Policy Options

The first page of the first issue of Policy Options began: ”œThe purpose of this magazine is to assist Canadian thought about all aspects of public policy. The purpose of...

A reflection on the politics of the last quarter-century suggests that we misinterpret large parts of our history, and that misinterpretation contributes broad- ly to political parties and stratagems...

”œIn any campaign, the first stronghold you must occupy, is your Enemy’s consciousness.” Felix Dzerzhinsky Sometime around 1980, in most of the democracies, the impossible happened. Radical conservatives donned...

”œWell, welcome to the 1980s!” declared Pierre Trudeau the night of February 18, 1980. The very next month Canada got itself a brand new policy magazine to go with...

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn...

We need a fountain of youth to dissolve the social arteriosclerotic structures in the body politic. C.P. Kindleberger Productivity growth and innovation are key drivers of growth in living...

Citizens as consumers, as producers, and as political actors are emerging as the principal beneficiaries of the knowledge-based era (KBE). The tandem of information empowerment and the democratization of...

(This article has been translated into French.) Think back to 1980. Canada was still a relatively closed economy; the regional trade agreement with the United States and Mexico was years...

All around the world, the intrinsic virtues and the impact of culture on individual and community development are being questioned, studied, measured and, hopefully, rediscovered. There is a keen...

A population is a living entity that is constantly changing: newcomers join the population, others leave or die, everyone gets older, families form and break up, and each person’s...

Twenty-five years in the life of Planet Earth is a heartbeat; a cosmic blink of an eye. For the bulk of the 3.6 billion-year history of our planet, humanity...

”œIf I knew where I were going to die,” remarked an old man, ”œI would never go there.” There is a grain of wisdom in this apocryphal story. Knowing...

In thinking about the Canadian welfare state, about past accomplishments and future challenges, I would like to begin by borrowing a few pages from the work of Amartya Sen,...

In 1972, I published Federal-Provincial Diplomacy: The Making of Recent Policy in Canada. It explored the dynamics of intergovernmental relations as they played out through the 1960s, on issues...

”œThe world is among us, within us and with us. It is no longer possible to see it as some distant notion, exotic or episodic, to keep it in...