Provincial and Territorial Politics in Canada and Beyond

J03 - Micro-Paper Roundtable: Provincial Politics, Policy, and Data: Data Gaps and Public Policy in Canadian Provinces

Date: May 30 | Time: 10:30am to 12:00pm | Location: Classroom - CL 408 Room ID:15751

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jim Farney (University of Regina)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Anthony Sayers (University of Calgary)

Provincial Politics, Policy, and Data 1: Data Gaps and Public Policy in Canadian Provinces:

Linda White (University of Toronto)
Jack Lucas (University of Calgary)
Christa Shultz (McGill University)
Mireille Paquet (Concordia University)
Gerry Boychuck (University of Waterloo)
Geoffrey Hale (University of Lethbridge)
Andrea Olive (University of Toronto)

Abstract: Canadian provinces do much of the policy making heavy lifting in Canada and are significant sites of political mobilization, but have been understudied in both dimensions. Shared institutions, histories, and policy challenges make provinces ideal candidates for comparative research, a potential that political scientists are beginning to recognize. As the discipline pays more attention to provincial policy making process and to politics in the provinces a number of valuable research programs are opening up. But, this workshop takes as its starting contention that these research programs would benefit from a concerted effort to capture and systemize data about provincial societies, economies, political systems, and policy outcomes in a way suited to use by political scientists (in the first instance), policy-makers, and the informed public. In this preliminary pair of workshops, we aim to identify what types of such data is currently available, how it might be leveraged to facilitate policy analysis, and what sort of infrastructure would be required to support the effort. 'Provincial Politics, Policy, and Data 1' focusses especially on identifying where there are gaps in the descriptive knowledge we have of provincial policy resources and outcomes.