Canada In Canada, quangos are referred to as
Crown corporations or simply
Crown corps. As of May 2021, there were 45 Crown corps owned by the
Canadian federal government, however many more are owned by each of the provincial governments. Notable are electricity providers such as the
Saskatchewan Power Corporation (SaskPower) owned by the province of Saskatchewan and '
Manitoba Hydro-Electric Board' a.k.a. Manitoba Hydro owned by the province of
Manitoba.
Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is notable for the ubiquity of provincial crown corps with most styled with the prefix
Sask- followed by the primary service. The larger Saskatchewan Crown corps have their own Saskatchewan minister with all Saskatchewan Crown corps owned by the Crown Investment Corporation of Saskatchewan which in turn is owned by the provincial government. Some of the most notable Saskatchewan Crown corps are as follows: •
SaskTel (Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation) providing telecommunications. Notable for being the last remaining government-owned incumbent telephone provider in Canada. •
SaskPower (Saskatchewan Power Corporation) provides electricity. •
SaskEnergy (SaskEnergy Incorporated) provides natural gas. •
SaskWater (Saskatchewan Water Corporation) providing
potable water and sewage services to certain communities.
Ireland In 2006, there were 832 quangos in the Republic of Ireland – 482 at national and 350 at local level – with a total of 5,784 individual appointees and a combined annual budget of €13 billion. The Irish majority party,
Fine Gael, had promised to eliminate 145 quangos should they be the governing party in the 2016 election. Since coming to power they have reduced the overall number of quangos by 17. This reduction also included agencies which the former government had already planned to remove.
New Zealand In New Zealand, quangos are referred to as '
Crown Entities', with the shift occurring in the 1980s during a period of
neoliberalisation of the state sector. In 1996, there were an estimated 310 quangos in New Zealand, and an additional 2690 school Boards of Trustees (similar to the American model of
boards of education). Other quangos from 1996 include: "...63 Crown Health Enterprises, 39 tertiary education institutions, 21 Business development boards and 9 Crown Research Institutes. But there were also 71 single crown entities with services ranging from regulatory (e.g. Accounting Standards Review Board, Takeovers Panel) to quasi-judicial (e.g. Police Complaints Authority, Race Relations Conciliator), to the arts (e.g. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZ Film Commission), to social welfare (e.g. Housing Corporation of NZ) and to substantial enterprises (e.g. Auckland International Airport Ltd)." This appointment of people to governance boards has been widely criticised by political parties and political commentators as a form of
cronyism. In 2010, there were 2,607 crown entities (including Board of Trustees) with annual expenditure of $32 billion in 2009/2010.
United Kingdom Despite a 1979 commitment from the
Conservative Party to curb the growth of non-departmental bodies, their numbers grew rapidly throughout that party's time in power during the 1980s. One UK example is the
Forestry Commission, which is a non-ministerial government department responsible for forestry in
England. The Cabinet Office 2009 report on non-departmental public bodies found that there were 766 NDPBs sponsored by the UK government. The number had been falling: there were 827 in 2007 and 790 in 2008. The number of NDPBs had fallen by over 10% since 1997. Staffing and expenditure of NDPBs had increased. They employed 111,000 people in 2009 and spent £46.5 billion, of which £38.4 billion was directly funded by the government. According to an analysis done by the
Cabinet Office, there were 302 ALBs (or quangos) in the UK in 2022/23, 244 of which were
non-departmental public bodies. ALBs employed just over 390,800 staff. By far the biggest ALB was
NHS England, receiving over a third of the total funding for all ALBs. NHS England is currently being dissolved, with most of its functions and employees due to be absorbed into the
Department for Health and Social Care.
Paul Krugman has stated that the US
Federal Reserve is, effectively, "what the British call a quango... Its complex structure divides power between the federal government and the private banks that are its members, and in effect gives substantial autonomy to a governing board of long-term appointees." Other U.S.-based organizations that fit the original definition of quangos include the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the
National Endowment for Democracy, the
Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). By the broader definition now used in the United Kingdom, there are hundreds of
federal agencies that might be classed as quangos.
Indonesia The
Indonesian Ulema Council is considered a quango for its status as an independent, mass organization-like public organization but supported and financed by the state while keeping its status as independent organization outside the Indonesian state organizational system in other side. As a quango, MUI is empowered to issue religious edicts (
fatwas) comparable to state laws which are binding upon the Indonesian Muslim population and can exert influence upon state policies, politics, and the economy due to its status and prestige. == History ==