3,937 research outputs found
Off the Mark: Canada's 2008 Fiscal Accountability Ranking (also available in French)
No full textEvery year, legislators in Canada vote for budgets that set out targets for the coming fiscal year. But every year, governments tend to spend more than they promise at budget time. The result: accountability between legislators and voters breaks down. Canadians should demand better.fiscal policy, public accounts, Canadian federal, provincial and territorial governments fiscal accountability rankings
Time and Money: The Challenge of Demographic Change and Government Finances in Canada
No full textAs a result of demographic change, Canadian governments face a net liability of $1.4 trillion for healthcare, education, seniors' and children's programs. Meeting this challenge will require fiscal discipline, partial prefunding and growth-friendly policies.fiscal policy, demographics
Classification of Caesarean Section: A Scoping Review of the Robson classification
No full textCaesarean section (CS) rate is rising dramatically worldwide. WHO recommended CS rate of 10-15% at population level would not be the ideal rate at the hospitals level due to the differences on population they have been serving. At the hospital level, a perfectly effective system is necessary to understand the trends and causes of rising trends of CS as well as to implement effective measures where necessary to control the same. Hence, WHO recommended the Robson classification, which is also called the 10-group classification of CS (TGCS) as a global standard tool to assess, monitor and compare CS rates within healthcare facilities over time, and between health facilities. The Robson classification, proposed by Dr Michael Robson in 2001, is a system that classifies all women at admission at a specific health facility for childbirth into 10 groups based on five basic obstetric characteristics (parity, gestational age, onset of labour, foetal presentation and number of foetuses). This classification is easy and simple and mutually exclusive, highly reproducible, easily applicable, and useful to change clinical practice. It has many strengths such as simplicity, flexibility (further subdivisions can be made to increase homogeneity within groups). This classification helps to identify and analyse the contribution of each group to overall CS rates. It also allows distinguishing the main group of women who contributes most and least to the overall CS rates; so that the CS rates can be monitored in a meaningful, reliable, and action-oriented manner in each health facility for optimal use of C
Fiscal Tonic for an Aging Nation: A Shadow Federal Budget for 2007
No full textSaving and investment are critical to Canada's economy. They underpin today's prosperity and will be critical to raising living standards in the future. Growth in Canada's workforce is slowing, and a larger population of older Canadians will soon need pensions and social services. Federal fiscal policy must ensure that the environment in which Canadians work, save and invest encourages them to set aside resources for the future, and to invest in ways that will raise living standards for individual families, and for the country as a whole.fiscal policy, demographics
Six Pillars of Social Policy: The State of Pensions and Health Care in Canada
No full textWilliam B.P. Robson, a co-author with David Slater of a series of papers on pension issues, has written an ambitious survey of the state of Canadian economic policy in the areas of pensions and health care. He argues that it is appropriate to tackle both issues in the same paper because they are both major spending programs strongly related to the life cycle of Canadians, and face challenges arising from the aging of the population. Robson notes that the pension debate uses the metaphor of three pillars to describe a comprehensive pension system: a safety net to guard against destitution in old age; a mandatory employment-related system to provide basic replacement income; and a voluntary system supported by provisions that reduce the double-taxation of saving. The main elements of public policy related to pensions in Canada cover these pillars. He recognizes that all three of the pillars cannot be directly applied to health care, but he argues that the three-pillar metaphor is still a fruitful perspective because it facilitates constructive responses to the pressures confronting Canada’s health system and illuminates interactions between the pension and health systems. Hence his title “six pillars of social policy”. Based on his examination of Canada’s pension and health-care systems, Robson makes a number of recommendations. First, he advocates more prefunding in both the pension and health areas to cover the future cost of the aging baby-boom cohort. Second, he recommends a gradual increase in the normal age of eligibility for pension benefits. Third, he recommends the creation of a second pillar, a mandatory contribution scheme in the health area as a way to avoid the development of a means-tested system that would exacerbate the disincentives to work and save. Fourth, he puts forward the idea of a new type of saving vehicle that provides tax-relief on distributions rather than on contributions so that Canadians can avoid the high marginal effective tax rates associated with means-tested programs.Health, Health Care, Health-care, Healthcare, Canada, Pensions, CPP, Retirement, Mandatory Contribution, Aging, Ageing
Steering Through Turbulence: The Shadow Federal Budget for 2008
No full textNear-term turbulence should not distract Ottawa budget-makers from critical long-term tasks. This 2008 shadow federal budget will move Canada a key step forward by providing improved incentives and rewards for Canadians' work and saving, and a more congenial environment for investment and innovation.fiscal policy, Canadian government budget
Spanning Trees of Bounded Degree Graphs
No full textWe consider lower bounds on the number of spanning trees of connected graphs
with degree bounded by .
The question is of interest because such bounds may improve the analysis of the
improvement produced by memorisation in the runtime of exponential algorithms.
The value of interest is the constant such that all connected graphs with degree bounded by have at least spanning trees where is the cyclomatic number or
excess of the graph, namely .
We conjecture that is achieved by the complete graph but we have not proved this for any greater than . We give weaker lower bounds on for .
First we establish lower bounds on the factor by which the number of spanning trees is multiplied when one new vertex is added to an existing graph so that the new vertex has degree and the maximum degree of the resulting graph is at most . In all the cases analysed, this lower bound is attained when the graph before the addition was a complete graph of order but we have not proved this in general.
Next we show that, for any cut of size cutting a graph of degree bounded by
into two connected components and , the number of spanning trees of is
at least the product of this number for and multiplied by the same
factor .
Finally we examine the process of repeatedly cutting a graph until no edges remain. The number of spanning trees is at least the product of the multipliers associated with all the cuts. Some obvious constraints on the number of cuts of each size give linear constraints on the normalised numbers of cuts of each size which are then used to lower bound by the solution of a linear program.
The lower bound obtained is significantly improved by imposing a rule that, at each stage, a cut of the minimum available size is chosen and adding some new constraints implied by this rule
Freeing up Food: The Ongoing Cost, and Potential Reform, of Supply Management
No full textGovernment-mandated cartels in eggs, dairy and poultry products impose high costs on consumers and harm Canada’s standing in international trade. The authors offer compelling evidence of the high costs to Canadian consumers and limited benefits to farmers arising from the supply management system. The study recommends phasing out Canada’s controversial supply management system through sales of new quota for the production and sale of these products.Governance and Public Institutions, Canadian agriculture, supply management policy, agricultural production quotas
English spelling in the seventeenth century : a study of the nature of standardisation as seen through the MS and printed versions of the Duke of Newcastle's 'A New Method ...'.
No full textIn 2 vols.Available from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DX201006 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo
A catalogue of the entire and valuable library of the late Rev. Michael Lort, D.D., F.R.S. and A.S. : which will be sold at auction by Leigh & Sotheby, booksellers, at their house in York-Street, Covent Garden, on Tuesday, April 5, 1791, and the fourteen following days ... and then the sale to re-commence Wednesday, May 4, 1791, and to continue the nine following days ...
No full textSignatures: [A]² B-U⁴ *U² X-2K⁴.ESTCPlace of sale: London.Date of sale: April 5-21 and May 4-14, 1791.Mode of access: Internet.Library's copy bound with: A catalogue of the genuine and valuable collection of English heads, prints, books of prints, and maps, of the late Rev. Michael Lort, D.D., F.R.S. and A.S. [London] : Catalogues ... to be had of Mr. Becket, ... Robson, ... Walter, ... Owen, ... Sewell, ... and at the place of sale, [1791] -- A catalogue of the collection of antient and modern coins and medals, in gold, silver, and copper, antiquities and curiosities, of the late Rev. Michael Lort, D.D., F.R., and A.S. [London] : Catalogues to be had at Mr. Gerard's, [1791]Library's copy is annotated with prices; has bound in facing t.p. an engraved print: The Revd. Michael Lort, D.D., F.R.S. & A.S., from a picture by Sir J. Reynolds / G.P. Harding delin. ; James Stow sculp. Pub. May 1st 1815 by G.P. Harding; has bound in also a ms. copy of a letter from M. Lort to John Nichols (cf. the latter's Literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century, v. 2, p. 596)
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