By Henry E. McCandless
[Op-ed in the Victoria Times Colonist 13 September 2004]
Ottawa Needs to Get Tough with Provinces on Health care
In the bickering between the provinces and the federal government over conditions attached to federal health funding, public accountability has been purposefully left out — the obligation to answer publicly and adequately for the discharge [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Special Issues category.
Ottawa Needs to Get Tough with Provinces on Health care
Keeping the Meaning of Public Accountability Clear
[Previously published in March, 2003]
The meaning of public accountability argued in the Citizen’s Guide is based on the definition of accountability given in the 1975 Report of the Independent Review Committee on the Office of the Auditor General of Canada (Wilson Committee):
“Accountability in its simplest terms is the obligation to answer for a responsibility that [...]
Defending the Internet as Endangered Commons
[Previously published in March, 2003]
A new global conflict is emerging among proponents of opposite views of the nature of systems, closed or open. The conflict flows from an epistemological shift that affects worldviews in general. Closed systems are mechanistic and are designed or authored from outside of themselves. Open systems are structured dynamically from within, [...]
Mapping Public Accountabilities
[Originally published in February, 2002]
In this first edition of the Journal we set out, borrowing from the examples in the Citizen’s Guide, broad responsibility areas for which public answering is missing or inadequate. The purpose is to stimulate readers to identify others; to identify more specific important responsibilities within areas that the Journal maps; and [...]
