Il faut asseoir le programme d’assurance-emploi du Canada sur des bases plus solides

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Lorsque de nombreux Canadiens se sont retrouvés temporairement sans travail en raison de la pandémie de COVID-19, le gouvernement fédéral s’est engagé à réformer son programme d’assurance-emploi (AE), l’un des principaux piliers du filet social du pays.

Mais la fin de la pandémie a vu l’économie rebondir et le taux de chômage baisser. Et le gouvernement fédéral a repoussé la réforme de l’AE derrière d’autres priorités. Aujourd’hui, alors que la guerre tarifaire avec les États-Unis menace l’économie canadienne, la réforme de l’AE revient sur le devant de la scène.

Peu de choses ont changé depuis, mais il n’est pas trop tard pour lui donner une assise plus solide.

Plutôt que d’introduire une nouvelle série de mesures palliatives comme pendant la pandémie, le gouvernement fédéral devrait apporter des changements significatifs et durables au système d’AE.

Même si le gouvernement a entrepris après la pandémie un examen de deux ans de l’AE afin de déterminer, entre autres, comment il pourrait mieux soutenir le nombre croissant de travailleurs qui n’a pas droit aux prestations en vertu des règles actuelles, il n’a encore annoncé aucune réforme d’importance.

Pour soutenir et informer les efforts du gouvernement, l’Institut de recherche en politiques publiques a réuni un groupe de travail d’experts en 2021 et 2022 afin de proposer des options pour moderniser le programme. Nous avons publié deux rapports de recherche. Le premier, publié en mai 2022, mettait l’accent sur les moyens de moderniser le régime, tandis que le second, publié plus tard dans la même année, examinait les moyens de financer les changements proposés.

Nous avons également publié un commentaire contenant des recommandations sur la manière d’améliorer le fonctionnement et le financement du programme.

Peu de gens auraient pu anticiper cette guerre commerciale à l’époque où nous avons entrepris ce travail. Mais les solutions que nous avons proposées conservent toute leur pertinence aujourd’hui face à ce nouveau choc économique.

Des droits de douane prolongés pourraient transformer l’économie

Le calendrier et les conditions d’application des droits de douane américains évoluant de jour en jour, les prévisionnistes économiques estiment qu’il est difficile de prédire leur impact potentiel. Leurs effets dépendront en grande partie de leur ampleur et leur durée.

Dans un discours prononcé fin février, le gouverneur de la Banque du Canada, Tiff Macklem, a déclaré que les conséquences économiques d’un conflit commercial prolongé seraient bien différentes du choc qui a suivi la pandémie. Il est peu probable que l’on assiste cette fois à un rebond rapide et les effets sur l’économie canadienne seraient probablement structurels, a-t-il déclaré.

Selon un scénario de la banque centrale, les exportations pourraient diminuer de plus de 8 %. Les exportateurs réduiraient probablement leur production et licencieraient des travailleurs. Les effets se propageraient rapidement, a averti M. Macklem.

Selon les projections de la banque CIBC, ce sont les travailleurs du secteur de l’exportation qui ressentiraient le plus durement les effets de la guerre commerciale. Son estimation des pertes d’emplois varie de 150 000 à 350 000 en fonction de la sévérité et de l’étendue des droits de douane. La CIBC avance aussi que le Québec et l’Ontario risquent de subir le plus gros du choc.

Les recherches de l’IRPP sur le niveau d’exposition des communautés aux droits de douane américains ont permis d’identifier plusieurs régions susceptibles d’être affectées de manière importante.

Au Québec, la région de L’Islet et son industrie du bois et de la fabrication de meubles verrait la plus grande part de ses travailleurs affectés. En Ontario, Ingersoll et Windsor, qui ont de fortes concentrations d’emplois dans la construction automobile, et Sault Ste. Marie, qui a une forte proportion d’emplois dans la production d’acier, pourraient être durement touchées. Les communautés à forte concentration d’emplois dans la production de pétrole et de gaz, notamment Fort McMurray et Cold Lake en Alberta, ainsi que Fort Nelson en Colombie-Britannique, seraient également exposées.

Le programme d’AE nécessite des changements importants et durables

L’ancien premier ministre Justin Trudeau a déclaré début mars que le gouvernement utiliserait « tous les outils à sa disposition » pour aider les Canadiens à surmonter la tempête, notamment en élargissant les prestations d’AE et en les rendant plus flexibles.

Le gouvernement fédéral a ensuite annoncé des modifications temporaires du programme de partage du travail de l’AE, qui permet aux travailleurs admissibles de recevoir des prestations partielles tout en travaillant à temps réduit. Cela permet aux employeurs de conserver les travailleurs expérimentés et d’éviter les licenciements pendant les périodes creuses.

Les changements élargissent les types d’entreprises qui peuvent accéder au programme, y compris les organisations à but non lucratif et celles qui emploient des travailleurs saisonniers. Elles prolongent également la durée pendant laquelle les employés peuvent participer au programme, qui passe de 38 à 76 semaines.

Bien que ces mesures soient utiles, il reste encore beaucoup à faire.

Lors de la première table ronde de l’IRPP sur la réforme de l’AE en décembre 2021, notre groupe de travail composé de 12 chercheurs nous a dit que le programme était trop complexe et qu’il comportait trop de lacunes en matière de couverture, ce qui le rendait de plus en plus inefficace. Le nombre de chômeurs canadiens qui reçoivent des prestations d’AE est actuellement inférieur à 40 %, alors qu’il était de plus de 80 % dans les années 1990.

L’une des raisons de ce déclin est le nombre important de travailleurs autonomes, en particulier les « travailleurs à la tâche » et autres travailleurs précaires, qui n’ont pas droit aux prestations d’AE parce qu’ils ne cotisent pas. Pour aggraver le problème, les règles d’admissibilité ont été renforcées et le programme est devenu moins généreux.

Après l’éclosion de la COVID-19, le gouvernement fédéral a mis en place diverses mesures d’urgence pour accélérer le traitement des demandes et le versement des prestations, pour combler les lacunes en matière de soutien et pour créer de nouveaux programmes pour les chômeurs canadiens qui n’avaient pas droit à l’AE. Mais ces mesures ont été supprimées avec la fin de la pandémie.

Notre groupe de travail a largement convenu que le programme d’AE devrait être simplifié et que les règles d’admissibilité devraient être assouplies. Beaucoup de membre de notre groupe ont également demandé au gouvernement fédéral de rendre le programme plus généreux en prolongeant la durée des prestations, en augmentant le taux de remplacement de la rémunération, en relevant le plafond annuel de la rémunération assurable ou en combinant ces trois mesures.

Plusieurs experts ont également déclaré qu’il était temps de s’attaquer à l’exclusion des travailleurs autonomes, en particulier ceux qui occupent des emplois précaires.

Bien entendu, ces changements se traduiraient par une augmentation des coûts du programme et des cotisations, tant pour les travailleurs que pour les employeurs qui cotisent au fonds. Le Commissaire des employeurs, la Commission de l’assurance-emploi du Canada et la Fédération canadienne de l’entreprise indépendante se sont opposés à l’idée d’une augmentation des cotisations.

Pour en savoir plus : Un Canada plus fort à l’ère Trump

Il n’existe pas de solution miracle qui satisferait tout le monde. À la fin de nos travaux en 2022, nous avons proposé un ensemble de solutions de compromis qui renforceraient le régime d’AE, qui protégeraient mieux les travailleurs canadiens et qui réduiraient le fardeau pesant sur les petites et moyennes entreprises qui cotisent au fonds.

À court terme, nous avons proposé que le gouvernement fédéral adopte une condition d’admissibilité uniforme de 420 heures travaillées au cours des 52 semaines précédentes, comme il l’a fait pendant la pandémie, au lieu des 9 conditions actuellement en vigueur qui varient en fonction des taux de chômage régionaux.

Cela n’augmenterait peut-être pas la participation dans les régions où les taux de chômage sont déjà élevés, mais cela permettrait de remédier à la lenteur du programme à déterminer l’admissibilité. Cela permettrait également de résoudre certains problèmes liés aux limites des régions de l’AE.

Nous avons également proposé que le taux de remplacement des revenus passe de 55 % à 60 %.

Ces changements, bien que modestes, augmenteraient tout de même les coûts du programme. Pour limiter l’augmentation des taux de cotisation, nous avons recommandé au gouvernement de prendre trois mesures :

• Porter de sept à dix ans le délai pour atteindre le taux d’équilibre du fonds de l’AE.
• Limiter les réductions des taux de cotisation lorsque le compte de l’AE est déficitaire.
• Verser des fonds fédéraux au compte de l’AE pour couvrir les déficits encourus pendant les récessions, en particulier lorsque la réponse comprend une augmentation des prestations.

Nous l’avions signalé à l’époque et le temps nous l’a confirmé : il était peu probable que les lacunes du système d’AE disparaissent en même temps que la pandémie.

Ils sont toujours présents aujourd’hui, alors que le Canada est confronté à un nouveau choc économique, potentiellement plus préjudiciable que le précédent. Il est temps d’agir.

It’s time to put Canada’s employment insurance program on solid footing

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When many Canadians were temporarily thrown out of work in the midst of COVID-19, the federal government pledged to reform its employment insurance (EI) program – one of the main pillars of the country’s social safety net.

But the economy rebounded when the pandemic ended, the unemployment rate dropped and EI reform took a back seat to other priorities. Now, as the tariff dispute with the U.S. casts a dark shadow over Canada’s economy, it is back in the spotlight.

Not much has changed in the intervening years. But it’s not too late to put it on a more solid footing.

Rather than introducing another flurry of stop-gap measures as it did during COVID, the federal government should make meaningful, long-lasting changes to the EI system.

In the wake of the pandemic, the government undertook a two-year review of EI to consider, among other things, how it could better support the increasing number of workers who don’t qualify for EI benefits under current rules. But it has yet to announce any meaningful reforms.

To support and inform the government’s efforts, the Institute for Research on Public Policy convened a working group of experts in 2021and 2022 to propose options for modernizing the program. We published two research reports. One, in May 2022, highlighted ways to modernize the EI program while a second later in the same year discussed how to finance the proposed changes.

We also published a commentary with recommendations about how to improve the way the program functions and how it is funded.

These solutions remain relevant today as Canada faces another economic shock brought on by a trade war that few could have anticipated when we undertook our work.

Prolonged tariffs could result in structural changes to the economy

With the timing and conditions of the U.S. tariffs changing by the day, economic forecasters caution that making predictions about their potential impact is difficult. The effects will largely depend on how widespread the tariffs are and how long they remain in place.

In a speech in late February, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said the economic consequences of a protracted trade conflict would be much different than the shock that followed the pandemic. A quick bounceback would be unlikely this time and the effects on the Canadian economy would likely be structural, he said.

Exports could decline by more than eight per cent in one central bank scenario. Exporters would likely respond by cutting production and laying off workers. The effects would quickly spread, Macklem warned.

According to CIBC projections, the effects of the trade war would be felt most acutely by workers in the export sector. Its estimate of job losses ranges from 150,000 to 350,000 depending on the severity and coverage of the tariffs. Quebec and Ontario would be likely to bear the brunt of the shock, it says.

IRPP research on community susceptibility to U.S. tariffs identifies several jurisdictions that could face a significant impact.

The lumber and furniture manufacturing industries of the Islet region in eastern Quebec could see most of its workers affected. In Ontario, Ingersoll and Windsor, with high concentrations of employment in auto manufacturing, and Sault Ste. Marie, with a high proportion of jobs in steel production, could be hit hard. Communities with high levels of employment in oil and gas production, including Fort McMurray and Cold Lake in Alberta, as well as Fort Nelson in B.C., would also be exposed.

EI program requires meaningful, long-lasting changes

Former prime minister Justin Trudeau said in early March that the government will use “every tool at its disposal” to help Canadians weather the storm, including expanding EI benefits and making them more flexible.

The federal government then announced temporary changes to the EI work-sharing program, which allows eligible workers to receive partial benefits while working reduced hours. This helps employers retain experienced workers and avoid layoffs during slow periods.

The changes expand the types of businesses that can access the program, including non-profits and those that employ seasonal workers. The changes also extend the time that employees can take part in the program to 76 weeks from 38.

While this helps, there is still more to do.

During the IRPP’s first roundtable on EI reform in December 2021, we heard from our working group of 12 researchers that the program is overly complex and has too many coverage gaps that make it increasingly ineffective. The number of unemployed Canadians who receive EI benefits now is less than 40 per cent, down from more than 80 per cent in the 1990s.

One reason for the decline is the substantial number of self-employed workers, especially gig workers and others with precarious work arrangements, who are not eligible to receive EI benefits because they don’t pay into the fund. Compounding the issue, eligibility rules have been tightened and the program made less generous.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, the federal government introduced various contingency measures to accelerate claims and benefit delivery, to fill the gaps in support and to create new programs for unemployed Canadians who didn’t qualify for EI. But as the pandemic receded, the measures were eliminated.

In its assessment of the EI program, our working group largely agreed it should be simplified and the eligibility rules eased. Many also called on the federal government to make the program more generous by extending the duration of benefits, increasing the earnings replacement rate, raising the maximum yearly insurable earnings or some combination of the three.

Several experts also said it was time to address the exclusion of the self-employed, especially those in precarious jobs.

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Of course, these changes would mean higher program costs and accompanying higher premiums for both workers and employers who contribute to the fund. The commissioner for employers at the Canadian Employment Insurance Commission and the Canadian Federation for Independent Business have pushed back on the idea of premium increases.

There is no quick fix to address these challenges that will satisfy everyone. At the conclusion of our work in late 2022, we proposed a set of compromise solutions that would bolster the EI program, better protect Canadian workers and minimize the burden on the small- and medium-sized companies that contribute to the fund.

In the short term, we proposed that the federal government adopt a uniform eligibility requirement of 420 hours worked over the previous 52 weeks as it did during the pandemic, instead of the nine requirements currently in place that vary depending on regional unemployment rates.

This might not increase uptake in regions where unemployment rates are already high but it would address the program’s slow response time in determining eligibility requirements. It would also address some of the issues created by the boundaries of EI regions.

We also proposed that the earnings replacement rate be increased to 60 from 55 per cent.

These changes, though modest, would still increase program costs. To limit increases in premium rates, we recommended that the government do three things:

• extend the timeframe for the break-even rate of the EI fund to 10 years from seven;
• limit reductions in premium rates when the EI account is in deficit;
• contribute federal funding to the EI account to cover deficits incurred during recessions, particularly when the response includes increased benefits.

As we cautioned at the time, the shortcomings of the EI system were unlikely to recede when the pandemic ended – and they didn’t.

They are still with us today as Canada faces another shock to our economy – this one potentially more damaging than the last. It’s time to act.

Can Canada afford to cut the public service while Trump moves the goalposts?

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OTTAWA – Canada’s public service has never been bigger. And the calls to shrink it have never been louder. But how and when does the next government cut public-service spending with a U.S. president who keeps shifting the goalposts of his economic warfare against Canada?

Cutting spending and jobs is never easy – it eats up time and energy, triggers union battles, and disrupts departments. Buyouts and severance cost money, and deeper cuts inevitably hit services, including Canada’s critical social safety net.

Some critics blame Canada’s productivity decline on public-sector growth. The public sector for all levels of government now makes up nearly 40 per cent of GDP. Productivity has steadily fallen as the public sector has expanded, the International Monetary Fund notes, fueling debate over its role in the slowdown.

The federal workforce has grown faster than ever in the last decade, up 43 per cent to a record high. Its payroll topped $65 billion in 2023-24. The average full-time employee now costs $136,345. That is up 15.7 per cent from the previous year.

That’s a tempting target for any government looking to rein in spending.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux says the government is caught in a fiscal squeeze.

It’s facing a $50.1-billion deficit. Tariffs alone will reduce the GDP by two per cent, which reduces tax revenues. The government has promised to help people and industries hit by the tariffs. NATO’s defense-spending target is two per cent of GDP but is set to rise higher.

Add in campaign pledges, talk of major infrastructure projects – from rail and pipelines to military upgrades for promised nation-building, and the next government has some big budget tradeoffs to make over the next five to 10 years.

Giroux says a wildcard like Donald Trump – with his constantly shifting trade threats – “throws a monkey’s wrench into any party’s fiscal tracks.” With Canada-U.S. relations in historic flux, a key factor in the country’s financial outlook keeps changing, making it tough to stick to targets, election promises or set a stable fiscal path.

With all the uncertainty and spending pressures, the math simply won’t add up without public-service cuts, says Sahir Khan, vice president of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa.

Whether the next government reshuffles spending to fund new priorities or cuts it to shrink the deficit, ­­­public servants can’t escape the knife.

But Khan says major cuts – or any big fiscal decisions – are unlikely for now because the landscape is too uncertain. The government needs a clearer picture of whether Trump’s tariffs and policies are here to stay before setting priorities. Until the goalposts stop shifting, committing to a long-term fiscal plan is tough.

“We are in a vacuum right now. I stand by the statement that a $65-billion payroll is going to be attractive, but the problems are so much bigger than that. You have to solve for the policy requirement first before you get at the size of your payroll,” he says.

It’s not just about jobs. There’s a social and economic value to programs and services. They complement what the private sector does. They fill the gaps left by the private sector, like spending for the military, national security and border control.

The biggest federal union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), is tapping into the wave of national unity ignited by Trump’s trade shocks, launching a “For You, Canada” campaign to save public services from cuts.

“When the world feels uncertain – with reckless tariffs putting our jobs at risk and our very sovereignty under attack – you can count on Canada’s public service to be there when people need them most,” says PSAC President Sharon DeSousa.

Jennifer Robson, an associate professor in political management at Carleton University, says it’s “kind of dumb” to obsess over the headcount of the public service. What’s important is the function, what it’s doing and the problems it solves.

As a result, the calls for a spending review have never been stronger.

A big push is for one modelled on the Chrétien government’s “getting government right” program review in the mid-1990s. It looked at the role of government with an eye on what programs to keep and what to stop doing, eliminating the deficit and cutting 50,000 jobs.

Cuts shouldn’t drive the agenda, says Khan. The size of government should be based on policy goals, budget realities, and the capacity of the public service to deliver services effectively. That also means fixing the way the public service works and manages.

The real test for the next government will be whether the public service has the delivery capacity to match the crisis and the government’s response, says Khan. Without that, policy and fiscal decisions have “no transmission mechanism,” no way to turn plans into results.

But it will be a policy choice, says Giroux.

“An incoming government that wants to have different priorities may just want to reallocate. But if they want to find savings within the public service, then they’ll probably have to do some surgical cuts, at least, maybe deeper cuts,” says Giroux.

Neither Prime Minister Mark Carney nor Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has fleshed out their policies, but there are signs of divergence.

Carney has promised to rein in spending by balancing the government’s operating budget – which includes the $65 billion payroll – in three years, while running a small deficit with a capital budget, which would include long-term investments.

He’s talked about a spending review and using technology and AI to make operations more efficient. But he says he will cap the public service while Poilievre says it will be cut at least at the rate of attrition.

It’s unclear whether Carney means the size of the public service or its payroll costs when he talks about a cap. The public service now has 441,000 people. Payroll costs will grow with annual pay increases. Capping $65-billion payroll costs would decrease spending as inflation eats away at it.

Carney promises a very different government | The Functionary

Is the public service ready for a big Trump policy shift?

Canada weighs bailouts as U.S. tariffs threaten businesses

But Alasdair Roberts, who predicted Canada’s sovereignty crisis in his book The Adaptable Country says Trump’s tariff and annexation threats are just the beginning. Canada will face bigger geopolitical and economic shocks in the coming decades.

“This isn’t the whole story. This isn’t the shock. This is only one of the shocks,” he warns.

As much as the world has changed, politics remains the same, reactive and driven by events, says Roberts. He has long argued Canada needs a “national conversation” about what it wants to be and how to get there. He’s a strong advocate for royal commissions.

But he fears the election will push parties into quick fixes and short-term platforms, locking the country into policy priorities without a long-term strategy. That would also sideline the public service, which brings continuity, institutional memory, and non-partisanship – critical for preparing for the next crisis.

He supports a 1990s-style program review but warns the public service faces “deferred maintenance” and needs major reforms in how it operates and manages itself.

And he warns that Canadians’ unity – their resolve to fight Trump and build a more independent country – will weaken if the economy slows or enters a recession. Politics will turn nastier, internal divisions will deepen.

Add to that climate emergencies, the possibility of war, and the fact that Canada, home to just 40 million people, holds a disproportionate share of the world’s fresh water, critical minerals, and habitable land. That makes it a target.

“The question will be: why does Canada have all this stuff?” Roberts says. “That’s essentially what President Trump is asking. We shouldn’t expect international law or diplomatic norms to stop powerful countries – even those we thought were our friends – from doing what they think is necessary to preserve their country.”

This article was produced with support from the Accenture Fellowship on the Future of the Public Service. Read more of Kathryn’s articles.

Comme dirait Elvis Gratton : Think big !

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Au Canada, le territoire est immense, mais la population se concentre dans quelques grandes villes, près de la frontière. Il est donc facile de se sentir « petit ». Nous faisons partie du G7, avec l’une des plus grandes économies de la planète. Pourtant, la taille de notre population reste modeste, même si elle dépasse désormais les 40 millions d’habitants et continue de croître.

Dans un contexte où le potentiel de conflits augmente entre les grandes puissances, comme la Chine et les États-Unis, mieux vaut se faire discret, à défaut d’être une grande puissance nous-mêmes. Quand les tensions montent, nous n’avons guère d’autre choix que de nous retrancher.

C’est la meilleure stratégie. Après tout, notre voisin et principal partenaire commercial n’est-il pas le gendarme de la planète? Il l’était, jusqu’à tout récemment. Mais la guerre commerciale débridée du président Trump et ses menaces d’annexion démontrent que le Canada ne peut plus compter sur la bienveillance américaine.

Les États-Unis ne semblent plus vouloir jouer leur rôle de leader du monde libre. Le Canada doit donc se repositionner, tout comme ses alliés. Les démocraties doivent surpasser les autocraties.

Cela signifie bâtir davantage : plus de logements, plus de transports en commun et investir dans une défense plus robuste. En somme, nous devons grandir pour éviter d’être malmenés.

100 millions de Canadiens ?

Le Canada a de l’espace et des ressources en abondance. Ce qui lui manque, c’est une population plus grande. Les dirigeants visionnaires, comme Wilfrid Laurier l’avaient compris. Plus récemment, le professeur Irvin Studin, de l’Université de Toronto, a popularisé l’idée de fixer un objectif de 100 millions de Canadiens, tandis que l’écrivain Doug Saunders a plaidé en faveur d’un « Canada maximum ».

En 2023, des gens d’affaires, des universitaires et ex-politiciens regroupés au sein de l’Initiative du siècle ont repris l’idée d’atteindre 100 millions d’habitants d’ici 2100. Cette initiative a suscité à la fois éloges et critiques. Mais, comme l’a récemment fait valoir le chroniqueur du Globe and Mail, Andrew Coyne, le Canada est déjà en bonne voie d’atteindre cet objectif.

Devenir une puissance économique comporte plusieurs avantages d’un point de vue géopolitique. Un Canada plus peuplé aurait plus d’influence sur la scène mondiale, avance le professeur Studin. Il rappelle – ce qui peut sembler inquiétant – que cette réflexion n’est pas nouvelle.

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Plusieurs, écrit-il, ont oublié que la raison initiale du peuplement encouragé par le gouvernement fédéral à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle était en grande partie stratégique : affirmer la souveraineté canadienne et prévenir un éventuel empiétement américain, notamment dans l’Ouest.

Notre influence à l’échelle mondiale nous semblait secondaire sous la protection rassurante des États-Unis. Mais alors que cette protection s’effrite, avoir plus de poids comptera. Une économie plus forte offre les moyens de mieux se défendre, un défi crucial pour un territoire aussi vaste que le nôtre.

Cette vision a gagné de la crédibilité. Entre 2014 et 2024, la population canadienne a augmenté de près de six millions de personnes grâce à la décision du gouvernement de porter le plafond de l’immigration à 500 000 nouveaux arrivants par an, et à l’afflux de résidents temporaires. Cependant, les résultats restent mitigés.

Une tendance inquiétante

Cette croissance rapide a fait exploser les prix de l’immobilier et a alimenté les frustrations dans tout le pays. Le problème? Nous avons pris un raccourci. Nous avons accru la taille de la population sans renforcer les bases, dont le logement. Considérons la figure 1, que j’aime appeler le « graphique de la malédiction ».

Ce graphique est tiré d’un article que j’ai coécrit pour l’Institut MacDonald-Laurier en 2023. Le calcul n’a pas changé. Depuis les années 1970, nous construisons toujours environ 200 000 logements par année, alors que notre population a doublé.

La Société canadienne d’hypothèques et de logement estime qu’il manquera 3,5 millions de logements d’ici 2030. Nous devons doubler la cadence. Tous les partis politiques s’accordent sur le principe, mais peu ont eu le courage d’imposer les réformes nécessaires.

Le problème ne se limite pas au logement. Construire des infrastructures de transport dans les grandes villes est fastidieux et coûteux. Quant aux transports interurbains, ils sont rares, souvent lents et peu fiables. Se rendre à Toronto à partir d’Ottawa ou de Montréal pour une réunion matinale devrait être simple. Un train à haute vitesse entre Montréal et Toronto pourrait transporter jusqu’à 21 millions de passagers par an d’ici 2050. Il faut soutenir cette initiative.

Les communautés nordiques sont souvent isolées de façon saisonnière en raison d’infrastructures inadéquates. Elles souffrent généralement d’une connectivité limitée tout au long de l’année. Notre système de santé est en difficulté et nos universités crient famine. Bref, nous ne sommes pas prêts à accueillir une forte croissance démographique.

Nous devons aussi réduire notre dépendance aux États-Unis en développant nos infrastructures de transport d’énergie et de marchandises.  Bien que l’oléoduc Trans Mountain ait été coûteux et controversé, il illustre comment des infrastructures adéquates peuvent stimuler l’économie et nous aider à nous diversifier.

Nous devons nous défendre

Reconstruire notre armée est aussi essentiel. Cela permettrait non seulement de dissuader les attaques potentielles dans l’Arctique, mais aussi de s’imposer dans un monde de plus en plus hostile. C’est le prix à payer pour protéger notre souveraineté et notre démocratie.

Bien sûr, tout cela coûte cher. Il faut doubler d’effort en matière d’infrastructures et se doter d’une politique industrielle ambitieuse. Nous pouvons l’ignorer et espérer que la tempête se calme, ou nous pouvons nous renforcer et ne pas nous laisser abattre.

Nous avons déjà relevé des défis majeurs : construction du chemin de fer, réseaux de canaux reliant les Grands Lacs à l’Atlantique, expansion industrielle après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. À cette époque, nous avions la quatrième plus grande marine du monde. Nous avons su nous surpasser. Nous pouvons recommencer.

Cela ne signifie pas nous replier sur nous-mêmes. Au contraire, nous devons resserrer nos liens avec d’autres alliés. L’instabilité mondiale actuelle prouve que le libre-échange n’est pas toujours garanti sur le terrain. Or l’histoire et la théorie économique sont claires sur ses avantages, en particulier pour un pays riche en ressources comme le Canada. Si les États-Unis se rétractent, nous devons nous ouvrir davantage aux autres marchés. Commercer est dans notre ADN. Nous devons continuer à le faire en ne dépendant plus d’un seul client.

Pour cela, nous devons être autonomes. Il nous faut des capacités de production stratégique : armements, vaccins et énergie. La croissance démographique et économique est la clé.

Rendre l’immigration populaire à nouveau

Nous devons attirer les meilleurs talents, comme les États-Unis l’ont fait après la guerre. S’ils ne le font plus, profitons de l’occasion. Devant l’incertitude quant à la politique d’immigration américaine et un possible déclin des États-Unis, certains travailleurs qualifiés pourraient choisir de demeurer au Canada plutôt que de s’expatrier à Silicon Valley ou à New York.

Un ami s’est vu proposer récemment un poste permanent dans une université américaine réputée. Il a refusé, préférant accepter un poste au Canada. Mais si on lui avait offert le poste six semaines plus tôt, il l’aurait peut-être accepté.

Les Canadiens prennent conscience des enjeux géopolitiques. Les droits de douane, les tensions civiles aux États-Unis et les conflits internationaux nous affectent directement. La meilleure façon de s’adapter et d’éviter d’être malmené par les grandes puissances est d’en devenir une. Et pas seulement en matière de population, mais aussi sur les plans économique et militaire.

Les tarifs douaniers peuvent ralentir notre économie, voire la plonger dans une profonde récession. Nous devons saisir cette occasion pour jeter les bases essentielles à notre survie et investir dans ce qui nous permettra de prospérer. Mieux vaut façonner l’histoire que de la subir.

Un Canada plus grand et plus fort est un rempart contre la tyrannie. Devant le repli progressif des États-Unis, nous avons tout intérêt à renforcer le pays. Il faut se mettre au travail sans attendre. Il faut construire, partout, en même temps, afin de développer nos pleines capacités économique et démographique.

We live in a dangerous world. Canada needs to bulk up

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Canada often feels small. The landmass is gigantic, but we’re mostly clustered in a few metropolitan areas along the border. We’re a G7 country, so we have one of the largest economies on Earth. Our population, well, it’s not exactly large. But it’s not small either. Canada has crossed the 40 million threshold, and we continue to grow.

Still, in a world increasingly defined by conflict between great powers like China and the United States, if you’re not big, you might as well be small. When global political winds blow, we can do little more than take shelter.

Taking shelter has been an easy strategy for a long time. After all, our neighbour and primary trading partner is the leader of the post-war liberal international order. Or it was. The president’s increasingly unhinged trade war and annexation threats suggest that Canada can’t count on the benevolent hegemon for protection anymore.

With America seemingly uninterested in maintaining its position as leader of the free world, Canada needs to get serious about its place in the new world order. As do our allies. The free nations of the world should outgrow the autocracies.

That means we need to get building – more housing, more transit and a more robust defence policy. In other words, we need to get too big to push around.

100 million Canadians?

Canada has a vast geography and abundant resources. What we lack is people. It’s something that visionary leaders like Wilfrid Laurier thought about. More recently, University of Toronto professor Irvin Studin popularized the idea of setting a concrete target of 100 million Canadians while writer Doug Saunders argued for “Maximum Canada.”

A group of people from business, academic, and political circles formed the Century Initiative to promote having 100 million Canadians by 2100. It has become a magnet for credit and criticism for the idea.  But, as Andrew Coyne recently argued, Canada is already well on track to reach that target.

There are major advantages to being a large economy. Studin cast the argument in geopolitical terms: a larger population would give us more weight in global affairs. He noted – ominously – that this isn’t entirely new thinking:

“Many have forgotten that much of the original populating motive of the federal government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a clear sovereignty motive (yes, a strategic motive) vis-à-vis potential American encroachment into Canadian territory (particularly in the West),” he wrote.

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Policy Options coverage of the Trump 2.0 era

Large economies have more geopolitical sway, which may not seem important in a world where we peacefully live under America’s security umbrella, but matters a lot when that guarantee becomes unreliable. It also gives you the resources to defend yourself, which is particularly challenging for a large landmass like Canada.

This view has proved influential lately. Canada’s population grew by about six million people between 2014 and 2024, in part due to the government’s decision to boost permanent immigration to 500,000 annually, and from an influx in non-permanent residents. I think it’s fair to say the results have been mixed.

A troublesome trend

The impact of rapid growth on housing prices has been undeniable and has stoked frustrations across the country.

The trouble is, we took a shortcut. We increased the rate of population growth without putting in place the basic building blocks of a growing country, most notably, housing. Consider figure 1, which I like to refer to as the Chart of Doom.

The figure is from a paper I co-authored for the Macdonald Laurier Institute in 2023. The math hasn’t changed since. Canada builds around 200,000 housing units per year – just like we did in the early 1970s, when we had around half as many residents and far slower population growth.

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimates that we’ll have a housing supply gap of 3.5 million units by 2030. We need to double home building at a bare minimum. Politicians across the spectrum agree in concept, but few have had the political will to implement all of the necessary reforms.

It’s not just housing, though. Transit construction in major cities has become slow and expensive, inter-city transportation between cities is often sparse, slow and unreliable. It shouldn’t be hard to get from Toronto to Ottawa or Montreal for a morning meeting. We can change that by embracing the new push to build high-speed rail from Toronto to Montreal, with new estimates suggesting it could move  up to 21 million passengers annually by 2050.

Northern communities are often cut off seasonally by poor infrastructure and generally have poor year-round connectivity. We also have a distressed health-care system and cash-starved universities. In short, we’re not able to absorb the large numbers of people that would be required to really build out the country.

We also need more and better trade-promoting infrastructure so that we’re not so reliant on the United States. While the Trans Mountain pipeline was expensive and contentious, it is an example of how we can diversify our trading patterns with the right infrastructure.

We need to defend ourselves

Rebuilding our shrinking military would not only deter potential aggression from adversaries in the Arctic, but also would allow us to project strength.  In an increasingly dangerous world, we should be willing to pay the cost of maintaining a free society.

None of this would be cheap, of course. We’d need a major national infrastructure push as well as an aggressive defence industrial policy. We can hide and hope things blow over, or we can bulk up and stop getting pushed around.

It’s been a while since we have done big things, but we’ve done it before – whether it’s building the railroad or the canal systems that connect the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. We had the world’s fourth largest navy by the end of the Second World War. We’ve punched above our weight in the past. We can do it again.

This doesn’t mean that we should turn inward. In fact, we’d be well advised to deepen ties with other allies. Geopolitical uncertainty has shown us that we can’t always count on free trade to exist in practice, but history and economic theory are clear on the benefits of trade – especially for a resource-rich country like Canada. If America wants to trade less with us, we should trade more with our other allies. Trading is in our DNA. We should continue to embrace that role, albeit with less dependence on one customer.

Still, we need to be able to stand on our own two feet. We need to have the manufacturing capacity to do the basics. We need at least some capacity to build bombs, produce vaccines and keep the lights on. Growing our country and economy will help on all these fronts.

Make immigration popular again

We should continue to press to attract the best and the brightest from around the world – much like post-war America did. If they’re no longer interested, that’s a major opportunity for Canada. Uncertainty over U.S. immigration policy combined with a general sense of American decline might push some Canadians who might have otherwise moved to Silicon Valley or New York to stay put. Anecdotally, a friend was recently offered a tenure-track job at a well-known American university. Had the offer came six weeks earlier, they might have accepted. It didn’t seem like a great time to move to America, and Canada, too, has excellent universities, so they accepted a Canadian offer instead.

Canadians are starting to think more seriously about geopolitics. We’re concerned about how our own lives will be impacted by tariffs, or civil unrest in the United States, or global conflicts. One of the best ways to adapt to a world where great powers might decide to push around middle powers is to get too big to push around. Not just in population, but in an economic and military sense.

Getting pushed around by mutually destructive tariffs could create some slack in our economy – or worse, a deep recession. We should use that slack to build the things that we need to survive, and the things that can help us thrive. Better that than huddling along the border and hoping that history continues to ignore us.

Building a larger, more muscular Canada can allow us to become a bulwark against tyranny. With America stepping back, it’s more important than ever that Canada bulks up. That means getting more shovels in the ground, much faster. It’s time to build everything, everywhere, all at once so that we can grow our economy and population and reach our full potential.

Canadian media need to more carefully consider op-eds on the Mideast

Opinion columns on the Middle East published in the three largest Canadian print media in 2024 were a vital part of freedom of expression and independent thought about the region and Canadian foreign policy. 

However, research shows that some op-eds can propagate problematic and incendiary views with real consequences. 

Researchers, including myself, have shown how op-eds in many countries shaped foreign policy in the West, often with harmful consequences for the population in the areas affected. This occurs when narratives emphasized in Western media gain credibility abroad, influencing how local actors frame their own political and social realities.  

What is the role of the media when it comes to problematic discourse in a democracy? The issue isn’t whether the media can be held accountable because laws already limit hate speech and defamation. 

Rather, it’s a question of whether the media recognize there can be negative real-world consequences to their publication decisions that should be considered more carefully and whether governments, experts and organizations can help them realize that. 

I have identified and analyzed 365 opinion columns substantially on Middle Eastern affairs that were published in the centre-left Toronto Star (30 per cent of the articles), the centre-right Globe and Mail (27 per cent) and the National Post further to the right (43 per cent).  

In 2024, these op-ed writers weighed in on the hostages held by Hamas, Israel’s devastating wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the threat of Iran and its proxies, the change of regime in Syria and other critical developments that require sensible discussion.  

How to play a constructive role 

My analysis led me to three recommendations to Canadian editors, Middle East policy experts, and lawmakers concerned with violence triggered by inflammatory media discourse. 

• Encourage peaceful discourse and external perspectives, rather than aggressive interventions penned by a few in-house columnists.  
• Recognize that criticism about side issues is productive – until it distracts from the main issue. 
• Understand that acknowledging complexity is generally good for peace, but not always because historical nuance can foster distrust and legitimize violence. 

My recommendations are motivated by the main foreign policy that Canada has advocated in the Middle East – a voice of peace and tolerance, and a careful mediator who can reconcile differences.  

When analyzing all 365 op-eds, I looked for articles that called for peace, a ceasefire, reconciliation, hostage and prisoner exchanges, or tolerance between opposing sides. 

Two thirds of the Toronto Star articles advocated these positions, compared to 71 per cent in the Globe and Mail but only 11 per cent in the National Post. 

I also found a strong relationship between the background of the author and whether the article called for peace.  

Opinion articles written by individuals in community organizations, higher education, medicine, or the arts strongly tended to advocate solutions such as a ceasefire and the need for tolerance. 

Interestingly, my analysis suggests the number of such articles dropped slightly when the author was a lawyer – due to the equivocal ways they interpreted international law regarding the actions of the Israeli government. 

The number also dropped significantly when the author’s background was in politics and diplomacy, or policy organizations and think tanks. 

Across all three publications, authors whose background was in journalism and media – typically columnists who regularly write for their respective publications – were less likely than other writers to call for peace, ceasefire, reconciliation, hostage and prisoner exchange or tolerance.  

The largest share of the 365 articles came from authors in journalism and media: 58 per cent for the Toronto Star, 45 per cent for the Globe and Mail, and 71 per cent for the National Post. A disproportionate number of articles were written by a few authors – 40 per cent of the articles were written by a handful of authors for the Star, 30 per cent for the Globe and 37 per cent for the Post.  

This raises an important question. Do op-ed writers represent the voice of the Canadian people or the views of their respective publications? 

A handful of people set the agenda 

If the former, we should see correspondence between what ordinary Canadians have expressed in 2024 – two thirds of whom desired a ceasefire in Gaza according to a February 2024 survey – and the proportion of pacifist positions among opinion writers. This correspondence holds in the case of the Star and the Globe but not the National Post.  

Though all 365 opinion articles I analyzed were substantially on the Middle East, they served to criticize a range of issues, global and local. 

Censorship of voices within Canada as a result of Middle Eastern conflicts – particularly on university campuses – was the top issue criticized in the Star. The most commonly criticized subject in the Globe was the steps taken by the Israeli government. National Post writers mostly criticized the threat of Iran and its proxies. 

Historically, the problem with op-eds on the Middle East that focus too narrowly on national interests is losing sight of more pressing issues for the concerned countries. 

All three Canadian publications used the Middle East as a backdrop to criticize the Canadian government, members of the NDP and the Liberal Party, particularly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, as well as the Biden administration. 

In all three publications, these political actors were criticized by both authors calling for peace and by authors who claimed more should be done to support Israel. 

There were eye-opening similarities and differences in criticized subjects. A considerable number of op-eds across all three publications were critical of international organizations, such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, including many calling for the Canadian government to disregard its commitment toward them.  

In terms of distinctive character between publications, Toronto Star articles prioritized criticizing the lack of humanitarian aid going into Gaza and the lack of safe ways for Palestinians to make it to Canada.  

Writers in the Globe and Mail tended to criticize the lack of dialogue, restraint or proposed solutions, including a lack of resolve to end the suffering of Palestinians and to return the hostages.  

National Post op-ed writers regularly criticized Islamic extremism and what they called media misinformation.  

Historical context and calls for peace  

Before my data analysis, I hypothesized that opinion pieces mentioning the history of the Middle East would tend to call for peaceful solutions. 

However, there was only a weak correlation between articles with historical facts and calls for peace, due to the ways the authors interpreted the same fact. The National Post published the articles with the most diverse set of historical dates, figures, and events related to the Middle East. There was a noticeable hesitation in the Star and the Globe to discuss historical events before the 21st century. Yet, these facts are important to understanding the origins of Middle Eastern issues. 

For example, during the First World War, the Western powers promised Arabs a state that included Palestine if they helped fight the Ottoman Empire based in Istanbul which ruled over most of the Middle East at that time. The Arabs did but France and Britain betrayed their commitment after the war.  

Yet, Canadian academics who could offer experience in the history of the region made up only a small portion of the writers across all three publications.  

Opinion writers across all three publications criticized scholarship produced in Canadian universities, including studies on colonialism. That said, the Canadian-written op-ed with the highest digital engagement in 2024 was published by UBC associate professor Naomi Klein in The Guardian U.S., according to my analysis of search behaviour on Google Trends. 

The success of Klein’s article may be instructive. Its argument was simultaneously historical, geopolitical, moral, humanitarian and social/cultural.  

Op-eds in Canadian media tended to meet only one of these categories. The majority of Globe and National Post articles made a geopolitical argument about the Middle East, i.e., recommendations regarding military objectives, strategy and global influence. 

Toronto Star articles tended to make a social/cultural argument, i.e., how Middle Eastern conflicts affected the fabric of Canadian, Israeli/Jewish and Arab/Muslim society. 

Humanitarian arguments – such as reasoning that people should not be killed regardless of politics – made up only a small fraction of the articles across all three publications.  

In 2024, opinion on the Middle East in Canadian media showed some potential to become a voice of peace in the region, but it is clear substantial structural changes are needed to deliver on that promise. 

My analysis suggests diversity is key. When more Canadians from different backgrounds and perspectives were solicited for their opinion, they enriched Canadian journalism and likely foreign policy. 

The true north strong and green?

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Going back to his first term, President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland, as have other American officials since the 1800s. But as with many ideas from south of the border, if the U.S. is considering it, why can’t we? Canada has already gained a small bit of Danish Arctic territory on Hans Island, so why shouldn’t we invite Greenland to exchange its red-and-white flag for one with like colours but featuring the Maple Leaf?

This is not a new idea. In 1917, Britain attempted to purchase Greenland for Canada as part of global territorial adjustments after the First World War. The issue resurfaced in 1940, when Canada and Britain weighed whether to pre-emptively invade Greenland to prevent it from falling to Germany in the Second World War. Today a different argument is being made.

Greenlanders like Canada

A 2021 survey of Greenlanders found that 85 per cent of respondents wanted a closer relationship with Canada. While Ottawa has much to be ashamed of for its past treatment of Arctic Peoples, Canada’s 21^st-century approach to the Inuit-Crown relationship would have much to offer Greenlanders, almost 90 per cent of whom are of Inuit heritage.

There is already a precedent for a North Atlantic union. In 1949, residents of another remote outpost — also colonized by the Vikings and later administered by a distant European power — grew weary of transatlantic isolation. They voted to join Canada and, after a period of transition, Newfoundland became our country’s 10th province.

We share many objectives and obstacles

Greenlanders would have much to gain from becoming Canada’s fourth territory. Our closeness geographically means Greenland’s affairs are already inextricably linked to ours — from transportation and maritime security to fishing and climate change. Moreover, Ottawa has extensive experience in administering vast Arctic territories. In terms of population and area, Greenland (57,000 people over 2.2 million square kilometres), resembles Nunavut (roughly 41,000 people over 2.1 million square kilometres).

Ottawa to a large degree supports the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut through transfer payments that total almost $5.4 billion in 2024-25. Extrapolating from Canada’s financing formula, Greenland would have received roughly $1.6 billion — almost double the 4.3 billion kroner (roughly C$860 million) it received from Copenhagen in 2024. As part of this spending, Greenlanders would continue to receive public health care.

Greenland and Canada also share ancient cultural ties. As a new territory, Greenland’s Inuit would become part of the Inuit Nunangat, which stretches from northern Yukon to Labrador. For millennia, the Inuit travelled freely throughout the Arctic. Bringing Greenland into Canada would once again link most of the region into a single border-free area.

Becoming a Canadian territory could also be financially rewarding. While Greenland’s GDP per capita in U.S. dollars slightly exceeded Canada’s in 2023, a union would be likely to generate many economic benefits. Bringing Greenland under our regulations and laws, while introducing the loonie as currency, would attract greater investment by Canadian firms. Canada and Britain already tie as the top holders of mining licences in Greenland. And while Arctic mining can exact heavy environmental costs, Canada has a long-standing history of environmental impact assessments.

Beyond the mining sector, Greenland would be likely to solidify its tourism industry by attracting many more visitors. Greenlanders, meanwhile, could obtain the right to study, live and do business anywhere in Canada — a country far closer than distant Europe and with an existing population of Inuit speakers. Greenlandic companies could still trade freely with Denmark under the Canada-European trade agreement.

An economic union rather than a full integration would give Greenland many of these same benefits, but Canada’s vastly larger population would make that an exceptionally unequal partnership. Greenland would arguably have more influence as a part of Canada.

How Canada could get much closer to Europe

The great paradox of the North

Finally, Greenland would reap major security benefits. It would fall under Norad, which as a joint military command provides a deeper layer of defence integration than NATO. Protected by both the U.S. and Canadian militaries, Greenland would receive a two-for-one defence deal. A 2022 commentary by the global policy think tank RAND Corporation recommended bringing Greenland into Norad, albeit as a sovereign part of Denmark.

RAND has also noted that, as a thinly populated, remote and resource-rich territory, Greenland could face significant risk of interference from hostile countries. Canada’s own struggles with this issue might undercut Ottawa’s attractiveness as a potential protector of Greenland’s sovereignty. But one would hope that Canada emerges from the public inquiry into foreign interference better equipped to identify and address such threats to ourselves and others.

Canada would benefit too

Canadians would also benefit from welcoming Greenland as a new territory. Greater investments by Canadian firms in Greenland’s resource sector would generate tax revenue and further develop Canada’s critical minerals sector. Additionally, our three territories would gain from Greenland’s knowledge and experience in handling Arctic affairs.

Furthermore, a policy update from the Canadian Forces last year stressed the security needs of the Canadian Arctic. Adding Greenland as a new territory would extend Norad coverage further around the polar ice cap, making it easier to monitor increasingly important sea routes. And with control of both sides of the Davis Strait, Ottawa would have a more robust defence against Washington’s claim that the Northwest Passage is an international waterway.

It’s up to them

However strong the case for joining Canada, it is up to the people of Greenland to determine their future. In an election March 11, a party that supports a careful and slow approach to full independence received the most votes. In the near term it is safe to assume that Greenland will remain part of Denmark, despite any economic and defence benefits that could be enjoyed as part of Canada — along with a dramatic increase in the supply of maple syrup, ketchup chips and double-doubles.

Whatever Greenlanders might decide in the future, mercantile and security concerns should not be the only drivers behind Ottawa’s approach to the question. Canadians pride themselves on their stewardship of the North — even delivering mail to its most famous bearded resident. Bringing Greenland into the Canadian family, while offering peace, order and good government, would be a noble way to further that aim.

Canada’s overzealous copyright law deprives us of our own cultural heritage

In 2024 the estate of street photographer Vivian Maier, who died 15 years earlier, sued Toronto’s Stephen Bulger Gallery for allegedly producing and selling reproductions of her work without authorization. 

In 2021 the heirs of Thomas P. Kelley sued author Nate Hendley for allegedly infringing on the copyright of Kelley’s book, The Black Donnellys, which was published three generations earlier in 1954. 

A recent expansion of Canadian copyright protection means contemporary artists and curators will increasingly face the prospect of being blocked from legally using and sharing items of cultural heritage by creators who are deceased – sometimes decades ago.  

The issue of copyright infringement is intricate with many different potential consequences. It is a balancing act between the rights of creators and users. 

When that balance works, artists and creators enjoy incentives that propel new work while members of the public enjoy consuming their content. As part of this balance, the Copyright Act includes ‘fair dealing’ provisions that permit the use of copyright protected materials without permission in certain situations including research and news reporting.  

Under most circumstances, copyright protection of written material, visual material and music prevents unfettered use. However, once a copyright expires the work enters the public domain which means it can be freely copied or adapted by new generations of creators making new things.  

A broad and deep public domain enriches our social and cultural lives. 

Extended protection in Canada 

In 2022, Canada extended copyright protection from 50 years after the death of the creator to 70 years. Consequently, very little will enter Canada’s public domain until 2043. 

Extending copyright by twenty years was a concession Canada made during the 2017-18 Canada-US-Mexico free trade agreement (CUSMA) negotiations. Unfortunately, term extension implementation was lopsided – no additional or expanded user rights were introduced to offset the loss to Canada’s public domain. 

Theoretically, the longer a piece of copyright material is protected, the more revenue the owner stands to collect over time. However, this rarely plays out.  

And, materials that remain moneymakers well beyond a creator’s death are equally rare, usually appearing in the form of blockbuster books, music or films.  

More typically, after only a few years on bookstore shelves, most books are no longer making money. Similarly, a 2020 study found that most music album and track sales fall to nearly zero within one year after their release. 

Protection in perpetuity 

Authors or creators can transfer their ownership of copyright to others. In other words, copyright protection benefits the owner of the work, who may not be its creator.   

Materials that remain marketable beyond the lifetime of a creator often have copyrights that were transferred from the creator to a production company. Canadian rock legend Bryan Adams argues that copyright should automatically transfer back to the creator after 25 years so they may benefit from any continued use of their work.  

Copyright doesn’t just protect some things; in Canada it is automatically extended to everything.  

Under Canada’s updated copyright act, that photograph you just posted to social media will be protected well into the 22nd century. Will your estate or your children care or even be aware that they’ve inherited your copyrights?   

Check out our in-depth series from the archives on reforming Canadian copyright  

Longer copyright terms present the added challenge of locating copyright owners to ask permission to use their material. Often these materials end up orphaned – inaccessible to anyone seeking to legally use them in some new way.  

Cultural heritage organizations like libraries and archives currently hold significant stores of content created by local communities that tell Canadians’ stories going back decades.  

The copyright owners of these works are often unknown or unreachable. Digitizing and distributing these works would infringe copyright and break the law.  

Often, such treasures remain locked down in libraries and archives until librarians and archivists are confident that copyright has expired. In some cases, out of an abundance of caution and fear of legal repercussions, they wait more than a century after having been created.  

Opening communal benefits 

Why should Canadians have to wait well over a century to access our community voices and stories? 

In response to this dilemma Canadian cultural heritage organizations have been advocating for an amendment to the Copyright Act to make available these otherwise trapped orphan works.  

Group of Seven painter A.Y. Jackson died in 1974. Until two years ago, we expected his paintings to be entering the public domain this year. However, under the new rule, copyright will not expire in his art works until 2045 – a century after he created most of his paintings.  

Were Jackson’s art in the public domain, images could be freely included in documentaries, books, research articles or presentations. Because they are not in the public domain, anyone wishing to use them must first determine who owns Jackson’s estate, request permission, and cross their fingers. 

Canadians deserve a Copyright Act that doesn’t lock up all cultural materials for a century or more after their creation, including works with no remaining commercial value.  

And for what? Copyright laws that continually expand copyright present little or no benefit to either their creators or those wishing to use them.  

Until it is changed, Canada’s Copyright Act will continue to act as a barbed wire fence between Canadians and their own cultural heritage. 

 

Is the CRTC capitulating to the streaming giants?

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At the end of March, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will begin the most important public hearing of the decade for Quebec and Canadian television. The goal is to rewrite the definition of a Canadian program and establish a new regulatory framework for programming by conventional and online television broadcasters.

However, the commission’s preliminary approach set out in Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2024-288 risks undermining our national identity and cultural sovereignty – the protection of which are at the heart of the Broadcasting Act.

For nearly two years, the commission has been working to implement the new Broadcasting Act, as amended in April 2023 by the Online Streaming Act. It’s a titanic task, aimed above all at integrating the streaming giants (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney, Spotify…) into our broadcasting system and obliging them to make a minimal contribution based on their earnings in Canada.

Needless to say, the web giants are strongly opposed to this initiative, and are doing everything in their power to render ineffective any amendment by Canada’s Parliament that directly affects them.

Strong growth in foreign location shooting in Canada

Foreign television and film location shooting in Canada by the web giants and Hollywood studios has increased dramatically over the past decade, assisted by the low value of the Canadian dollar, federal and provincial tax credits, and the excellence of our audiovisual technicians and craftspeople.

However, these productions use few, if any, Canadians in key creative positions (writer, director, actors, art director, cinematographer, editor, music composer) and, as a result, are not recognized as Canadian content by the CRTC. Moreover, their location shooting is almost never in French.

The American giants prefer to rely on key creators who are familiar to Hollywood and American audiences. Quebecers and Canadians can be hired for these productions, provided they are familiar enough. Denis Villeneuve, Jean-Marc Vallée, Yves Bélanger and Jessica Lee Gagné are recent examples of those who have had successful careers in the U.S., but they are few and far between.

CRTC prepares to make huge concessions

Now that the CRTC is planning to impose new Canadian programming obligations on the streaming giants, their chief representative, the Motion Picture Association Canada, is trying to convince the commission to redefine “Canadian programming” so that it essentially conforms to what they already produce.

The streaming giants want their location shooting in Canada (sometimes called “runaway Hollywood” production) to be counted as Canadian content although they ignore the current minimum requirements of a Canadian program – the presence of key Canadian creators, including a screenwriter or director, at least one Canadian in a lead role, a Canadian producer and 75 per cent of production spending on Canadian elements. They want to avoid any changes to their current mode of operating and any additional expense, but still count their location shooting as Canadian.

Unfortunately, in its preliminary approach, the CRTC is conceding a great deal to the streamers and American studios. Seeking to “modernize” the current criteria for a Canadian program, the commission proposes to qualify the secondary positions of costume designer and senior make-up artist as key creative positions, to replace the music composer with Canadian rights holders (regardless of the music’s origins), and to introduce the concept of “showrunner,” a term borrowed from American productions.

Fewer Canadian creators, more financial control

Indeed, the concept of a “showrunner” in a production (a kind of screenwriter-producer) is an American practice recently introduced to Canada that does not exist in French-language production and is not recognized in collective agreements between writers and producers.

Under the CRTC’s proposal, a “showrunner” could replace the original screenwriter of a Canadian program. So, with a showrunner, costume designer, make-up artist and Canadian music rights holder, a foreign location shoot in Canada would come very close to qualifying as Canadian content. What’s more, the CRTC would allow non-Canadians to occupy up to 20 per cent of the key creative positions – if the position is held by more than one person – in the name of “flexibility,” the creation of “foreign partnership opportunities” and “exportability.”

If it were acceptable for only 80 per cent of a key position to be held by a Canadian, a writer or director responsible for shooting the pilot episode of a drama series could determine the majority of the series’ artistic choices, without being Canadian. All in all, the commission is suggesting that the very meaning of an original Canadian program be significantly altered.

A redefinition that benefits the streaming giants

Compared to its current definition of a Canadian program, the CRTC’s preliminary approach makes a significant concession to Canadian ownership of intellectual property. Going beyond the new requirements of the Broadcasting Act and the Canadian government’s November 2023 policy direction, the commission proposes that the intellectual property of any Canadian program be entirely Canadian.

Thus, the commission offers a kind of trade-off in its overall proposal for the definition of a Canadian program – a reduction in the presence of key Canadian creators and creative control, in exchange for a strengthening of ownership and financial control by Canadian producers and broadcasters.

The result of the changes introduced by the CRTC’s preliminary approach would be a redefinition of a Canadian program that favours the streaming giants, American studios and even the major Canadian broadcasting groups (BCE, Rogers and Videotron) to the detriment of key Canadian creators, who would see their presence considerably reduced in the commission’s proposed definition.One of the consequences of these changes would be to allow a significant number of foreign productions in Canada to be reclassified as Canadian programs – provided the web giants and studios agree to work with a Canadian production company.

Thus, the measured volume of Canadian “exports” could increase without necessarily affecting the total volume of activity. Production teams with few key Canadian creators could meet the CRTC’s new requirements for spending on Canadian programs. This is not a result that respects the Government of Canada’s policy direction, which directed the commission to “support Canadians holding a broad range of key creative positions, in particular those with a high degree of creative control or visibility.”

Protecting creators while promoting co-productions

What’s the solution? The best option would be to retain the broad outlines of the current definition of a Canadian program to ensure the place of key creators in Canadian content. At the same time, the CRTC could maintain the definition of an “international co-venture,” which allows foreign producers from countries that do not have an official co-production treaty (sanctioned by the Canadian government), including the U.S., to participate in the production of Canadian programs under more flexible criteria regarding intellectual property and financial control.

This approach would comply with the new requirements of the Broadcasting Act and the Canadian government’s recent policy direction with respect to intellectual property. Obviously, a ceiling would have to be placed on the use of such co-ventures to prevent excessive use by foreign online broadcasters.

Large Canadian and foreign programming and distribution broadcasters benefit from significant economies of scale through broadcasting and streaming, a high degree of industrial concentration, and the power to monopolize or control their markets. Add to this, the imperfect information available to consumers, and the tendency of web giants and U.S. studios to operate without regard to the laws and sovereignty of nations.

In this period of political and economic instability, it is essential that the CRTC stand firm and continue to defend the fundamental objectives of the Broadcasting Act, including our national identity and cultural sovereignty, which safeguard, enrich and strengthen the country’s cultural, political, social and economic well-being.

Le CRTC est-il en train de capituler devant les géants du numérique ?

(English version available here)

À la fin du mois de mars, le Conseil de la radiotélévision et des télécommunications canadiennes (CRTC) amorcera l’audience publique la plus importante de la décennie pour la télévision québécoise et canadienne. Son but ? Réécrire la définition d’une émission canadienne et établir un cadre réglementaire pour la programmation des entreprises de télévision traditionnelles et en ligne.

Or l’approche préliminaire, élaborée dans son avis de consultation CRTC 2024-288, risque de porter atteinte à notre identité nationale et à notre souveraineté culturelle, dont la protection est au cœur de la Loi sur la radiodiffusion.

Depuis près de deux ans, le Conseil travaille à mettre en œuvre la nouvelle Loi sur la radiodiffusion comme amendée en avril 2023 par la Loi sur la diffusion continue en ligne. C’est une tâche titanesque, qui vise surtout à intégrer les géants du web (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney, Spotify…) dans notre système de radiodiffusion et à les obliger d’y contribuer minimalement en fonction des bénéfices qu’ils retirent du Canada.

Il va sans dire que ces géants résistent fortement à ce projet et font tout en leur pouvoir pour rendre nul et non avenu tout amendement du Parlement canadien qui les affecte directement.

Forte croissance des tournages étrangers au Canada

Les tournages télévisuels et cinématographiques étrangers entrepris au Canada par les géants du web et les studios hollywoodiens se sont accrus de façon impressionnante depuis une dizaine d’années, facilités par la valeur du dollar canadien, les crédits d’impôts fédéral et provinciaux, et l’excellence de nos technicien(ne)s et nos artisans en audiovisuel.

Toutefois, ces tournages utilisent peu ou pas de Canadiens dans les postes clés de création (scénariste, réalisateur, interprètes, directeur artistique, directeur de la photo, monteur de l’image, compositeur de la musique) et, par conséquent, ne sont pas reconnus comme « contenu canadien » par le CRTC. D’ailleurs, ces tournages ne se font presque jamais en français.

Les géants américains préfèrent s’appuyer sur les créateurs clés qui sont connus à Hollywood, ainsi que par les auditoires américains. Les Québécois et Canadiens peuvent se faire engager sur leurs tournages, à condition qu’ils remplissent ces critères. Nous pensons à Denis Villeneuve, Jean-Marc Vallée, Yves Bélanger ou Jessica Lee Gagné, qui ont bien fait carrière aux États-Unis, mais les exemples sont peu nombreux.

Le CRTC s’apprête à faire des concessions énormes

Maintenant que le CRTC projette d’imposer de nouvelles obligations en matière de programmation canadienne aux géants du web, leur représentant principal, la Motion Picture Association Canada, cherche à convaincre le Conseil de redéfinir une « émission canadienne » afin qu’elle se conforme essentiellement à ce qu’ils produisent déjà.

Écartant les exigences minimales d’une émission canadienne — présence de créateurs clés canadiens dont un scénariste ou un réalisateur, au moins un Canadien dans un rôle principal, un producteur canadien, 75 % des dépenses de la production sur des éléments canadiens — les géants du web souhaitent que leurs tournages au Canada (parfois appelés runaway Hollywood production) soient comptabilisés comme du contenu canadien afin d’éviter toute modification de leur fonctionnement actuel et à toute dépense supplémentaire.

Malheureusement, dans son approche préliminaire, le CRTC concède énormément aux géants du web et aux studios américains. En cherchant à « moderniser » les critères actuels d’une émission canadienne, le Conseil propose de qualifier les postes secondaires de chef costumier et de maquilleur principal comme postes « clés » de création, de remplacer le compositeur de musique par des « détenteurs » canadiens de droits (sans égard aux origines de la musique) et d’introduire le concept de showrunner, un emprunt de la production américaine.

Moins de créateurs canadiens, plus de contrôle financier

En effet, la présence d’un showrunner dans une production (un genre de scénariste-producteur) est une pratique américaine introduite tout récemment au Canada, mais qui n’existe pas dans les productions francophones et qui n’est pas reconnue dans les ententes collectives entre les scénaristes et les producteurs.

Selon la proposition du CRTC, un showrunner pourrait remplacer le véritable scénariste d’une émission canadienne. Ainsi, avec un showrunner, un chef costumier, un maquilleur principal et des « détenteurs » de droits musicaux canadiens, un tournage étranger au Canada serait tout prêt de se qualifier comme contenu canadien. Qui plus est, le CRTC permettrait à des non-Canadiens d’occuper jusqu’à 20 % des postes de création clés — dans le cas où le poste est occupé par plus d’une personne — au nom de la « flexibilité », de la création de « partenariats internationaux » et de l’« exportabilité ».

Si l’on acceptait que seulement 80 % d’un poste clé soit occupé par un Canadien, un scénariste ou un réalisateur responsable du tournage du pilote ou du premier épisode d’une série dramatique pourrait déterminer la majorité des choix artistiques de la série, sans être Canadien. Somme toute, le Conseil suggère d’abaisser considérablement le sens même d’une émission canadienne originale tout en accommodant les géants du web.

Une redéfinition avantageuse pour les géants du web

Il faut préciser que, par rapport à sa définition actuelle d’une émission canadienne, l’approche préliminaire du CRTC fait une concession importante à la propriété canadienne en matière de propriété intellectuelle. Outrepassant les nouvelles exigences de la Loi sur la radiodiffusion et du décret du Gouvernement canadien de novembre 2023 en matière de propriété intellectuelle, le Conseil propose que la propriété intellectuelle de toute émission canadienne soit entièrement canadienne.

Ainsi, le Conseil offre un genre de compromis dans sa proposition globale de la définition d’une émission canadienne — une réduction de la présence de créateurs clés canadiens et du contrôle créatif, en échange d’un renforcement de la propriété et du contrôle financier par les producteurs et les diffuseurs canadiens.

Le résultat des modifications proposées par l’approche préliminaire du CRTC serait la redéfinition d’une émission canadienne qui favoriserait les géants du web, les studios américains et même les grands groupes de radiodiffusion canadiens (BCE, Rogers et Vidéotron) au détriment des créateurs clés canadiens qui verraient leur importance réduite considérablement dans la définition proposée par le Conseil. Ces modifications auraient, entre autres, comme conséquence de permettre la reclassification d’un bon nombre de tournages étrangers au Canada en émissions canadiennes — à condition que les géants du web acceptent de travailler avec une maison de production canadienne.

Ainsi, le volume mesuré d’« exportations » canadiennes pourrait augmenter sans nécessairement affecter le volume réel d’activités. Des équipes de production avec peu de créateurs clés canadiens pourraient remplir les nouvelles exigences du CRTC en matière de dépenses sur émissions canadiennes ! Ce n’est pas un résultat qui respecte le décret du Gouvernement du Canada qui ordonne au Conseil « d’appuyer la détention, par des Canadiens, d’un large éventail de postes clés de création, en particulier les postes avec un degré élevé de contrôle créatif ou de visibilité. »

Protéger les créateurs tout en favorisant les coproductions

Quelle est la solution ? La meilleure option serait de retenir les grandes lignes de la définition actuelle d’une émission canadienne pour assurer la place des créateurs clés dans le contenu canadien. En même temps, le CRTC pourrait maintenir la définition d’une « coentreprise internationale » qui permet aux producteurs étrangers des pays qui n’ont pas de traité de coproduction officielle avec le Canada (sanctionné par le gouvernement du Canada), dont les États-Unis, de participer à la production d’émissions canadiennes selon des critères plus souples à l’égard de la propriété intellectuelle et du contrôle financier.

Cela respecterait les nouvelles exigences de la Loi sur la radiodiffusion et le récent décret du Gouvernement canadien en matière de propriété intellectuelle. Évidemment, il faudrait mettre un plafond sur l’utilisation de telles coentreprises afin d’empêcher un recours excessif par les entreprises en ligne étrangères.

Les grandes entreprises de programmation et de distribution canadiennes et étrangères bénéficient d’importantes économies d’échelle en radiodiffusion et sur le web, d’un haut degré de concentration industrielle, et d’un pouvoir de monopoliser ou de contrôler leurs marchés. S’ajoutent à cela, l’information imparfaite disponible auprès des consommateurs, ainsi que la tendance des géants du web et des studios américains de fonctionner sans nécessairement tenir compte des lois et de la souveraineté des nations.

En cette période d’instabilité politique et commerciale, il est essentiel que le CRTC se tienne debout et continue à défendre les objectifs fondamentaux de la Loi sur la radiodiffusion, dont notre identité nationale et notre souveraineté culturelle qui sauvegardent, enrichissent et renforcent la structure culturelle, politique, sociale et économique du pays.

Quarante ans après la Commission Macdonald, il faut repenser l’avenir du Canada

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Imaginez une commission royale mandatée pour repenser en profondeur les leviers de croissance du Canada. Une instance dotée d’un mandat ambitieux et stratégique, chargée de définir des objectifs nationaux, de proposer des politiques et de réformer les institutions, tout en anticipant les défis économiques de demain.

L’idée n’est pas révolutionnaire. Nous l’avons déjà fait.

Un pan oublié de la Commission Macdonald

La Commission Macdonald (officiellement la Commission royale sur l’union économique et les perspectives de développement du Canada), qui a publié son rapport il y a près de 40 ans, avait justement cette mission.

Cette commission est surtout connue pour avoir ouvert la voie au libre-échange avec les États-Unis – une décision qui a fondamentalement transformé l’économie canadienne. Toutefois, une analyse plus détaillée de son travail révèle un ensemble beaucoup plus large de recommandations visant à corriger des inefficacités structurelles, à améliorer la gouvernance et à établir une vision économique à long terme pour le pays.

Aujourd’hui, nous nous retrouvons à un carrefour similaire, qui nécessite des décisions audacieuses et tournées vers l’avenir.

En ce moment, et c’est compréhensible, l’attention est concentrée sur la réaction immédiate aux menaces tarifaires du président américain Donald Trump.

Cependant, des enjeux tels que les barrières au commerce intérieur, la faible productivité, la dépendance excessive envers les États-Unis et les relations dysfonctionnelles entre les gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux méritent une analyse approfondie. Une nouvelle commission royale pourrait prendre le temps nécessaire pour trouver des solutions appropriées, sans être freinée par des considérations politiques à court terme.

L’économiste Trevor Tombe, de l’Université de Calgary, a répertorié, peu après l’élection de Trump, les nombreux défis structurels auxquels le Canada est confronté : des entraves au commerce intérieur qui freinent la croissance, des déséquilibres fiscaux entre les provinces qui créent des inégalités, et des réformes réglementaires nécessaires pour améliorer la compétitivité.

Il conclut, avec une pointe d’ironie, qu’il faudrait peut-être «une ou deux commissions royales pour aider à surmonter certains des défis que les gouvernements semblent incapables de relever».

Les problèmes économiques les plus urgents au Canada sont profondément interconnectés et nécessitent une stratégie globale à long terme – une stratégie qui va au-delà des cycles politiques de deux à quatre ans qui dominent l’élaboration des politiques.

Le problème est que nous avons perdu l’habitude d’utiliser les commissions royales comme outil de réforme politique significative.

Commissions royales : un bilan des impacts

Dans son livre The Adaptable Country, le politologue Alasdair Roberts rappelle qu’autrefois, les commissions royales étaient fréquemment employées pour mener des enquêtes approfondies sur des enjeux à long terme. Leur abandon a donc réduit la capacité du gouvernement à planifier stratégiquement sur le long terme.

Bien que certaines aient eu un impact limité, d’autres, comme la Commission Macdonald, ont laissé une empreinte durable.

Les recherches de Gregory Inwood et Carolyn Johns montrent que plusieurs ont directement mené à des réformes majeures. La Commission sur le bilinguisme et le biculturalisme (1963-1969) a conduit à l’adoption de la Loi sur les langues officielles, tandis que la Commission Bird (1967-1970) a joué un rôle clé dans l’avancement des droits des femmes.

Mais au-delà de leur impact politique, les commissions royales permettent aussi d’engager une discussion nationale, en mobilisant experts, dirigeants d’industrie et citoyens sur l’avenir du pays. Aujourd’hui, nous en avons besoin plus que jamais.

Pourquoi ne les utilise-t-on plus ?

La dernière grande commission axée sur les politiques publiques fut la Commission royale sur les peuples autochtones (1991-1996), dirigée par Georges Erasmus et René Dussault. Son rapport en cinq volumes demeure une référence, riche en recherches approfondies, appuyées par des années de consultations.

Même si ses recommandations centrales n’ont pas été appliquées, cette commission a contribué à façonner le débat actuel sur la réconciliation nationale.

Depuis, les gouvernements ont largement délaissé cet outil. Pourquoi ?

D’abord, une telle enquête nationale, menée sur plusieurs années, coûte cher. Or, dans le contexte actuel, les gouvernements ne souhaitent pas engager de dépenses importantes aux retombées incertaines.

Le paysage politique national semble également s’orienter vers une réduction du rôle de l’État. À cet égard, toutefois, il convient de rappeler que l’une des principales critiques adressées à la Commission Macdonald était qu’elle avait été accaparée par les économistes et que son rapport privilégiait largement des solutions favorisant le marché.

Autrement dit, le lancement d’une commission royale par un gouvernement ne signifie pas automatiquement un rôle accru pour l’État.

Ensuite, une commission royale peut prendre une trajectoire imprévue et interpréter son mandat initial d’une manière non anticipée. Ses conclusions ne peuvent être prédéterminées, ce qui en fait un exercice politiquement risqué.

Enfin, et peut-être surtout, une croyance de plus en plus répandue veut que les enjeux complexes puissent être résolus par des solutions rapides ou des raccourcis simplistes, en dépit des leçons de l’histoire qui prouvent le contraire.

Un exemple récent est celui des barrières au commerce intérieur. Depuis des décennies, ces barrières persistent malgré de nombreuses tentatives de réforme. Pourtant, Anita Anand, ex-ministre du Commerce intérieur et actuelle ministre de l’Innovation, des Sciences et de l’Industrie, soutenait que les obstacles au commerce interprovincial pouvaient être réglés en un mois – une déclaration qui ignore des décennies d’impasse politique.

Il est encourageant de constater du mouvement dans n élan en faveur de ce dossier, mais il est nécessaire de trouver une solution à long terme. Plus important encore, nous devons réfléchir à cette question en lien avec tous les autres grands défis auxquels nous sommes confrontés.

De solutions fragmentées à une vision cohérente

Une commission royale ne signifie pas simplement remettre le problème à plus tard. De toute évidence, les menaces tarifaires de Trump doivent être traitées dès maintenant, et non dans trois ans, un délai habituel pour une commission royale. Certaines actions peuvent et doivent être prises immédiatement.

Mais la réalité demeure que bon nombre des problèmes structurels majeurs du Canada ne sont pas isolés. Au contraire, ils sont profondément interconnectés.

Les aborder de manière précipitée et séparée risque de mener à des solutions inefficaces et éphémères. Nous avons besoin d’une approche unifiée et à long terme – une approche qui ne se limite pas au prochain cycle électoral, mais qui envisage l’avenir économique du Canada pour les générations à venir.

Relever ces défis exige quelque chose qui semble de plus en plus rare : un leadership doté de l’humilité nécessaire pour reconnaître qu’aucune personne ni aucun gouvernement ne détient toutes les réponses.

Un gouvernement doit être prêt à dire : « Nous avons besoin de temps et d’outils différents, car la complexité de ces enjeux exige une approche plus large, à l’échelle de la société ».  Le leadership dont nous avons besoin n’est pas celui qui détient toutes les solutions, mais celui qui est prêt à créer les conditions nécessaires pour les trouver.

C’est pourquoi il est peut-être temps pour le prochain gouvernement fédéral de dépoussiérer les vieux outils et de réintroduire l’un des instruments de politique les plus efficaces du Canada : une nouvelle commission royale pour le 21ᵉ siècle.

Forty years later, we’re due for another big rethink about Canada’s future

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Imagine establishing a royal commission tasked with a comprehensive evaluation of everything necessary to unlock Canada’s long-term economic potential – a commission with a broad, strategic mandate to identify national goals, policies and institutions essential for growth while preparing the country for the challenges ahead.

This isn’t a radical idea. We’ve done it previously.

The Macdonald Commission: A forgotten blueprint

The Macdonald Commission (officially the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada), which released its final report almost 40 years ago, was assigned this very mission.

It is best remembered for paving the way for free trade with the United States – a decision that fundamentally reshaped Canada’s economy. But a closer look at its work reveals a much broader set of recommendations that tackled structural inefficiencies, governance and the country’s long-term economic vision.

Today, we find ourselves at a similar crossroads, requiring bold, forward-looking decisions.

Attention is understandably focused now on an immediate response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats.

However, issues such as internal trade barriers, sluggish productivity, overreliance on the U.S. and dysfunctional federal-provincial relations need to be studied in depth by a new royal commission that can take the time necessary to find the correct solutions, unencumbered by short-term political considerations.

University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, in a commentary written shortly after Trump’s election, listed the many structural challenges Canada faces: Internal trade barriers that stifle economic growth, provincial fiscal imbalances that create inequalities and the regulatory overhauls needed to improve competitiveness.

His conclusion, possibly tongue-in-cheek: “Perhaps a Royal Commission or two could help cut through some of the difficult challenges that governments seem unable to tackle.”

Canada’s most pressing economic issues are deeply interconnected, requiring a holistic, long-term strategy – one that transcends the usual two- to four-year political cycle that dominates policymaking.

The problem is that we’ve lost the habit of using royal commissions as a tool for meaningful policy reform.

Royal commissions: A track record of impact

In his book, The Adaptable Country, political scientist Alasdair Roberts highlights how royal commissions were once used frequently to make comprehensive investigations into long-term challenges. The fact we have abandoned this tool diminishes the government’s capacity for long-term strategic planning.

While some royal commissions have had only a limited impact, many such as the Macdonald Commission have left a lasting imprint.

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Research by Gregory Inwood and Carolyn Johns demonstrates that many have directly led to transformative policy changes. The Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission (1963-69) led to the Official Languages Act, while the Bird Commission (1967-70) played a key role in advancing women’s rights.

But perhaps even more important than their lasting policy impact, royal commissions can also facilitate a national conversation, engaging experts, industry leaders and citizens in discussions about the country’s future. We clearly need that now.

So why don’t we do them anymore?

The last major policy-focused one was the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1991-96), chaired by Georges Erasmus and René Dussault. The five-volume RCAP report remains an influential document, brimming with extensive research backed by years of consultations.

Even if the report’s central recommendations were shelved, the RCAP helped to shape the national reconciliation conversation we’re having today.

Since then, however, governments have mostly avoided this approach. Why?

First, conducting a thorough, multi-year national inquiry is expensive and the current context is not one where governments are looking to spend money on large-scale enterprises with unclear outcomes.

The national political landscape also seems to be tilting toward a smaller role for government. On this note, however, it is worth mentioning that one of the main criticisms of the Macdonald Commission was that economists had co-opted it and that its report largely embraced market-based solutions.

In other words, a royal commission launched by a government does not automatically mean a bigger role for government.

Second, a royal commission may take on a life of its own and interpret its original mandate in unintended ways. Its findings cannot be predetermined, making them politically risky.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, there’s the growing belief that complex issues can be solved with quick fixes or slogans, even when history suggests otherwise.

A recent example is internal trade barriers. For decades, these have persisted despite numerous attempts at reform. Yet, Anita Anand, then minister in charge of internal trade, suggested that interprovincial trade issues could be resolved in a month – a claim that overlooks decades of political gridlock. (Anand moved on to the innovation, science and industry portfolio under Prime Minister Mark Carney.)

It is a positive development that momentum is building to make progress on this file, but we need a long-term solution. More importantly, we need to think about this issue in relation to all the other major problems we are facing.

From fragmented fixes to a coherent vision

A royal commission doesn’t mean just kicking the can down the road. Clearly, Trump’s tariff threats need to be addressed now, not in three years, which is the usual time frame for a royal commission. Some actions can be, and should be, taken now.

But the reality remains that many of Canada’s serious structural issues are not isolated. Instead, they are deeply interconnected.

Tackling them hastily and separately risks inefficient, short-lived solutions. Instead, we need a unified, long-term approach – one that doesn’t focus just on the next election cycle but that envisions Canada’s economic future for generations to come.

Addressing these challenges requires something that seems increasingly rare: leadership with the humility to acknowledge that no single person or government has all the answers.

A government must be willing to say: We need time and different tools because the complexity of these issues demands a broader, society-wide approach. The leadership we need isn’t one that has all the solutions. It’s one that is willing to create the conditions to find them.

That’s why it might be time for the next federal government to dust off the old toolbox and bring back one of Canada’s most effective policy instruments: a new royal commission for the 21st century.

Donald Trump is changing the political culture of the United States

In 1935, American political scientist E. E. Schattschneider astutely observed: “A new policy creates a new politics.” This insight from his book Politics, Pressures and the Tariff is equally apt today.

That first articulation of what would come to be known in political science as “policy feedback effects” was an early recognition that politics does not simply shape policymaking, but that policymaking also shapes politics.

President Donald Trump sweeping changes to American foreign and domestic policies, and his emphasis on personal loyalty over competence – regardless of how successful these are over the short and medium term – could alter long-term U.S. political culture so profoundly that it resists a return to normal, evidence-based governance after he leaves office.

What Trump’s second term highlights

Trump’s second term is undoubtedly both the product of, and the initiator of, American civil strife.

In the first weeks back in the White House, he signed more than 80 executive orders. That is not uncommon. Executive orders are a straightforward way for presidents to bypass Congress. President Joseph Biden signed more than 160 of them.

However, Trump’s recent orders that signal major changes include establishing a White House Faith Office, withdrawing some funding from United Nations relief projects and establishing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with Elon Musk as the lead “special government employee.”

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Furthermore, Trump has reportedly tasked his administration’s top officials with screening applicants for jobs in several government agencies, including the Pentagon, by asking their thoughts on the violent attack on the Capitol that Trump initiated on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Political scientists Nancy Rosenblum and Russel Muirhead describe Trump’s overall approach as “ungoverning” – a process in which the state deliberately degrades its own administrative capacity in favour of personal loyalty to the president. They argue that this shift diminishes the value of expertise, reducing it to a dispensable resource.

Ungoverning “makes the strongman weak,” Rosenblum and Muirhead note.

Thus, Trump’s emphasis on personal loyalty will undermine his ability to govern effectively. Imposing one’s will is not the same as governing. As loyalty replaces expertise and obsequious followers multiply, a leader’s excesses are left increasingly unchecked.

The consequences of a new era

Not only will these sweeping changes diminish the state’s capacity to perform the everyday functions of government, they will also reshape the norms around future governance. This could happen in two ways.

First, it will reshape political culture as the U.S. pursues more isolationist “America First” policies both abroad and at home.

Trump has already threatened or initiated tariff wars with Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union. Other countries could be hit in April.

This economic pressure is compounded by Trump’s increasing antagonism toward Canada, driven by his desire for our natural resources, including critical minerals.

Repeated references to Canada as the “51^st state” have rapidly reshaped Canadian political culture. The threat of annexation has fueled a surge in patriotism, with some Canadians even interpreting the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament as a manifestation of “burgeoning U.S.- Canada geopolitical rivalry.”

In response to growing tensions, many Canadians are boycotting American products in favour of Canadian-made goods – a shift that is already affecting the retail market.

More strikingly, a recent poll found 51 per cent of those surveyed now view the U.S. as an “enemy” country or a “threat to national interests.”

As Winston Churchill warned: “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the act of a single day.” Since it can take decades to repair diplomatic ties, Trump’s threats of annexation are already reshaping North American political culture for the long term.

In terms of Trump’s domestic policy, the new era of “America First” could lead to a fragmented federal bureaucracy, reshaping how governance is understood. By valuing personal loyalty to Trump and cost-cutting over the expertise needed for complex, beneficial outcomes, it will drive a shift in governance norms.

Second, it is possible that many of Trump’s new policies will be “sticky” – meaning difficult for a future administration to undo.

When sticky policies are designed, they can have “adhesion mechanisms” embedded that reinforce a specific trajectory. Scholars Andrew Jordan and Elah Matt have outlined that mechanisms such as monitoring and review systems, revision steps and relational contracts can all either enhance policy adaptability or make them “sticky” and resistant to change.

The danger in what the Trump administration is doing is that its policymaking in an era of weakened administrative capacity and growing deference to executive authority may lead to policies that become sticky or self-reinforcing.

Without procedural safeguards, built-in revision mechanisms or the necessary expertise to explore alternative designs, policies risk becoming entrenched.

In the absence of specialized knowledge, poor policy design becomes more likely as decisions are made without sufficient understanding of long-term consequences or potential adjustments. This rigidity makes future corrections difficult, even when evidence suggests the need for reform or when political priorities shift.

Changing course

While it may seem early to discuss the challenges facing the next administration, the ways in which Trump is reshaping U.S. politics are not merely future problems. Rather, they are unfolding in real time.

The reshaping of norms is happening every day, influencing governance long before any future transition of power. Decisions made now – from executive orders to bureaucratic restructuring – may have ripple effects that extend well beyond the current Trump second term, altering not just policy but the very framework of governance itself.

Beyond the inherent complexity of policy reform, changing course in four years could prove difficult. If new norms prioritize deference to executive authority over professional competence, future administrations may find themselves constrained not just by sticky policy legacies, but by an altered political culture.

How Canada could get much closer to Europe

(Version française disponible ici)

As Canada faces an economic aggression backed by an existential threat to its sovereignty, we know we need options. One idea floating around is to become the 28^th member state of the European Union.

Why not? After the defection of the U.S., Europe remains the only club of liberal democracies and multilateralism, two core Canadian values. It is a prosperous region where, thanks to our history and contribution to NATO, we have reliable allies. Becoming the 28^th EU member state rather than the 51^st U.S. state would act as a hedge for our economic security while keeping our political sovereignty.

Now, Canadians will naturally be hesitant to join an often-demonized organization whose centre of gravity is firmly across the Atlantic. But even if we never joined the EU, there is still a strong case for applying for membership now. As we begin a conversation with Brussels, we will open up paths that, short of full membership, would also get us much closer to Europe… and a bit more removed from the U.S.

The long road to becoming an EU member

On paper, Canada is the perfect candidate for EU membership. Our country easily meets two of the three so-called Copenhagen criteria used to assess candidates for enlargement: like other member states, Canada is a free-market economy (first criterion) and a democracy ruled by law and respect for human rights (second criterion).

The third criterion would be more challenging and require at least 10 years of bilateral negotiation. It is called the acquis communautaire (French is one of the EU’s official languages). To become a full member, Canada would need to adopt all the supranational laws that have been passed since the creation of the EU, in 1957. There are a lot of them, and very few possibilities to carve out exceptions.

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If Canadians wanted to launch such a negotiation, all 27 EU member states would also need to give their unanimous approval. At every stage of the process, any of them could halt or veto negotiations on one aspect or another: say, agriculture or financial services. However, when comparing our application file to those of other countries, like Ukraine, they would likely welcome a wealthy and stable democracy with a national budget that is well in line with EU fiscal rules.

What EU membership would mean

Adopting the acquis communautaire would include social rights, such as the maximum 48-hour week (including overtime), environmental regulations such as REACH (Registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals), and economic rules such as the banking union. By and large, that would mean upgrading our social, economic, and environmental rights. More controversially, perhaps, Canada would have to replace supply management with the Common Agricultural Policy, contribute to the CO2 emissions trading scheme, and apply EU trade tariffs to third parties (including the U.S.).

Down the line, EU membership would also entail free movement of people (no need to show a passport between Montreal and Paris) and the substitution of the Canadian dollar with the Euro. On some issues, decisions from the European Court of Justice would supersede those of the Supreme Court. In effect, joining the EU would require a complete overhaul of our institutional, policy, and regulatory landscape.

A tall order! But bear in mind that Canadians would elect their representatives in the European Parliament and the European Commission. Our leaders would sit on the European Council and appoint European judges. With allies such as France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany, we would have an opportunity to shape outcomes. The EU is much more decentralized than the U.S.: no European army, no European FBI, no European taxes, no European mail, no European social security. And, as Brexit demonstrated, anyone can leave if they wish, without a civil war. Canada would become part of an important club without losing much sovereignty.

Serious obstacles

To be sure, there are geographic, economic, and political obstacles to EU membership. Canada is not on the European continent which, in principle, is a condition for accession. But more importantly, we still trade very little with Europe compared to the U.S. Although trade diversification is precisely the point of looking for options, there is no denying that the main force of attraction remains south of the border.

The main obstacle, in my view, would be political. On the one hand, there is no doubt that Trump’s aggression has encouraged Canadians to consider options they had never considered. In an Abacus Data survey conducted from February 20 to 25, 2025, 46 per cent of Canadians said they supported joining the EU while 29 per cent opposed it. Although about a quarter of respondents didn’t know or were unsure, that is a staggering number for an issue that has never been on the agenda before.

On the other hand, as my colleagues and I documented in the context of Brexit, Canadians are quite polarized in their attitudes towards Europe: while Liberals and Eastern Canadians have an attachment to continental Europe and the EU, Conservatives and Western Canadians feel closer to the U.K. (and, the Abacus survey shows, the U.S.). Joining the EU, without the U.K., would risk dividing the country, which is not what we need right now. Hence the need to consider other options for a rapprochement.

Alternatives to full membership

Some countries have very close relations with the EU without membership. One is the United Kingdom, which left the EU in 2020 after a 47-year marriage and is now bound by a new trade and co-operation agreement. Another is Switzerland which has access to the internal market and grants free movement of people to Europeans. Finally, there is the case of Norway which, as a member of the so-called European Economic Area with Iceland, enjoys almost all the benefits of EU membership except voting rights. All of these scenarios would go beyond the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) we currently have with the EU. Each has pros and cons.

The U.K. scenario would be the easiest to follow but also the least transformational. With CETA and NATO, we basically already have the same rights as the U.K. in the EU: quasi-free trade and partial market access for services, participation in the Allied military command, as well as participation in some EU programs such as Horizon Europe for research.

On many political and diplomatic issues, Canada has long been considered like-minded and an honorary European nation. A beefed-up Strategic Partnership Agreement could institutionalize our desire to do more together, for example in the field of security and defense, digital governance, or climate change. The main benefit of the U.K. scenario would be symbolic: showing that we throw our fate with Europe rather than the U.S.

Policy Options coverage of the Trump 2.0 era

The Norwegian scenario would be the most substantive but also the costliest. Canada would need to contribute to the EU budget as a proportion of its GDP (around one per cent). It would have to implement the bulk of EU rules, from car headlight standards to the recognition of professional qualifications. We would do all this without formally belonging to the EU, so without representatives in Europe’s Parliament, Commission, Council or Court. This is not ideal from a democratic point of view. But our firms would have unfettered access to the single market, including for our gas, oil, beef, and maple syrup, with fewer regulatory or tariff barriers than we ever faced with the U.S. under NAFTA (now the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA).

The Swiss scenario is the only one that allows for deep bilateral negotiations and a win-win outcome. It is, for that reason, the most complicated to implement. Because the two parties are on equal footing and everything is negotiable, talks tend to drag on forever and interim deals can constantly be challenged. Some EU conditions, such as adhering to its more ambitious environmental regulation, may be hard to resist. But at the end of the day each side decides what they’re willing to give. In contrast to Switzerland, a landlocked country, Canada may not wish to grant free movement of people across the Atlantic. But we may want security and defense cooperation in the Arctic.

Submit an application now, figure out the details later

At this stage, there is no harm in applying for EU membership. This gesture of sovereignty would be highly symbolic. It would show Donald Trump that we are not alone, and that we have options if he decides to strangle our economy, interfere in our politics, or worse.

As a political scientist who specializes in the EU, I am not at all confident that Canada-EU negotiations would ever be concluded, or even that Canadians would want them to succeed. The odds are long, and there is no obligation to go all the way to the end: after all, Norway applied to the EU in 1962 and never joined. But in the meantime, starting a round of negotiations on either accession or an ambitious Canada-EU deal would allow us to explore a wealth of opportunities to free Canada from American dependence.

Voici comment le Canada peut se rapprocher davantage de l’Europe

(English version available here)

Face à une agression économique accompagnée d’une menace existentielle contre notre souveraineté, nous avons besoin d’options. Une idée qui circule de plus en plus est celle de devenir le 28^e État membre de l’Union européenne.

Pourquoi pas? Depuis le repli des États-Unis, l’Europe demeure le seul regroupement de démocraties libérales et de pays engagés dans le multilatéralisme, deux valeurs fondamentales que nous partageons. C’est une région prospère où, grâce à notre histoire et à notre contribution à l’OTAN, nous avons des alliés de confiance. Devenir le 28^e État membre de l’Union européenne, plutôt que le 51^e État américain, nous permettrait de renforcer notre sécurité économique tout en préservant notre souveraineté politique.

Bien sûr, les Canadiens pourraient hésiter à rejoindre une organisation souvent critiquée, dont le centre de gravité se trouve de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique. Mais même si nous ne rejoignions jamais l’UE, il y a de solides arguments en faveur du dépôt d’une demande d’adhésion dès maintenant. En engageant un dialogue avec Bruxelles, nous ouvririons la porte à des perspectives de collaboration qui, sans aller jusqu’à une adhésion complète, nous permettraient de nous rapprocher considérablement de l’Europe… et de s’éloigner un peu des États-Unis.

10 ans de négociations bilatérales

Sur papier, le Canada est un candidat idéal pour l’adhésion à l’Union européenne. Notre pays répond aisément à deux des trois critères de Copenhague, qui servent à évaluer les demandes d’adhésion : comme les autres États membres, le Canada possède une économie de marché (premier critère) et un régime démocratique fondé sur l’État de droit et le respect des droits humains (deuxième critère).

Le troisième critère serait plus difficile à respecter et nécessiterait au moins dix ans de négociations bilatérales. Il s’agit de l’« acquis communautaire ». Pour devenir membre à part entière, le Canada devrait adopter l’ensemble des lois supranationales adoptées depuis la création de l’UE en 1957. Elles sont en grand nombre et il y a très peu de possibilités de faire des exceptions.

Si les Canadiens souhaitaient entamer une telle négociation, les 27 États membres de l’UE devraient l’approuver à l’unanimité. À chaque étape du processus, chacun pourrait bloquer ou opposer son veto à certaines discussions, par exemple sur l’agriculture ou les services financiers. Toutefois, en comparant notre candidature à celle d’autres pays, comme l’Ukraine, l’UE verrait sans doute d’un bon œil l’entrée d’une démocratie stable et prospère dont le budget national est conforme aux règles fiscales européennes.

Ce que signifierait l’adhésion à l’UE

L’adoption de l’acquis communautaire inclurait des droits sociaux, comme la semaine de travail de 48 heures maximum (incluant les heures supplémentaires), des obligations environnementales, telles que le règlement REACH (Registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals), ainsi que des règles économiques, comme celles de l’Union bancaire. Dans l’ensemble, cela reviendrait à renforcer nos normes sociales, économiques et environnementales.

Certaines obligations seraient plus controversées : le Canada devrait remplacer son système de gestion de l’offre par la Politique agricole commune (PAC), contribuer au marché du carbone européen et appliquer les tarifs douaniers de l’UE aux pays tiers (y compris les États-Unis).

À terme, l’adhésion signifierait aussi la libre circulation des personnes (plus besoin de passeport entre Montréal et Paris) et le remplacement du dollar canadien par l’euro. Dans certains domaines, les décisions de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne primeraient sur celles de la Cour suprême du Canada. En somme, rejoindre l’UE exigerait une refonte complète de nos cadres institutionnels, politiques et réglementaires.

Un défi de taille! Mais il faut se rappeler que les Canadiens éliraient leurs représentants au Parlement européen et à la Commission européenne. Nos dirigeants siègeraient au Conseil européen et nommeraient des juges européens. Avec des alliés comme la France, les Pays-Bas, le Danemark et l’Allemagne, nous aurions voix au chapitre. L’UE est bien plus décentralisée que les États-Unis : pas d’armée européenne, pas de FBI européen, pas d’impôts européens, pas de poste européenne, pas de sécurité sociale européenne. Et, comme le Brexit l’a montré, un pays peut toujours choisir de partir s’il le souhaite, sans guerre civile. Le Canada pourrait ainsi rejoindre un club influent sans trop perdre de sa souveraineté.

Un parcours semé d’embûches

Bien entendu, il existe des obstacles géographiques, économiques et politiques à une adhésion à l’UE. Le Canada n’est pas situé sur le continent européen, ce qui constitue en principe une condition d’adhésion. Mais, surtout, nos échanges commerciaux avec l’Europe restent limités par rapport à ceux avec les États-Unis. Bien que la diversification commerciale soit justement un des objectifs de ce rapprochement, il est indéniable que l’attraction principale demeure au sud de la frontière.

L’obstacle majeur, selon moi, serait politique. D’une part, l’agressivité de Trump a incité les Canadiens à envisager des options auxquelles ils n’avaient jamais pensé auparavant. Selon une enquête d’Abacus Data réalisée du 20 au 25 février 2025, 46 % des Canadiens se disaient favorables à l’adhésion à l’UE, tandis que 29 % s’y opposaient. Même si environ le quart des répondants étaient indécis ou ne savaient pas, ce chiffre est surprenant pour une question jusque-là jamais évoquée dans l’espace public.

D’autre part, comme mes collègues et moi l’avons constaté dans le contexte du Brexit, les Canadiens sont divisés dans leur perception de l’Europe : alors que les libéraux et les Canadiens plus à l’Est sont attachés à l’Europe continentale et à l’UE, les conservateurs et les Canadiens de l’Ouest se sentent plus proches du Royaume-Uni (et, selon l’enquête Abacus, des États-Unis). Adhérer à l’UE sans le Royaume-Uni risquerait de diviser le pays, ce dont nous n’avons pas besoin actuellement. D’où la nécessité de considérer d’autres formes de rapprochement.

Des alternatives à l’adhésion complète

Certains pays entretiennent des relations très étroites avec l’UE sans en être membres. C’est le cas du Royaume-Uni, qui a quitté l’Union en 2020 après 47 ans d’adhésion et qui est désormais lié par un nouvel accord de commerce et de coopération. La Suisse, quant à elle, a accès au marché intérieur et accorde la libre circulation des personnes aux citoyens européens. Enfin, la Norvège, en tant que membre de l’Espace économique européen avec l’Islande, bénéficie de presque tous les avantages de l’UE, à l’exception du droit de vote. Tous ces modèles vont au-delà de l’Accord économique et commercial global (AECG) que nous avons actuellement avec l’UE. Chacun présente des avantages et des inconvénients.

Le scénario britannique serait le plus simple, mais le moins transformateur. Avec l’AECG et l’OTAN, nous avons déjà des droits comparables à ceux du Royaume-Uni en matière de commerce et d’accès partiel au marché des services, ainsi qu’une participation au commandement militaire allié et à certains programmes européens comme Horizon Europe pour la recherche.

Sur de nombreuses questions politiques et diplomatiques, le Canada a longtemps été considéré comme un pays partageant les mêmes valeurs, voire comme une nation européenne honorifique. Un Accord de partenariat stratégique renforcé pourrait officialiser notre volonté de collaborer davantage, par exemple dans les domaines de la sécurité et de la défense, de la gouvernance numérique ou des changements climatiques. Le principal avantage du scénario britannique serait symbolique : montrer que nous choisissons de nous associer à l’Europe plutôt qu’aux États-Unis.

Le scénario norvégien serait le plus engageant, mais aussi le plus coûteux. Le Canada devrait contribuer au budget de l’UE en proportion de son PIB (environ 1 %). Il lui faudrait appliquer la majorité des règles européennes, qu’il s’agisse des normes sur les phares des véhicules ou de la reconnaissance des qualifications professionnelles. Tout cela se ferait sans faire officiellement partie de l’UE, donc sans représentants au Parlement, à la Commission, au Conseil ou à la Cour. D’un point de vue démocratique, ce n’est pas l’idéal. Cependant, nos entreprises bénéficieraient d’un accès sans restriction au marché unique, y compris pour le gaz, le pétrole, le bœuf et le sirop d’érable, avec moins d’obstacles réglementaires ou tarifaires que ceux rencontrés avec les États-Unis sous l’ALENA (maintenant l’Accord Canada-États-Unis-Mexique ou ACEUM).

Le scénario suisse est le seul qui permet des négociations bilatérales approfondies et une entente gagnant-gagnant. Il est aussi le plus complexe à mettre en place. Comme les deux parties sont sur un pied d’égalité et que tout est négociable, les pourparlers ont tendance à s’éterniser et les accords provisoires peuvent sans cesse être remis en question. En somme, chaque partie détermine ce qu’elle est prête à concéder. Certaines conditions imposées par l’UE, comme l’adoption de normes environnementales plus strictes, pourraient être difficiles à refuser. Contrairement à la Suisse, un pays enclavé, le Canada ne souhaiterait sans doute pas instaurer la libre circulation des personnes de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique. En revanche, il pourrait vouloir renforcer la coopération en matière de sécurité et de défense dans l’Arctique.

Déposer maintenant, régler les détails plus tard

À ce stade, il n’y aurait aucun préjudice à soumettre une demande d’adhésion à l’UE. Ce geste hautement symbolique enverrait un message clair à Donald Trump : le Canada n’est pas seul et a des options face aux menaces économiques ou politiques.

En tant que politologue spécialisé dans l’Union européenne, je ne suis pas du tout convaincu que de telles négociations entre le Canada et l’UE aboutiraient un jour, ni même que les Canadiens souhaiteraient leur succès. Les chances sont minces, mais il n’y aurait aucune obligation d’aller jusqu’au bout : la Norvège a déposé sa candidature à l’UE en 1962 sans jamais y adhérer. Néanmoins, l’amorce d’un dialogue sur une éventuelle adhésion ou un partenariat ambitieux avec l’UE nous permettrait d’explorer de nouvelles pistes de coillaboration pour réduire notre dépendance aux États-Unis.

Canada should look south to the Caribbean amid Trump threats

The Trump administration’s disruption of traditional U.S. policies in both its bilateral relations with Canada and its approach to the world has prompted a flood of suggestions that Ottawa consider action in various well-honed policy frontiers.

These include reducing interprovincial trade barriers, bolstering national defence and security and international relations, and changing government procurement plans to favour domestic suppliers.

But Canada should also look to the Caribbean Basin to help find its new global purpose. Specifically, Ottawa should maximize its longstanding relationship with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to restore and burnish our middle power status and preserve the internationalist principles we helped institute nearly a century ago.

Ottawa can take four steps to achieve that goal: expand access to our domestic market for CARICOM service and investment sectors; exempt vulnerable CARICOM businesses from direct competition with more powerful Canadian competitors; revamp our temporary foreign worker programs; and stop the practice of deporting convicted criminals to their countries of birth.

From acting in unison to finding a new path

Since the early 20^th century in general and the post-Second World War period in particular, the Canada-U.S. relationship displayed unusually high levels of symbiosis toward strategic partners elsewhere in the world.

Recently, however, Canada and the U.S. have had distinctly different geo-strategic postures toward the pan-American region.

U.S. foreign policy is uncharacteristically aloof from the Caribbean Basin because of more urgent strategic commitments in Europe and Asia.

Also, the U.S. has exhibited unprecedented aversion to regional involvement – excepting the Venezuelan-Guyanese border dispute, and its pledge to expand its presence at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Panama Canal – despite mounting humanitarian crises that are likely to increase in frequency and severity.

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The Caribbean Basin thus offers numerous opportunities for revitalizing Canada’s foreign policy in a world that is polarizing in both political and economic terms.

Predicated on political, economic and cultural linkages, the longstanding special Canada-CARICOM relationship – recently rechristened a strategic partnership – is teeming with potential to affirm the waning principles of liberal internationalism.

For starters, the strategic partnership is an embodiment of once-widely revered principles such as democracy, the rule of law, human rights and a rules-based international order.

Four steps forward

To strengthen that bond, the next federal government should take four immediate steps.

First, Canada should enhance access to its domestic marketplace for businesses domiciled in CARICOM member states, particularly those dealing in services and investments because current bilateral agreements pertain only to goods, not services.

Second, this should be complemented by explicit recognition of vulnerable CARICOM business sectors requiring exemption from direct competition with their Canadian competitors.

In free trade talks, manufacturing and service sector inputs were identified as requiring trade facilitation and promotional assistance to compete with transnational Canadian competitors. Doing so would not only buy goodwill toward Canada but would also contribute toward alleviating CARICOM’s growth and development constraints.

Third, Canada should commit to overhauling its temporary foreign worker programs, which have been dubbed a breeding ground for modern forms of slavery. This includes ramping up enforcement against non-compliant employers as well as Amnesty International’s many recommendations to federal and provincial governments.

Last but not least, Canada must take a new approach to its longstanding policy of deporting landed foreign nationals convicted of criminal offences. This couldn’t be more timely given the imminent threat of mass U.S. deportations of illegal immigrants and the problems that CARICOM countries already face in handling this influx when they already have other crises facing them.

Canada needs to stop doing more of the same in Haiti

The unfairness of Canada’s Latin American humanitarian program

All of our coverage of the Trump 2.0 era 

I recently argued that the geopolitical gains resulting from these steps would greatly outweigh any associated economic costs. That’s still true, arguably more so than ever at a time when the 90-year project of greater North American economic integration seems to be coming apart at the seams.

For Canada, this is a critical juncture requiring radical domestic market revisions and the geo-politicization of trade. It is also an auspicious moment of soul–searching for its CARICOM partners amid the increasing tenuousness of traditional alliances and the enduring reverence for the aspirational principles espoused by the waning liberal order.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a special affinity for Canada’s relationship with CARICOM, as exemplified by various high-level climate collaborations with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

To review Canada’s international purpose and restore its middle power status, the next prime minister must build on that momentum.

This may be the last best stab at salvaging the principles that enabled “Canada’s century.” Whatever happens, one thing seems certain: whether or not we celebrated the principles of liberal internationalism in their heyday, we’re all going to miss them if they become a dead letter.

Affordability and Climate: Addressing Intertwined Challenges in Politics Today

As a new U.S. administration issues repeated threats to impose punishing tariffs on Canadian exports, the IRPP hosted a panel discussion on how to address the intersecting affordability and climate crises. 

Increasing costs from extreme weather events, uncertainty about energy and supply chains and added pressure on already inadequate infrastructure and housing mean new, comprehensive solutions are needed to keep Canadians safe. The panel focused on how to protect households from the rising cost of living, how to minimize the impacts of extreme weather events and how to keep affordable food on the table. 

Hosted in partnership with the Affordability Action Council, the panel featured Tyler Meredith, a former economic policy adviser to the Liberal government, Kathleen Monk, former director of communications to NDP leader Jack Layton, Karen Restoule, vice-president of Toronto-based Crestview Strategy and senior fellow at Macdonald-Laurier Institute and was moderated by Jennifer Ditchburn.

This podcast is the audio from that discussion.

How Trump is reshaping global criminal justice co-operation

The second presidential victory of Donald Trump has already ushered in a new era of geopolitics marked by the U.S. abdicating its role as the guardian of the rules-based order to which international criminal justice co-operation has long been tethered.   

“The postwar global order is not just obsolete. It is now a weapon being used against us,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at his confirmation hearing. 

“(Countries) have manipulated it to serve their interests at the expense of ours.”   

In its place, a narrower, one might say myopic, nationalist vision is emerging in the United States. Self-interests are governing co-operative transactions, and long-standing allies are being blackmailed into compliance without reciprocal concessions.  

In this rapidly evolving context, Canada and like-minded countries may be forced to re-evaluate their commitment to the treaty-based international criminal justice framework. It may be time for countries to redefine the rules that will guide them — if not multilateral and bilateral treaties and conventions — and how they will co-operate in the future.

In 2021, the growing global debate over the embattled rules-based order inspired co-author Yvon Dandurand and me to think critically about how international criminal justice co-operation could possibly evolve as that order eroded. That discourse culminated in our developing five scenarios. At that time, we could not have predicted which, if any, of these would eventually take hold.  

Yet, four years later, shifts in U.S. foreign policy portend a fundamental revision of cross-border relationships. This is leading to a sustained deterioration of the foremost attributes of co-operation: trust, reciprocity and predictability.  

In what we originally characterized as the “going-alone” scenario, moving away from multilateral mechanisms, along with coercion of others to achieve self-interested ends, would devolve into common practice. To the extent that scenario reflects our current geopolitical reality, one may be concerned about the longer-term consequences. 

America was always first 

The present-day spread of coercive tactics by the main global players, including China and the U.S., cannot be mediated by foreign countries pledging renewed loyalties to the existing framework. The roots are structural and relational, which leaves countries vulnerable to a diverse array of pressures.  

For instance, take extradition treaties that hypothetically could be abused by the U.S. administration to compel foreign governments to surrender American political dissidents based on fabricated criminal charges. This would expose democratic states to reputational damage.  

Consider also the power the U.S. has to selectively impose financial sanctions against individuals and countries — ostensibly implicated in terrorist financing, corruption or other crimes — by restricting their transactions in U.S. dollars across the global financial system.   

Imagine the U.S.-headquartered tech companies that control an immense volume of digital data and the cross-border disclosure of which could be prohibited by the U.S. administration. That would in turn undermine investigations led by foreign governments that have not enacted data localization laws of their own. 

More informal methods include co-operation veiled in greater secrecy. This could include sharing intelligence in exchange for a direct favour or a delayed assurance that future help will be delivered. Diplomatic reciprocity risks losing its value if a foreign service is led by a highly unpredictable administration that might seek to cash in favours of an undemocratic nature.  

Countries historically assumed such vulnerabilities because the U.S. acted in foreseeable ways. It respected its trust-based relationships, negotiated compromises and honoured, at least in principle, the agreements it signed.  

The dangerous rise of “might makes right” 

The year of living dangerously – Canada, Australia and the global order 

Canada has lost its purpose in foreign relations. It’s time for a review 

As the American administration increasingly sows uncertainty and unreliability, foreign governments will more than ever question whether they can continue to shoulder the risks and concede to the U.S.’s evolving demands.  

Perhaps for good reason. Strategic calculations quickly become trickier if concessions made by governments to appease Trump start to impede their ability to co-operate with other countries.  

Canada recently granted a U.S. demand to designate drug cartels as terrorists. This could introduce new ways to potentially ignore human rights safeguards. Whether and to what extent such concessions will raise concerns among Canada’s other partners over sharing intelligence and extraditing fugitives should be closely watched. 

If the three main attributes of co-operation continue to be disregarded by the global superpower that was once their primary defender, it sends a dangerous signal of indifference to co-operation made possible by the institutions, mechanisms and norms of the rules-based order. And it invites many other countries to disinvest too.  

The deterioration of trust, reciprocity and predictability could also help fuel an alternative scenario in which stable partners re-evaluate the conditions and mechanisms by which cross-border crime is investigated and prosecuted. 

Appetite for adaptation? 

There may yet be space to forge a working consensus with nations that still value predictable criminal justice co-operation, even if some of the most powerful players are distancing themselves from the rule of law and the protection of human rights.  

What then could Canada and like-minded countries realistically do, if anything, to try to adapt a frail co-operation framework to counter the evolving threat of cross-border crime? 

To start, a consensus around the urgency of reform needs to emerge.  

Can leaders fundamentally rethink the criminal justice co-operation infrastructure without the collective will to recognize its serious fault lines? Will states opt to defend parts of the imperfect rules-based order as a framework for adapting or adding co-operation pathways?  

In recent years, countries have increasingly hedged against the anticipated rise in Chinese influence by further embracing “minilateralism” with stable partners. A small coalition of like-minded nations might be best poised to initiate rights-based reforms for criminal justice co-operation and eventually persuade other countries by appealing to their own interests or by pledging foreign aid.  

For instance, civil society groups have called for a global strategy against organized crime that safeguards human rights and revitalizes mechanisms for international criminal justice co-operation. A minilateral approach might lend itself well for developing and carrying through such a strategy.  

In the longer term, reliance on minilateral co-operation risks relocating cross-border crime to places where co-operation is weaker, especially to countries that already have fragile institutions vulnerable to hijacking by organized criminal groups.  

But in the short term, the versatility offered by informal co-operation blocs could prove favourable, especially as global power is progressively dispersed among more major players and multilateralism is increasingly deadlocked.  

In the best-case scenario, international co-operation in criminal matters would regain political traction as a valuable way to advance national interests in pursuit of human betterment.  

Canada’s resolve to fight crime through co-operation based on human rights and the rule of law will continue to be tested by Trump.  

International co-operation guided by predictability and made possible by reciprocity remains key to effectively combating transborder crime. Without such conditions, we will increasingly find ourselves vulnerable to an even more dangerous set of rules: those of other countries intent on an imperial quest.