Research

Research Publications

The Centre's publicaton series is archived on Scholaris, Western's open research respository.

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Recent publication

Governing Public Transit in Canada: A Primer

By Martin Horak

As Canada’s urban population continues to grow, increasing the capacity of urban transit systems while also ensuring their operational sustainability has never been more important. In recent years, new federal and provincial spending has led to a boom in the construction of rapid transit lines in Canada’s largest cities. At the same time, urban transit systems have experienced a crisis of operating revenues brought on by a sharp decrease in ridership during the Covid-19 pandemic. How well Canada’s transit systems will manage new infrastructure development and continued operating pressures in the coming years depends on governance – the way in which public transit is organized and run. Yet this subject has received little systematic attention from Canadian researchers. This primer aims to lay a foundation for future work, and to inform broader public discussion, by providing a high-level overview of transit governance in Canada.

Funded Projects

Local Democracy Project

The goal of the Local Democracy Project / Projet sur la démocratie locale is to comprehensively describe local election rules in ten Canadian provinces, explain how they have changed over the past decade, and determine their effects on election outcomes. We will also use anonymous surveys and interviews to learn about how candidates campaign in municipalities large and small, and gather their opinions about the rules that govern municipal elections. Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant, the project is housed at the Centre. 

The Centre is Canada’s participant in developing a multi-national project on Local Government and the Changing Urban-Rural Interplay. Each country’s research team will study the responsibilities of different levels of government, financial arrangements, and public participation in relation to the growing gap between urban and rural settlements, and to identify innovative practices to respond to these challenges. Prof. Martin Horak is leading this project. Housed at the  Institute for Comparative Federalism at Eurac Research, Bolzano, Italy, the LoGov project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (MSCA-RISE) programme.

In 2021, Professors Martin Horak and Zack Taylor were invited to contribute to the Canadian dataset and profile report to an international project on measuring local autonomy funded by the European Commission. Published in April 2022, the final report by project leaders Andreas Ladner, Nicolas Keuffer, and Alexander Bastenian of the University of Lausanne, Self-rule index for local authorities in the EU, Council of Europe and OECD countries, 1990–2020, compares 57 countries over 30 years. The report finds that local autonomy measured across eleven dimensions has increased in most countries. Compared to the average, Canada scores lower on institutional depth, policy scope, effective political discretion, the conditionality of the financial transfer system, borrowing autonomy, legal protection, administrative supervision, and national access, and higher on fiscal autonomy, fiscal self-reliance, and organizational autonomy. Overall, Canada scores 45 out of 100 on the Local Autonomy Index compared to the mean score of 57. Professors Horak and Taylor are grateful for the research support of Amanda Gutzke, who collected data for the project as an Undergraduate Student Research Internship in Summer 2021. The project will be updated in 2026.

Open Data and Tools

Open data and data tools are made available through the Borealis research data repository (formerly ScholarsPortal Dataverse).

Canadian Municipal Attributes Portal (CMAP)

Martin Horak and Zack Taylor

CMAP is an interactive data portal that presents information on how governance is structured in major municipalities across Canada. It is the only resource of its kind in Canada. Here you will find data on dozens of key institutional attributes of Canadian municipalities, ranging from electoral systems and council structure to the governance of service provision. CMAP currently includes information on over 50 institutional attributes in 189 Canadian municipalities that span all provinces and territories, and are collectively home to 73% of Canada’s population.

Visit CMAP

Canadian Longitudinal Tract Database

Zack Taylor and Jeff Allen

One of the most difficult tasks for users of the Canadian census is linking data across years. The Canadian Longitudinal Tract Database enables the spatial apportionment of Canadian census tract-level data from different census years to common geographic boundaries. This dataset contains the apportionment tables and associated documentation.

Access the CLTDB