How Ottawa Spends, 1997-98: Seeing Red-a Liberal Report Card

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University, is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century and the Dictionary of Canadi

Carleton University Press’s annual Public Policy Series is extremely
valuable for all those interested in what happens to their tax dollars.
Experts in different fields go into depth, usually in comprehensible
prose, on what is happening and why, and sometimes the comments can be
tart indeed. Sometimes, too, the essays are more on political questions
than on budgets and spending. The present volume, for example, has a
good piece by Reg Whitaker on the Chrétien government’s Quebec
policy, and another by Claire Turenne Sjolander on the way Canadian
foreign policy has turned into trade promotion with “Team Canada”
missions headed by the prime minister. Other essays of note include
assessments of the Liberal approach to child care, to domestic- and
foreign-communications policy, and to labor-market policy, and of the
government’s attempts to “lower the boom on the boomers”—the
“reform” of the Canada Pension Plan and the replacement of Old Age
Security with the new Seniors’ Benefit. As these subjects suggest, How
Ottawa Spends deserves a wide readership.