[CivicAccess-discuss] Fwd: [spno-data] FYI - For the record: Independent policy think tank closes doors (Canadian Medical Association Journal)

Fri Oct 30 13:59:00 EDT 2009

This is unbelievable!  Who will be the third point to triangulate evidence
based policy at a national scale in Canada?  We are loosing so many national
think tanks, three in this story, The Canadian Council on Social Development
is struggling and CISTI is closing.  And we have no national advisory on
science and technology!  Is it just me or is there something really weird
going on?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ted Hildebrandt <thildebrandt at cdhalton.ca>
Date: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Subject: [spno-data] FYI - For the record: Independent policy think tank
closes doors (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
To: spno at yahoogroups.com
Cc: spno-data at yahoogroups.com

http://www.cmaj.ca/earlyreleases/4theRecord.shtml
 For the record

*Independent policy think tank closes doors*

October 29, 2009

The Canadian Policy Research Networks, which published scores of reports on
health care and conducted the community consultations for the Royal
Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada headed by ex-Saskatchewan
premier Roy Romanow earlier this decade, will cease operations at the end of
the year.

“We are losing a much needed voice. In the landscape of public policy we
need think tanks that have a different approach from the perceived
conventional wisdom of the day,” says Romanow.

For the Royal Commission, the networks did seminal and progressive work
conducting public consultations across the country that found that Canadians
“clearly viewed health care as a public good, and not a commodity,” he adds.

Sharon Manson Singer, president of the 15-year-old networks, says Canada has
“lost policy capacity across the country — both independent and at every
level of government. We are thin on the ground in terms of our policy
capacity compared to other developed nations.”

The organization has been in survival mode Sept. 25, 2006, when the federal
government cancelled a multi-year $12-million sustaining grant agreement
that it had signed five months earlier.

That cut, combined with the recession and the federal government’s “loss of
appetite” for independent evidence-based research — the federal share of the
network’s contract research fell from 40% to 4% within a year — doomed the
organization, which has 22 employees and about 15 regular contractors,
Manson Singer says. “But more important is the loss of a Canadian voice.”

The Canadian Policy Research Networks was founded in 1994 by Judith Maxwell,
the former head of the Economic Council of Canada, a federally-funded crown
corporation which was dissolved by the government in 1993.

The demise of the nonprofit organization represents the loss of another
arm’s length policy voice, says Bruce Campbell, executive director of the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, now the only remaining “national
multi-issue” nonprofit policy organization. Campbell says the centre is not
dependent on government funding, but rather has core funding from its
11 000 members, made up of individuals, nongovernmental organizations and
unions.

The death of Canadian Policy Research Networks and other similar independent
organizations degrades the policy dialogue process, Campbell adds. “You’re
left with corporate-funded think tanks,” and as a consequence, democracy is
undermined.

The Canadian Policy Research Networks joins the Law Commission of Canada,
and the Canadian Labour and Business Council as organizations that have
since ceased to exist after they and others had their funding cut in 2006.

Ironically, the networks’ website highlights a commentary, Canadian
Non-Profit Organizations Play a Critical Role in Social Innovation and
Economy, which states that nonprofit and charitable organizations “work hard
to make our communities a better place by providing quality research, policy
advice … on everything from health care to housing, to education, the
environment and the economy.”

— Ann Silversides, CMAJ

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