Canada, Robin Sears writes, faces enormous policy challenges:
Canada faces policy challenges today that are broader and more complex than perhaps ever in our history. Several are well-known: climate, health care and the next contagion, sliding productivity and widening inequality. Each will be expensive to tackle, and all will require great creativity to address.
Each of our three major political parties has think tanks to help them develop policy. On the Right there are two major think tanks: The Manning Institute -- now the Canada Strong And Free Network -- and the Fraser Institute:
Canadian conservatives desperately need a bold centre for testing policy if they are to return to being a party of government. It has long failed to elaborate a credible conservative agenda for action on any of the tough issues. Ken Boessenkool’s Conservatives for Clean Growth may be a valuable new player on climate, perhaps one that will inspire new groups on other priorities.
The New Democrats have created three major think tanks:
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives was created by New Democrats and labour more than 40 years ago, and regularly serves up new progressive policy proposals. The Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation, recently revived under former Jack Layton staffers Karl Belanger and Josh Bizjak, is plunging into new policy research. But it is the youngest of the three that shows the greatest strength and communications skill.
The Broadbent Institute is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. It staged its Progress Summit this week, returning to its regular cycle of policy conferences, training sessions and research. Alone among any of the big institutes, it also runs its own media business, Press Progress. Key to its success has been finding the right balance between being a forum for new and often dissenting progressive voices, and for party loyalty. New executive director Jen Hassum brings a formidable reputation as an organizer and communications strategist.
The Liberals have the C.D. Howe Institute. But curiously:
the Liberal party has several times failed in its efforts to create a similar centre to feed its need for creative new centrist thinking. The gap is evident in areas such as security policy, wealth inequality and growth through innovation. The obstacle maybe the number of Liberal thinkers who are parked in the academy or in non-partisan centres such as the Institute for Research on Public Policy, who don’t fancy a new competitor.
All of the think tanks are having trouble creating new ideas:
Our governments today need broader and richer sources of policy innovation than ever before. The academy is curiously weak in experts who bring creative thinking combined with an understanding of tough political realities. Too many of the civil society organizations who do sponsor research promote only their own agenda. Many of the health charities are especially guilty of this.
We -- and they -- must do better.
Image: best educationnework.org
8 comments:
Our governments have collectively sought unison in this age of multi nationalism and globalism.
This has been nothing more than a business agreement between countries .
From NAFTA to NATO Its the control of market share.
We elect well wishing individuals who cannot think outside this sphere, no original thinkers!
The world runs on other things rather than business ; which nowadays means big business ;businesses so large they control the decisions of local, provincial and federal government!
Can you imagine the plight of some well meaning MP or MLA from some obscure town or city wishing to put in his or her views on national interest?
We cannot blame the decision makers who are in the position ( without influence) of power but we should question those that put them there either through self interest or ignorance..
And that is us!
Without informed voters little will change.
TB
Thomas Jefferson said long ago, TB, that democracy could not survive without a well-educated citizenry. To that end, he founded the University of Virginia. He was right then. He is right today.
I don't remember reading much if anything from the Manning Institute but I have long been labeling the Fraser Institute as the Fraser Institute for Policy Analysis and Fantasy Writing. The was one paper on school rankings that after about 8 hours of reading made me think that their method section was gobbledygook. It may be that it was just poorly written or my my stats and methodology knowledge was not up to the challenge but I remain convinced it was film-flam.
I remember a few years ago reading a short paper combining vacation entitlements and public holiday entitlements between public servants and private sector employees from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. It took me about 10 minutes of internet searching to realize that the author had really done no research and was writing based on a bit of faulty memory.
The few papers that I have read from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives usually seem to make sense or, at least, do not have such egregious errors that I start really data checking or a very detail look at the analyses where I know enough about the methodology that I can do it.
Overall, i am rather wary of all think tanks except the Fraser Institute where my assumption is that it is probably nonsense from the start. This is a bit unfair; they may occasionally do some good work. A stopped clack is corroct twice a day.
I've been quite impressed by the work of the CCPA, jrk. I have always been unimpressed by the stuff the Fraser Institute puts out. Perhaps that says more about my political biases than their products.
Perhaps that says more about my political biases than their products.
I doubt it. The Fraser Institute for Policy Analysis and Fantasy Writing seems to produce nonsense or research that is so cherry-picked as to be meaningless. I should have a look at some of the Manning Institute's products. I dislike Manning's politics but I think he is a more intellectually rigorous than whoever runs the Fraser Institute. If he has any day-to-day influence on the Institute's products we may see something passable.
IIRC, someone pointed out a few years ago that several of the Board of Directors as listed on their website were deceased.
As Mark Antony said, jrk, "The evil that men do lives after them."
As Mark Antony said, jrk, "The evil that men do lives after them."
Don't do that! I was just picking up my before-dinner glass of wine! :)
It's not the kind of statement that soothes the soul, is it, jrk?
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