Policy Brief Paper

Policy Brief / Paper

Scenario: You are the economic advisor for a Canadian politician (provincial or federal depending on topic). The politician you work for is a member of the party that is associated with your assigned (not personal) political view. 

The politician is about to take part in a television debate with another politician with a set of opposite viewpoints. You are writing a policy brief for them to prepare. The paper must include arguments on how to reform your assigned topic area. To avoid your boss embarrassing themselves, each argument needs to be backed up by data or economic theory. 

You must argue from your assigned partisan perspective. You are encouraged to look into party platforms, but ultimately should come up with your own ideas and assessment.

Assigned topic: Social Security

Partisan role: Progressive

Social security refers to government programs that replace people’s income lost due to pregnancy, illness, accident, disability, the death or absence of a family’s breadwinner, unemployment, old age or retirement.

Social security refers to government programs that replace people’s income lost due to pregnancy, illness, accident, disability, the death or absence of a family’s breadwinner, unemployment, old age or retirement. A cornerstone of Canada’s social programming, it is a subject of recurring political debate and discussion — and an increasingly important one, as Canada’s population ages.

Prominent political parties in Canada according to their political leanings. The links lead to their website introduction, respectively. 

Progressive Parties

Federal: NDP Ready for Better: New Democrats’ Commitments to You « Canada’s NDP

Provincial: ANDP About Alberta’s NDP « Alberta’s NDP (albertandp.ca)

Conservative Parties

Federal: CPC Governing Documents – Conservative Party of Canada

Provincial: UPC About – The United Conservative Party

Guidelines

These are the guidelines for three page policy paper:

• The paper should be brief, under no circumstances longer than 3 pages of text (more space for graphs and bibliography, cover page is of course ok.).
• The paper should have two parts
  • A first part identifying the main problems of the public program under discussion. This part should have lots of graphs, data and references to studies and research papers.
  • The second part should propose reform ideas aligned with your assigned political view. This part should have references to research and policy papers.

• We suggest that you use the ‘Citations & Bibliography’ functionality in Microsoft Word under the ‘References’ tab.
  • Alternatively, you can manually cite your references with a citation style (e.g. APA, Chicago, etc.) of your choice. 
• You can find research papers using
  • Google Scholar
  • Through research institutes online (e.g. C.D Howe institute, Fraser institute, etc.)
• The paper should be: (1) brief, (2) professional, (3) easy to read, (4) informative
• You must export your work to a PDF file and submit only the PDF file. 
• Formatting: Times New Roman, 12 pt, double spaced.