Current Research

Investing in a Faster and Fairer Digital Infrastructure

Many employers in Canada want to get better at hiring and advancing workers with disabilities – but the results are lagging. PPF’s Access Ability leverages policy, research and training to identify ways that businesses and policymakers can ensure workers with disabilities are able to contribute their full potential while fixing the persistence of exclusionary bias in recruitment, hiring and training.

By shifting its policies on technology procurement and embracing a more collaborative development approach with Canadian innovators; government could also enable Canada’s technology sector to compete more successfully in global markets.

With COVID-19 raging out of control in the U.S., the last thing most Canadians want to contemplate is more entrants from abroad. But it could be a year before a vaccine arrives and much longer until it is administered globally. If COVID has taught us anything it is that, this time, we have to be ahead of the curve on border control.

Rebuilding the economy will require a sustained, thoughtful approach. Key to that approach will be improving both the quantity and quality of work to repair fractures and avoid disruption from future waves of infection.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated developing geopolitical shifts that are unlikely to dissipate even after the pandemic's economic shock wanes. As a country long used to a more benign international environment, the future prosperity, security and well-being of Canadians will depend in no small measure on how well we navigate this unfamiliar world.

Before the COVID-19 crisis hit, there was already a need for public policy in Canada to adjust. Now, with the economy wounded and international cooperation frayed, we must consider the merits of a more fundamental rebuilding job. Through a series of reports and conferences, this project will tap into the best established and ascending policy brains in an effort to help policymakers weigh priorities and trade-offs and forge a far-reaching rebuild plan.

The Future of Work is here to stay. This new PPF project explores the policy implications for skills, training, and employment for workers and learners across Canada.

Disinformation can stymie policy responses to public health, environmental threats and crises. COVID-19 provides a unique albeit troublesome opportunity to investigate phenomena like the erosion and corrosion of public trust through the spread of disinformation and misinformation (the former purposeful, the latter flowing from ignorance). PPF is working with partners and its members to understand the nature of the problem of science and health mis- and disinformation in Canada, map the range of current proposed solutions, and build the conceptual framework for new policy pathways to address the issues.