PPGR Holiday Debrief

Happy New Year subscribers and welcome back! We hope you had a relaxing break. Here at the PPGR, our authors were hard at work during the holiday season to keep you informed on the latest developments in the world of public policy. Start your week by getting reacquainted with the PPGR’s latest articles.

We’re also taking this opportunity to announce that the Morning Briefing will undergo some minor changes this term. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out a few new formats including shorter roundups and special editions themed on developing policy issues. This will mean a slight delay in our return to weekly coverage.

We’d love your feedback as we go through this process! Feel free to get in touch with us through email, facebook, or twitter to let us know what you like about the new formats, or what you’d like to see changed in the future.

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Commentary: 

• Often, when we think of precarious work certain jobs come to mind. You may be shocked to learn that contract faculty at Canadian universities often fall into this category. Why is this the case and what, if anything, is the government doing about it? Staff Writer Robert St. Pierre investigates.

• Jonathan Kates and Madeline Rowland provide an update on how behavioral sciences can help us understand the recent developments in the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race.

• After four months of public consultation, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released a preliminary report on Canada’s upcoming national housing strategy in November. Though the report included several strategies, one area that lacked sufficient attention was the community land trust model. Luckily, our own Shelby Challis helps CMHC to fill in the gaps on this area of housing policy. 

Seen + Heard: 

• In a piece that reports on recent developments on the housing policy file in Canada, Amanda Buchnea outlines the political context and assesses Canada’s ability to move toward a future without homelessness.

• Did you know that the federal government is in the process of developing a national food strategy? Priscilla Mak reports on two recent events exploring food insecurity in Canada and the challenges policymakers face in addressing it.

• Will 2017 be the year that robots crowd humans out of the labour force? Andrew Abballe attended MaRS Discovery District’s panel “The Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics” to find out what new developments in AI will mean for contemporary economic policy.

• At the surface, design and public policy may not seem to go together. In Flux, a design conference held in Toronto this past December, suggests that service design has great potential to contribute to public policy. PPGR Staff Writer Jasmine CY Lam brings us up to speed.