Regulation

The pandemic is a financial crisis like none in recent years and governments now face the challenge of promoting economic growth and investment and getting people back to work, while also protecting the vulnerable and addressing ballooning debt and deficits. It’s time to use a scalpel, rather than a sledgehammer, to reduce spending by reconsidering the size and compensation levels in the public sector, reviewing the defined benefit pension programs and restructuring where possible.

As a presidential election looms in the United States, Canada is facing three possible scenarios for its outcome. Trade with the U.S. remains largely as healthy as it was 30 years ago, but that could change as the country’s neighbour to the south looks inward. To combat this, Canada must continue to diversify while also trading south.

As a starting point for further dialogue, lawyer Lex Gill explores the legal tensions and policy questions that have historically animated debates surrounding hate speech in Canada. This report summarizes some of the most significant recent developments, in particular the ways technological, economic and social change have begun to challenge the ways we think about harmful expression.

By shifting its policies on technology procurement and embracing a more collaborative development approach with Canadian innovators; government could also enable Canada’s technology sector to compete more successfully in global markets.

With COVID-19 raging out of control in the U.S., the last thing most Canadians want to contemplate is more entrants from abroad. But it could be a year before a vaccine arrives and much longer until it is administered globally. If COVID has taught us anything it is that, this time, we have to be ahead of the curve on border control.

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.

Democracy has been made vulnerable to attack by hate speech and disinformation on digital and social platforms. Policy must be implemented to reconcile freedom of speech and freedom of the press with these online news threats to democracy.

The Energy Regulator Dialogues, a pilot project, will initially run for three years beginning in Fall 2018. The objectives of the initiative are to connect representatives of Canadian regulators and to create a space in which regulators can share best practices and learn from one another.

The Canadian energy sector is changing, rapidly. The drivers of these changes are local, national, global, environmental, economic and more. Energy regulators face increasing pressure to find balance among competing priorities, and to meet the high standards to which they are held by stakeholders.

Past Event

A Public Policy Forum Seminar Series