Publications

For six months, Global Affairs morphed into a giant consular and travel service. As part of the Public Service Innovation and Leadership During COVID-19 series, we dive into this account of historic department-wide shifts to consular services to help Canadians abroad. With a volunteer workforce of more than 1,000 public servants pulled from their day jobs, this consular focus led to major rethinking of how the department responds to an emergency and underscored the need to communicate the way Canadians do.

Six months after the release of New North Star II, the case for a mission-driven economic strategy is even more relevant. The pandemic has highlighted the need for a new industrial strategy to cultivate domestic innovations and technologies in Canada's national interests and authors Robert Asselin and Sean Speer revisit their analysis and recommendations and find a compelling model in the US’s DARPA model.

Canada must come to grips not just with a massive fiscal shortfall but also consecutive deficits in our current account, a broad measure of our trading and investment relationship with the rest of the world. A government plan must be growth oriented if we are to get the twin deficits under control without resorting to the drastic measures of 25 years ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a fiscal conundrum for governments: How can they dig themselves out of debt in a manner that protects the financial futures of younger generations? Governments should opt for a mix of fiscal strategies that favour smart tax increases.

Well-planned, reliable infrastructure is essential to the well-being of all communities. Despite major policy challenges, Indigenous people, companies and governments are closing the infrastructure gap by advancing successful equity infrastructure projects across the country. Canada should follow these examples.

As a starting point for further dialogue, lawyer Lex Gill explores the legal tensions and policy questions that have historically animated debates surrounding hate speech in Canada. This report summarizes some of the most significant recent developments, in particular the ways technological, economic and social change have begun to challenge the ways we think about harmful expression.

Today’s media systems include the powerful social media companies that watch, commodify, and manipulate us as they buy and sell our data. Mike Ananny urges a more sophisticated understanding of the privately controlled infrastructures where important decisions are made shaping behaviours, beliefs and online news. These might look like boring, messy, technical places where only engineers work, but regulators need to grasp their complexities and tackle the prevailing secrecy to better protect the public interest.

By drawing parallels to elections, climate change and the anti-vaccination movement, author Christopher Dornan illustrates how disinformation about COVID-19 can pose significant risks for public health, social cohesion and collective trust. Dornan identifies several useful recommendations for citizens, governments and social media platforms to consider to effectively combat disinformation and engage in evidence-based discussion about scientific findings.

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.

The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on the need to reform Canada’s income-support framework. Combine this with the looming risks of automation and age-related labour shortages, and we have a strong case for creating a modern framework that promotes work and minimizes earning losses for dislocated workers. As we rebuild our economy following the crisis, Canadian policy-makers will need to grapple with this complex and critical task.

When COVID-19 lockdowns came, Canada’s employment insurance system failed to cover enough of the Canadian workforce that was affected and failed administratively to keep up with the surge in applications for benefits. This new report by Jennifer Robson proposes ideas for policy reform and shows why Canadians need wage insurance in the first place.

PPF's new series chronicles how public servants throughout Canada responded in real-time to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). First up: A new email notification service, Get Updates on COVID-19, turns traditional methods of government communications on its ear. How did it come to be in weeks, not months?

The country has been held back by lagging productivity and competitiveness, leading to a stagnant growth rate incapable of lifting Canadians’ standards of living. As we rebuild, simply going back to ‘normal’ is not an option.

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.