Policy Options Politiques Magazine

A birth-control app can look straightforward. A user records body temperature and menstrual cycle data, and the app identifies days when pregnancy is more or less likely. The decision that follows can have serious consequences. Someone may rely on the app’s prediction when deciding whether to use protection during sex. Health Canada approved Natural Cycles in January 2024 and granted a Swedish digital health company what is called a medical device licence.

Pete Hegseth managed to do something last week that Canadian governments have struggled to do for years: get a lot of people talking about the Canadian Cadet Program. Unfortunately, the U.S. Secretary of Defense did it by reposting a photograph from the Vernon Cadet Training Centre showing a cadet receiving an award from an officer. He added a Canadian flag and the words “this is real” – an obvious invitation to mock the women’s appearance.

Canadian economic performance has been plagued by weak growth in private investment, productivity and output for more than a decade. The tariffs implemented by the U.S. administration have magnified Canada’s economic malaise and reinforced the need for a more robust economic pathway with reduced reliance on the U.S. Broad tax reform should be part of a strategy to build resilience and fuel growth. What would a new direction look like?

As Canada confronts U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff and other threats to our economy, much of the discussion has focused on protecting jobs, maintaining competitiveness and ensuring that Canadian workers can withstand another period of serious disruption. Labour Day offers an opportunity to ask: what kind of jobs, economy and working lives are we trying to protect? For generations, workers have fought to shorten the working day.

The last time Ontario went on a serious waterpower building spree, Indigenous communities were largely consulted parties. Today, waterpower developers are increasingly asking: Who is connected to this hydro site, and who should share in the benefits of developing it? To understand how we got here, we need to take an honest look at where we came from.

(Version française disponible ici.) On May 28, 2026, France adopted a bill officially repealing the Code Noir, the 1685 law that had regulated enslavement in the French colonies. The vote came just days after the 25th anniversary of the Taubira Law, adopted in 2001, which made France the first country in the world to recognize the transatlantic slave trade and enslavement as crimes against humanity. A few weeks earlier, Canada had chosen a different course.

As concern grows about rising hostility and incivility in municipal politics, local leaders should pay attention to residents who describe feeling controlled, unheard and shut out of meaningful engagement with local government. Across North America, municipal meetings are designed primarily for orderly decision-making rather than sustained democratic dialogue. Civic Searchlight, the largest database of Canadian municipal council transcripts, makes this tension visible.

Canada is pursuing two major federal initiatives that are moving in opposite directions. Canada’s federal government pledged $3.8 billion on April 29 to protect 30 per cent of its lands and waters by 2030 through its new nature strategy, A Force of Nature. The strategy promises a major push to map and safeguard the country’s most biodiverse and carbon-rich areas before development is allowed to proceed.

When Andy Burnham became prime minister of the United Kingdom in July, his first pledge was to end homelessness. That should tell you something about what’s possible when a government decides to stop managing a crisis and start preventing it. Before walking up Downing Street, Burnham met people with lived experience of homelessness. Then he backed it with £340 million ($631 million).

As one of the originators of Canada’s market basket measure (MBM), developed with my colleague Michael Hatfield, I was interested to read the argument for complementing it with a material deprivation index (MDI) to better measure poverty, as outlined recently in Policy Options by Richard Matern, Dana Vreeswijk and Sofia Seer. They are onto something important. With a few caveats. Canada would benefit from incorporating a well-designed material deprivation measure into its understanding of poverty.