Assignment 3 Canadian Public Policy Evaluation

1^st Topic: Fiscal Snapshot 2020 Chapter 2

• Comment on the Fiscal Policy came up dealt with Coronavirus. Don’t spend time on fiscal policy before the COVD-19. Take your fiscal principles, you know where the shock is, you know what the federal government have done, think about the fiscal policy.
• There is a brief part of Fiscal Snapshot in“Fiscal Policy Lecture” slide 86 to 91. (It’s not complete but it’s a starting point.) The “Fiscal Snapchat 2020 Chapter 2” provides you information on the economic situation and where the budget situation is. (All the information you will need for the framework.)
• Hint: Here, they are unsure about the 1^st topic“Fiscal Snapshot 2020Chapter 2“, so the importance of the 1^st topic is Q1, in this case, what exactly the government trying to achieve is what we are trying to achieve as we put ourselves as policymakers.

2^nd Topic: Aboriginal Policy

• How would you evaluate the aboriginal policy issue using the four questions?
• The Summary of “Royal Commission Report Highlights” will be helpful in answering the 4Qs and focusing on the importance of the 4Qs on the 2^nd
• Hint: Q2-Whether the Aboriginal issue the way has been dealt with in Canada has a social aspect of not? When the government is making policy on the Aboriginal population, are they using a market failure as an example or they are using a social objective. It’s asking you which front is it.

3^rd Topic: Social Assistance

• Fix the program using the four questions. The “Social Assistance Lecture” and “Social Assistance (UoC)-Ontario-Committee-Review” are useful.
• Hint: Q3-Slide 11 of “Social Assistance Lecture”, Q4-Slide 13 will be helpful.

4th Topic: Equalization Program

• Critical in Canada’s policy set-up.
• You have to read the“Canada’s-Equalization-Program-Political-Debates-and-Opportunities-for-Reform” to answer the four questions.
• Hint: Q1-What are we trying to achieve with Equalization Program? Q2-Is there a rationale, which suggests should the government actually do it? Q3-Do we have a system in Canada for government to make a positive difference? Q4-Whether the equalization program we have in place is technically flawed, can you do something better?

Assignment 3 Canadian Public Policy Evaluation

Expectations:

• The prof. wants basic answers (NOT massive details).He is not looking for a right or wrong answer, he needs to see how you approach an issue. As long as you have a view you can defend that view. (Mindset: When you look at a policy, you review that policy from your perspective and say “If I answer these 4 questions, how does that tell me whether this policy makes sense or not? What are the kind of changes that should happen?” It is NOT asking you to tell him a new policy, it’s asking you to review the policy and say, “you know there is a challenge, the reason for the challenge is….”. Try to get that mindset of critically looking at stuff from the point of view that you solve a problem and making a change.)
• Why the prof. selected these 4 topics: Policy development in each of these 4 topics is quite distinct, the prof. wants to see from your responses as to which of these 4 Qs is the most relevant to the 4 topics given. These 4 topics given represent the different importance of the 4 Qs. The 4 topics would represent challenges on either one or another part/area of public policy development (the importance of one or another of the 4Qs). Try to focus on what the importance are and it’s important from the point of view of application of the ‘framework’.
• You cannot make assumptions about facts, but you can make assumptions about opinions.
• Notes and examples to better UNDERSTAND the importance of the 4 Qs:

1. There are some public policy issues where it isn’t quite clear what the government is trying to achieve. For example, immigration policy where quite a lot of confusion as to what exactly is our objective? So, the importance is Q1.
2. Then, there are topics where you have a question mark about what exactly the role of the government is. Is there a role of government or not? For example, you ask yourself what the government is to do with the Tax expenditure? Another example, it’s hard to figure out is there a role of government for house debt?So, the importance is Q2.
3. Whether the government can make a positive difference and make things better? A good example is the Canadian healthcare system, the market fails, the social objectives below the average, the government simply is not able or has not been able to do the best they can on the health policy front. We can do a lot better. So, the importance is Q3.
4. For question on the actual policy design, a good example is fiscal policy where we concluded on two fronts. One is the infrastructure bank, we concluded that the fundamental design of an infrastructure bank was flawed. We also went over the fiscal objectives the Canada government has, we concluded: before the COVID-19 crisis hit, the budget deficit the government was planning to run for 2 years, what inconsistent with fiscal policy principles which would show that in the absence of any economic slowdown which was the case before the COVID-19 crisis, the principle would suggest that the government should not run a deficit which is larger than the amount of infrastructure spending, it’s clearly a bad design for a really important public policy. The second thing we found was that when we talked about infrastructure spending/investments by the government, we talked about a situation where those investments would produce a higher income stream for the future. So, the future generation enjoys those high future streams because those investments would be able to pay higher taxes to finance the cost paying interest on that, from that respective, we found that policy is flawed. So, the importance is Q4.
5. So, now you have examples where a public policy either fair or not act as they could be in different parts of public policy development in the 4 areas of the 4 Qs.

Assignment 3 Canadian Public Policy Evaluation

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