Whatever Happened To The Music Teacher

Thirty years ago, Anglo-American politicians set out to make the public sector look like the private sector. These reforms continue today, ultimately seeking to empower elected officials to shape policies and pushing public servants to manage operations in the same manner as their private-sector counterparts. In Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher?, Donald Savoie provides a nuanced account of how the Canadian federal government makes decisions. Savoie argues that the traditional role of public servants advising governments on policy has been turned on its head, and that evidence-based policy making is no longer valued as it once was. Policy making has become a matter of opinion, Google searches, focus groups, and public opinion surveys, where a well-connected lobbyist can provide any answers politicians wish to hear. As a result, public servants have lost their way and are uncertain about how they should assess management performance, how they should generate policy advice, how they should work with their political leaders, and how they should speak truth to political power - even within their own departments. Savoie demonstrates how recent management reforms in government have caused a steep rise in the overhead cost of government, as well as how the notion that public administration could be made to operate like the private sector has been misguided and costly to taxpayers. Abandoning "textbook" discussions of government and public service, Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? Is a realistic portrayal of how policy decisions are made and how actors and institutions interact with one another and exposes the complexities, contradictions present in Canadian politics and governance.

An insightful account of the forces that shape Ottawa's expenditure budget and the relations between politicians and public servants.

Recent decades have shown the public's support for government plummet alongside political leaders’ credibility. This downward spiral calls for an exploration of what has gone wrong. The questions, "What is government good at?" and "What is government not good at?" are critical ones - and their answers should be the basis for good public policy and public administration. In What Is Government Good At?, Donald Savoie argues that politicians and public servants are good at generating and avoiding blame, playing to a segment of the population to win the next election, embracing and defending the status quo, adding management layers and staff, keeping ministers out of trouble, responding to demands from the prime minister and his office, and managing a complex, prime minister-centred organization. Conversely, they are not as good at defining the broader public interest, providing and recognizing evidence-based policy advice, managing human and financial resources with efficiency and frugality, innovating and reforming itself, being accountable to Parliament and to citizens, dealing with non-performers, paying sufficient attention to service delivery, and implementing and evaluating the impact of policies and programs. With wide implications for representative democracy, What Is Government Good At? is a persuasive analysis of an approach to government that has opened the door to those with the resources to influence policy and decision-making while leaving average citizens on the outside looking in.

Canada's representative democracy is confronting important challenges. At the top of the list is the growing inability of the national government to perform its most important roles: namely mapping out collective actions that resonate in all regions as well as enforcing these measures. Others include Parliament's failure to carry out important responsibilities, an activist judiciary, incessant calls for greater transparency, the media's rapidly changing role, and a federal government bureaucracy that has lost both its way and its standing. Arguing that Canadians must reconsider the origins of their country in order to understand why change is difficult and why they continue to embrace regional identities, Democracy in Canada explains how Canada's national institutions were shaped by British historical experiences, and why there was little effort to bring Canadian realities into the mix. As a result, the scope and size of government and Canadian federalism have taken on new forms largely outside the Constitution. Parliament and now even Cabinet have been pushed aside so that policy makers can design and manage the modern state. This also accounts for the average citizen's belief that national institutions cater to economic elites, to their own members, and to interest groups at their own expense. A masterwork analysis, Democracy in Canada investigates the forces shaping the workings of Canadian federalism and the country's national political and bureaucratic institutions.

This Compelling book tells it ALL and MORE. Includes interviews with diverse and legendary musicians who provide candid insights. See what they have to say about their own teachers and the art of teaching!Over 400 Pages of revealing and relevant information. Music isn't Optional, It's IMPORTANT! Hellyer's book is a Must-Read.

The only rival to Harrison McCain’s entrepreneurial success was his deep attachment to his Maritime roots. From McCain’s beginnings in Florenceville, New Brunswick, the early mentorship he received from K.C. Irving, to the global success of his corporate empire McCain Foods, Donald Savoie presents a compelling and candid biography of one of the most famous and down-to-earth figures in Canadian business history. Savoie, a longtime friend to McCain, describes a driven, charismatic, and energetic man who had a keen wit and a deep commitment to his business and hometown. Through unprecedented access to McCain’s papers and interviews with family members, friends, and colleagues, Savoie details the decisions that McCain made alongside his brother and business partner, Wallace McCain, from the company’s humble beginnings to its expansion in Europe, Australia, India, and China. McCain saw the potential of globalization before others did. Despite conflict between the brothers and the eventual fracture of their partnership, Savoie presents the McCains’ dedication as so immersed in the development of their company that they had little time left for second-guessing. At a time when New Brunswick struggles to reinvent itself economically, Savoie points to former government policies and programs that helped the company thrive and holds up the example of Harrison McCain with the hope of seeing Canadian success stories like this in the future.

The digital world has impacted the way Canadians socialize and interact with others, teach and learn, conduct business, experience culture, fight political battles, and acquire knowledge. The traditional forms of media, newspapers, radio, and television are being replaced by digital media which is fast, sporadic, and sometimes inaccurate. As a result, Canada is experiencing a number of overlapping crises simultaneously: a crisis in traditional media, a crisis in public broadcasting, a crisis in news and journalism, and a crisis in citizen engagement.

Mount Allison University has consistently been ranked among the leading undergraduate universities in Canada over the last two decades. How does a small-town university with a population of just 2,500 students achieve such outstanding successes year after year? According to Dr. Louise Wasylkiw and Dr. Jennifer L. Tomes, it is the exceptional quality of teaching that makes ‘Mount A’ truly stand out from the crowd. In this volume, Wasylkiw and Tomes have assembled essays from across disciplines that examine the diversity of pedagogical methods and philosophies that instructors currently employ to give Mount A students a modern, critical, and conscientious education experience. Arranged around the themes of course conceptualization, targeted teaching techniques, and going beyond performance assessments to measure students’ outcomes, the contributors’ essays range widely in scope. Their collective theme, however, is the depth and breadth of the high quality of teaching offered at Mount A.