Public Service

Getting Canadians immunized against COVID-19 has been a complicated process in a country that has neither the capabilities to produce its own vaccine nor a centralized healthcare system to administer it.

Past Event

PPF’s annual Fall Dinner will showcase two case studies, a keynote speaker, and a panel that will explore the topic of collaboration between different levels of government and other sectors during a global crisis.

Members of Canada’s political class should on balance receive at least a passing grade for their management of the pandemic, and Canadians should be both proud and worried about policymakers’ performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The three areas in which they could have done better include: keeping schools open, using technology to combat the pandemic, and prioritizing vaccine targeting.

Digital Transformation During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since March 2020, Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) has transitioned its largely paper-based and in-person justice system to predominately online and virtual services—opening new opportunities for public access to court proceedings.

"We're going to send our helpers in and we're not going to stop." The Kenora Chiefs Advisory, an Indigenous-led health and social services agency, got to work right away in the nine First Nations it serves to stop COVID from entering. And so far, it's worked.

As businesses saw their revenues plummet in early spring, the Department of Finance and the Canada Revenue Agency quickly hammered out the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy allowing employers to keep on staff. Did it achieve what it set out to do?

In Spring 2020, threat actors wearing lab coats instead of trench coats were infiltrating our labs in hopes of stealing valuable COVID-19 vaccine research. It forced Canada’s top secret intelligence agency CSIS to step out of the shadows and warn those most at risk.

Prior to COVID-19, Prince Edward Island struggled to keep up with demand for mental health and addictions services. This account tells of the pivot to virtual care which sees P.E.I. with more psychiatrists on-call and more options for support. Good thing, because the long-term stresses brought by the pandemic have made these services more critical than ever before.

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?

Relations with the United States have been challenging for Canada in recent years. It’s become clear that Canada needs to move beyond its traditional trade-of-goods narrative with the U.S. and focus on factors that will be most important for its diplomatic assets in the coming years, namely culture and technology.

Little did Alberta Health Services' Digital Experience team know this moment would shift the province’s whole pandemic strategy, and become the core of Alberta’s COVID response. Their assessment tool with online booking and results would get attention from across North America, and spark a form of collaboration that would cast lasting doubt on the way things have always been done.

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.