The Report Card on Ontario’s Secondary Schools 2012 collects a variety of relevant, objective indicators of school performance into one, easily accessible public document so that anyone can analyze and compare the performance of individual schools. By doing so, the Report Card assists parents when they choose a school for their children and encourages and assists all those seeking to improve their schools.

Canada’s federal government sends cash transfers to the provinces to help pay for health care. Under the current arrangement regarding cash transfers, the federal government has committed to increasing its cash transfers for health care by 6 percent annually in addition to the provision of targeted transfers, such as those for health reform and waiting list reduction. Recently, the federal government announced that it would continue the 6 per cent annual increase to 2016-17, despite expecting to run planned budget deficits (spending exceeding revenues) until 2014-15. After that, it will change to a rate of increase matching either the nominal rate of economic growth or 3 percent, whichever is greater.

This paper responds to the criticism by Mohsen Javdani and Krishna Pendakur of our estimate of the net fiscal transfer to recent immigrants. Specifically, Javdani and Pendakur question our estimate that in fiscal year 2005/06 the average fiscal burden imposed on Canadian taxpayers was around $6,000 for each immigrant.