Innovation

A new initiative to support economic growth by building a workforce with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time

Our multi-year initiative to produce a blueprint outlining how Canada can leverage its economic advantage in these turbulent times.

Past Event

Past Event

Invitation-only member event

Healthy Canadians, competitive Canada

Past Event

Canada’s prosperity has relied too heavily on the here and now of deficit spending, booming real estate and debt-financed household consumption. We must instead redirect investment to the wealth and well-being of the future, particularly our ability to invent and innovate, generate world-leading technologies and firms and ultimately capture global markets. The invention and adoption of new products, services and processes must be the foundation of rising productivity and long-term prosperity.

As COVID-19 surged through Canada’s population, the country’s genomics community came together in an ambitious national consortium to sequence the genomes of the virus and Canadians exposed or affected. Its challenging work didn’t stop there. Mary Gooderham recounts how it was done.

PPF's flagship Brave New Work project is wrapping up by rounding up the perspectives and insights of over 20 of the people who contributed to the project over the years. We ask them what they learned about the future of work, and what they recommend needs to be done next.

Broad, rapid government support received widespread support in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on their public opinion research, Peter Loewen and Blake Lee-Whiting argue that Canadians, especially those who lost income or jobs during the pandemic, would be eager to receive government-assisted skills training as part of that support.

A majority of Canadians indicate they have at least a basic understanding of AI and automation. Politicians have an opportunity to seize upon this perceived knowledge to address coming challenges by linking COVID-19 solutions to challenges — and potentially positives — presented by AI and automation. This new report by Peter Loewen and Blake Lee-Whiting shows signs that Canada has not seen a large populist backlash to the pandemic, but that could be coming, perhaps against immigration policies, if citizens feel the government is not following through on job creation.

A people-centric approach at AVIT Manufacturing in Peterborough, Ont. means that employees are continuously offered opportunities to upgrade their skills and learn new ones. AVIT provides a prime example showing that encouraging lifelong learning in workplaces is an asset. Read this case study by Daniel Squizzato on navigating precarity on managing transformation in disrupted sectors – all for PPF's Brave New Work project on the future of work.

There are lessons to be learned from industries that have survived and thrived through disruption, as well as those that have failed to navigate industry transformation. We need to learn from the past while we look for innovative ways of working together to rebuild the economy. To achieve these goals, we need to plan for inevitable change as all sectors, no matter how resilient writes Lori Turnbull. With the right tools, workers, employers and sectors can fortify themselves in a new economy.