Municipal Reform in Canada: Reconfiguration, Re-Empowerment, and Rebalancing

Extract

Municipal Reform in Canada: Reconfiguration, Re-Empowerment, and Rebalancing, Joseph Garcea and Edward C. LeSage, Jr., eds., Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. ix, 350.

This book will be an essential reference for students of local government in Canada. It deals with the most recent period of municipal reform, from 1990 onwards. There are chapters on each of the ten provinces, plus a combined chapter on the northern territories. The editors establish an analytical framework for the book in their introduction, and then try to bring things together in a long concluding chapter. The individual chapters differ somewhat in approach, but the editors were fairly successful in getting the contributors to keep to a common analytical framework. Reading the whole book straight through is a bit of a slog, because there is so much detail; on the other hand, it is handy to have all this material collected together. It will stimulate useful reflection, as much about what is not here as what is.