Government & Public Sector

The Ontario government has announced plans for a four-year $46 million program that will help new companies develop cutting-edge technologies to fuel the economy and create jobs for Ontario families, according to provincial officials.

Voting at the Lac Carling Congress suggested that participants are in a mood to move from theoretical framework to practical solutions.

The 10th Lac Carling Congress may have been a watershed event. It marked the emergence of municipalities as the project directors who are taking citizen-centred service delivery beyond the conceptual stage - to a work in progress.

The summer of the gun in Toronto in 2005 left a trail of dead and wounded youth and a posse of government agencies struggling to respond to the crisis.

It's okay, all you hard-working bureaucrats who think politicians don't recognize the effort that has gone into streamlining and integrating the provision of government services. n

You can't have collaboration without a collaborator. Before Lac Carling X, there was no national organization with a mandate to serve as a municipal voice in collaboration with other levels of government to advance the cause of citizen-centred service. n

Over the past two decades, growing public demand for better services has pushed governments to experiment with new kinds of intergovernmental partnerships. This, in turn, has raised questions over whether governments can really be partners and still be fully accountable to their legislatures.

SARS and the possibility of a flu pandemic have together madensecurity - and access to buildings - critical issues fornhospitals.