1,720,978 research outputs found
Holding Canada's Cities to Account: an Assessment of Municipal Fiscal Management
Full text linkCities are the most visible level of government for most Canadians, providing services such as waste collection, policing and transit. Yet their budgets are the most opaque of any level of government. Municipalities generally use accounting in their budgets that does not match what they use in their financial reports. Peering through the messy numbers reveals that most cities routinely miss budget targets by large amounts. Councillors and taxpayers who seek to hold these municipal governments to account face a daunting task. Amid the mixed record, however, are some municipalities with clearer numbers and better records for spending control. That fact, along with improvements that have occurred at the federal and provincial levels in recent years, shows that progress is possible. The authors suggest five basic reforms would create clearer, more consistent budgets and would bring the financial management of Canada’s municipalities into line with their fiscal impact and their importance in Canadians’ lives.Fiscal & Tax Competitiveness, Governance and Public Institutions, Urban Issues Series, Canadian municipalities, fiscal management, municipal budgets
A bushel Half Full: Reforming the Canadian Wheat Board
Full text linkThe Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) has been earning poor financial returns for farmers over the last three years, based on our benchmarking analysis. Reforms are required, including more transparency in reporting financial returns to farmers, and greater accountability on the part of CWB management to the farmer-elected board of directors.governance and public institutions, Canadian Wheat Board, Daily Price Contract (DPC)
Picking up Savings: The Benefits of Competition in Municipal Waste Services
Full text linkCities save money through competitive tendering of waste services contracts. This study finds municipalities that have their waste services provided through contracted operations have substantially lower average costs per household than municipalities with few of their services provided through contracts. The study shows that where city employees provide the bulk of waste services, such as in Toronto (and many other cities in Ontario), Vancouver, and Calgary, municipalities could reduce the costs of their waste services through increased contracting. Contracting can also be used to attain other goals, such as increased recycling rates, if municipalities provide incentive payments for contractors who meet their targets. The study, which analyzes the finances of hundreds of cities in Ontario, also finds cost savings from contracting will be apparent only if municipalities follow certain guidelines. Contracts should clearly define outcomes, and not specific processes, that contractors must meet.Urban Issues, competitive tendering, waste services contracts, Ontario, municipalities, contracting
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A Clean Canada in a Dirty World: The Cost of Climate-Related Border Measures
Full text linkAs the federal government weighs policy options for reducing greenhouse gases, the question arises as to how to treat imported goods from countries with less stringent emission targets. One policy option is to impose a “carbon tariff” on imported goods from those countries.economic growth and innovation, carbon tarriff, greenhouse gas reduction, WTO
New and Improved: How Institutional Investment in Public Infrastructure can Benefit Taxpayers and Consumers
No full textVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Death by a Thousand Cuts? Western Canadaas Oil and Natural Gas Policy Competitiveness Scorecard
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