Renewing the Social Contract: Economic Recovery in Canada from COVID-19 An RSC Policy Briefing
Established by the President of the Royal Society of Canada in April 2020, the RSC Task Force on COVID-19 was mandated to provide evidence-informed perspectives on major societal challenges in response to and recovery from COVID-19.
The Task Force established a series of Working Groups to rapidly develop Policy Briefings, with the objective of supporting policy makers with evidence to inform their decisions.
About the Authors
Vic Adamowicz, Professor, Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Alberta
Robin Boadway, David Chadwick Smith Emeritus Professor of Economics, Queen’s University
Christopher S. Cotton, Professor, Jarislowsky-Deutsch Chair in Economic & Financial Policy, Director, John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy, Queen’s University
Evelyn Forget, Professor, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba
Richard Gold, James McGill Professor, McGill Faculty of Law and McGill Faculty of Medicine, Director, Centre for Intellectual Property Policy, and Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation
Esyllt Jones, Professor, Departments of History and Community Health Sciences, Dean of Studies, St John’s College, University of Manitoba
Fabian Lange, Professor, McGill University, Research Associate at the National Bureau of EconomicResearch (NBER), Research Fellow of IZA, Member of CIRANO, Research Affiliate of the University of Oslo, Norway, Canada Research Chair of Labour and Personnel Economics
Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin, Professor, Polytechnique Montreal, CEO of CIRANO, Visiting scientist at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health
Christopher McCabe (Chair), Chief Executive Officer, Institute of Health Economics, Alberta, Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta
Stuart Peacock, Professor and Leslie Diamond Chair in Cancer Survivorship, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Head, Cancer Control Research, BC Cancer, Co-Director, Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC)
Lindsey Tedds, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, and Scientific Director, Fiscal and Economic Policy, School of Public Policy, University of Calgary
Dan Breznitz, Professor, the Munk Chair of Innovation Studies and the Co-Director of the Innovation-Policy Lab at the University of Toronto and a Co-Director and Fellow of Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Innovation, Equity & the Future of Prosperity
*Dan Breznitz is an author on chapter 4 of the report but not a member of the Working Group
Renewing the Social Contract: Economic Recovery in Canada from COVID-19 3
Stewart Elgie, Professor, Law and Economics, University of Ottawa, Chair, Smart Prosperity Institute**Stewart Elgie is a co-author on chapters 3 and 4 only
From the Executive Summary:
What policies and investments should we consider, as a country, to ensure we build a better Canada off the back of the COVID-19 crisis? Canada should be more resistant to future crises. Why was Canada the 13th country to enter into this crisis and what might we do to reduce our exposure to global crises? Once the crisis struck, the impact was rapid, and the damage was large and inequitably distributed. What changes might we make to the structure and the policies of our society that would make Canada more resilient, so that we deal more effectively with future crises and return more rapidly to the pre-crisis social and economic norm. When crises strike, governments, communities, businesses and citizens must respond. What are the characteristics of an effective response and what physical, human and institutional capital must pre-exist for Canada to have confidence in its effective response?
Recommendations
With this ambition as our focus, we make the following recommendations to the federal and provincial governments.
Renewing Social Contract
Establish a basic income guarantee (BIG) that is universally available to provide adequate income support to all persons and be responsive to economic shocks. (BIG_NS emphasis)
Reform provincial and federal labour codes to ensure paid sick leave, as this is an essential public-health policy to support a more resilient economy.
Work with provinces and territories to establish universal access to childcare that provides Early Childhood Education, to protect parents and especially mothers’ opportunities for labour force participation.
Implement a comprehensive tax reform that enhances the fairness of taxes by broadening the tax base to treat all capital income on a par with earnings, and address intergenerational transmission of wealth inequality by re-instituting an inheritance tax.
Reinvigorating the Economy
Develop clean competitiveness roadmaps for each sector that target opportunities for Canada to succeed in a low-carbon global economy, and the policies, investments and actions to capture those opportunities. As a critical first step, develop long-term, low carbon infrastructure plans to support a decarbonized economy (energy, transport, buildings) and invest in building the foundational infrastructure identified in it.
Invest in a comprehensive and secure digital infrastructure to support the development of a strong domestic digital economy and enable equality of opportunity for all Canadians as consumers, innovators, employers and employees.
Invest in effective and efficient labour-force transition from carbon intensive industries through wage insurance and bridge-to-retirement mechanisms, supported by comprehensive high-quality retraining programmes.
Undertake a risk assessment of Canada’s exposure to global supply chains to identify essential commodities which might merit the repatriation of manufacturing capacity.
Enabling Innovation
Develop and disseminate a clear vision for the objectives of innovation policy and specify general flexible metrics for assessing success.
Create flexible, arms-length institutions with stable, long-term funding to provide resources and programs to firms to spur innovation by sector and/or region.
Identifyclearspecificmissionsforinnovationpolicy,suchasdecarbonizingtheeconomyand accelerating the shift to and growth of the digital economy. These serve to align incentives and resources and provide a clear signal of the opportunities available to the private sector.
For truly global endeavours, such as the life sciences, government must support engagement in global research networks. Investments in building Canadian capacity must focus on leveraging Canadian research through sharing relationships, such as open science partnerships.
Improving Crisis Policy Responses
Establishing Standing Crisis Response Teams, made up of a broad range of experts with the necessary intellectual and physical infrastructure and secretariat services. Consideration should be given to enshrining the resourcing of these teams in law, to ensure that we make the necessary investments in public health to deal with future crises.
Develop systems for citizen engagement with a policymaking process that actively encourages and incorporates feedback from the Canadian public. This system must reach marginalized groups to understand their priorities and concerns relating to alternative options.
Fund and facilitate better data collection, including health, economic, education and environmental indicators, ensuring that these data includes demographic and socioeconomic indicators and is readily available to experts based within and outside of the public service. It will be important to establish mechanisms to increase the frequency of data collection during crises.
Develop and disseminate an intersectional approach to policy development and analysis to provide decision makers with a more accurate and comprehensive picture of problems, the potential benefits and costs of solutions and how these are distributed across society, especially marginalized groups.
check also Policy Options of Basic Income Canada Network to see how we can pay for it.
