Publications

The North is warming faster than any other place in Canada. The lessons being learned about mitigation in the North can help all of Canada adapt to a rapidly warming world.

Over the last two decades, global interest in the Arctic has grown exponentially. Canada can either be a leader in defining its northern sovereignty and development or have its roles and responsibilities determined for it by global actors already active in the region.

Canadian society has the resources to operate more effectively than violent extremists — and at scale — said panelists at two PPF events on countering radicalization online. Participants made recommendations in four policy areas to combat hate that festers without intervention, which not only threatens public safety, but the human rights and lived-experiences of all Canadians.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) could dramatically improve the way governments deliver services and data to citizens while protecting governments from the risks associated with government-led digital projects. This report examines what was learned through two Government of Canada API projects, and how to build on their successes.

Gaps in Canada’s Employment Insurance program are already leaving too many workers behind as gig work, part-time jobs and self-employment grow. EI needs to be modernized now to support Canadians as they transition to an economy and labour market disrupted by technology and automation.

Rapid and far-reaching changes to the global economy, driven by technology, demographics and geopolitics, are forcing us to rethink some of the core assumptions of what makes a nation competitive or not. Robert Asselin and Sean Speer offer a bi-partisan strategy for what Canada can do in a data-driven 'intangibles' economy.

Training for working Canadians is scarce, and the people who most need it are the least able to get it. As global competition and technological change increase, Canada needs to create effective and inclusive systems of training, which are essential for innovation, growth, employment and good incomes. In this report, Daniel Munro looks at Canada's strengths and weaknesses, training models from around the world, and suggests improvements to lifelong learning systems.

Canada can stem the tide of the opioid crisis. Among Canadians, there is hope that hastening access to treatments that work, learning from and scaling up best practices, and continuing coordinated efforts between all stakeholders will positively impact the pathways to treatment services - beyond just overdose treatment. This report discusses opportunities for policy makers to engage on harm reduction, equitable access to treatment and support, and collaboration and coordination following a PPF roundtable on opioid misuse in December 2018.

Canada is a great sporting nation, but we need values-based sport to prevent unethical practices from undermining the integrity of sport. Concrete actions must be taken by stakeholders in Canadian sport to make values-based sport the foundation of their policies and practices. This report outlines the game plan for government, media, corporations, philanthropists, educators, coaches and athletes.

Canada’s public service has charted an ambitious information management and technology strategy, and talent is one of its pillars. Finding innovative approaches to attracting, developing, and retaining the best and brightest requires rethinking many traditional assumptions and harnessing new approaches. What can be done to attract a skilled and diverse workforce?

Our Task Force conducted a preliminary study of the feasibility of an Arctic Food Innovation Cluster in Canada. The intent of such a cluster is to advance increased access to affordable, culturally informed, healthy food across northern regions. The cluster’s secondary objective is to foster further innovations within the North’s commercial food production industry via new food production methods (e.g., full utilization of harvested fish), value chains, and/or governance models. This would, in turn, boost local economic development opportunities within these northern communities.

A lack of information about some aspects of food makes it difficult for Canadians to make informed food choices. Our Task Force set out to address this by considering what policy decisions could improve Canadians' ability to make informed food choices.

Action Canada Task Force hears from workers, administrators and farmers that existing programs don't work quite right and they need to for Canada's agricultural sector to thrive.

The public sector should expand its interchange program with the private sector in order to diversify its employees’ networks and skill sets and, in so doing, help the public service face employment challenges and disruptive technologies.

Canada’s labour market will not have the skilled workers it needs unless we change the way we train workers today. As automation spurs rapid change, Canada needs to change its approach to education, training and skills development in order to close the skills gap.