Much has been written about how Canada successfully conquered its budgetary crisis in the 1990s. Indeed, significant deficits and mounting debt quickly turned into large budgetary surpluses and a reduction in debt within a few short years. Missing in these accounts are the factors that led to the federal government implementing an austerity agenda and the impact the austerity agenda had on Canada’s subnational governments—provinces and local governments. Our objective is to examine these factors. In doing so, we argue that Canada faced a critical juncture in the 1990s when a window of opportunity presented itself for action to be taken. As we find, this was due to the confluence of three factors: agreement in problem definition, agreement in policies for what to do, and the desire of decision makers to respond to the fiscal situation. Yet, the federal government’s success at taming its deficit and debt subsequently hampered the ability of subnational governments to act and placed the non-profit sector in a precarious position. We conclude that ideas, individuals, and institutions matter, and the historical context largely dictates how they matter. Insights for the current financial challenges as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic are offered.
| Published in | Journal of Public Policy and Administration (Volume 6, Issue 3) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12 |
| Page(s) | 122-134 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Economic Federalism, Austerity Measures, Canada, Critical Juncture, Economic History, Non-profit Sector
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APA Style
Mario Levesque. (2022). Questioning the Success of Canada’s 1995-2005 Austerity Measures. Journal of Public Policy and Administration, 6(3), 122-134. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12
ACS Style
Mario Levesque. Questioning the Success of Canada’s 1995-2005 Austerity Measures. J. Public Policy Adm. 2022, 6(3), 122-134. doi: 10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12
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Download@article{10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12,
author = {Mario Levesque},
title = {Questioning the Success of Canada’s 1995-2005 Austerity Measures},
journal = {Journal of Public Policy and Administration},
volume = {6},
number = {3},
pages = {122-134},
doi = {10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jppa.20220603.12},
abstract = {Much has been written about how Canada successfully conquered its budgetary crisis in the 1990s. Indeed, significant deficits and mounting debt quickly turned into large budgetary surpluses and a reduction in debt within a few short years. Missing in these accounts are the factors that led to the federal government implementing an austerity agenda and the impact the austerity agenda had on Canada’s subnational governments—provinces and local governments. Our objective is to examine these factors. In doing so, we argue that Canada faced a critical juncture in the 1990s when a window of opportunity presented itself for action to be taken. As we find, this was due to the confluence of three factors: agreement in problem definition, agreement in policies for what to do, and the desire of decision makers to respond to the fiscal situation. Yet, the federal government’s success at taming its deficit and debt subsequently hampered the ability of subnational governments to act and placed the non-profit sector in a precarious position. We conclude that ideas, individuals, and institutions matter, and the historical context largely dictates how they matter. Insights for the current financial challenges as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic are offered.},
year = {2022}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - Questioning the Success of Canada’s 1995-2005 Austerity Measures AU - Mario Levesque Y1 - 2022/07/20 PY - 2022 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12 DO - 10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12 T2 - Journal of Public Policy and Administration JF - Journal of Public Policy and Administration JO - Journal of Public Policy and Administration SP - 122 EP - 134 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2640-2696 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jppa.20220603.12 AB - Much has been written about how Canada successfully conquered its budgetary crisis in the 1990s. Indeed, significant deficits and mounting debt quickly turned into large budgetary surpluses and a reduction in debt within a few short years. Missing in these accounts are the factors that led to the federal government implementing an austerity agenda and the impact the austerity agenda had on Canada’s subnational governments—provinces and local governments. Our objective is to examine these factors. In doing so, we argue that Canada faced a critical juncture in the 1990s when a window of opportunity presented itself for action to be taken. As we find, this was due to the confluence of three factors: agreement in problem definition, agreement in policies for what to do, and the desire of decision makers to respond to the fiscal situation. Yet, the federal government’s success at taming its deficit and debt subsequently hampered the ability of subnational governments to act and placed the non-profit sector in a precarious position. We conclude that ideas, individuals, and institutions matter, and the historical context largely dictates how they matter. Insights for the current financial challenges as we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic are offered. VL - 6 IS - 3 ER -
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