Innovation

Building off of last year’s seminal report on the rise of the intangibles economy, PPF’s newest contribution to Canada’s economic conversation proposes an industrial plan to “rebuild Canada” post COVID-19. New North Star II presents a plan that accounts for the technological push-and-pull of today’s global economy and finds common ground between opposite ends of the political spectrum, in an effort to jump-start Canada's economy.

Courts and legislatures are deciding whether your Lyft driver is an independent contractor or an employee. The classification is a big deal, affecting workers' protections through to retirement. This paper surveys the current state of the gig economy and how courts, tribunals and legislatures in North America and the UK are tackling the issue of employment classification.

The prospect of losing our jobs to automation may keep us up at night and change our politics, but there are other factors at play, too. Here are five key challenges and some smart policy responses that emerged at the inaugural Brave New Work Conference.

Who is fearful of automation and what do they want politicians to do about it? This paper finds a correlation between Canadians’ fear of job losses from automation and populist and nativist views—but also that Canadians favour traditional government policy approaches to job disruption, such as retraining, more than radical measures such as reducing immigration.

If Canada's government is committed to becoming digital-first, a focus needs to be on quantifying the risk of maintaining the status quo, as compared to the risks associated with digital transformation. This project aims to find out how risk is being perceived and managed by the government of Canada and governments globally.

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.

Past Event

PPF highlighted Indigenous innovation at a breakfast event on the morning of Thursday April 11, 2019 prior to the Canada Growth Summit.

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.

Past Event

Action Canada’s 16 Fellows will gather in Ottawa where our first study tour took place. It’s the fifth and final study tour of the 10-month program and will provide opportunities to meet many of the experts that will inform the three research projects that are taking shape.

Global events are creating unprecedented opportunities for Canada to attract capital, talent and companies. In an age of disruptive technological advances, Canada must focus on research, talent and innovation to strengthen its innovative capacity, global competitiveness, and economic and social fabric.  

Past Event

Invite-only roundtable discussion

Get the whole Canada Next series in one document. Choose the complete collection of full reports, a collection of summaries only, or a recap of recommendations for provinces, territories and municipalities.

Decision makers in all fields face intense challenges to keep up with geopolitical transformation, the sweeping innovations of the digital age, the impacts on work sparked by artificial intelligence, and the catastrophic effects of climate change. Edward Greenspon and Drew Fagan introduce the challenges that Canada Next addresses.

Canada needs a clear, new program for competitiveness that accounts for classic economic challenges and a new set of disruptions such as intellectual property, data and labour participation.

Past Event

Action Canada’s 16 Fellows will gather again in cosmopolitan Montreal where they’ll attend Resetting the Table, Food Secure Canada's 10th Assembly. It’s the third study tour of the 10-month program and will provide opportunities to meet many of the experts that will inform the three research projects that are taking shape.