62 nd National Annual Conference of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada

1. Findings from and Evaluation of New Intergovernmental Accountability Regimes: Canada in Comparative Context 62nd National Annual Conference of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada August 22-25, 2010 Peter Graefe, McMaster University Julie Simmons, University of Guelph Linda A. White, University of Toronto

2. Evaluating Recent Intergovernmental Accountability Regimes: What Works; What could Be Done Differently • Contours of the project • Accountability – definitions and multiple understandings • Results

3. Areas of Examination • Health Care • Early Learning and Child Care • National Child Benefit • Labour Market Agreements • LMT – Disabilities • Infrastructure Federal/Provincial/Municipal • United States: Education • European Union: GMOs • Switzerland: Benchmarking • Auditor General • Absence of fed/prov Accountability: Education

4. Health Care • 2000 Intergovernmental Agreement • Comprehensive and regular public reporting • Collaboration on framework to develop common indicators (67) • 2004 10 Year Plan to Strengthen Healthcare • Reducing wait times • 5 Performance indicators • Canadian Institute for Health Information

5. Labour Market Training: Disabilities • 1997 Multilateral Framework for Employability Assistance for people with Disabilities (EAPD) and bilateral agreements • Accountability to consumers and the public • Set of indicators • Planning and annual reviews • 2003 Multilateral Framework for labour Market Agreements for Persons with Disabilities • Similar: greater emphasis on measurement of results; program evaluation and exchanging results

6. Labour Market Training • Mid 1990s-present: LMDAs • Bilateral Agreements with each province • 2007/08/09 LMAs • Increased funding • More rigorous accountability • Each province reports annually to its citizens on RESULTS (10 performance indicators) federal govt. reports aggregate results • Conditional; without sanctions

7. National Child Benefit • Federal National Child Benefit Supplement to the Canada Child Tax Benefit (1998) • Provincial reinvestment of “adjusted” social assistance funds into programs benefiting children • Collective annual reporting • amount of funds invested by each province and the federal government (inputs) • nature of the programs of each province in five categories: (outputs) • “indicators” of whether NCB achieves its overall goals (outcomes)

8. Early Learning and Child Care • 2000 Early Childhood Development Agreement • 2003 Multilateral Agreement on Early Earning and Child Care • 2005 Bilateral Agreements in Principle on ELCC (cancelled in 2006) • Accountability through public reporting. • Making the Connections • Tracks 5 years of reporting for 13 jurisdictions

9. Accountability Architecture Varies Considerably • Voluntary Reporting by individual governments to public (Labour market development agreements) • Collective Reporting (National Child Benefit) • Third Party Monitoring and funded by federal government (Early Childhood Development) • Third Party Monitoring and funded by all governments (Health Care)

10. Lessons Learned • Incentive for Public Reporting in intergovernmental agreements different from within the Public Service • Trajectory of performance management within the public sector • Trajectory of fed/prov relations

11. Lessons Learned • Outputs of public reporting are therefore different • Numbers are not “auditable” • Provision of data sometimes absent • Accountability vs. Communications in public reporting

12. Lessons Learned • Trust and cooperation are not synonymous with secrecy • Some indication that incentive to report linked to norms in sector • No correlation with the “stakes” of the issue • No correlation with will to cooperate • Political will filtered through executive federalism • Weak institutionalization of practices • Change in government

13. Conclusions • Public Reporting has not been successful • Best practices and policy learning • Democracy • Federal leadership in policy vs. Provincial Room to Maneuver • Cooperation between two orders of government

14. Alternatives • Provincial executives are accountable to their legislators • Provinces are accountable to their voters for the social policies that they choose to offer. • Conversation Spaces • Sharing best practices • Provinces and “Area Experts”