menu

Canadian Priorities Agenda

With the Canadian Priorities Agenda (CPA), the IRPP initiated a broad-based and informed debate on policy priorities for Canada over the medium term. The project’s overarching theme was the scarcity of public resources and the need for governments to make sound policy choices for the future. It brought together 45 of Canada’s best policy minds to examine and deliberate on choices and priorities in eight broad policy challenges: human capital, climate change, natural capital, population aging, economic security, health outcomes, productivity, and trade and globalization. The results were published in A Canadian Priorities Agenda: Policy Choices to Improve Economic and Social Well-Being, edited by Jeremy Leonard, Christopher Ragan and France St-Hilaire (2007).The project’s process and substance generated widespread interest and led to high-level meetings at the Bank of Canada and the Department of Finance, among others. As well, the CPA is now the basis for graduate-level seminars at several leading Canadian public policy schools. Since 2009 the IRPP has posted on its website the best student essays from these seminars.  The introduction (Setting the Stage) and conclusion (Epilogue: Some Reflections on the Judges’ Policy Choices) to the volume, as well as executive summaries of each chapter and two complete chapters, are available on the Institute’s website.

Latest Research

EVENT: Resilient Institutions: Learning from Canada’s COVID-19 Pandemic
- Toronto - April 3, 2024 - 5:30 PM
Federal government should appoint expert panel to study what happened during COVID-19 pandemic, says major new report