Ottawa – Canada’s turbulent economic and political times over the past year provide a compelling backdrop for this year’s edition of How Ottawa Spends, Carleton University’s premier review of government spending. The 30th edition hits newsstands this month.

The introduction notes that the economic woes were not addressed by political actions.

“ ... in 2008 Canadians went through an election called because the Prime Minister perceived that Parliament was dysfunctional, which if true, was largely a circumstance of the government’s own making. This was quickly followed by an actual dysfunction of the new Parliament created by a government so hyper-partisan that it chose to use the fall economic statement to pursue a political agenda while largely ignoring the rapidly developing economic crisis.”

“This year’s review showcases the breadth and depth of Carleton’s expertise on government spending and provides great insight into how some of these real-world problems can be addressed,” says Carleton professor, Allan Maslove, editor of this year’s review.

The review tackles three important questions:

• Does the Harper government’s 2009 budget contain enough stimulus to significantly moderate the recession?

• Does the budget open the door to long-term structural deficits?

• Do the budget measures address the more fundamental structural adjustments discussed earlier?

The ten book chapters explore these and other policy issues in more depth:

• How Ottawa Spends: Evolving Budgetary Policies and Experiments: 1980 to 2009-2010 (Bruce Doern}

• How Ottawa Assesses Department/Agency Performance: Treasury Board’s Management Accountability Framework (Evert Lindquist)

• Design Challenges for the Strategic State: Bricolage and Sabotage (Ruth Hubbard and Gilles Paquet)

• Evaluating the Rationale of the New Federal Lobbying Act: Making Lobbying Transparent or Regulating the Industry? (Robert Shepherd)

• Could the Senate be Right? Should CIDA be Abolished? (Chris Brown and Ted Jackson)

• Federal Gas Tax Transfers: Politics and Perverse Policy (Robert Hilton and Christopher Stoney)

• How Ottawa Spends and How Canadians Save (Jennifer Robson, Richard Shillington, and Peter Nares)

• Communication by Stealth: the New Common Sense in Government Communication (Kirsten Kozolanka)

• Framing the Harper Government: “Gender-Neutral” Electoral Appeals while being Gender-Negative in Caucus (Melissa Haussman and L. Pauline Rankin)

• Where is VIA Going: A Case Study of Managing a Commercial Crown Corporation (Malcolm Bird)

How Ottawa Spends is the annual review of the federal government’s spending and public policy by the Carleton University School of Public Policy and Administration.