Futureproofing Canada

After the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools, political leaders won’t be able to ignore commitments to advance reconciliation.

The pandemic, combined with working from home, has challenged our perceptions of how we work. People are now able to “work from home” from anywhere, and the concept of a disaggregated workforce is gaining acceptance. The idea that being employed means staying in one place and following the same rules that we have followed for generations is crumbling, and people are adapting to this new normal. But the changes have not been all positive. In fact, research shows that people are more stressed and overworked than they have been in decades, and that the technology that was supposed to make work easier has invaded our non-work lives and broken down the barrier between work and life. How can employers decrease the stress that employees are feeling, and how can we rethink work? To discuss these ideas I am speaking with Linda Duxbury, Chancellor's Professor at Carleton University, who studies work-life balance and the impact of technology on employees. Some employers are indeed recognizing that the pandemic gave us an opportunity to change the way we work and reduce the stress felt by employees. One of these is our second guest, Barry Carroll, chief administrative officer at the municipality of Guysborough on the east coast of Nova Scotia. He transitioned his entire workforce to a four-day work week. Our third guest, Christina Bowie, is an employee at the municipality of Guysborough who now works four days a week. We will be discussing their experiences and how the change has impacted the lives of these employees.

The last year has been a reckoning for so many aspects of our society, revealing that we need fundamental reform in the way the country operates. However, one piece of news that has been shocking to many Canadians is the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at residential schools across the country, with thousands more expected to be found. While many Indigenous people have known about these graves and have tried to shine light on them for decades, they have continued to be hidden from the public by various institutions and governments. But we have to be very clear: Canada has committed a genocide. From the late 19th century up until 1996, Canada forcibly removed over 150,000 Indigenous children from their families in order to, as John A. Macdonald put it, “remove the Indian from the child.” Canadians are learning that we have an individual responsibility to advance reconciliation. In fact, a new survey conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research, along with the Institute for Research on Public Policy and a number of other leading public policy organizations called the Confederation of Tomorrow, showed that the percentage of Canadians who believe individuals have a role in advancing reconciliation has increased from 55 per cent in 2020, to 70 per cent in 2021. These statistics were taken before the news of any unmarked graves came to light, and may have changed since. So if residents of Canada want to enact change where policy has failed to do so, and work collectively toward reconciliation, what can they do? This week on the podcast we are speaking with Tara Williamson and Robert Houle, researchers at the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nation-led research centre that aims to foster education and dialogue on First Nation governance. We are discussing the role that individuals play in advancing reconciliation, and what steps settlers can take to push for it in their everyday lives.

The conversation surrounding the COVID-19 recovery has been almost entirely centred on the economy. Governments have allocated countless resources to protecting people from economic hardship and keeping businesses afloat. But there is one aspect of Canada’s recovery that has received little attention from policy-makers: How do we heal people and cities, so that when we “build back better” we are building a society that includes and works for everyone? This type of healing does not require a vaccine. It requires a rethink of who we are and how our cities operate. The pandemic did not create the issues that dominate the news cycle, such as racism, sexism and the repression of marginalized voices, but it did make these issues much more prevalent in everyday life. This week’s podcast guest is Jay Pitter. An award-winning place-maker and author, she works in her practice to mitigate the growing divide in cities across North America. She will be discussing marginalized and underrepresented groups, their experience during the pandemic, and what policy-makers can do to truly build back better.

En dépit de nombreux rapports qui préconisent depuis plus de 20 ans une réforme majeure des soins de longue durée au Québec, aucun gouvernement n’est véritablement passé à l’action. L’indignation en réaction aux défaillances systémiques révélées par la pandémie entraînera-t-elle un véritable changement ? Quelles politiques faut-il prioriser pour lancer une réforme en profondeur qui produirait des résultats probants ? Le balado de cette semaine est l’enregistrement d'un webinaire que l’IRPP a tenu le 3 juin 2021. Il portait sur les problèmes du système de soins de longue durée qui doivent être abordés dans le Québec post-pandémique. Réjean Hébert, Marie-Louise Leroux et Yves Couturier étaient les invités de cette rencontre animée par Charles Breton, directeur du Centre d'excellence sur la fédération canadienne de l'IRPP.

COVID-19 has shaken the Canadian labour market to its core, and it has revealed that our Employment Insurance system is not well equipped to handle a major disruption to the economy. In the first half of 2020, roughly 2.4 million Canadians were laid off or had permanently lost their jobs. By January 2021, roughly 511,000 individuals had been unemployed for more than six months. In response to these unprecedented unemployment numbers, the federal government created a patchwork of emergency response benefits to cover the gaps in the EI system. Now, as vaccinations go out across the country and the economy reopens, people will need to get back to work. EI could provide a stepping stone, but will the current system get people back to full-time employment? A new IRPP study argues that the system could be improved by redesigning the working-while-on-claim provisions, which allow claimants to take part-time or casual jobs and still keep a portion of their EI benefits. The authors of the study, IRPP Research Director Colin Busby, Stephanie Lluis, professor of economics at the University of Waterloo, and Brian P. McCall, professor of education, economics and public policy at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, join us on the podcast to discuss their research.

The story of western alienation runs parallel to the story of Canada. Both stories have their roots in 1867, when a country was born out of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. At the time those two provinces were leaders in business and population numbers. But in the western part of the country, a different story was started – one of alienation – that would lead to the creation of modern-day political parties and calls for separation from the rest of Canada. Despite attempts by successive governments to reduce it, western alienation persists, and while it may seem that current political issues are driving these feelings, the root cause remains in 1867. The current political debates around big issues like energy or the environment, and other issues such as equalization payments, are manifestations of long-lasting grievances in the west dating to the founding of the country. Canada’s original sin ─ building the country on the foundation of the eastern provinces ─ persists. To discuss these issues, this week’s guest is Loleen Berdahl, professor and head of political studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She has been studying western alienation and how it fits into the context of pan-Canadian regional conflict for two decades. Her recent essay for the IRPP’s Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation delves into the origins of western alienation and recommends ways to tackle it.

COVID-19 has been one of the largest disruptions in the Canadian labour market in the country’s history. Not only were some sectors like tourism nearly decimated, the economy as a whole took a hit - making it extraordinarily difficult for laid-off Canadians to find jobs that they could easily transfer their skills to. Retraining workers who have lost their jobs so that they can successfully transition into a new field has been an elusive goal for governments. This is partly because skills retraining is a difficult to sector to navigate for policy-makers, but also because studies have shown mixed results in the benefits and drawbacks of this training, which has shaken the public’s confidence in whether or not it’s an economically viable solution. But given the pandemic’s toll on our labour market, it is time for governments to start taking a serious look at skills training, and to develop a functional system so that workers can find not just any job, but the right job for them. Kelly Pasolli, along with Karen Myers and Simon Harding of Blueprint, conducted a study for the IRPP that examined previous research on skills training to find what worked and what didn’t. Through this research, they found two promising systems that Canadian workers could benefit from. For this episode of the Policy Options Podcast, we speak with Kelly Pasolli about these systems, and what Canadian governments need to do to successfully retrain under- or unemployed workers for the post-pandemic future.

Canada has vaccinated nearly 40 per cent of its citizens, an important milestone in the fight against COVID-19. But underlying this success is a concerning aspect of the global vaccine rollout: wealthy countries like Canada have taken the lion’s share of vaccines – 87 per cent, leaving medium- and low-income countries with just 0.2 per cent of the vaccine supply. Not only is this a moral concern, with the pandemic ravaging medium- and low-income countries that may struggle with increased health-care demands, it’s also a health concern as new variants emerge from the hardest-hit areas. But there is a plan to correct this, and Canada has an opportunity to support it: COVAX, a program designed in early 2020 with the hopes of distributing vaccines globally and equitably. Today’s guests are Annie Bodmer-Roy, the director of international policy and programs at UNICEF Canada, and Srinivas Murthy, a clinical professor in the department of pediatrics at the University of British Columbia and a consultant with the World Health Organization. They will be speaking about the global inequality in vaccine distribution, and how Canada can support COVAX in its goals.

On April 19, 2021, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented the first federal budget in two years. Among the many new and updated policies, one stood out especially – the promise of affordable universal childcare for all Canadians. Universal child care had been promised in the past and never come to fruition, not for lack of political will or public support, but rather because it is such a difficult policy to enact. One place in Canada, however, already has universal, affordable child care: Quebec. The federal government plans on taking this model of child care and replicating it in every province and territory. But this system is not perfect, and the government needs to be careful not to make the same mistakes that Quebec has made while creating this policy. This week we are joined by Sophie Mathieu and Gordon Cleveland to speak about the Quebec model of child care, and how this policy will be enacted across the country. Sophie Mathieu is a postdoctoral researcher at Université TÉLUQ in Quebec City, with a focus on family policy in Quebec. She holds a PhD in sociology. Gordon Cleveland is emeritus associate professor of economics at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and a member of the Expert Panel on Early Learning and Child Care Data and Research. He is also president of Cleveland Consulting: Early Childhood Education and Care Inc.