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Recent calls to establish a royal commission to chart Canada’s future in an era of global turbulence caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies and threats are compelling in general but particularly urgent in the area of social policy.

Accessible, world-leading health and social policies have long been a source of Canadian pride and identity – a big factor setting us apart from our American neighbours. That is no longer the case.

Our social policies, mainly established over half a century ago, have not evolved in line with changed population characteristics or technological advancements.

For example, since the 1960s, the employment rate for women has tripled while the rate for men has fallen by one-quarter. The percentage of immigrants in the population has tripled. The share of young people in the population has halved while the share of older people has tripled.

The “punch cards and typewriters” technology of the 1960s supported one-size-fits-all programs. The old ways of doing business were simply computerized in subsequent decades and have yet to enter the truly modern digital world.

While some short-term fixes are possible, what is missing today is a practical strategy for building consensus on the best route forward and the institutional arrangements that would enable ongoing system-wide planning and monitoring.

The proposed royal commission on Canada’s future would be ideally positioned to make recommendations that address these crucial gaps. It would set the stage for restoring Canada’s leadership in health and social policies, as well as fostering a renewed sense of unity and pride.

Recent incremental reforms have mostly failed. Changes were implemented within existing silos, often reinforcing them and neglecting how their interconnected services and supports affect the lives of Canadians.

As a result, serious cracks have emerged in policies around health care, long-term care, affordability, housing and drug use. Nor are we creating the skills needed for the robust and innovative economy of the future.

There have also been no serious proposals for big policy changes in recent years. The main candidate, a basic income, is addressed at the wrong problem, is out of touch with fiscal realities and relies on the one-size-fits-all programs that make sense only based on the technologies of 50 years ago.

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The current priority should be on fixing social services using AI technologies rather than expensive improvements in income support – an area where Canada already has effective programs by world standards.

One strength of a federation such as Canada should be the capacity to learn from the success or failure of health and social initiatives undertaken by provinces, territories and local governments.

However, this has not happened. Governments and professional organizations continue to place priority on protecting themselves from external scrutiny or accountability and have therefore not allowed the sharing of data about which interventions are working best for which individuals –despite the fact digital technology now allows data sharing that is tailor-made to individual circumstances while protecting privacy.

In addition, Canada does not have institutional frameworks to evaluate the interplay among health, skills, and social policies, or to assess options at the level of social policy as a whole.

There is no organization with a mandate to routinely assess the combined effects of the income-support programs, service programs, regulatory programs and public-information initiatives of the various governmental departments and jurisdictions. There are no bodies with a mandate to monitor success in the various social domains or draw attention to needed changes.

The resulting deterioration in social policies is widely felt. In a 2022 OECD survey, only 36 per cent of Canadian respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: “I feel that I could easily receive public benefits if I needed them.” That’s a truly dismal result, albeit similar to respondents in other countries.

The stagnation of our social programs is also felt by the employees who administer those programs. Violence in schools and health care are a worrying symptom.

More common, and equally worrying, are the broader effects of trying to deliver siloed, outdated programming, including accountability measures that stifle innovation, increase paperwork, overwork frontline staff and create a sense of purposelessness in support functions.

This has been documented by Donald Savoie in his recent book Speaking Truth to Canadians about Their Public Service and in recent calls for public-service reforms

A royal commission would allow us to break out of the incrementalism and rigid policy silos that have served us so poorly in recent decades. It could focus on the solutions made possible by digital technology and new data sources.

The commission could describe policies where referrals to services were based on real-time evidence of which interventions – and which mixes of interventions – worked best in similar circumstances in the past. The design and administration of programs would continuously evolve based on feedback of what was working best.

In consequence, costs would fall and outcomes would improve. Individuals and families would become full partners in the provision of health and social services.

Privacy protection would be assured. Implementation would be gradual, built on small-scale experimentation. No legislative or jurisdictional changes to existing programs would be needed.

A royal commission could recommend institutional arrangements that could provide integrated assessment and planning at the level of social policy as a whole, as well as at the level of the different domains of social policy such as health, education and income security.

Reform requires two key actions: developing an evidence base for effective, people-centred social policy, and building governance and institutional capacity to use this evidence in practical applications.

We know how this can be done from a technical perspective. Statistics Canada has already produced a paper describing the new micro-level evidence.

As well, I have written papers, still in draft form, that show how that evidence can provide integrated support for all policy functions: policy research; assessing big policy options; designing programs; referring people to interventions; accountability regimes; audit and evaluation.

Transformative change such as this will take many years to be fully implemented. However, we are further along the needed reform path than is often recognized. As well, there could be visible payoffs even in the short- and medium-term.

A royal commission on Canada’s future would fill the missing gap: a practical strategy for building consensus on the best route forward and the institutional arrangements that would enable ongoing system-wide planning and monitoring.

That would result in a transformation of social policies that would, over time, radically improve our quality of life and that would be developed in harmony with our economic, global and fiscal policies.