tk – The Globe and Mail | Canada Voices

The $60,000 Donner Prize for the best book on public policy by a Canadian will be awarded May 15. With the federal election days away, The Globe and Mail asked the shortlisted authors to identify a pressing problem the future prime minister must address.

Michael M. Atkinson, co-author with Haizhen Mou of Fiscal Choices: Canada After the Pandemic (University of Toronto Press)

Sustainable growth track: That means reversing our slide in productivity by boosting capital investment and improving public sector efficiency. But more will be required. The new prime minister must deliver the message that sustainable growth requires a dynamic economy. That will mean some challenging, even uncomfortable, policy changes.

Real, lasting growth requires a hard look at our tax, immigration, and innovation systems. Younger Canadians, in particular, need the tools and opportunities to build a future for themselves so that the choice of investing in Canada is the best one they could possibly make. Properly managed, the federal balance sheet can help them acquire the assets they need, stimulate the economy and literally build a prosperous future. Conspicuous collaborative projects, like removing internal trade barriers, can knit us together as a country and improve our economic performance.

James B. Kelly, author of Constraining the Court: Judicial Power and Policy Implementation in the Charter Era (UBC Press)

Notwithstanding clause: Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should rarely be used, and only in specific circumstances – in response to judicial invalidation, and only after an informed parliamentary debate determines that no other legislative response can achieve the pressing and substantial policy goals of the invalidated statute. The notwithstanding clause should never be used in a pre-emptive fashion to shield a statute from potential judicial remedy under the Charter.

The courts play a vital, but not domineering, role in our constitutional democracy. Normalizing the pre-emptive usage of Section 33 robs our constitutional democracy of the edifying value of judicial review for policy discourse and the institutions of parliamentary democracy.

Pamela Cross, author of And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence (Between The Lines)

Intimate partner violence (IPV): This society-wide problem requires a society-wide response, including leadership from the top. Thanks to the work of domestic violence death review committees and inquests, we know that IPV is serious, pervasive and affects us all, not just the immediate victims. Recommendations from those committees and inquests tell us what action is needed. We have a roadmap to guide public policy development, with a focus on prevention and education while also offering more than a law-and-order response.

Working with community-based experts, including survivors, the prime minister can and must be seen to lead, giving those in positions to implement the changes that are needed the resources and tools to do so. This is the only approach that will enable us to move closer to seeing the equality promised by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms become a reality for all Canadians.

Bryce C. Tingle, author of Hard Lessons in Corporate Governance (Cambridge University Press)

Economy: Canada’s ability to provide for its citizens and fend off the machinations of the Trump administration depends on its economic health. As many experts have noted in the pages of this newspaper, Canada has real problems growing its economy. This is why, over the past two decades, our per capita income has gone from being almost equal to being just 70 per cent of that of our American cousins.

Central to our declining economic fortunes is Canada’s failure to grow new businesses. We create new businesses at about the same rate as Americans, but we don’t scale them up. The main culprit is that we mostly sell our new companies in the first decade of their existence. In most industries (such as technology and pharmaceuticals) the buyers of those companies are foreign.

The alternative to selling your business is to take it public. Unfortunately, Canadian companies have been refusing to go public in this country for two decades.

Kevin Quigley, co-author with Kaitlynne Lowe, Sarah Moore and Brianna Wolfe of Seized by Uncertainty: The Markets, Media and Special Interests that Shaped Canada’s Response to COVID-19 (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

National unity: The next prime minister will step into his position at a time of economic uncertainty and threats to Canada’s sovereignty. Even if his government secures a majority, more than half of the population will not have voted for his party.

In periods of instability, governments need to be clear about the values that guide policies and equally clear about the principles to resolve conflict between competing values. Governments need to make explicit the trade-offs in their decisions and who is carrying the costs of these decisions and why.

Debate should not be curtailed in the name of unusual circumstances. The government will have to uphold democratic processes and demonstrate tolerance for diverse views and compassion for the vulnerable. In this way we won’t simply have a better coordinated response to threats but a more deliberative and enlightened one.

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