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This paper explores the relationship between federalism and the policy design of labour market policies in two liberal welfare state regimes – Canada and the United States – addressing the following research question: How do variations in policy design intersect with federalism in both countries and how can these variations provide powerful, self-reinforcing or self-undermining feedback effects over time? Combining the literatures on the varieties of federalism, the liberal welfare regime, and policy design and feedback, the paper shows that paying close attention to federalism is necessary to understand diverse national policy designs that produce self-reinforcing feedback effects over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the COVID–19 outbreak, food insecurity was already a serious public health problem in Canada, impacting 12.7 percent of households. In recent years, activists, practitioners and researchers from a range of health–related disciplines, have debated the legitimacy of food banks and other charitable food programs, contending that policy and programs at the federal level must be prioritized to address the underlying root causes of poverty. This paper challenges the discourse that charitable food programs prevent or distract from Canada's social equity goals. Alternatively, this paper argues that programs and initiatives at the local level can emerge to bring short–term stability and self–sufficiency to local communities while also advocating for longer–term structural change. Drawing upon structuration theory and critical ecologies of anti–Black racism, we examine the work of BlackFoodToronto, a food sovereignty initiative, to illustrate the negotiation of power and agency, and how groups and networks react to and reshape confining and enabling structures through collaborative practice. In addressing Canada's food security crisis, this paper offers an alternative perspective of community–based, nonprofit and charitable programs, which in practice, can help inform future food security policy and related health equity and community development strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transition from the "era of the health accords" (from 2000 to 2017) to the new regime of individual bilateral agreements between Ottawa and each of the provinces and territories, allocating federal health transfers and setting agreed-upon health-reform priorities in each jurisdiction. The paper argues that the health accords of 2000, 2003 and 2004 were essentially unsuccessful for a number of reasons. First, they tended to raise expectations among the public, health system actors and health policy experts about the ability to transform health care in Canada in a relatively short period of time. This was, in part, a result of the accords' very broad and general commitments to change, but also their lack of recognition of the barriers to change that exist within the system. Second, and related to the first, attention was paid mostly to the amount of the transfer from the federal government to the provinces and territories, rather than to how those dollars were to be spent. At best, governments bought only a modest amount of change in the system, despite the billions of dollars of new investment. Unlike other industrialized federations, Canada appears to be the only one that relies on an ongoing, highly politicized process of intergovernmental diplomacy to negotiate the fiscal relationship in health care. This, combined with a somewhat amorphous and changeable understanding of the federal government's overall role in health care, complicates the process of reform and heightens the political stakes around the negotiations. The new model of bilateral agreements negotiated under an umbrella statement of common principles around health-reform priorities may yet prove to be an improvement in both process and outcomes. Bilateralism can serve to de-escalate the political stakes inherent in the federal-provincial diplomacy around Canada's most popular social program, by moving away from the "grand bargains" that characterized the accords. In short, there will be less opportunity for the kind of political rhetoric that unduly raises expectations of rapid change. More importantly, the bilateral agreements, although far from perfect, may actually better serve to focus attention on the specific health-service organization and delivery issues the provinces and territories intend to improve, restructure or expand. Under very broad principles such as "improving access to mental health and community care," the bilateral agreements articulate some very clear plans about specific approaches, programs and policies on which the transfers will be spent. This should provide a much greater opportunity for the Canadian public to hold governments to account for progress in those areas, something the accords never really managed to do. Going forward, there is still room for improvement. Some provincial plans are decidedly vague, and governments should be urged to be more specific in their commitments and intentions. Common indicators continue to be difficult to develop, although big strides have been made in recent decades. Governments would be well advised to talk seriously and openly about the challenges and barriers to change that exist within the system and, in doing so, marshal public support to dismantle them. And the federal government itself needs to actively engage in assisting jurisdictions in learning from and adapting the successful reforms and initiatives of other jurisdictions. This could be an act of true system stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is centred on the use of legislation as a tool of public action in health policy. We suggest that, as with the Canada Health Act (CHA) of 1984, this option should be considered to direct future reform efforts and pursue our collective aims of health and wellness. The CHA is the legislative expression of the federal government's exercise of its spending power, serving to consolidate key national agreements governing the circumstances under which the federal government contributes to the costs of medically necessary health services delivered by the provinces and territories. Two features of the CHA merit highlighting. The first is that its core provisions -- in particular, the five criteria often referred to as Canada's "national standards" for health care -- were not new or original to the CHA. The CHA was nonetheless an important step in the development of Canada's health system because it enshrined together, in one statute, longstanding commitments. A second feature of the CHA worth highlighting is that it does not stand alone. The CHA is one of 13 statutes across the country, including one in each province and territory, that serve together to establish the basic legal infrastructure of Canada's health insurance system. The CHA's powers to make regulations and issue policy interpretation letters offer important potential to achieve needed health system reforms without needing to "open" the act. Even where these powers are unrestricted by an express requirement for consultation with the provinces and territories, however, this would undoubtedly be required, given the fundamentally consensual nature of the CHA. Finally, the federal government's legislative options are not limited to the CHA. Jurisdiction over health and health care in Canada is shared between the federal and provincial and territorial governments. The various federal powers with health aspects allocated by the Constitution Act, 1867 are significant, including the residual "federal health power" to make laws "for the peace, order and good government of Canada" It therefore makes good sense to consider federal policy objectives in the health domain with regard for the full spectrum of federal legislative competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growing focus on healthy aging in the political agenda. Discourses contained within policy documents have the potential to shape our notions of healthy aging and well-being. This comprehensive critical document analysis of provincial aging policies in Newfoundland and Labrador (2006–2015) contributes to a larger research study exploring aging women's notions of health and the body in relation to the aging process. The findings highlight how healthy aging discourses focus on the concept of productivity and how a certain type of health is required for ongoing contribution. The paper concludes by arguing that if healthy aging is framed around one's ability to remain productive, notions of health will remain limited to an externalized measure of output versus subjective experience of well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health workers are the foundation of health systems. The alignment of health workforce structures and processes to achieve the quadruple aim outcomes is central to any learning health system. This requires robust data and evidence. A key problem is that Canada lags behind comparable OECD countries in terms of health workforce data and digital analytics. As a result, health workforce planning and decision-making tend to be ad hoc, sporadic and siloed by profession or jurisdiction, generating significant costs, inefficiencies and risks for all involved. 2 Health workers in Canada account for more than 10 per cent of all employed Canadians and over two-thirds of all health-care spending, which amounted to $175 billion in 2019, or nearly eight per cent of Canada's total GDP. 3 Recognizing these facts and supporting strategic health workforce planning, policy and management ought to be key priorities for federal and provincial/ territorial governments and other health-care organizations. Across all the different stakeholders that make up the complex, adaptive health workforce system in Canada, we lack a centralized and co-ordinated data, analytics and strategic planning infrastructure, a neglect that has been readily acknowledged for over a decade. COVID-19 has exposed the significant gaps in our knowledge about the health workforce, causing critical risks for planners to manage during a health crisis. The time is ripe for the federal government to take on a co-ordinating leadership role to enhance the data infrastructure that provinces, territories, regions and training programs need to better plan for and support the health workforce. Efforts should centre on three key elements that will improve data infrastructure, bolster knowledge creation and inform decision-making activities: • A minimum data standard and enhanced health workforce data collection across all stakeholders; • More timely, accessible, interactive and fit-for-purpose decision-support tools; • Capacity building in health workforce data analytics, digital tool design, policy analysis and management science. This vision requires an enhanced federal government role to contribute resources to co-ordinate the collection of accurate, standardized and more complete data to support analysis across occupations, sectors and jurisdictions, with links to relevant patient information, health-care usage and outcome data, for more strategic fit-forpurpose planning at all levels. This paper presents a vision for enhanced federal support of data-driven and evidence-informed health workforce planning, policy and management. First, two data infrastructure and capacity-building recommendations include: 1. The federal government should create an initiative dedicated to enhancing standardized health workforce data, purpose-built for strategic planning and associated decision-making tools for targeted planning, through a specially earmarked contribution agreement with the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). 2. In addition to the need to build better data, digital tools and decision-support infrastructure, there is a parallel need to build the human resources capacity for health workforce analytics. Through a special Canadian Institutes of Health Research-administered fund, this could include a strategic training investment in health workforce research and a complementary signature initiative to fund integrated research projects that cut across the existing scientific institutes. Building on these two necessary but insufficient building blocks, a co-ordinating national health workforce organization could include one of the following three options: 1. The federal government could create a dedicated agency with a mandate to enhance existing data infrastructure and decision-support tools for strategic planning, policy and management across Canada. 2. Through a contribution agreement, the federal government could support the creation of an arm's-length, not-for-profit organization -- a partnership for health workforce -- as a steward of a renewed strategy and to provide health labour market information, training and management of human resources in the health sector, including support for recruitment and retention. 3. The federal government could support the creation of a robust, transparent and accessible secretariat for a council on health workforce to improve data and decision-making infrastructures, and to bolster knowledge creation through dedicated funding to inform policy and decision-making and collaborate on topics of mutual interest across stakeholders. In addition to building a more robust health system for Canada's post-pandemic recovery, these actions would align with the World Health Organization's Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health (2016) which encourages all countries to have institutional mechanisms in place by 2030 to effectively steer and co-ordinate an intersectoral health workforce agenda and established mechanisms for health workforce data sharing through national health workforce accounts. Because of the importance of the health workforce to Canada's economy and pandemic recovery, building the necessary infrastructure requires a sizable and sustained investment over the course of at least 10 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unique challenges of the correctional healthcare environment are well-documented. Access to community-equivalent care, voluntary informed consent of offenders with mental disorder, violence risk, suicide risk, medication misuse, and clinical seclusion, confinement and segregation are just a few of the challenges faced by correctional psychiatric services. This paper shares experiences for dealing with the ongoing challenges for psychiatrists working in the field. It provides an overview of the current state of mental healthcare in the federal correctional system in Canada, the legislative framework and initiatives aimed at addressing the healthcare needs of federal inmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National responses to COVID-19 depend in part on national health care financing arrangements. Yet the pandemic itself has not only strained system capacity, it has – through subsequent economic shocks – strained revenue sources that prop up these arrangements. In federal countries, fiscal pressures are particularly pronounced. As this paper argues, however, federal health financing regimes differ in ways that are shaping the agenda for post-pandemic reforms. The analysis, which focuses on health care financing in three federal countries (Canada, the United States, and Mexico), explores the current and potential future impact of COVID-19 on existing policy legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written recently about the rise of within‐country inequality and growing imbalances of regional fortunes in the United States and the European Union. In this paper, we apply a novel geo‐visualization technique that combines local indicators of spatial association with directional statistics to a unique dataset in order to explore the spatial dimensions of regional income inequalities in Canada from 1981 to 2016. After describing a pattern of growing spatial divergence among regions, we briefly discuss the need for the federal government to explore new types of place‐sensitive development policies. Key Messages: A novel geo‐visualization technique is used to track the evolution of regional inequalities in Canada.The implications of growing spatial divergence in regional trajectories of inequality are briefly discussed.Particular emphasis is placed on the need for the federal government to revisit its regional development policy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting in 1967, with the issuance of an Order-in-Council by Canada’s Privy Council, the concept of providing Canadians access to their Federal Government Records was promulgated through their National Archives (now Library and Archives Canada - LAC). In the intervening decades, LAC has reviewed millions of pages of Security and Intelligence Records and, whenever possible, released them. Now, as the Canadian Federal Government examines changes to the Access to Information Act, as well as changes to Canada’s National Security systems, there is a new commitment to National Security Transparency. The intent of this paper is to examine the historic provision of archival access to the records of Canada’s Federal Security and Intelligence Records, in particular to the archival records of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Through a proper application of the terms of the Access to Information Act to the Canada’s Federal Security and Intelligence files, carried out in consultation with Canada’s intelligence community, Library and Archives Canada has embraced its responsibilities to Governmental Openness and the needs and requirements of National Security. In doing so, LAC has worked to balance  legislatively mandated commitment to chart a course between desirable accessibility and the operational needs of Canada’s Security/Intelligence community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian law is commonly learned through the examination of court decisions. This "case study" technique is intended to demonstrate not only the prevailing principles of law but also how these principles have developed over time. Taking this approach a step further, this paper demonstrates that the governing principles of Canadian constitutional law pertaining to federalism (i.e. the division of powers) can be discovered by studying Canadian court decisions on a discreet topic: namely, insurance law. While reviewing the fundamental principles of federalism analysis, this paper illustrates the important role that insurance has and continues to play as a focal point for developing constitutional law principles; reminds readers that matters of public law are often decided on the basis of private law disputes; and examines the approach that Canadian courts have taken to federalism issues where the relevant subject matter (i.e. insurance) is not specifically itemized in the written text of the constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which dimensions of open government have been adopted by local governments in Canada. Local government structures are sometimes conceptualized as particularly well suited to democratic experimentation. Certainly, it has been the case that many governmental/democratic reform initiatives have started at the local/municipal level. Exploring open government at the local level provides us with insights into two questions. First, it helps us determine the extent to which open government has permeated beyond federal and provincial levels of government in Canada. Second, due to the challenges associated with open government, it allows us to identify and highlight such challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scope and content of section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which constitutional- ized the recognition of Aboriginal and Treaty rights, was intended to be negotiated at the political level. The failure of that process meant that the job of determining the meaning of the provision fell largely to the judiciary. As a result, the constitutional relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state has most frequently been theorized in terms of Aboriginal rights and the judicial doctrines interpreting section 35. Theis paper explicitly considers the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canadian governments from the perspective of federalism. It does so by emphasizing the interstitial character of federalism. Theis articulation serves two func- tions. First, it recognizes the myriad ways that Indigenous peoples exercise jurisdiction as being constitutive of federalism in Canada. Theat is, it offers a way of re-describing existing practices of governance in Canada in order to shed light on their federal character. Second, this approach offers a view of how constitutional change can occur moving forward, providing a critique of conceptions of federalism that cement a constitutional order that has histori- cally marginalized Indigenous practices of governance. Lastly, it suggests avenues for the development of a federalism that can support Indigenous self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right to healthcare is a socio-economic right. It is positive in the sense that governments need to provide resources and set the priorities for individuals to be able to exercise it. The provision of healthcare within complex political entities such as the European Union (EU) and Canada is divided between different actors, namely the federal government and provinces in the case of Canada, and European institutions and Member States in the case of the EU. The paper analyses the EU and Canadian legal frameworks and attempts to determine the right balance of power between the centre and the constituent parts in order to facilitate the exercise of the right to healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Local public health authorities often lack the capacity to adapt to climate change, despite being on the 'front lines' of climate impacts. Upper-level governments are well positioned to create an enabling environment for adaptation and build local public health authorities' capacity, yet adaptation literature has not specified how upper-level governments can build local-level adaptive capacity. In this paper we examine how federal and regional governments can contribute to enabling and supporting public health adaptation to climate change at the local level in federal systems. We outline the local level's self-assessed adaptive capacity for public health adaptation in Canadian and German comparative case studies, in terms of funding, knowledge and skills, organizations, and prioritization, drawing upon 30 semi-structured interviews. Based on interviewees' recommendations and complemented by scientific literature, we develop a set of practical measures that could enable or support local-level public health adaptation. We find that adaptive capacity varies widely between local public health authorities, but most report having insufficient funding and staff for adaptation activities. We propose 10 specific measures upper-level governments can take to build local public health authorities' capacity for adaptation, under the interrelated target areas of: building financial capital; developing and disseminating usable knowledge; collaborating and coordinating for shared knowledge; and claiming leadership. Federal and regional governments have an important role to play in enabling local-level public health adaptation, and have many instruments available to them to fulfill that role. Selecting and implementing measures to enable local public health authorities' adaptive capacity will require tailoring to, and consideration, of the local context and needs. Highlights • Local public health authorities often lack capacity to adapt to climate change. • National and regional governments can play supportive or enabling role. • We propose 10 concrete measures to enable local public health adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada today, the review and approval of federal linear energy infrastructure projects is a contentious matter. Tension is driven in part by the complex regulatory regime, and this complexity is intensified by the federal government's responsibility to fulfill obligations associated with the rights of Indigenous peoples. Th e federal legal regime is evolving rapidly and is part of a broader policy debate pertaining to energy and climate policy, and interprovincial pipelines in particular. Th is article presents the current legal landscape and then discusses emerging changes in federal law and policy. In doing so, it discusses the rights of Indigenous peoples, summarizes the associated varied legal terrain across the country, describes the legislative scheme for review and approval of federally regulated linear energy projects, and provides in-depth discussion of the duty to consult and accommodate. Th e fi nal part of the paper turns to the current evolving context, setting out recent changes the federal government has put forward for law reform. While acknowledging that there is an important continuing need for analysis and commentary with a normative approach to the fi eld of Aboriginal law and the revitalization of Indigenous law, this article takes the approach of focusing on the current content of federal law in Canada as it pertains to Indigenous peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilevel governance poses several challenges for the politics of climate change. On the one hand, the unequal distribution of power and interests can serve as a barrier to implementing coherent policy at a federal level. On the other, these features also enable policy leadership among sub-federal units. In the context of wide variation in climate policy at both national and sub-federal levels in Canada and in the United States, this paper utilizes an original data set to examine public attitudes and perceptions toward climate science and climate change policy in two federal systems. Drawing on national and provincial/state level data from telephone surveys administered in the United States and in Canada, the paper provides insight into where the public stands on the climate change issue in two of the most carbon-intensive federal systems in the world. The paper includes the first directly comparable public opinion data on how Canadians and Americans form their opinions regarding climate matters and provides insight into the preferences of these two populations regarding climate policies at both the national and sub-federal levels. Key findings are examined in the context of growing policy experiments at the sub-federal level in both countries and limited national level progress in the adoption of climate change legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines shifts in the regulation and governance of environmental crime over the twenty-year period since the passage of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) in 1988, tracing its history, policies, and enforcement record from 1989-2008. Documents assessed include Environment Canada's enforcement data, Annual Reports, reports on its Plans and Priorities, the Senate and House of Commons five-year reviews of CEPA 1988 and CEPA 1999 and the government's response to these reviews. The purpose of the paper is to document the process and compromises that have shaped federal environmental protection, and explore the policy paralysis this has produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the assumption that historical institutionalism has much to offer in order to address important questions raised in the literature on comparative federalism. Historical institutionalism is a useful approach to enhancing our understanding of both the origins that drive federal system dynamics and the dynamic patterns which federal systems unfold over time. The paper conceptualizes federalism as a multi-layered political order, comprising an institutional and an ideational layer. It then introduces two models of political change, the model of path dependence and the process sequencing model, and asks how each model can contribute to explain the emergence of the federal order in Canada and Germany. I conclude that while the model of path dependence lends itself well to capturing federal system dynamics in Germany, the process sequencing model, in contrast, is better suited to explaining sources and patterns of change in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of the Canadian federal government in two foreign policy areas: overseas development assistance and international cultural relations by providing a brief history of the federal government’s engagement in both policy areas and highlighting the contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of Canadian higher education. More broadly, the paper explores the unique characteristics of the Canadian federal government’s role in higher education policy making, and in particular, its relations with academics and the university community. Ironically in a world increasingly characterized by greater international education flows, in Canada, there has been a narrowing of vision, a focus on more short rather than long term objectives and a limited engagement of dialogue between academics and the government to promote both development assistance and international education as Canada’s soft power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1960s, the only pan-Canadian association of municipalities has shown two decades of decline followed by two decades of growth. This paper analyses this decline and subsequent growth in the context of the changing position of municipalities with Canada, particularly those in Quebec. Examination of the association's recent history provides useful insights into how Canada's municipalities cope with Canadian federalism. It provides lessons as to how best to prosper as a pan-Canadian organization concerned with what are mainly matters of provincial interest. The paper's theoretical contribution includes reference to the nature and roles of interest groups in Canadian federalism and to the application of structural contingency theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent assessments of the federal government's social policy leadership fail to provide a satisfactory linkage between its unilateral actions and its ongoing involvement in intergovernmental bargaining. This paper argues that the federal government is honing old and new tools to shape the direction of provincial policy development. Indeed, many unilateral initiatives appear tied to a broader strategy of assuring the federal government an important place in intergovernmental negotiations. The paper unpacks four key tools (new money, accountability, creation of expertise, and structuring investments) and assesses how they have been employed to rebuild federal leadership to various degrees in the health, child, and labour market policy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries with different characteristics and different inserts in the global context, that reformed the State, acted similarly in relation to their housing policies during the reform period. In most of these countries housing policy has undergone a "privatization" supported by a new vision of housing not as a social policy, but as a market product to be consumed. In Brazil, the recent housing policy is being performed by the Federal Government has shown a similar route to those countries. Brazil also has gone through a Reform of the State, though not implemented in its entirety, the question arises: How does the recent Brazilian housing policy is in the context of State reform implemented in 1995? In seeking answers to this question, this paper discusses the course of national housing policy from 1995 to the present day, focusing on the fundamental changes that were introduced after this date, especially in the housing finance system, and convergences and their relations with the State Reform agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which party systems are nationalized in four federations. In doing so, the research addresses two questions. First, is dual accountability operational across decentralized countries, or do sub-national voters turn to national cues as a means to economize in a complex information environment? By bringing a cross-national dataset to bear on this question, we are able to provide insight into where and why dual accountability might operate. Second, what explains variation in the extent to which party systems are nationalized across countries and time? We build on previous literature to suggest a number of factors likely to impact the extent of nationalization. We examine those factors in the context of provincial-level elections in Argentina, Canada, Germany and the United States. Using national and sub-national economic data, we find little evidence of dual accountability in any of our countries. We find that economic performance matters little for regional electoral outcomes, and where it does, sub-national outcomes reflect national rather than sub-national conditions. More important are the roles of partisan relations across levels of government and election timing. Sub-national co-partisans of the nationally governing party lose votes, particularly as the time from the most recent national election grows. The strength of these effects varies across our cases in predictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Paired comparisons of liberal-welfare regimes are underrepresented in housing policy literature. This paper adopts historical institutionalist theory in comparing two such cases: Canada and Australia. Despite these countries’ many similarities, social housing policy differences have been shaped by institutional differences in federal systems, welfare states and social housing itself. Australia's earlier welfare state supported much larger postwar production, but Canada caught up once it departed from the residual US model in the 1960s. Although the 1970s economic shocks challenged Australia's welfare state more than Canada's, the latter's centrifugal federalism became a bigger threat to social housing. In 1985–1995 Australia expanded its social programmes, including demand-side assistance, while Canada devolved and retrenched social programmes, including social housing. Although supply-side social housing is an orphaned legacy in each case, Australia has higher assistance to low-income tenants, more active policy discourse and stronger recent signs of post-neoliberal re-engagement than Canada. These two cases illustrate the importance of institutional differences, including ‘‘institutional design’’, in creating different forces of change at key junctures, leading to divergences in policy paths. These findings suggest value in reinterpreting the existing secondary literature from the perspectives of welfare regime theory and historical institutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses the Canadian federal system. First, it focuses on the reasons for the choice of a federal system when the Canadian federation was created in 1867, on the main features of that system: the asymmetrical nature and the strongly centralized division of powers, and on its evolution. Second, it analyses the federal financial relations, the intergovernmetal relations and various issues relating to the structure and functioning of national institutions. Finally, it pays special attention to the changing and problematic relationship between Quebec and English Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the lead-up to the November 2007 general election, the Australian Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd, announced its intention to repair a relationship between the Commonwealth government and the not-for-profit sector (NFPS), which it alleged had been 'broken' by the Howard government. The key policy expression of this commitment would be a 'compact' that would set the terms of engagement between the federal government, through its departments and agencies, and the NFPS. The Rudd Labor government's pursuit of a compact followed the lead of governments overseas - most notably in the United Kingdom (1998) and Canada (2001) - whose landmark agreements set the benchmarks against which most other compacts are compared. It also followed in the wake of similar initiatives by state and territory governments over the previous decade. On 17 March 2010, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd launched the National Compact. Although an important milestone, the policy journey did not end with this event. This paper explores the implementation challenges confronting government and the NFPS and considers the prospects for an Australian compact in the light of overseas and Australian experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom about the structure of political parties in Canada has emphasized their confederal nature. In other words (and the New Democratic party excepted), parties with identical partisan complexions at the federal and provincial levels are thought to operate in “two political worlds.” This paper argues that election campaigns are a key integrating link between parties. How they fight elections reveals extensive cross-level co-operation, particularly through shared activists (local party activists, party staff and party professionals) and technological expertise. This has the effect of shrinking the space between party cousins and forges unity between them. While there are certain obstacles to electoral collaboration, there are also incentives for these parties to work to maintain and strengthen their ties with their partisan cousin at the other level. These findings make an important contribution by directly challenging the notion that Canada's federal system has led to increasingly disentangled political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canada has experienced two formal federal ministries dedicated to addressing urban issues. The first, the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, encountered resistance from provincial governments and its fellow departments. Both worked to undermine it. The second, the Ministry of State for Infrastructure and Communities, was created with a more conciliatory tone towards the provincial governments and its ministerial colleagues. This paper examines the establishment of both ministries and tracks their efforts using a policy learning and lesson-drawing framework, concluding that common institutional actors, such as the Privy Council, were responsible for the Ministry of State for Infrastructure and Communities’ change in tone and approach to multilevel governance. General lessons are drawn about inter-governmental relations and multi-level policy formation in federal systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]