Category Archives: public policy

Naomi Klein postscript no. 1

Posted by on | economy, environment, public policy

There were a number of things that struck me while reading Naomi Klein’s most recent book, This Changes Everything, which were somewhat tangential to my main line of critique, and so I left them out of the response piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Nevertheless, some are worth mentioning, particularly those that connect this book up with her previous work, including The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. (One of the annoying things that we academics like to do is read all of someone’s work, then ask pesky questions like “how does it all fit together?” Some people tell me this is unfair, when dealing with the work of non-academics, but I guess I just can’t help myself.)

The first thing that many Klein fans will notice about This Changes Everything is the huge tension that exists between this book and The Shock Doctrine. Indeed, to the casual reader, it might seem as though Klein is taking back most of what she said in the previous book.… Continue reading

Physician-Assisted Dying: What Now?

Posted by on | Canada, criminal justice, health care, public policy, Quebec, Supreme Court (Canada)

Five years ago, I agreed to join an “expert panel” of the Royal Society of Canada. Our mandate was to provide a broad assessment of end-of-life care in Canada, and to make recommendations on how it might be improved. One of the recommendations that we made in our 2011 report was that there was no ethical justification for the maintenance of the criminal prohibition preventing physicians from helping their critically ill patients to die a dignified death, one that conformed to their wishes, and avoided them needless suffering.

I was therefore naturally very pleased when the Supreme Court of Canada issued its judgement in the Carter case, declaring that those articles of the Criminal Code were incompatible with Canadians’ Section 7 rights to life, liberty and security of person. Looking back at the 1993 decision in which a 5-4 majority had ruled that those articles were not in fact unconstitutional, a unanimous Court this time argued, in essence, that the empirical environment in which it was now being asked to render judgment had changed.… Continue reading

Canada’s worst policy ideas of 2014

Guest post by Daniel Béland, Rachel Laforest and Jennifer Wallner

When the Washington Post’s Wonkblog recently published a list of 11 of the worst U.S. policy ideas of 2014, we asked the question: what would the Canadian equivalent of such a list look like? To simplify the task, we looked at provincial and federal policy proposals officially promoted by a governing party. Here we provide a list of four policies – two provincial and two federal. While some may disagree with our picks – and the list is certainly not comprehensive – this exercise has clear value to stimulate debate about what good and bad policies are.

1. Charter of Values. An obvious contender for worst policy idea of 2014 is the so-called Charter of Values put forward by the PQ government in Quebec. An exercise in policy demagogy, the Charter of Values, and especially the proposed ban on all “ostentatious religious signs” worn by public employees, claimed to protect society against a widely inflated threat (religious accommodations).… Continue reading

Free Spirits: An Argument against State-Run Booze

Posted by on | Canada, economy, public policy, Quebec

When I lived in Oxford, I loved to go shopping for wine. There were a couple of wine stores down the street from where I lived that were clearly owned by wine-lovers. New arrivals had lovingly inscribed tasting notes taped to them. The selection in the two stores was quite different, and clearly reflected the tastes of the owners.

I don’t enjoy shopping for wine in Montreal that much. That’s because rather than being able to walk into a small store with lots of character, I have to go to the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) retail stores. Don’t get me wrong: these stores are bright and efficiently run. There’s nothing wrong with them, but there is nothing particularly right about them either. Each store is pretty much the same as any other. The folks who work there are unfailingly courteous and knowledgeable, but they are knowledgeable in the way you become knowledgeable when you take a 3-week training course, rather than in the way you are because you have developed a personal obsession with a particular cépage, and have idiosyncratically but charmingly stocked your store to reflect your particular obsession.… Continue reading

The war on the car continues (but how?)

Posted by on | political philosophy, public policy

Until recently, residents and visitors to Toronto have been able to observe a strange phenomenon. Right downtown, just behind the provincial legislature (here), there is a very beautiful park (called Queen’s Park). The surprising thing about this park was that, on a typical weekday during the summer, even during lunch hour, you could walk through this park and find practically nobody in it – no students from the University of Toronto, despite the fact that it is almost part of the campus, and no workers from the nearby government buildings eating lunch.

There was a simple reason for this. It all came down to urban planning – in this case, bad urban planning. Until recently, Queen’s Park was a typical example of what I tend to think of as “1960’s urban planning” — the time before people really figured out how cars work (or the way that cars affect the dynamic of pedestrian flow).… Continue reading

How do we feel about a national daycare program?

Posted by on | economy, inequality, public policy

Those who use simple heuristics to make up their minds about policy questions (e.g. “government good, markets bad”) will undoubtedly already know how they feel about the federal NDP’s recent announcement of a bold new plan for a national daycare system. The headline feature of the system is that it will be subsidized, so that the cost to parents should come in at about $15 per day.

There has of course been a sense of welcome relief that the NDP has stopped doing small-bore, pseudo-populist politicking, and is actually coming forward with a genuine proposal to expand the Canadian welfare state, moving it away from the American toward the Scandinavian model. But if you look at the issue from first principles, or from a social justice perspective, public involvement in the daycare sector is not an easy issue to assess. In this respect, it is not like the other two “big fish” out there in the policy space – carbon pricing and national pharmacare – which are no-brainers by comparison.… Continue reading

Waldron, Sunstein, and nudge paternalism

Posted by on | politics, public policy

It is not my policy to comment on articles published in the New York Review of Books, but Jeremy Waldron had a piece a little while back – a discussion of Cass Sunstein’s book, Why Nudge? – that I feel impelled to respond to. That’s because the view Waldron puts forward, in criticizing Sunstein, is a precise articulation of exactly the view that I think we need to be getting away from. One of the major objectives of my own recent book, Enlightenment 2.0, was to explain why we need to stop thinking this way. (That’s actually the reason for the “2.0” in the book title. What Waldron is urging upon us is what I like to think of as the “Enlightenment 1.0” position.) And Sunstein’s response, in the most recent issue, is too tepid by far.

Sunstein, it may be recalled, is a proponent of “nudge” paternalism, based on the observation that the way choices are presented to people, although seemingly neutral from the standpoint of economic rationality, often actually favour one option over some other.… Continue reading