Crown Corporation Research Articles

Government-Owned Enterprises in Canada

Until now, assessments of the scope of enterprises in Canada that are owned by government have placed Canada roughly in the middle of OECD member countries in terms of how much direct control governments have over businesses in our economy. But that’s because all of those assessments have relied almost strictly on counting federal Crown corporations. For the first time, this study takes into account businesses owned by lower levels of governments. And once they are accounted for, it becomes clear that the size of Canada’s state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector is dramatically bigger than previously thought. In fact, the provincial Crown sector alone is significantly larger than the entire federal sector, whether we measure by assets, employees or contribution to national GDP. Add the assets of provincial Crown corporations to the federal ones and the combined sector turns out to be nearly two and a half times larger than the federal sector alone. Measured by contribution to GDP, the provincial sector and federal sector together account for nearly five times as much as the federal sector on its own. But even this seriously understates the true scope of government-owned enterprise in Canada, since it does not account for what are certainly hundreds more municipally owned corporations. Getting a handle on the actual size of the undoubtedly substantial municipalSOE sector, however, has proven to be difficult, due to the dispersion of records and the differences in how government-affiliated businesses are structured and defined from city to city (and even within the same city). But one thing is certain: Canadian governments own a sizeably larger share of the national economy than past studies have suggested. The share of the economy that is controlled by government is something Canadians need to have a much clearer idea about: In the past, Canadian governments have privatized many of the most visible state-owned businesses, from Air Canada and Petro-Canada at the federal level, to Manitoba Telephone Systems and Nova Scotia Power Corp. at the provincial level. With a better understanding of the size, and structure, of the government-owned enterprise sector, Canadians may wonder if there is still much more room for privatization. It is possible that may not be the case. But until Canadians have clear information about the government’s ownership stake in the economy, informed decisions about the further privatization of Crown corporations are not possible.

Infoway to become more responsive to needs, CEO vows

Canada Health Infoway must rapidly reboot, and do so in substantial fashion, if it’s to justify public outlays beyond the billions already spent on developing a national electronic health infrastructure, according to the crown corporation’s CEO. After years of defending a strategy favouring

Drug Shortages: Searching for a Cure

Shortages of prescription generic drugs have recently made headlines in Canada and elsewhere. The causes and possible solutions for these shortages are still unclear. With the failure of "market forces," has the time come to establish a Crown corporation to ensure the supply of essential drugs?

Achieving Balance, Spurring Growth: A Shadow Federal Budget for 2012

Canada is in the happy position of being able to address its fiscal challenges not just through eliminating deficits, but also by promoting growth in the economy and the tax base. This report takes a two-pronged approach: first, an accelerated plan to achieve budgetary surplus in three years; and second, a series of low-cost initiatives designed to foster economic growth. On top of the strategic review of direct program spending announced in last year’s federal budget, initiatives in this Shadow Budget can enhance federal cost savings, including: restraining federal employee compensation, rationalizing Canada's tax base and trimming financial assistance to Crown Corporations.

The Role of Crown Corporations in the Canadian Economy: An Analytical Framework

The Role of Crown Corporations in the Canadian Economy: An Analytical Framework

The Role of Crown Corporations in the Canadian Economy: An Analytical Framework

Government interference in markets arouses heated emotions on both sides of the political spectrum. But the fact remains that governments of all stripes routinely play a direct role in the economy. Motivations run the gamut from the economic (correcting perceived market failures) to the ethical (addressing social injustice) to the nakedly political (ideology or the status quo demands it). This paper offers a highly readable theoretical and practical framework for understanding federal and provincial governments’ market interventions in sectors including power generation, alcohol and mail delivery. Public ownership can advance a range of normative objectives, so the choices, reasons and outcomes for the government, the Canadian economy, Crown corporation employees and the general public can vary as widely as the enterprises involved. But in asking why and how and assessing ways and means, the authors bring together a substantial body of knowledge and expertise, providing an essential guide to a phenomenon that, like it or not, will remain a major part of Canada’s economic landscape for a long time to come.

Noise surveys and hearing protection at the Royal Canadian Mint plant

Royal Canadian Mint is a Crown Corporation to produce circulation and non-circulation coins for Canada and other countries. Noise measurements have been conducted regularly for production environment and before any new equipment operation in Royal Canadian Mint, and to protect our employee from hearing loss is one of our health and safety issues applied in whole plant. The formula used in the noise measurement is introduced in this paper, and the noise calculations are also discussed for the continuous noise sources, intermittent noise sources, and the combinations of individual noise sources. Some noise survey results are listed and analyzed, and the related hearing protective methods in our plant are also described.

HP Sauce and the Hate Literature of Pop Art: bill bissett in the House of Commons

HP Sauce and the Hate Literature of Pop Art: bill bissett in the House of Commons Ryan J. Cox (bio) The minister, the Government and its vehicle, the Canada Council, are weak and full of fear—fearful of not appearing avant garde, fearful of being labeled culturally illiterate. Robert Wenman, MP Fraser Valley West (PC), 13 December 1977 they got a sause calld houses uv parliament for meat at th tabul hp sause it sure tastes shitty too bill bissett“in nova scotia th peopul call shit houses housus uv parliament” Taken at face value, the bissett affair of 1977–78 seems rather mundane, hardly worth noticing. A group of mostly opposition MPS, headed by Bob Wenman, the Tory member for Fraser Valley West, attempted to take the government to task for, in their eyes, the fiscal irresponsibility of the Canada Council for the Arts, a semi-autonomous Crown corporation. This irresponsibility was evident in the fact that Canada Council was funding “what anyone in [parliament] would term as offensive and demeaning pornography” (Canada 1845) and, as Hugh Anderson, the Parliamentary [End Page 147] Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries, put it, “a degradation to the printed word in Canada” (Canada 4084). It had the potential for great political theatre, linking as it did excessive government spending and morality—Jake Epp, another Tory MP, falsely alleged that certain unnamed publishers, likely alluding to bill bissett and his blew ointment press, had received “in excess of $100000 to publish poetry which … the average Canadian would call pornographic”1 (Canada 4989)—but the scandal never materialized and the stated goal of Wenman and company, the review of the Canada Council’s mandate, was never accomplished. The bissett affair has all the hallmarks of a by rote political scandal. There is little new in the way it attempts to tear strips off the Trudeau government’s hide and gain votes, primarily in conservative areas of the country. The moral panic angle—the poetry of bill bissett at the centre of the scandal is described as “evil,” and Wenman suggested that the government had an “obligation to fight” this evil lest it negatively affect the Dominion (Canada 1845)—had been played numerous times before. In the late 1940s and 1950s, E. Davie Fulton—a Conservative MP for Kamloops—made his political bones by joining Dr. Fredric Wertham’s campaign to control the publishing of crime and horror comics on the grounds that they were a threat to the youth of the nation and lead to juvenile delinquency (Bell 94–98, Palmer 187). Fulton went on, partially in thanks to this crusading, to the position of Minister of Justice under Diefenbaker and eventually ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. Interestingly, the bissett affair wasn’t even the first time in the 1970s that a poet would become a lightning rod in the House of Commons. When bpNichol won his Governor General’s Award in 1970, it provided MPS with an occasion to remark on what they perceived as government subsidizing of Marxism, pornography, and obscenity, which, as Caroline Bayard establishes, is at its core a thinly veiled attack on the counterculture by the establishment (112–13, 304). The other angle, focusing on government arts spending as misappropriation and waste, is also a common trope in Canadian politics. Wenman’s charge that not even “one half of one percent of the Canadian people would say [bissett’s work] is acceptable” and “Common sense judgment says that taxpayers’ dollars not be used to support such work” (Trueman), while allowing him to neatly sidestep the issue of censorship echoes the comments [End Page 148] of Prime Minister Stephen Harper about cuts to the arts in the run-up to the 2008 federal election. There Harper stated that “when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough, when they know those subsidies have actually gone up—I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people” (Benzie, Campion-Smith, and Whittington). Harper’s “ordinary working people...

Strategy evaluation: Experience at the International Development Research Centre

AbstractThis chapter examines how the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has framed and used strategic evaluations. Drawing from IDRC's experience, the authors look at Henry Mintzberg's ideas on strategy formation, and explore potential implications for evaluation in an organization that resembles what Mintzberg calls an “adhocracy.” The International Development Research Centre is a Canadian Crown Corporation that supports research in developing countries and undertakes evaluative work at different levels: strategic evaluations, program and project evaluation, and ongoing learning. “Strategic” evaluations examine issues that cut across the Centre's 18 programs. They have focused on programming modalities and broad corporate result areas like capacity building and policy influence. In a decentralized, utilization‐focused approach to evaluation, IDRC has taken the view that strategic‐level evaluation requires separate studies, as opposed to rolling up data from program or project evaluations. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.

The Taegeukgi and the Maple Leaf: The Pursuit of South Korean Export Markets by Atomic Energy Canada Limited

In the 1980’s Canada’s nuclear technology company, Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL), designed and attempted to sell a next-generation, small-scale nuclear reactor called the Slowpoke Energy System (SES). AECL pursued export markets for the SES, of which the most promising was South Korea. The SES project was forced to compete for funding and this necessitated the formation of partnerships with private and public sector agents in South Korea. AECL’s experience in South Korea suggests that crown corporations are more commercially oriented than established policy scholarship admits, and that in some cases competitive forces work to blunt innovation rather than reward it.

David M. Malone

David M. Malone' s appointment in February as president of the International Development Research Centre seems a natural step for a man whose career embodies the worldview of the crown corporation. Both Malone and IDRC, which aims to assist developing countries in nurturing local research groups to tackle social, economic, and political issues, are familiar with the problems facing such countries and the potential the global research community has to address them. Most recently, Malone was Canada's high commissioner in Delhi, where IDRC has a regional office, and his selection has been met with praise in the two worlds that he has known best - diplomacy and research.Malone was born in 1954 in Ottawa, the son of an Australian mother and Canadian father who was recruited by the then- Department of External Affairs. Thus began a childhood spent in the Netherlands, France, and Iran, a country he returned to in 2004 for the first time in 25 years. The early exposure to a cosmopolitan lifestyle appealed to the young Malone, who says his parents' frequent travels encouraged him to seek a job that would enable him to do the same.Kids often default into the sort of professional lives of their parents and think did that very much, having grown up internationally, says Malone. I think simply having moved around as a kid and lived in different societies, all of which I'd liked and had liked learning from, it was something wanted to continue to do during my life.He studied business at Montreal's Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales before following his father's footsteps by joining the Department of External Affairs for a career that would lead him to postings in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait, among other countries. After completing a master's degree in public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Malone returned to External Affairs to assist Ostry, then deputy minister of international trade and one of Canada's key players in international economic diplomacy.He credits Ostry with teaching him a thing or two about the delicate art of diplomatic negotiation. I learned a tremendous amount from working with her, both on the substance ofthe issues, but also on how much personal style can matter, says Malone. Sylvia had a tremendous personal style that was a major force in international economic relations.He would put those lessons to use while working for two of Canada's permanent representatives at the United Nations in the early 1990s, Yves Fortier and Louise Frechette, before becoming deputy permanent representative from 1992-94. He also took charge ofthe working group ofthe UN's special committee on peacekeeping during Canada's ill-fated deployment to Somalia, which partially contributed to the country's reluctance to participate directly in future missions. But there are other reasons for a decreased Canadian presence in UN peacekeeping operations in recent times, according to Malone. He points to Canada's participation in NATO operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan as part of a trend seen in many western countries, whereby increasing numbers of governments are bypassing the UN in favour of more practical and efficient regional organizations and coalitions ofthe willing. But a reduced ground presence in conflict- ridden countries hasn't stopped western nations from being the primary funders ofthe UN budget, including most of its peacekeeping expenses.Malone says that because Canada was actively involved in peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Somalia while he was at the the views of Canadian ambassadors were always sought out and held in high regard, allowing the country to speak authoritatively on those and other conflicts.Canada had the capacity to punch above its weight at the UN, says Malone. This was due in no small part to the influence of Fortier and Frechette. I concluded that personal engagement by Canadian ambassadors, their capacity to add value to UN processes, often by being rather critical of the way business was done, made Canada matter more than simply going with the flow. …

Functional specialization across space: a case study of the Canadian Electricity Industry, 1971–2001

This article examines the location of functions within the electricity sector in Canada from 1971 to 2001, using a centre‐periphery model. Power generation, distribution and retailing are generally carried out by multiestablishment crown corporations. Location patterns of different functions—management, scientific, production, etc.—are analyzed via the use of occupational groups. The spatial distribution of functions is found to be generally consistent with centre‐periphery relationships, with evidence of a growing functional specialization between large metropolitan and nonmetropolitan locations. However, differences emerge depending on power generation sources: fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, solar or biomass. The choice of a power generation source has consequences for local economies.

SeMS and sensibility: Security management systems and the management of risk in the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

Following International Air Transportation Association requirement for all member airlines and airports to have a security management system (SeMS) beginning 1 March 2007, many organizations are looking to learn from safety and quality management systems. Without specific guidelines or best practices, organizations are forced to imitate these processes designed for different goals. Since safety, quality, and security environments operate on radically different principles, SeMS implementation must take a different tack. The case of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority illustrates the importance of a custom-designed program that meets public and corporate needs. The Authority is responsible for security screening of passengers, non-passengers, and baggage within selected airports. As a crown corporation with a precise statutory mandate and regulatory environment, the development of a SeMS illustrates some of the key problems for the application of SeMS to larger organizations.

Cape St. Mary's

3 Bob Finch At six thirty a.m. Penny and I start out by car from St. John’s toward Cape St. Mary’s, home of the largest gannet colony in Newfoundland and the southernmost gannet breeding colony in the world. The day begins in darkness and continues in rain, not a promising start. We swing off the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) on route 100 just past the Whitbourne turnoff and continue down the long, empty stretch of highway to Freshwater. In Placentia we stop for breakfast at Harold’s Hotel, a place that looks as if it has remained stuck in the 1950s. At the counter is a sports trophy naming Harold “Freshman of the Year l973–74,” and also a light-box projecting a color photo of the town, which we turn on to get the attention of someone in the kitchen. A jukebox in the dining room has the usual mixture of current hits and old country and western standards. After breakfast we begin the long and spectacular drive down the coast road from Placentia to St. Bride’s, a distance of some forty-six kilometers, through a series of steep picturesque stream valleys, or barachois (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, “barasways”), all ending in impounded coves. There are small villages or sometimes only a single house at each of these stream outlets. Penny and I went to high school together in West Virginia, and we remark how much these villages resemble a seacoast version of the hollows and mountain towns of Appalachia. Most of the houses are one-story contemporary ranches painted in the usual Newfoundland fashion with two or three tones of bright boat paint, primary and secondary colors, often in distinct bands around the house. Penny explains to me the mortgage approval system in Newfoundland, which accounts for so much of the homogeneity Cape St. Mary's 4 Ecotone: reimagining place 4 of contemporary outport architecture. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC, a Crown corporation) must approve each house plan before the lender banks give a mortgage. They provide a limited range of approved house plans—fifty or so—or you can submit your own. But since the CMHC plans are free, buddy says, why should I pay to get my own? Most of these government-provided plans are ranch-style houses from the 1950s, a happenstance that has, over the past several decades,transformedthetraditionalarchitectureofmostNewfoundland outports into early versions of Levittown as painted by Mondrian. At St. Bride’s the last town before the turnoff to Cape St. Mary’s, the preferred color combination for houses seemed to be brilliant orange and green. Several young people stand by the roadside or next to barns on this Sunday morning with nowhere to go, nothing to do. There is an undistinguished motel in the town called the Bird Motel, but no sign or other indication of where the bird sanctuary itself is. As with so much of Newfoundland, including St. John’s, it is a place where one must know where something is in order to find it. Americans do not function well without signs. In fact, on some level we do not believe we are actually in a place—a city, a store, a national park—unless there is a sign to tell us so. The road out of St. Bride’s, shown on the official Provincial Highway Map as “scheduled to be paved” two years ago, soon turns to gravel. The landscape becomes flat, treeless, boulderless, and grassy. We see no cars, but at one point a huge, stuffed, toy bear is propped up against the road, as though hitchhiking. Since leaving Placentia, we have only passed a dozen cars and no hitchhikers (this being a risky activity in most of Newfoundland, where, except for the TCH, traffic is usually so sparse that one risks being stranded out in the middle of nowhere for an indeterminate period). After three of four kilometers we spot a single, small, white sign with “Bird Sanctuary” printed on one side only. From the turnoff it is some twelve kilometers to the lighthouse at the Cape along a potholed onelane dirt road. Paralleling the road is a single power...

Resorts, Culture, and Music: The Cape Breton Tourism Cluster

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada saw rapid growth in heavy industry at the turn of the 20th century. The industries were in severe decline by the 1960s. To stabilize economic shrinkage as a result of job losses in coal and steel, the federal government, through two Crown corporations, developed strategies to create a fully stratified tourism cluster. The research examines the growth of the tourism cluster in Cape Breton, noting early investments in infrastructure, large-scale programmes to attract private investment, recognition of the role of cultural tourism and the development of a segmented marketing programme.

The CMHC in Ajax, Ontario: 1948-1950

Between 1948 and 1950, the federal crown corporation, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) sold off most of its extensive holdings in the small Ontario community of Ajax. This process was surprisingly arduous and complex as the CMHC attempted to ensure that the community and the immediate surrounding area had suitable plans to regulate potentially uncontrolled growth. The local federal member of Parliament and residents were among the actors who resisted the CMHC efforts. Ontario governmental officials also played a complex almost duplicitous role in the proceedings. Eventually, the CMHC withdrew from Ajax without achieving most of its objectives. This case study highlights the complications that can occur when three levels of government become involved in a contentious undertaking such as establishing a new municipal government.

Crown corporations and co‐operatives as coping mechanisms in regional economic development

This paper focuses attention on two types of businesses, Crown corporations and co‐operatives, that have long been associated with attempted solutions to regional economic developmental problems in Canada. The paper argues that co‐operatives and Crown corporations can be viewed as coping mechanisms that attempt to make up for shortcomings in Canada's market‐based economic system. Consistent with this perspective, the case study of co‐operatives and Crown corporations finds that, taken as a single group, these firms are more spatially dispersed than their privately held and publicly traded counterparts at both the Canadian national level and the regional level in Saskatchewan. The study also shows that, taken separately, Crown corporations are highly concentrated within Saskatchewan, while co‐operatives are dispersed across the province. A possible explanation for this behaviour, warranting further research, is that Crown corporations in Saskatchewan encourage development provincially by linking with global and national business networks in their respective industries, while co‐operatives in Saskatchewan largely focus on facilitating economic development opportunities at a local level across the many smaller town‐ and city‐centred regions of the province. The paper discusses the meaning of these and other findings for regional economic development efforts in Saskatchewan and Canada.

CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS OF SPONSORSHIP IN THE ARTS

This article investigates consumers’ perceptions of three types of sponsors that play a role in backing financially Canadian artistic and cultural organisations: government ministries (or departments), Crown corporations and private companies. In addition to the type of sponsor and the nature of the sponsorship (philanthropic or commercial), the perceived congruence between the sponsor and the sponsored event (strong as opposed to weak), and the form of arts and cultural events (high art versus popular art and performing arts versus heritage arts) are explored in an experimental setting combining within‐subjects and between‐subjects factors. The main hypothesis of this research was that consumers’ perceptions are not the same when it comes to the different kinds of sponsors that evolve in the cultural and art fields. As the researchers explored this issue, they observed that significant differences do exist. It is believed that the rich findings of this study will be useful to civil servants.

ISO 14000 Environmental Management Standards: Their Relation to Sustainability

The aim of this study was to explore the link between sustainable development and the ISO 14000 Environmental Management Series of Standards, with particular reference to the ISO 14001 standard. In order to do this, it was decided to evaluate the ISO 14000 series in the context of a large engineering facility; namely, the Canadian provincial Crown Corporation of Manitoba Hydro. The ISO 14000 series is in principle an effective system to manage an organization’s self-prescribed environmental goals; however, its main limitations are that it does not require the demonstration of environmental performance and it is sometimes difficult to interpret and apply due to ambiguous language. The paper closes with speculations that despite these shortcomings, the essence of the ISO 14000 series of standards is in sympathy with the notion of sustainability.

Les techniques actuelles de contrôle démocratique et de participation aux choix énergétiques généraux au Québec

Techniques of democratic control and public participation in general energy choices have recently been the concern of many, especially in Quebec. Firstly, over the last ten years, the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Resources has been the forum of important debates and serious discussions. Members of the National Assembly have been able to follow to a certain extent the rapid evolution of energy policies and to articulate the concerns of the general public. Those responsible for Crown corporations (Hydro, SOQUIP) have had to account for their projects and to report regularly. Through public hearings, various economic agents have had the opportunity to present their views on many occasions. The second important technique, the use of an indépendant regulatory agency, in this case, the Quebec Gas and Energy Board, with a rather limited jurisdiction, has been the centre of discussions. Some see in that formula an adequate channel of public participation ; others have some hesitation about accepting the broadening of the role of an indépendant regulatory agency, where important issues have to be dealt between the Minister and major Crown corporations.