Canada at Risk? Canadian Public Policy in the 1990s

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

This work by the C.D. Howe Institute is based on a conference held in
1990 attended in the main by journalists but with a smattering of
academics, almost all of whom came from Ontario. (Is it true that the
two coasts of Canada are the Humber and the Don? The C.D. Howe people
seem to think so.)

The book is divided into two parts: the first covers the policy setting
for the 1990s, while the second examines the policy fields. The major
theme is, “What role does Ottawa need to perform well in order to
promote a viable political community and a competitive economy?” To
answer this question, the authors analyze such diverse subjects as
health care, the environment, science and technology, universities,
culture, and social policy. There are also essays on the size of
government, regulation, free trade, and, oh yes, the Constitution.

The essays are uneven, as one would expect in a work of this nature.
For example, Richard Gwyn offers a thoughtful piece on “Canada at
Risk,” while Richard Simeon talks about the lack of a national glue to
cement the country together. Robert Evans’s item on health care gives
an insight into perhaps the most important policy issue of the 1990s.

This group of essays illustrates that the world has changed and that
Canadians—particularly Central Canadians—have been too busy gazing
at their constitutional navel to notice the shift from the welfare state
to that of the neo-conservative.