Making homes affordable while cutting emissions in Canada

Canada needs more defence autonomy in a less reliable world

As alliances weaken and supply chains become tools of pressure, Canada must build more domestic defence capacity while reducing and diversifying reliance on foreign suppliers.

Slaying myths about income support

The new groceries benefit and other income supports won’t solve affordability on their own, but claims they waste money or discourage work don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Shoring up supports for people and communities in a turbulent trade climate

Support for sovereignty in Quebec: the role of identity, culture and language

This is the second of two articles examining rising support for the Parti Québécois. The first explains how the support for independence is not rising among young Quebecers.

A surprising resurgence of popularity for the Parti Québécois is not driven by growing support for sovereignty. But many Quebecers nonetheless identify themselves as mainly sovereigntist. What underpins this preference? Beyond an obvious preference for sovereignty, which of their views distinguish them from other Quebecers?

It’s not their opinions about major policy challenges of the day. On health care, affordable housing and the environment, there is no great divide. It’s also not the role of the state. What sets them apart are grievances with our federal system coupled with a strong sense of identity, our 2024 edition of the Confederation of Tomorrow survey shows.

Same challenges, same concerns

On health care, about one in two Quebecers lack confidence in their ability to get medical treatment within a reasonable period of time. This proportion is the same for those who identify as mainly sovereigntists and those who identify as mainly federalists.

On housing, roughly the same proportion of Quebecers (just under one in two) disapprove of how the province is managing affordability. But, again, there is no difference in opinion between those who identify as sovereigntists and those who don’t.

On the environment, same pattern. Sovereigntists and federalists are divided more or less evenly between those who agree and those who disagree that protecting the environment is more important than protecting jobs.

Looking beyond single issues, maybe Quebec sovereigntists are more pro-government, more supportive of the state (at least the provincial one) as a tool for advancing collective goals? This also does not appear to be the case.

In fact, Quebecers who identify mainly as sovereigntists are a little more likely than average to prefer smaller governments or the status quo instead of larger governments that offer more services. And sovereigntists are more likely than federalists to say governments have a negative impact on most people’s lives. Federalists tend to see governments’ impact as positive.

Perhaps most interestingly, the spectrum of left-right ideology is almost identical among sovereigntists and federalists. In both groups, about half place themselves in the centre, a quarter on the left, and a quarter on the right.

What does make a difference?

What distinguishes sovereigntists are their views on two other types of question.

The first of these is obvious: federalism. It goes without saying that sovereigntists are much less convinced of the merits of Canada’s federal system. Sovereigntists are twice as likely as the Quebec average to disagree that federalism offers more advantages than disadvantages for their province.

And a strong majority of sovereigntists believe Quebec lacks its rightful share of influence in national decisions and receives less than its fair share of federal spending. Three in four sovereigntists (75 per cent) favour a shift in powers from Ottawa to Quebec City compared with a provincial average of 42 per cent.

The second set of opinions that distinguishes sovereigntists from other Quebecers relates to identity, with elements of both pride and grievance.  Most Quebecers feel a sense of attachment to their province. But sovereigntists are much more likely to feel strongly attached (72 per cent) compared with the provincial average (44 per cent). Forty-three percent of sovereigntists identify as a Quebecer only – rather than as a Quebecer who is also Canadian – compared with the provincial average of only 17 per cent.

Here we go again? Making sense of the PQ’s rise in the polls

Alberta’s Bill 18 is another strategy from Quebec’s playbook

It is this strong sense of Quebec identity that many sovereigntists feel is rejected by the rest of Canada. Overall, 30 per cent of Quebecers disagree that their cultural identity is respected in Canada today. For sovereigntists, it’s 52 per cent.

Conversely, 40 per cent of Quebecers overall strongly agree that their culture is misunderstood by the rest of Canada. For sovereigntists, it’s 67 per cent. And, finally, almost nine in 10 sovereigntists (88 per cent) say the French language in Quebec is threatened.

The importance of identity in underpinning support for sovereignty will come as no surprise for those most familiar with the sovereignty movement or Quebec politics. But Canadian political leaders would do well to keep it in mind as we approach a federal election expected by October 2025.

At the moment, many of the flashpoints in federal-provincial relations relate to the federal price on carbon (which doesn’t apply in Quebec because of its cap-and-trade system), or to the use of the spending power to advance federal priorities.

But promises and policies in these areas are not likely to shrink or spark support for sovereignty, particularly if the PQ eventually returns to government. It will be federal (and “rest of Canada”) reactions to issues related to language and identity. This doesn’t mean keeping quiet; rather, it means being politically aware and astute. The worst possible option is thinking that these issues don’t exist.

Methodological details

The Confederation of Tomorrow surveys are annual studies conducted by an association of some of the country’s leading public policy and socio-economic research organizations: the Environics Institute for Survey Research, the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation, the Canada West Foundation, the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution Fédéralisme, the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government and the First Nations Financial Management Board.

The surveys give voice to Canadians about the major issues shaping the future of the federation and their political communities.

The 2024 study surveyed 6,036 adults and was conducted between Jan. 13 and April 13 (82 per cent of the responses were collected between Jan. 17 and Feb. 1) with 94 per cent of the responses collected online. The remaining responses were collected by telephone from respondents living in the North or on First Nations reserves.

The results presented above are based on surveys of 1,621 Quebecers, 1,297 of whom were francophones.

Survey responses are weighted by age, gender, region, education, Indigenous identity and home language to be representative of the actual distribution of the adult Canadian population.

Here we go again? Making sense of the PQ’s rise in the polls

The 2018 Quebec provincial election was notable not only because it brought to power a new political party – the Coalition avenir Québec – but because it was a historic defeat for the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, reduced at that time to only 10 seats in the National Assembly. The party suffered a further setback in the vote four years later, winning only three seats.

With the PQ having been all but erased from the provincial political scene, surely that meant the decades-long debate about whether Quebec should remain part of Canada could finally be laid to rest.

Not so fast. Public opinion polls in the province have captured a dramatic change recently. In mid-2023, the PQ experienced an initial boost that saw them pull ahead of the other opposition parties. Then in the fall, an even larger boost propelled them to the top, well ahead of the governing CAQ.

If an election were held today, the polls now project the PQ would return to power with a majority.

And with that shift, we are now talking about a referendum again.

Is Quebec independence on the march?

Does the growing support for the PQ signal a resurgence of support for sovereignty in the province?

In a word: no.

The proportion of francophone Quebecers who identify as “mainly a sovereigntist” has changed little over the six years covered by the annual Confederation of Tomorrow survey.

In 2024, only 23 per cent of respondents described themselves as mainly a sovereigntist – which is more than those who said they were mainly a federalist (18 per cent), but not much different from previous years. A slightly greater share (29 per cent) placed themselves in between the two options, while another 23 per cent said they were neither one nor the other.

The same pattern held when Quebecers were asked if they agreed that Quebec sovereignty is an idea whose time has passed. In 2024, 51 per cent of Quebec francophones agreed, which is unchanged not only compared to when this current series of surveys began in 2019 but also to when the question was asked more than 20 years ago.

To the extent that there has been some change, it is that the proportion disagreeing has dropped off somewhat, while the share that is unsure has increased.

The picture is no more encouraging for the sovereignty movement when we look specifically at younger adults. In 2024, only 16 per cent of Quebec francophones aged 18 to 34 identified as mainly sovereignties and only 26 per cent disagreed that Quebec sovereignty is an idea whose time has passed.

In both cases, these proportions are lower than those for older generations today and lower for this same age group two decades ago. Millennial and GenZ Quebecers are less sovereigntist than their GenX or Boomer counterparts.

Even the current supporters of the Parti Québécois were not one-sidedly sovereigntist. Yes, PQ supporters (53 per cent) were more likely than those who support the CAQ (18 per cent) to identify as mainly sovereigntist.

But that still leaves 39 per cent of PQ supporters who said they were either in between the two options or neither, while seven per cent said they were mainly federalist. One in three PQ supporters (33 per cent) agreed that the time for Quebec sovereignty has passed.

Other issues are driving the PQ’s rise

So what explains the resurgence of the PQ, if not a renewed interest in sovereignty?

It’s likely a straightforward combination of government missteps and the failure of the other opposition parties to capitalize on them. The proportion of Quebecers dissatisfied with the way things are going jumped 14 percentage points between 2023 and 2024 to 46 per cent from 34 per cent.

Dissatisfaction with the province’s management of the health-care system (which was already high) also grew over the past year.

The proportion seeing the Quebec provincial government as the one that best represents them dropped, while the proportion saying that no government is best more than doubled to 24 per cent from 11 per cent.

The Quebec Liberal Party remains adrift without a leader and Québec solidaire still hasn’t been able to get out of large urban areas. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum and the PQ with its more charismatic leader has been able to fill the empty space.

Before federalists conclude that there is nothing to worry about – that the rise of the PQ in the polls is driven more by nightmares about hospital waiting times than by dreams of independence – it is worth recalling the other side of the coin.

While the proportion of francophone Quebecers who identified as mainly sovereigntist is not trending upward, the proportion who identified as mainly federalist remains small – fewer than one in five.

Only 42 per cent of Quebecers agreed that Canadian federalism has more advantages than disadvantages for their province. As well, for the sixth year in a row, our survey found that roughly seven in 10 francophone Quebecers feel the French language in Quebec is threatened.

The absence of a resurgence in support for sovereignty should not be mistaken for an indication of stronger support for federalism.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In the second part, the authors will examine in more detail some of the factors that relate to support for sovereignty in Quebec.

Methodological details

The Confederation of Tomorrow surveys are annual studies conducted by an association of some of the country’s leading public policy and socio-economic research organizations: the Environics Institute for Survey Research, the Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation, the Canada West Foundation, the Centre d’analyse politique – Constitution Fédéralisme, the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government and the First Nations Financial Management Board.

The surveys give voice to Canadians about the major issues shaping the future of the federation and their political communities.

The 2024 study surveyed 6,036 adults and was conducted between Jan. 13 and April 13 (82 per cent of the responses were collected between Jan. 17 and Feb. 1) with 94 per cent of the responses collected online. The remaining responses were collected by telephone from respondents living in the North or on First Nations reverses.

The results presented above are based on surveys of 1621 Quebecers, 1297 of whom were francophones.

Survey responses are weighted by age, gender, region, education, Indigenous identity and home language to be representative of the actual distribution of the adult Canadian population.

Industrial policy may have part of the answer to Canada’s productivity problem

The Trudeau government’s latest budget contained a number of splashy items, ranging from housing policy to national defence. In the midst of a national housing crisis and with mounting geopolitical threats, it’s no surprise that these policy areas are getting attention.

Another issue that the government sought to address in the budget is Canada’s lagging productivity. It’s perhaps less well understood, but one that will determine Canada’s ability to fund solutions to our most pressing national challenges. Dusting off the industrial policy playbook may be part of the solution.

Canada’s productivity challenges aren’t new, and aren’t news. Economic commentators have been raising flags about them for years. A recent speech by Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, injected some urgency into the discussion.

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” she said.

In other words, productivity is no longer just a problem. It’s an emergency.

Why should Canadians care?

But why should ordinary Canadians fixate on productivity? Next to the increased cost of living – particularly the cost of shelter – productivity can seem like an abstract concept. Why spend money trying to make firms more efficient when many households are having trouble paying the bills? It’s an important question that elected officials need to answer.

But productivity isn’t a mere statistical artifact. Nor is it something that just pads the corporate bottom line. It determines how much Canadians can produce, and therefore how much we’re able to enjoy.

Investments in productivity – ranging from big ticket items like cutting-edge machinery to improve manufacturing output, to marginal tweaks like better software to improve agricultural output – mean we’re able to produce more goods and services per hour worked. Put simply, it means we get more output for the same amount of effort. Increased productivity means an increased standard of living, and a greater ability to finance important social programs.

Let’s use housing as an example. Several analysts have estimated that Canada is short over three million housing units. That is a daunting number. To meet that goal, we need more output. Unless we’re going to make a massive push to get young people into the building trades or completely reorient our immigration policy to focus on construction workers, we need to build more housing units per worker. In other words, we need more productivity.

Increasing productivity isn’t easy. If it was, we’d have already done it.  It’s easy enough to tell firms that they ought to invest more in equipment or software. But they need to have the right incentives and the right tools at their disposal.

One potential tool to hit the accelerator is industrial policy. It’s a broad concept that means different things to different people. The idea that there is a role for the state to nudge private companies in a particular direction is often thought of as antithetical to a market-oriented economy. In reality, we’ve always done some form of industrial policy. This ranges from past large-scale interventions to build out Alberta’s oilsands to tax credits for research and development.

There’s plenty in the budget that broadly falls under the industrial policy umbrella aimed at bolstering clean technology, artificial intelligence, Indigenous reconciliation and other key priorities.

A cynic could argue that the federal government is merely throwing money at stakeholder groups. Indeed, some skepticism is warranted. After all, if there’s money to be made on something, why doesn’t the private sector just step up?

Private firms can’t always address broad public interest

The trouble is the incentives often don’t line up. Let’s take another example: supply chains. Global supply chains normally work like magic. Our highly globalized economy provides us with an array of goods and services previous generations could only have dreamed of.

However, COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have shown that we can’t take that stability for granted. Geopolitics, natural disasters and infectious diseases, among other things, can disrupt supply chains. That is inconvenient when we’re talking about trinkets from Amazon. It’s a disaster when we’re talking about life-saving vaccines. We need to ensure that we don’t put all our eggs in one basket. No one wants to have to hoard toilet paper again.

This is where industrial policy can come in. Sometimes there are broader public interests that individual firms don’t have the right incentives to address. There’s no shortage of examples. Reshoring or shortening supply chains is expensive and can put companies at a competitive disadvantage; firms might face cost barriers to adopting cleaner technologies; they might not see the monetary value in reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples; and they might not have the ability to undertake heavy upfront costs for research and development on the technologies of the future. This is where governments might have a role to play.

Canada wouldn’t be the first major country to experiment with industrial policy. Countries ranging from China to Germany are pursuing aggressive industrial policy strategies. Even the United States has embraced industrial policy, perhaps best embodied by the American government’s Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. This have led to an explosion of construction activity.

This new activity isn’t just building widgets for the sake of creating jobs. It means that a share of the most advanced semiconductors on earth will now be built on American soil, helping to reduce the world’s dependence on semiconductors produced in Taiwan. Given geopolitical threats in Asia and lingering worries about supply-chain predictability, having these vital inputs built in North America is an unalloyed good. There’s a reason why even conservatives like U.S. Senator Marco Rubio want to double down on industrial policy.

That isn’t to say that industrial policy is completely uncontroversial, let alone perfect. It’s not hard to find failed examples of industrial policy initiatives. Governments engaging in industrial policy need a sound strategy, good data and rigorous evaluation. They also need to know when to cut their losses. These are all easier said than done.

Quebec needs solutions to its long-term financial challenges

Ottawa saves the day by raising capital gains tax

The sheer size of recent industrial policy initiatives, such as multibillion-dollar electric-vehicle battery manufacturing facilities or tax credits for clean-energy investments, should focus our collective minds on getting value for money. While industrial policy may be necessary to maintain or expand a presence in certain heavy industries that are being generously funded by other countries, the costs can be enormous. We can’t simply cut blank cheques. We need to get these investments right more often than not.

Efforts to boost productivity in the medium to long term come at the expense of short-term priorities. Bluntly put, if we’re going to spend a dollar on factory construction rather than health care, we need to make sure there’s a plausible and attractive payback. One of the key objectives of boosting productivity is enhancing our ability to generate the tax revenue needed to pay for services like health care, after all.

While industrial policy might be a promising avenue to boost productivity, we shouldn’t step into it lightly. We need credible, evidence-based policies linked to a coherent strategy rather than ad hoc decisions. We also need strong governance, policy design that attracts private capital rather than replaces it, and effective and timely implementation. It’s good that the government is thinking about productivity, but it’s not a matter of flipping a switch. We need to get the details right.

Getting these details right is what motivates the IRPP’s Building New Foundations for Economic Growth research program. We will continue to produce and share research aimed at bolstering Canada’s productivity long after the budget ink is dry.

Fighting inflation can’t be left to central banks alone

This article originally appeared in The Hill Times on March 13, 2024 

With inflation starting to come down, many seem to believe that the affordability crisis is coming to an end. This is not the case for those with low incomes, who will remain squeezed between the high costs of basic needs, and wages and benefits that have not kept pace.  

Even if the Bank of Canada’s efforts succeed in bringing overall inflation down to a 2 per cent year over year increase, prices will still be far higher than they were three years ago.     

The cost of basic needs such as housing, food and energy may also be the trickiest to address, given the complex dynamics on both the supply and demand sides of the challenge. And focusing efforts solely on prices ignores the fact that some households simply do not have sufficient income to cover the costs of essentials. 

On housing, the Bank of Canada has acknowledged that interest rates alone will not bring down prices.  The fundamental issue is that there are too many people with too few places to live. Governments at all levels need to step in to get housing built as quickly as possible by tackling the barriers facing not-for-profit and private developers. And they also need to take a hard look at the demand side of the equation. 

Food prices are another area that deserves more targeted analysis. The war in Ukraine led to a spike in grain prices that rippled throughout the world in 2022. Climate change is also wreaking havoc with food prices. Drought in California in 2022 contributed to Canadians paying 11 per cent more for fresh vegetables versus the previous year. And drought in Brazil led to higher coffee and sugar prices. The drought predicted in Canada’s prairies this summer could contribute to food prices staying high. Interest rate increases and finger-wagging at grocery retailers isn’t helping families who are struggling now to put food on the table. 

With more and more Canadians struggling to afford groceries after they pay bills for rent and utilities, governments can no longer take a wait and see approach. Food and shelter prices are at least 20 per cent higher than they were in 2021. Almost 7 million people in Canada, including 2 million children and forty per cent of single mothers, are living in food insecurity and food bank use is up 80 per cent since 2019. The long-term effects of food insecurity on families and children should be setting off alarm bells.  

Governments need to step in to ensure that incomes are sufficient to put food on the table. Recently, the Affordability Action Council recommended restructuring and expanding the GST/HST credit aimed at low-income households and renaming it the Groceries and Essentials Benefit.  

Gasoline prices and home heating costs are also top of mind for many Canadians. Energy prices have been a major driver of inflation, though they have moderated over the past year. The long-term outlook for oil and natural gas prices, however, is for more volatility, a reality that will be the most challenging for lower-income households, who tend to live in more inefficient homes, are unable to afford the upfront costs associated with increasing the efficiency of their home or switching to alternatives such as heat pumps and electric cars.  

In Canada, governments have largely failed to see the bigger and longer-term picture on energy affordability. Proposed temporary fixes, such as pausing the carbon tax on home heating fuels, could leave low-income households worse off because of the loss of rebate payments. It will also not help households in the long run, since the main drivers behind oil and natural gas prices will be global market forces.  

The real, lasting affordability solutions  to energy prices are those that help households reduce energy use, increase the efficiency of their homes, and reduce their reliance on volatile fossil fuels. Government support for low-income energy efficient home retrofits, heat pumps, and convenient public transit is far more effective than temporary tax changes. Governments should also do more to ensure houses built today are future-fit, with less reliance on fossil fuels and driving, and greater resilience to growing climate change-related risks from wildfire smoke, flooding, and heat waves.  Otherwise, the wave of home-building will set Canadians up for decades of recurring affordability crises.  

In the ongoing fight against inflation, central banks and governments should be working in tandem to better understand the underlying factors behind price increases, to analyze potential future sources of price volatility, and to outline clear steps that can be taken, while taking into consideration the realities of families across the income spectrum.  

One of the most important roles of governments is to ensure that its people have a roof over their head and food on their table. It is time they step in with bolder interventions, rather than relying solely on the Bank of Canada. 

Yasmin Abraham is President and Co-Founder of the Kambo Energy Group and a member of the Affordability Action Council. 

Lisa Rae is Director of System Change at Prosper Canada and a member of the Affordability Action Council. 

Rachel Samson is Vice President of Research at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, one of the founding organizations of the Affordability Action Council. 

Where are the reviews of government action on COVID-19?

This winter, COVID-19 is circulating and contributing to the cocktail of respiratory diseases filling emergency rooms across Canada, but governments have shifted the bulk of their attention to dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic.

With the trauma and upheaval of the most disruptive pandemic restrictions behind us, the focus has turned to the affordability crisis and a health-care system about to crack.

But where are the lessons-learned reports from governments?

Academics and civil society have issued papers and reports reviewing the government’s performance, most notably, a series on Accountability for Canada’s COVID-19 Response by the BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.

The Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation at the IRPP has released its own report in partnership with the Institute on Governance on Resilient Institutions: Lessons Learned from Canada’s COVID-19 Response.

Reports like ours can set the groundwork, but they’re not a replacement for reports from governments themselves, which have largely been in short supply. We have neither the resources nor access required for the kind of lessons-learned study this country deserves.

But governments need to understand how they can co-ordinate to respond better to future crises.

Few internal reports have been made public by provinces

Why the lack of reports? It could be that governments simply haven’t gotten around to it yet. The federal government recently tasked a panel of experts with a report reviewing the federal approach to pandemic science advice and research coordination. It is set to be published in March.

Alberta released a report in November reviewing legislation impacting its response to COVID-19. But many other governments have not released plans to conduct any reviews at all.

As part of the Resilient Institutions research, we conducted a scan of publicly available reports on COVID-19 issued or commissioned by government.

We took a particular interest in those issued by ministries or departments given their internal perspective of what happened during the pandemic. We reached out to the provincial and territorial clerks to confirm whether reports have been published. We were surprised to find that six provinces haven’t made public any ministerial or departmental reports.

For one of the most devastating public policy crises of this century, half of the governments in this country have not published any sort of internal reflection (figure 1). It’s a very low bar, and yet, almost half of provinces and territories in the country have not met it.

Of the 61 reports we identified, 38 of the public COVID-19 reports were written by auditors general. Auditors general have an important role in government accountability but they’re limited in their mandate, which is to conduct performance and financial audits. They can’t, for example, question whether a decision should have been implemented. They can measure whether the program hit performance targets or stayed on budget, but not whether the government should have implemented the program in the first place.

External expert groups commissioned by governments were responsible for five reports. Expert groups can be helpful in providing an independent assessment of the government’s performance. Of course, the merits of this source of reports are dependent on the mandate and composition of these expert panels and what experience they have navigating the complexities of the public service.

But internal reports from governments themselves have advantages. Governments are best placed to understand the processes and structures that went into one of the most challenging policy responses in this century. No one has a better understanding of the government’s response to the pandemic than the governments themselves.

None of the 61 reports is a comparative, pan-Canadian pandemic lessons-learned study. Not one has been attempted or even announced. A pan-Canadian study is an inherently difficult task because of the input it needs from each order of government. That’s why such an initiative should be initiated by the federal government.

Co-ordination must improve

Better co-ordination is necessary to avoid causing harm, especially to underserved communities. Last June, we held the Resilient Institutions conference, where senior officials, academics, and civil society gathered to discuss lessons learned from the pandemic. During the conference, many of the 35 panelists talked about jurisdictional confusion and how treating responsibilities like a game of hot potato led to poor outcomes.

One of the most egregious examples was when provincial border closures prevented students in Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation from getting to school. The community is on the Quebec side of the border with New Brunswick, and their high school is on the N.B. side.

Another example was how some municipal governments were left with few resources or co-ordination. Kennedy Stewart, former mayor of Vancouver, lamented that he was only able to secure one brief person-to-person call with John Horgan, then-B.C. premier, throughout the entire pandemic.

Without a review to delve into understanding the necessary structures, processes, and relationships needed to prepare for cross-jurisdictional disasters, Canada is in a vulnerable position. Viruses and natural disasters don’t respect borders, so governments are all going to have to figure out how to work with each other.

Examine the federation’s robustness

Secondly, governments need to examine the Canadian federation’s robustness, and how flexible and responsive its responses can be. Our institutions largely worked well to implement the government’s COVID-19 strategy, but executive federalism, where the prime minister and premiers drive much of the institutional response, was the foundation of the government’s approach.

Governments need to figure out a way to work together that doesn’t depend on weekly first ministers’ meetings. This is not a sustainable strategy in the medium or long term. As a first step, they must identify the processes and structures that worked best in a far-reaching and vital process only they can launch.

This could be done with a thorough operational review of the committees and working groups that were a part of the federal, provincial, and territorial response to the pandemic. This could happen as part of a pan-Canadian pandemic lessons-learned study.

Avoiding a “snap-back” to old habits

The pandemic was the first big test this decade of a crisis that required cross-jurisdictional collaboration. Governments need to get a feel for what avenues of communication work. They need to capitalize on the information exchange that occurred and create opportunities for those relationships to continue after the pandemic.

One panellist during the Resilient Institutions conference remarked that after the pandemic started to subside, colleagues from other provinces stopped reaching out, and so did those in the panelist’s office. This is just one example of the “snap-back” governments should want to avoid. The federation is better off when governments talk to each other.

How federalism failed Canadian cities during COVID-19

Stress testing Canadian governance

Canadians were asked to accept far-reaching restrictions like border closures and curfews, often with little explanation and on short notice. They need assurances that the government acknowledges these costs and are working to ensure that these measures are proportionate and limited in the future. How the government handles itself after the pandemic sets the tone for future crises.

Learning how to learn from mistakes is something governments grapple with. The pandemic is a huge opportunity to do so. The Resilient Institutions report is a start, but it’s up to governments to build on the work in it.

It’s time to restore pride in post-secondary institutions and immigration

At one time, Canada could boast about its highly respected systems of immigration and higher education. You’d never know it from reading today’s headlines.

How did it come to this?

About a decade ago, the federal government made several changes to Canada’s immigration rules, effectively making it easier for international students to qualify for permanent residency, primarily by allowing them to stay and work after graduation. After three years, permanent residents can apply for Canadian citizenship.

These changes had several goals. Canada wanted to attract a larger share of international students and better compete with other top host countries including the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

But the changes were also seen as a way to overcome one of the big problems with Canada’s points-based immigration system: Canada admits many highly trained workers who often have difficulty getting a job in their field because employers don’t recognize their foreign educational credentials and work experience.

International students were thought to be the golden ticket. Educated in Canada, they would have the language skills, the Canadian degrees and diplomas, as well as the domestic work experience that employers sought.

For universities and colleges, international students expanded their pool of high-calibre students and brought in additional revenue at a time when domestic enrolment was dropping because of demographic changes. Students from abroad pay much higher tuition fees than domestic students.

The number of international students in Canada studying at all levels reached more than one million at the end of 2023, up 29 per cent from 2022 and up more than 200 per cent from a decade earlier. More than half were in Ontario, with British Columbia as the second most popular destination at 20 per cent.

Enter public-private partnerships in Ontario

Many institutions benefited from the new rules, but some more so than others. In Ontario, public colleges, particularly those in northern regions and smaller cities, which were experiencing a more pronounced decline in domestic enrolments, found it difficult to attract international students.

To overcome this roadblock, they began striking agreements with private institutions located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the region that most international students prefer.

Under these contracts, a student is admitted to a public college, but the training is provided by private institutions, which are mainly located in the GTA, often in strip malls and office buildings.

The college retains a portion of the fees paid by international students and graduates get a credential from the college, which then qualifies them for a post-graduate work permit and eventually permanent residency. In 2021, 11 Ontario colleges had partnerships with private institutions.

A 2017 review of these partnerships in Ontario by David Trick, a former provincial assistant deputy minister of post-secondary education, concluded they posed risks to academic quality and the reputation of the entire college system. He recommended shutting them down.

The then-Liberal government imposed a moratorium on new partnerships, which was subsequently lifted after the election of a Progressive Conservative (PC) government in 2018.

In 2019, the PC government also cut post-secondary student tuition fees by 10 per cent and imposed a freeze on future tuition fee hikes, which remains in place today. The lost tuition revenue wasn’t replaced with higher operating grants.

A 2021 report by the auditor general of Ontario noted that during the four years prior to the pandemic, college tuition revenue from international students increased to $1.75 billion in 2019-20 from $696 million in 2016-17 and accounted for 68 per cent of all tuition fee revenues.

The report also sounded the alarm over the growing popularity of public-private partnerships, finding provincial oversight of these agreements was lacking and there was no strategy to mitigate the risk that such a high reliance on international student enrolment posed for the province’s colleges.

The increase in international students extended beyond Ontario colleges. Universities too hopped on the bandwagon. International students at Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton University account for two-thirds of total enrolment and are the driving force behind its overall enrolment growth in recent years.

A separate auditor general of Ontario report on the financial management of four Ontario universities — Algoma, Nipissing, Ontario Tech and Windsor — noted that the vast majority of students at these institutions were from India, including 85 per cent of students from abroad at Algoma and 60 per cent at Windsor.

Rapid influx causing growing concerns

Post-secondary institutions rightfully argue that these students bring many benefits to Canadian campuses beyond financial considerations, including diversity and cultural perspectives that provide valuable lessons for Canadian students. They also contribute to Canada’s highly skilled workforce and help offset labour shortages.

But the rapid influx has raised many concerns too. Incoming students have complained of long processing times for student visas and delays in getting their post-graduate work permits, as well as a shortage of affordable student housing, unethical practices among some student recruiters, and financial and mental health challenges. Some have been forced to turn to food banks.

Others have blamed the student influx for exacerbating Canada’s housing shortage and putting additional strain on our health-care services.

In response, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced earlier this year that the federal government will set a cap on international student permits for two years. In 2024, the cap will be set at about 360,000 permits, down 35 per cent from 2023.

The permits will be allocated by province and territory, based on population. The provinces will then distribute the permits among institutions. The cap doesn’t apply to master’s and doctoral programs or the elementary and secondary sectors.

In addition, starting Sept. 1, international students who begin a program under a public-private partnership will no longer be eligible for a post-graduate work permit. This comes on top of previous announcements that raised the cost-of-living requirements for study permit applicants and other regulations.

There has always been much to celebrate about Canada’s post-secondary education system. We routinely come out near the top of OECD rankings for educational attainment.

Our institutions run the gamut from world-renowned research-intensive universities to small liberal arts institutions and to the wide network of colleges that are supposed to cater to community needs. Presumably, this is what attracted international students in the first place.

All this appears in jeopardy now. Forced to deal with a reduction in international study permits, many institutions are bound to be left struggling.

In Ontario, Laurentian University filed for creditor protection in 2021 and Queen’s University has publicly warned about its financial straits, blaming it on the reduction in tuition fees, high inflation and a decline in international student enrolment during the pandemic. Will governments step in or will we see more go the way of Laurentian?

International students should play an integral role in our immigration system, but they shouldn’t be used as a vehicle to keep post-secondary institutions financially afloat. Governments need to restore proper funding to universities and colleges.

A recent report by an Ontario expert panel recommended ending the province’s tuition freeze and increasing per-student funding, noting: “Many colleges and universities have passed the point where they could survive financially with only domestic students.”

The Ontario government announced recently a $1-billion funding boost over three years — far short of the $2.5-billion increase recommended by the expert panel.

The institutions need to do their part too. They have been unwilling to acknowledge the fact that a smaller number of domestic students means they need to scale back their operations.

It’s time to restore the pride we once had in our post-secondary institutions and our immigration system.