![]() ![]() Many of these people are single mothers with young children, for whom leaving the house to work is a major problem. This includes both unemployment insurance (a partial payment to those who temporarily lose their jobs), and welfare (a lower level of support that is given to those who are unable to support themselves). I will briefly describe each example, and draw some lessons from each.Ĭanada has a fairly well developed social security system. Perhaps the best way to approach the subject would be to describe three real-life policy-making exercises in Canada. Which way does the causality run? Does marriage make men happy? Or does happiness move men to get married? It may even be true that it works both ways. ![]() However, more recent research seems to indicate that happy men get married more often than those who are chronically unhappy. The policy conclusions for bachelors seem clear. I was struck recently by a newspaper report that medical evidence shows that men who are married tend to be happier than those who do not get married. Sometimes clear scientific evidence is not enough to figure out what to do. If you saw what went into it, you would never eat the stuff.Īnother, related, challenge is sorting out cause and effect. I think it was Bismarck who once said that watching policy making is like watching someone make a sausage. What would be the impact of legalising the possession of marijuana, for example, on our ability to cross the Canada-United States border at a time when the United States government has a no-tolerance attitude toward drug use? Many things go into policy making. It might include prevailing values and accepted norms, which may appear, in the first instance, to be unrelated to the issue at hand.įor example, a country like Canada has to be careful of how our neighbours might react to policy initiatives. This kind of evidence, while hard to quantify, is just as important as the other kind. In addition to this kind of hard evidence, we also get and use other kinds of evidence - softer, more intuitive and certainly more political. The Public Policy Forum has recently published a report, Information Management to Support Evidence-Based Governance in the Electronic Age, addressing ways that new technology can be used to develop records that are authentic, reliable, accessible, understandable and useable. Governments have always been famous for keeping huge volumes of files, but recent developments in electronic file management open huge and interesting possibilities for good governance. Policy making also characteristically requires many different kinds of evidence.Īnother extremely valuable source of evidence lies in the records of any government's own transactions and actions. When it comes to policy making, evidence is not always as clear or consistent as we would like. In my experience, there are many reasons why governments do not always look to scientific evidence to decide what to do. How can we explain these apparent inconsistencies? Why wouldn't a government act when the evidence is clear? Is it because people do not know the evidence? Don't they care? Or are there other, deeper reasons? Yet cigarettes are legal and marijuana is not. Evidence also shows that cigarettes kill more people annually than does marijuana. Yet, so far, we do not have a clean needle exchange programme in our prisons. Evidence also shows that needles are the main way HIV/AIDS spreads through the prison population. Evidence shows that many prisoners in Canadian prisons use drugs and share needles. Take the following examples from the social policy areas. Why would any government ever develop policy, or continue to apply policy that was not based on evidence, or worse, that is contrary to available evidence? Unfortunately, we all know that this happens regularly Many critics argue that policy decisions are too often driven by inertia or short-term political pressures. But the recent increase in interest in evidence-based policy making is a response to a perception that governments need to improve the quality of their decision making in a world typified by rapid change and scarce resources. Whether it was to build a bridge or wage a war, presidents and prime ministers have always based their plans on evidence of some sort. As we all know, evidence-based decision making is not new. ![]()
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