The often hidden, but very important, relationship between the municipal council and the public service is a key determinant of the success of any municipality. This paper offers some suggestions for positive ways in which the CAO model can develop and warns of some clouds on the horizon that could harm the Canadian municipal government system.
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This paper argues that municipal accountability officers in Canada can and do address many problems and dilemmas, but they can also create problems of their own. Accountability officers have limited formal authority, but considerable power to influence public opinion. The most important function of accountability officers is to provide citizens with the kind of information they need in order to make intelligent electoral choices.
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With a focus on urban flooding, this paper identifies and explains ways in which governments can share climate-related risks. It then evaluates whether and how these tools have been used in Calgary, Alberta, and Toronto, Ontario.
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City governments in Toronto, New York City, and Los Angeles have each set ambitious GHG reduction targets, and developed programs and policies to reach these targets. This paper draws on their experiences and identifies steering strategies that have proven effective in all three cities.
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This paper argues that additional taxes are entirely appropriate for major cities and estimates the potential revenue that some of these taxes could generate in eight Canadian cities – Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, and Halifax.
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IMFG invites applications for two one-year graduate fellowships in municipal finance and governance for the 2017-2018 academic year. The fellowships will begin on September 1, 2017 and each offer $5,000 in financial support.
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The Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG), within the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, invites applications for a one-year IMFG Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Municipal Finance and Governance. Research should be pertinent to IMFG’s focus on the finance and governance issues faced by large cities and city-regions in Canada and around the world.
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Toronto is known for having been a prosperous and successful city in the decades after the Second World War, and the postwar period has come to be seen as something of a Golden Age for the city. What role did Toronto’s postwar municipal finances play in making the city the success that it was?
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