The School of Public Policy Publications
The School of Public Policy Publications is aimed at providing a peer-reviewed publication outlet to stimulate timely research and discussion of public policy issues in Canada. SPP publications are intended to improve our understanding and increase our interest in public policy issues. With these publications, SPP aims to stimulate dialogue between academic researchers and policy practitioners and to provide a forum where academic and business communities and the public service can exchange ideas. One objective of these publications is to reduce the apprehension and misunderstanding between these groups. The papers we publish should have practical relevance of clear social value for an audience broader than disciplinary academic peers. SPP publications should be of a high intellectual standard but not typically technical in nature or laden in disciplinary jargon. At SPP we interpret high intellectual standard to mean that the content of a paper is drawn from the author’s thorough understanding of a policy issue. For academic authors this may be a paper based on original evidence from quantitative data or it may be based on her/his “reading of the literature” relevant to the policy issue. For authors from the private sector or public service, papers may be more based on their “distilled experience” and position of authority on the subject of the paper. We prefer that, where appropriate, our papers take a clear policy position. SPP papers must be evidence-based and factually accurate. That said, it is both necessary and desirable that papers will sometimes contain political views and value judgements, because policy choices invariably demand trade-offs that bring benefits to some and costs to others. Given this, we do not publish content which is political propaganda or polemic or potentially libelous. In cases where political views or value judgements are important and justifiable features of the paper it is important that authors disclose any biases they may have with respect to the issue, or interest in the argument or position being put forward in the paper.
The following is the copyright statement of SPPP. Copyright © <Author name> <year>. This is an open-access paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 4.0, which allows non-commercial sharing and redistribution so long as the original author and publisher are credited. Publication Copyright and Licensing The following guidelines and information, provided in six sections, are intended for authors (the “Author”) who are invited to write a paper (the “Work”) for The School of Public Policy Publications (the “Publisher”). The rights and responsibilities conveyed in the SPP Author Agreement will only apply once your paper is accepted for publication. At that point in the publication process, you will be asked to download the form and return a signed copy via e-mail to spppublications@ucalgary.ca. Please review the below information to ensure agreement with SPPP policies. 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Social Policy Trends: Social Assistance and Inflation
Gaps in the social safety net can widen during periods of inflation. In most circumstances, it is policy choice whether to allow this to occur.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ronald Kneebone, Margarita Wilkins
Speeches from the throne capture a government’s major policy commitments. Comparing those of the last Trudeau and new Carney governments reveals a sharp change in policy direction between the two.
Simpson Centre Policy Trends: Scaling Regenerative Agriculture (RA) in Alberta
Regenerative Agriculture (RA) is gaining traction in Alberta, offering solutions to climate challenges, enhancing soil health, and promoting sustainable farming. This brief explores successes, barriers, opportunities, and policy recommendations to support RA in Alberta.
Simpson Centre Policy Trends: What Regenerative Agriculture Can Learn from the Organic Movement
Copyright (c) 2025 Tatenda Mambo, Guillaume Lhermie, Anais Dardier
Social Policy Trends: It's Not Just The Cold
Prairie municipalities have seen some of the fastest population growth in Canada in the past ten years. Despite similar patterns of high growth, the burden of housing costs has diverged.
The national policy horizon for the new federal government will depend heavily on its capacity to negotiate with the provincial and territorial governments that dominate policy making in Canada.
Social Policy Trends: the Homelessness Income Cut Off
Homelessness is an increasingly important public policy issue. Yet policymakers have not had a measure of the income required to keep people from experiencing homelessness. Until now.
Simpson Centre Policy Trends: Payment For Ecosystem Services (Pes), Who Should Pay the Bill?
Copyright (c) 2025 Tatenda Mambo, Ohi Ahmed, Roshanne Sihota, Lucia Sanguinetti
HSP-115 Social Policy Trends: Domestic Violence and the Housing Crisis
Copyright (c) 2025 Margarita Wilkins, Ronald Kneebone
JSC-42 Simpson Centre Policy Trends: Labour shortage in Alberta Agriculture
Problems such as homelessness, food insecurity, and ill health are rarely experienced in isolation from one another. Understanding how they are related is helpful for designing appropriate public policy responses.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ronald Kneebone, Ali Jadidzadeh
Social Policy Trends: Bail Violations are Frequently a Precursor to a Domestic Violence Charge
FP-14 Canada’s Productivity Challenge: The Hidden Costs of Resource Abundance and U.S. Dependence
Canada’s productivity is lagging behind that of the U.S. and other advanced economies. Between 2001 and 2021, labour productivity increased by 19 percentage points less in Canada than in the U.S. (Gu and Willox, 2023), coinciding with a decline in investment per worker (Gu, 2024). A lack of competition, along with various constraints such as heavy regulation and interprovincial trade costs, is frequently cited to explain the productivity lag of Canadian firms (Rogers, 2024). This note proposes a different perspective: while abundant natural resources and privileged access to the U.S. market are often seen as key economic strengths for Canada, we examine how these very advantages may also act as constraints on productivity growth.
Tax Reform to Raise Canada’s Pitiful Productivity
Canadian productivity growth is falling behind historical trends and other countries, resulting in weaker competitiveness and an imperiled standard of living. Canadian productivity must be improved if trade is to diversify beyond the now less-reliable U.S. market. Tax reform must be an element of a multi-faceted effort to bolster productivity growth. Reforms should lower the economic cost of taxation and sharpen incentives to work, train, save, innovate and invest – key ingredients of productivity.
Food provided by a food bank is a close substitute for food purchased in a retail store. This characteristic of food bank services means that threats to one’s ability to maintain housing – increased rents, job loss, inadequate income supports, high prices generally – can be expected to result in growing reliance on food banks. This policy brief derives, presents, and evaluates preliminary results from an ongoing study of how individuals and families respond to shocks to their budgets that present challenges to their ability to maintain housing. We hypothesize that such a shock sets in motion an effort by a household to conserve income for the payment of rent and so a coincident increase in its use of food banks. By linking administrative datasets reporting food bank use and entry into homeless shelters by uniquely identified people, we show how reliance on food banks increases as individuals and families near the date when housing is lost. This research has the potential for identifying periods of intervention that may prevent homelessness.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ali Jadidzadeh, Ronald Kneebone
Crude Oil Curtailment and Collusion: Heterodox Trade War Strategies for Canada
This paper examines two non-traditional retaliation strategies that Canada could employ in response to U.S. import tariffs during a trade war: i) crude oil production curtailment and ii) potential exemptions to Canada’s Competition Act. Unlike traditional retaliatory tariffs or export restrictions, these measures could provide economic benefits to Canada rather than exacerbating the negative impacts of U.S. tariffs. While this paper does not advocate for any specific course of action, it highlights the need for policymakers to consider innovative and pragmatic responses to U.S. trade aggression. Crude oil curtailment and competition law exemptions present unconventional but potentially effective strategies for mitigating the adverse effects of tariffs while safeguarding Canada’s economic interests. Both strategies are preferred to export restrictions and export taxes. Nonetheless, their success in compelling U.S. policy changes remains uncertain and further analysis is required to fully assess their implications before implementation.
Tariffs, the Executive Branch and Recent Developments in U.S. Trade Policy
This policy brief explains recent developments in U.S. trade policy and the legal authority on which Trump is relying to pursue his foreign policy goals. It starts by reviewing the basics of trade policy making in the United States, including the clear mandate in the U.S. Constitution for Congress to have exclusive power to regulate trade. It examines why Congress delegated some of this authority to the president and explores the key tariff authorities currently being used or considered and which set of tariffs will impact Canada. It will also look at what options are available to U.S. trading partners as they manage a highly protectionist U.S. market.
Northern Corridor Research Program: Phase 2 Final Report
The Canadian Northern Corridor is an idea that responds to Canada’s need to increase interregional and international trade, provide services to northern communities, and establish a broadly accepted approach to large-scale infrastructure development. Since 2015, the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary has undertaken research and public engagement sessions to study the feasibility, acceptability, and desirability of a coherent and unified approach to national and regional infrastructure development in Canada. This paper stands as a final abbreviated summary report of the research and engagement program to date. The entire program comprises well over 40 individual studies conducted by over 50 contributing researchers and authors across eight research themes over the past 8 years. As such, this summary final report provides only a very basic overview of the research program. At the most fundamental level, the research conducted under this program suggests that a large-scale corridor concept is challenging to conceive, in both theory and practice for mid- and northern Canada. For that reason, we recommend a segmented corridor approach focused on development initiatives which are already gaining public acceptance and that communities identify as key priorities, such as digital infrastructure. One early priority could be the digitization of highways and roadways to enhance safety while travelling and to digitally connect communities. As such, a corridor approach must reflect a holistic strategy addressing the existing shortcomings related to the infrastructure gap in mid- and northern Canada which contributes to problems around unreliable transportation pathways, digital connectivity, food insecurity, inadequate housing, and lack of healthcare and education services.
Copyright (c) 2025 G. Kent Fellows, Katharina Koch, Emily Galley, Robert Mansell
HSP-129 Population Change and the Housing Market in Alberta
The collapse of oil prices in 2014 signaled trouble for the Alberta economy and quickly led to widespread layoffs in the oil and gas sector as well as in other industries reliant on activity in the energy sector. The economic downturn that followed influenced demographic trends as well. Interprovincial migration, typically a contributor to population growth in Alberta, turned negative with more people leaving the province than arriving. Of special concern was the growing exodus of young people. Alberta became less attractive to newcomers to Canada as well. And Alberta’s birth rate declined as well.
A Case for Reinforcing Agri-food Research and Development Spending: Where Does Canada Stand Internationally?
Global spending on agricultural research and development (R&D) increased from $31 billion in 2000 to $47 billion in 2016, reflecting the sector's growing importance for food security, climate adaptation, and economic competitiveness (IFPRI, 2020). Despite these global advances, Canada’s agricultural R&D spending declined from $0.86 billion in 2013 to $0.68 billion in 2022, ranking it lowest among the top seven OECD countries (OECD, 2022). Countries like China and Brazil demonstrate how strategic investments can drive innovation, sustainability, and economic resilience. This policy brief analyzes global trends, highlights Canada’s comparative underperformance, and offers actionable recommendations to strengthen its agricultural R&D framework. Prioritizing increased investment, fostering public-private partnerships, and integrating sustainability into research agendas are critical for ensuring Canada’s agricultural sector remains competitive and resilient in the face of global challenges.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sabrina Gulab, Guillaume Lhermie
The Prospects and Implications of Legal Challenges to President Trump’s IEEPA Tariffs
Since returning to office in January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed far reaching tariffs on imports from every country in the world. Although he has continued to rely on legal authorities that he invoked during his first term, in particular section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Trump has broken new ground by relying on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 as the basis for his most sweeping actions. Over a dozen lawsuits have been filed in U.S. courts challenging the legality of these tariffs. Most were filed in April and May and thus challenge only the Liberation Day and fentanyl tariffs, although the resolution of those cases could have implications for other IEEPA-based tariffs. This policy brief explains these cases, including the legal claims raised, their current status, and the implications going forward should the challenges succeed.
Neighbourhood Design and Affordability: Addressing Infrastructure Challenges through Sustainable Design
Rapid urbanization presents daunting challenges to the conservation of our natural resources and environment, particularly in cities where sprawl becomes the dominant development model. Sprawling cities with newly built neighborhoods, where green fields used to be, place extensive demands on infrastructure systems. The high cost of extending these systems into peri-urban areas is more often than not passed on to homeowners, thus greatly impacting housing affordability. In addition, there is an aesthetic impact since we observe that the natural features of entire regions are all but eliminated and the developed landscape bears no resemblance to what it was prior to development.
Enhancing Agricultural Research and Development for Sustainable Growth in Canada
The Canadian agriculture and food sector is an essential contributor to the national economy, providing food for domestic consumption and playing a pivotal role in global food security. However, the sector is increasingly challenged by environmental pressures, including carbon emissions, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss. In response, Canada aims to promote eco-friendly practices, increase food security, improve productivity, and ensure the long-term viability and competitiveness of the agriculture sector. Despite substantial investments in agricultural research and development (R&D), there remains a lack of comprehensive tracking and alignment between public and private sector funding. This report provides a detailed analysis of R&D funding trends, identifies key research priorities, and makes recommendations to enhance Canada’s agricultural R&D ecosystem for greater sustainability, productivity, and competitiveness.
Leaving the Big Canadian Senior Market Health Check: Future Relevancy of the Public Markets at Risk as Operating Public Company Decline Accelerates
Since the peak of operating company listings in 2008, the number of operating companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the “TSX”) has declined by 42.5%. A short COVID-era Initial Public Offering (“IPO”) boom in 2020-21 offered a brief reprieve in the ongoing operating company decline phenomenon, but the last two and one-half years has seen the worst Canadian IPO market over the multiple decades for data is available. Each passing month now sees a new multi-generational low in the number of operating public companies listed on the TSX. It has become apparent that the public operating public company decline phenomenon in Canada has become systemic and will not be reversed without significant reform in the regulation of capital markets along with other key policy innovations. Academic analysis on thetopic of operating public company decline to date in Canada has largely been focused only onthe twin headline statistics of total operating company listings and IPO volumes. Significant data gaps remain as to the broader nature of the operating public company decline phenomenon in Canada. Filling in these data gaps is necessary to underpin further academic analysis as to which regulatory reforms, and other public policy interventions, are most likely to be successful in reversing the tide of public company decline. This paper picks up the threads of pre-COVID analysis on this important issue, starting with a review of the key reasons why operating public company decline in Canada is a critical public policy issue necessitating intervention. Theories on factors contributing to the phenomenon are also briefly discussed. Finally, this paper presents a variety of key data points examining in more detail the precise nature and extent of the operating public company decline phenomenon in the senior Canadian capital markets.
Sectoral Contributions to Labour Productivity Growth
Concerns about Canada’s lackluster productivity growth have made it a priority on the public policy agenda. In this paper we argue that we should not automatically interpret declines, or slower growth rates, in aggregate labour productivity as deterioration in living standards because changes in an economy’s terms of trade are also important. Low rates of productivity growth may be the result of welfare improving changes in a country’s terms of trade that shift labour to sectors with declining labour productivity. We use the Generalized Exactly Additive Decomposition (GEAD) procedure to show how 15 sectors have contributed to aggregate business sector productivity growth in Canada from 1997 to 2019. This procedure separates a sectors’ contributions to aggregate productivity growth through relative output price changes, as well as within-sector labour productivity effects and labour reallocation effects. This analysis shows that labour productivity in Canada’s business sector increased by 30.7 percent between 1997 and 2019, an average annual growth rate of 1.2 percent. Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) made the largest contribution to aggregate labour productivity growth and followed by the Mining, Oil and Gas Extraction sector. The only sector that made a negative contribution to aggregate productivity growth was Manufacturing because of declines in the relative price of manufactured goods and the sector’s share of total labour input. Panel regression models indicate that a change in relative prices can indirectly influence a sector’s output per hour through changes in labour inputs. In three resource-based sectors and five service sectors, labour productivity declines when its share of labour input increases in a given year.
Youth in Calgary's Housing Programs: A Case Study
In this paper we evaluate the housing success realized by youth enrolled in a large, community-based housing program true to the philosophy of Housing First and attentive to the specific needs of youth. We examine the program in a non-experimental setting and so provide evaluations of the practical usefulness of such programs to system operators and policymakers. Our examination makes use of administrative data sets describing the experiences of youths with a wide variety of personal characteristics and homeless experiences. We evaluate rates of success in housing programs over a minimum of one year and for up to seven years. Evaluating success over a long time period makes it possible to define success as not only retaining housing but also establishing housing outside the system of care and so without case management.
Canadian Junior Public Markets Health Check: Surprising Resilience Thus Far, Some Concerns Looking Forward
It is widely recognized that Canada, along with other developed Western economies, has a significant public capital markets problem. Increasingly fewer operating companies are choosing to go public, limiting access to the most attractive growth-stage opportunities for retail investors. Thus far, analysis of the public company decline phenomenon in Canada has focused almost exclusively on the Canadian senior capital markets. Reasons for the lack of focus on the Canadian junior markets include: i) fragmented nature and inconsistent data accessibility, requiring extraction and collation of data from a variety of different underlying sources; and ii) the fact that Canadian junior capital markets are unique, primarily dealing with companies of a smaller size and earlier stage of maturity than one would encounter in other international public markets. Yet, the Canadian junior capital markets fill a critical role in the Canadian economy, in particular because of the lower level of access to institutional private capital for startup and growth-stage businesses in Canada compared to our American neighbours. This paper conducts a health check on the Canadian junior public markets. Surprisingly, the evidence demonstrates that the junior markets have proved resilient in the face of headwinds and the total number of listed operating companies on the junior stock exchanges in Canada has not followed the declining trendline of the senior markets. The makeup of issuers listed on Canadian junior public markets has evolved materially over the past 15 years; as the market has fragmented, new competitors have taken market share from the incumbent TSX Venture Exchange.
The price of weakness: Hydrocarbon looting and the erosion of the Colombian state
This article examines the vulnerability of Colombia's hydrocarbon sector to looting, which fuels criminal economies and impacts the industry. It argues that the institutional weakness of the Colombian state fosters a series of moral hazards in which actors from public institutions, private companies, armed groups, and local communities exploit systemic failures for opportunistic gains. These dynamics undermine state legitimacy, fuel public distrust, and perpetuate cycles of insecurity and criminality in affected regions. This study employs a qualitative approach, drawing on semi-structured interviews with key actors, to analyze the effects of fragmented authority and the outsourcing of responsibilities. The findings underscore the urgent need for innovative policy interventions to improve regulatory frameworks and adapt governance mechanisms in contexts of institutional fragility.
Copyright (c) 2025 Antonio Quiñones Valero, Pablo Policzer
The Dynamics of Fiscal Adjustment in Alberta
This paper investigates the effects of budgetary imbalances on various fiscal variables using time series data from Alberta spanning over half a century. Our empirical analysis reveals Alberta responds to budget deficits by cutting program spending and raising tax revenue. The results indicate that in response to a one percentage point increase in the current budget deficit to GDP ratio, Alberta’s governments have cut program spending by 0.24 percentage points and raised tax revenue by 0.06 percentage points the following year. These results imply that about 80 percent of the short-term fiscal responses to budgetary imbalances appear on the spending side of the provincial government budget. The empirical results of this study provide evidence of the asymmetric effects of fiscal imbalances on tax revenue and government program spending in the province. We also find that the provincial governments’ spending response to the budget deficit depends on whether oil prices are predicted to increase or decrease.
An Evaluation of the Industrial Research Assistance Program
The Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) supports R&D performed by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), financially assists not-for-profit organizations that provide innovation services to SMEs, and participates in the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy. IRAP funding is approximately $400 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year. About 90 percent of the funding supports R&D performed by SMEs, which is the focus of this paper. IRAP support for R&D consists of non-repayable contributions and the provision of advice by industrial technology advisors (ITAs). Financial support for R&D is generous: over the seven years ending in 2022-23, excluding the pandemic year, financial assistance averaged almost 37 percent of approved project costs. Almost all firms receiving IRAP assistance also benefit from federal and provincial tax incentives for R&D, bringing the total subsidy to almost 64 percent of project costs. IRAP provides financial support for numerous small projects, each of which requires a separate contribution agreement. In addition, IRAP provides intensive non-financial support in the form of technical and business advice to many firms. This approach results in high program delivery costs: in recent years operating costs amounted to 17.5 percent of financial assistance provided. Excluding advice provided by ITAs, which is another form of financial assistance to firms, the operating cost ratio was 15.5 per cent. In contrast, the operating cost ratio of the Strategic Innovation Fund, which supports large projects and offers a much lower level of client services, is around 2 percent. IRAP documentation states that the ultimate objective of supporting R&D is wealth creation in Canada. The two most recent evaluations of IRAP (National Research Council of Canada 2017, National Research Council 2022) assess this objective using benefit-cost analysis, concluding that the program provides a net benefit to Canada. However, this analysis compares the private benefit (profits) of client firms with the fiscal cost of the subsidy. It does not measure the net social benefit of the program. An analysis of the social costs and benefits demonstrates that IRAP is not fulfilling its mandate. Analysed as a separate program IRAP fails a benefit-cost test because of a high subsidy rate and high operating costs. However, IRAP subsidies are essentially a top-up for selected firms receiving the SR&ED tax credit, which also fails a benefit-cost test. Instead of excessively subsidizing R&D, IRAP funding would be more effectively deployed as repayable assistance for commercialization and scaleup in Canada.
This paper examines whether reducing Canada’s federal debt is a worthwhile policy objective, in light of economists’ advice and public opinion favouring debt reduction. As well, the federal government has projected a gradual decrease in its debt-to-GDP ratio over the next 30 years. Reducing the public debt means that governments have to adopt a policy of fiscal austerity. This paper focuses on the trade-offs of fiscal austerity — short-term sacrifices for long-term benefits.