Ditchburn and Breton: Canada's first ministers must learn to work together more often

Good leadership, the kind that leaves a positive legacy, sometimes means making decisions that won’t give you a bump in the political polls.

As the first ministers get ready to meet Tuesday to hammer out a health-care deal, let’s hope that the sense of urgency and the impulse to work together persists. For a brief time, the pandemic provided a perspective into what they could accomplish together — and with First Nations, Métis and Inuit leaders, and mayors. They broke a few eggs, annoyed some vested interests, but in the process we got important advancements such as virtual health care.

But the pandemic also pulled back the curtain on how our complex federation can be an impediment to nimbleness and adaptability. Red tape. Barriers. Overlapping programs and policies. Rigid organizational structures. Once again, creativity and pragmatism are needed to come up with modern solutions to the health-care crisis Canada is facing.

Beyond the immense health-care challenge, there are a growing number of multilayered policy issues that require the country to come up with a coordinated response. Improving climate resilience, helping workers and communities adapt to a global low-carbon transition, determining the energy mix we’ll need on the pathway to net zero, responding to labour shortages — the list is long, with a lot of jurisdictional overlap. While the tools and levers used might not be identical in each province, territory or Indigenous nation, a great deal of collaboration and goodwill will be necessary.

Already, the first ministers appear to have acknowledged that operating in silos doesn’t work when you’re dealing with massive modern problems. Data-sharing is reportedly one of the items they hope to strike an agreement on. At the IRPP’s Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation, we’ve heard anecdotes from provincial and federal officials that they were regularly consulting our Stringency Index comparing COVID measures, because nobody else was collecting this nationally. Of course, there are far worse data gaps in trying to compare public policy issues from province to province. Without those critical data points, it’s impossible to know what really works and what doesn’t.

And yet, there is a real threat that our governments will become more estranged. Survey data from the Confederation of Tomorrow project shows that resentment among citizens in particular provinces is becoming more acute, as is resentment toward the federal government. Some politicians might seek to exploit those feelings for their own gain.

Good leadership, the kind that creates a positive legacy, sometimes means making decisions that won’t give you a bump in the political polls. The first ministers meeting this week could turn out to be historic in terms of a health-care agreement, but it will require the assembled group to be courageous, think nationally, and work collaboratively. If occasionally sliding into each other’s DMs adds to their shared sense of purpose, that’s a good thing.

Jennifer Ditchburn is the President and CEO of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP). Charles Breton is the executive director of the IRPP’s Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation.