Policy Options

I read and agreed with almost every point in Jenn Wallner’s Policy Options recent article “Canada needs a more collaborative approach to reopening schools.”  However, Wallner’s article mentioned only...

Sometimes a report can change the conversation. In 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark special report showing that the world has only a short...

Over the past few months, the coronavirus pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions across the global food supply chain. The security and well-being of the individuals who get our food...

Canada, like the rest of the world, overwhelmingly relies on American plasma donors for our supply of plasma-derived medicinal therapies. These therapies — including immune globulin, albumin, and clotting...

COVID-19 has powerfully illuminated that having a home is a matter of life or death as governments around the world have invoked stay-home policies as central to flattening the...

With global infectious disease outbreaks comes pressure on national governments to close their borders to citizens or residents of affected countries. Too many governments give way to this pressure....

A new type of theoretical nuclear power plant design called small modular reactors (SMRs) has been in the news of late. Earlier this year, at the 2020 Canadian Nuclear...

The COVID-19 crisis has brought unique challenges. In times of crises, emergencies, epidemics or wars, an all-of-government approach is vital for effective mobilization of the “whole-of-society.” To be legitimate,...

Old habits are hard to break. Addictions are the toughest of all. So, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travelled to Houston in March 2017 and declared fealty to a...

Africa’s fate is precarious in the face of COVID-19. It is the last continent to be affected by COVID-19 following the arrival of the contagion in Egypt and Nigeria...

A “logging loophole” is jeopardizing Canada’s global climate commitments, allowing the logging industry to escape scrutiny and regulation for impact on the climate-critical boreal forest. The boreal forest is...

Our health is global. Our country’s ability to prepare for, prevent and respond to the spread of infectious diseases is deeply connected to the ability of other countries to...

Vulnerabilities and interconnectedness have been made visible by the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences. At issue are the vulnerabilities of people who have been harmed by or will be...

Despite the headlines about high deficits because of the cost of COVID-19 programs, governments must avoid the knee-jerk reaction of drastically cutting spending right now. While deficits can be...

In the grim international league tables of total deaths from COVID-19, Canada occupies a middling position. But when we turn to the share of deaths accounted for by residents...

COVID-19 has undeniably disrupted the schooling of children throughout the world. According to UNESCO, most governments took the dramatic step of temporarily shuttering schools in their efforts to contain...

ISIL bride Shamima Begum, whose British citizenship was revoked in 2019 on national security grounds, can return to the UK from Syria to plead her case to restore her...

The $19-billion agreement between Ottawa and the provinces announced on July 16 delivered what municipalities and experts have long been calling for: support for municipalities to cover deficits resulting...

A private member’s bill was tabled in the Alberta legislature during its spring sitting that would repeal the 2017 Voluntary Blood Donations Act. This act, like similar legislation in...

For proponents of digital government, 2020 has been a milestone year. In response to COVID-19, most of the federal public service has moved to a remote working arrangement. Many...

Les secteurs de l’activité économique ne connaissent pas tous le même sort face à la crise de COVID-19. Les mesures de confinement ne les ont pas affectés de la...

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced health-care policy-makers across the world to face the same gut-wrenching question: if critical care wards become overcrowded, to whom do we give potentially life-saving...

Le développement de l’intelligence numérique ― c’est-à-dire la mise au point d’innovations numériques avancées comme celles réalisées dans le secteur de l’intelligence artificielle ― constitue un enjeu prioritaire pour...

In Canada, long-term care residents have been deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to pleas for federal oversight and to provincial commitments to review the system. As Canadian...

Official documents prescribing mass surveillance, mass internment and mass forced sterilization. Satellite imagery documenting the destruction of ancient cultural sites and the proliferation of concentration camps. Products made using...

As calls to “defund the police” have spread around the world, we’ve seen the violence police inflict upon communities of colour. Race-based data is hard to come by in Canada,...

The world looks very different today than it did a few months ago, when the British Columbia government was in the midst of a review to modernize land use...

Prime Minister Trudeau should step aside and let Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland take over until the ethics commissioner decides on the conflict of interest allegation in the WE...

(This article has been translated from French.) The closing of museums in mid-march 2020 due to COVID-19 had a direct impact on their management. Concerns quickly arose among staff,...

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated a trend toward remote work in many parts of the public sector. The federal government issued guidelines on March 15 urging employees to...

The COVID-19 pandemic has given Canadians an unprecedented look at our federation at work. And while our federal and provincial governments have worked far better together than their equivalents...