The federal government’s internal accountability regime continues to grow more complex. Public service leadership is detached from policy implementation and socialized to avoid risk. Public servants should be evaluated on the rules they remove and services delivered. Those with delivery experience should be rotated periodically into roles that establish internal processes and policies. Improving the […]

Amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again trade war, trade diversification has been the talk of the town. But for a country like Canada, which has long felt the gravitational pull of the enormous U.S. market, diversifying trade will be no easy feat. It also shouldn’t be the goal in and of itself. As the first […]

Policymakers and governments are facing daunting challenges such as climate change, aging demographics, income and wealth inequalities, low productivity, unstable geopolitics, and international conflicts. For some, this means governments need to develop new approaches and capacities to meet these challenges. For others, the solution is to limit the size of government by focusing on key […]

Canada’s economy is evolving, which will bring both positive and negative change. But transitions — such as moving toward a low-carbon economy, shifting trade relationships or the rise of AI — can disrupt specific workers in specific places. In some instances, people in affected sectors will keep their jobs or move into new, often similar, […]

Implementation considerations need to be at the heart of federal government decision-making. Sequencing of the cabinet review process needs to be altered so that implementation issues are canvassed from the beginning. Political parties should be able to consult departments on implementation issues when developing their campaign platforms. The “challenge” function of central agencies, focused on […]

Like many advanced economies, Canadian governments are increasingly turning to industrial strategies to try to strengthen their economic sovereignty — defined here as the capacity to protect and shape key domestic economic capabilities — and to support economic growth aligned with the global energy transition and net-zero emissions goals. This represents a shift from previous […]

For decades, Fort McMurray has been synonymous with one thing: the oil sands, a vast deposit of viscous, heavy oil mixed with fine sand that accounts for the fourth-largest proven oil reserves in the world. But to the more than 82,000 residents of this northern Alberta community, it is so much more. It is a […]

Prime Minister Mark Carney has indicated a desire for change in the federal public service to deliver on the Liberal government’s Make Canada Strong agenda. He hopes to realign the country’s economic and political relations to respond to new global and North American realities. The question is whether the public service has the capacity to […]

The federal government’s unpredictable, fragmented approach to funding acts as a constraint on First Nations that are seeking to build long-term governance and community capacity. Predictable, flexible multi-year funding arrangements such as the New Fiscal Relationship grant should be expanded. First Nations should only have to communicate with a single “window” in Ottawa for their […]

Canada’s impact assessment process is structurally fragmented. A new AI-enabled Sovereign Impact Assessment Agent (SIAA) would speed up assessments and save money by using the federal government’s extensive but fragmented troves of data on Canadian land, water, wildlife and atmosphere to pre-populate assessment applications, identify information gaps and help inform regulators’ final decisions. Delivery requires […]