A quango or QUANGO (less often QuANGO or QANGO) is an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies. The term was originally a shortening of "quasi autonomous NGO", where NGO is the acronym for a non-government organization. In its pejorative use, it has been widely applied to public bodies of various kinds, and a variety of backronyms have been used to make the term consistent with this expanded use. The most popular have been "Quasi-autonomous national government organization" and "Quasi-autonomous non-government organization", often with the acronym modified to "qango" or "QANGO". As its original name suggests, a quango is a hybrid form of organization, with elements of both NGOs and public sector bodies. The term is most often applied in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser degree, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries. In the UK, the term quango covers different "arm's-length" government bodies, including "non-departmental public bodies" (NDPBs), non-ministerial government departments, and executive agencies. Use 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. Notably electricity providers such as the 'Saskatchewan Power Corporation' a.k.a. 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 the last remaining government owned incumbent telephone provider in Canada. SaskPower (Saskatchewan Power Corporation) providing electricity. SaskEnergy (SaskEnergy Incorporated) providing 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