Policy Options

The race for the Oval Office is closerthanthis, and both candidates are preparing for victory. Their transition teams are putting in place plans for the aftermath of the election,...

The more provincial governments clash with school boards and unions over education issues, the more parents consider alternatives to government-run schools. The common objection is that social outcomes such...

Climate change advocates in Canada and the United States have experienced several wins over the past few years on the multilateral, trilateral and bilateral fronts.  The United States and...

Au cours des derniers mois, plusieurs journalistes (pour ne citer que La Presse et le Globe and Mail) se sont prononcés sur le caractère unique de l’actuelle campagne présidentielle...

The other day, I set a Google alert for the term “terrorism” and synchronized it to my Gmail account. Needless to say, my inbox is overflowing. Reports of terror...

I recently responded on Twitter to two articles, one by Don Martin and the other by Robert Fife, about fundraisers featuring Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Quite a few people...

“Are you moving to Canada if Donald Trump wins?” my liberal friends and relatives have been asking me for months. I have lived in the United States since the...

The Polimeter is an online application created in 2011 by a team of political scientists at Laval University to monitor the fulfillment of campaign promises in Canada and Quebec....

Forget about Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead – Canadians can’t stop talking about that other addictive piece of American entertainment, the presidential election. This year’s campaign is...

Alors qu’une très forte majorité de Canadiens craignent l’éventualité d’une présidence de Donald Trump, l’une des questions que l’on pose souvent aux chercheurs de l’Observatoire sur les États-Unis de...

Since the 2015 election, the Liberal government has made two major adjustments to federal programs targeted at children and youth.  First, the uniform payment to every family with children...

The Canada-European Union trade agreement known as CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) sits in limbo, with Belgium stating it could not sign on with one of its regions...

For almost three years, Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission has been actively engaged in discussions about carbon pricing across the country. We have spoken with many governments, opposition parties, business groups...

Popular culture is filled with science-free noise about vaccines. And much of the noise is aimed directly at parents. From Donald Trump’s nasty anti-vax Twitter activity to celebrities raising...

It’s been two weeks since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood in the House of Commons and said that we’re going to have a price on carbon across Canada. And I have...

Le débat sur l’augmentation du salaire minimum ne cesse de faire la une au Canada depuis quelque temps. Lors de la dernière campagne électorale, le Nouveau Parti démocratique (NPD)...

In the weeks after the October 19, 2015, general election, Samara Canada, a national charity, surveyed 2,030 Canadians about the recent campaign. The survey responses were analyzed by age:...

Depuis des décennies, un doute persiste dans l’opinion publique quant à l’engagement des jeunes dans la vie politique. Les élections de 2008 au Québec ont contribué à amplifier ce...

With the debate around our electoral system still in full swing, the time is ripe to explore how Canadians perceive the performance of our democratic institutions. In a major...

How did the Canadian economy perform during the Harper government years, what factors drove this performance, and what role did Harper government policies play in achieving broad economic objectives?...

Imagine putting months of work into an article to have it read by only 10 people. This is the situation in much of academia right now, where the influx...

No matter how many legally binding conditions are included in the Pacific Northwest liquefied natural gas (PNW LNG) project approval, the problem is that this industrial project is just...

Across Canada, on every university campus, youth get together to learn, debate, fundraise, support one another, provide social services to the surrounding community, and much more. Whether you call...

The federal government’s recently announced national carbon price may be clever politics, but a credible, evidence-based climate change policy it most certainly is not. The government’s national carbon price,...

Our world is experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in human history. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that by 2030, over 5 billion people will live in...

In the midst of heated debates about trade deals, there’s one trade topic that everyone seems to agree on: we need to encourage more exports by small and medium-sized...

I still remember the first time I read the “Modernizing Animal Protections Act,” Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s private member’s Bill C-246, which aimed to reform the Criminal Code’s treatment of animal...

Summer feels over. Did you take your vacation? Chances are, if you are a millennial, the answer is: not really. We looked at some data from the Canadian Labour...

The history of risk communication is chock full of examples where threats are ignored or downplayed (Ebola in West Africa), details of the threat are concealed (SARS), or populations...

The previous Conservative government’s hiking up of citizenship application fees – from $100 to $530 – revealed a particular philosophy: that citizenship is a private, rather than a public,...

Last week, the House of Commons endorsed the Paris climate agreement, under which Canada commits to reduce greenhouse gases by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Simultaneously, Prime...

On August 3, 2016, the federal government formally launched the long-awaited, hard-won National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Indigenous women and girls and their allies...

Former Canadian diplomat Gordon Houlden, now with the University of Alberta’s China Institute, detailed recently in Policy Options how Ottawa has difficulty finding skilled Mandarin speakers to fill Canadian...

Now that students are settled back on campus for another academic year, they should also start thinking about packing their bags. In addition to planning for essays, exams and...

Pundits recently made a big deal about a paper Valérie-Anne Mahéo and Éric Bélanger presented at this year’s conference of the American Political Science Association. The paper announced the...

The Prime Minister has gone to great lengths to reiterate that he is a feminist. Last year, I set out 10 ways Trudeau could fulfil this identity. Nearly a...

One of Prime Minister Trudeau’s many commitments at the COP21 climate conference held in Paris in December 2015 was to meet Canada’s intended nationally determined contributions (INDC) emissions reduction target. ...

The day before Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2008 for the harms done to Indigenous children in residential schools, I was in Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery, visiting the grave...

Last week, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada submitted its 2015-2016 Annual Report to parliament. As well as giving a thorough account of the privacy risks facing...

Smart phones, cloud computing, Internet-connected gadgets, and algorithms that track our every move online – it’s all putting undue pressure on privacy. Unfortunately, in Canada we remain hampered by...

Political engagement has become something of an oxymoron for many young Canadians. Youth have no trouble engaging with each other on issues that we care about, but many of...

What happens when the world’s largest economy decides it wants to be a leader in tackling climate change? We’re about to find out. For years, the only headlines about...

While the special committee on electoral reform continues to study voting systems, 16- and 17- year-olds will be able to cast a ballot in Prince Edward Island’s province-wide referendum...