Canadian state-owned enterprises: a framework for analyzing the evolving Crowns

Abstract

Despite the privatization of many state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Canadian governments continue to own and operate numerous Crown corporations in a host of different sectors. Drawing its conclusions from the evolution of six Canadian Crowns, this article will explain both why these firms continue to exist in the public sphere as well as examine how their governance and organizational condition(s) have changed. With one exception, these firms have drastically modernized all aspects of their operations such that they are able to meet the needs of their citizen customers, various stakeholders and, most critically, their single shareholders. Historically imposed institutional variables, the political and policy needs of their respective owners and constraints on the decision-making powers of Canadian governments are key factors for understanding the continued public ownership and institutional development of these SOEs. Canada's limited adoption of New Public Management concepts and neoliberalism, more generally, is an additional pertinent factor that helps to explain their continued presence in the economy as well as the relatively late implementation of modernization programs. Some final thoughts on the value of SOEs and state intervention more generally round out the article.

Keywords:

• state-owned enterprises
• Crown corporations
• institutional change
• New Public Management
• public management

Notes on contributor

Malcolm G. Bird is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He earned his doctorate from Carleton University in Ottawa in 2008.