Innovation

by Jasmine Gill

COVID-19 has made it clear that Canada needs a strong domestic manufacturing sector to produce what it needs. Industrial production has been stagnant in the country for two decades and it’s a must for Canada to create and sustain a resilient manufacturing economy that will also be more competitive in a globalized economy and that will create good jobs while minimizing environmental impacts.

Canada’s economy has had its ups and downs, crashes, failures and recessions, but how do you measure the business impact of a country that simply stopped working and intentionally shut down its economy to halt the spread of COVID-19?

Our institutions must build uncertainty into policy-making and program design. This “uncertainty screen” will help ensure a vision of the future that reflects today’s uniquely complex environment.

COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for Canada’s entrepreneurial economy. This paper shows why some entrepreneurs have thrived while others are facing more barriers than ever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, the sharing economy and other emerging technologies were expected to upend the nature of how people work, eliminate an array of routine and repetitive tasks, and put pressure on social support frameworks designed for a different era. These impacts expected to be felt in the near to medium term suddenly find themselves present. The need to reinvent Canada's social and economic policy frameworks has a newfound urgency.

Over the past year, PPF's Prime Ministers of Canada Fellow, Sean Speer has been exploring urban and rural differences in Canada and how policymakers, business and community leaders, and the public can work to bridge the growing cultural, political and socio-economic characteristics of the urban-rural divide.