Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making in Canada Edited by Shaun P. Young Oxford University Press (2013) 226 pp. ISBN: 97800199003037

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1293
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Date: 01 September 2014

Book Review/Recensions de livre

Reviewed by Farimah HakemZadeh, DeGroote School of

Business, McMaster University

Evidence-Based Policy-Making in Canada

Edited by Shaun P. Young

Oxford University Press (2013) 226 pp.

ISBN: 97800199003037

It seems to be a no brainer: policy makers should base

their decisions on the best available evidence that is gener-

ated through scientif‌ic methods and is free of bias and ma-

nipulation. Rationally, an evidence-informed decision is of

higher quality and has a higher probability of yielding effec-

tive results. Furthermore, in democratic societies, govern-

ments are not only expected to make policies in favour of

their citizens’sustainable prosperity, but should be able to

justify their policies both to their citizens and to other polit-

ical parties. This becomes even more challenging as many

policies can only be evaluated after a considerable amount

of time, at which point taking corrective action may be too

costly and problematic. As a result, evidence-based policy

making (EBPM) has attracted the interest of policy makers,

researchers, and the public.

Evidence-Based Policy-Making in Canada examines

EBPM in a Canadian context and, in particular, explores

the challenges and limitations towards evidence-informed

policy making in different sectors. This book brings together

a collection of both scholarly- and practice-focused articles

written by researchers and senior civil servants. The articles

describe and appraise the current state of Canadian policy

making and its methods of acquiring and implementing

evidence.

The f‌irst chapters in the book concentrate on alternate

models of policy advisory systems, the overall relationship

between knowledge and practice in policy making in Canada,

and the role of research-brokering organizations in effec-

tively improving this relationship. Combined, these chapters

set the theoretical foundation for a system of knowledge pro-

duction that aims to effectively gather, interpret, package,

and distribute evidence for policy-making purposes. The

arguments made in the book become more compelling by

identifying and acknowledging in separate chapters the f‌ield-

specif‌ic challenges faced by major policies such as those re-

lated to early childhood education and care, crime, poverty,

tax expenditure, and the natural environment.

In the context of governmental decision making, the

book highlights the extent of the complexities involved with

policy making. Governmental policies affect a large range of

different stakeholders that include various communities, po-

litical parties, provincial and federal agencies, researchers,

public media, and even stakeholders beyond the borders.

These stakeholders differ from each other not only in their

objectives and interests, but also in the source and type of

knowledge they rely on for decision making as well as their

perception of what evidence actually is. Converging the

sometimes-conf‌licting views of different parties and agree-

ing on a common objective and a means of achieving that

objective is the f‌irst challenge for EBPM. Moreover, while

in theory most are on board with EBPM, many federal and

provincial agencies have limited capacity for generating

and acquiring information due to budgetary constraints and

the bounded rationality of the decision-making process it-

self. For example, in the case of environment related poli-

cies, several legislative changes are limiting environmental

assessment processes as the basic sources of scientif‌ic infor-

mation gathering. Sometimes evidence-supported decisions

are fundamentally different from traditional policy interven-

tions and the scope of changes makes their implementation

diff‌icult. For instance, the evidence-based crime policy sug-

gests a redirection from reactive to preventive interventions.

However, this requires drastic paradigm shifts in media and

public approaches, police force, justice system, and so forth.

The shared federal and provincial responsibilities in many of

these areas make the integration harder to achieve. Addition-

ally, in certain policy-related tasks, such as tax expenditure

design, the lack of transparency in the decision-making pro-

cess hinders open dialogue between different experts. Such

dialogue is essential for evidence-based decision making in

more complex socio-economic contexts in which cause and

effect relationships are not easily established and understood.

As discussed in this book, various conceptual and meth-

odological challenges remain in actualizing EBPM and a

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

31: 214–215 (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1293

Can J Adm Sci

31(3), 214–215 (2014)Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 214