Managing Federalism through Pandemic summarizes and analyses multiple policy dimensions of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy issues from the perspective of Canadian federalism. Contributors address the relative effectiveness of intergovernmental cooperation at the summit level and in policy fields including emergency management, public health, national security, Indigenous Peoples and governments, border governance, crisis communications, fiscal federalism, income security policies (CERB), supply chain resilience, and interacting energy and climate policies.

Despite serious policy failures of individual governments, repeated fluctuations in the overall effectiveness of pandemic management, and growing public frustration across provinces and regions, contributors show how processes for intergovernmental cooperation adapted reasonably well to the pandemic’s unprecedented stresses, particularly at the outset. The book concludes that, despite individual policy failures, Canada’s decentralized approach to policy management often enabled regional adaptation to varied conditions, helped to contain serious policy failures, and contributed to various degrees of policy learning across governments. Managing Federalism through Pandemic reveals how the pandemic exposed structural policy weaknesses which transcend federalism but have significant implications for how governments work together (or don’t) to promote the well-being of citizens.

Drawing on insights from leading scholars and policy practitioners, the book considers intergovernmental cooperation at the summit level and across multiple policy fields during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess how effectively governments served Canadians.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Acknowledgments

Part One: Introduction

1. Pandemic Federalism: Bridging the Normative–Functional Federalism Gap
Kathy L. Brock and Geoffrey Hale
 
2. Cooperative Federalism and Managing Intergovernmental Relations through the Pandemic: Setting the Framework
Kathy L. Brock

Part Two: Anticipating and Managing the Pandemic Response

3. Coordinating Emergency Management within and across Governments
Johanu Botha and Geoffrey Hale

4. COVID-19 Federalism and Public Health Regimes in Canada
Carey Doberstein

5. Global Pandemics and National Security: Will the Federal Government Have Your Back?
Andrew Graham and Eugene Lang

6. What We Have Here Is a Failure to Anticipate (Again!): Indigenous Peoples, Self-Determination, and Canada’s COVID-19 Pandemic Response
Yale D. Belanger and Calvin Hanselmann

7. Canada–US Border Governance during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Kathryn Friedman and Laurie Trautman

8. Pandemic Communications: How Leaders Encouraged Canadians to Stay the Blazes Home
Jeni Armstrong and Alex Marland

Part Three: Economic and Social Issues: Responses, Reopenings, Relaunching, and Rebuilding

9. Pandemic Fiscal Federalism and Future Prospects
Kyle Hanniman

10. Interactions between Federal and Provincial Cash Transfer Programs: The Effect of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit on Provincial Income Assistance Eligibility and Benefits
Gillian Petit and Lindsay M. Tedds

11. Globalization, Federalism, and Supply Chain Security
Patrick James and Geoffrey Hale

12. A Crisis within a Crisis: Canadian Energy and Climate Federalism during the Pandemic
Brendan Boyd

Part Four: Lessons for the Federation from the Pandemic

13. Crises, Mega-Crises, and Beyond: The Evolving and Functions of Intergovernmental Units in Federal Governance Systems
Evert Lindquist

14. Pandemic Federalism: Bridging the Normative–Functional Federalism Gap – Conclusions and Continuing Challenges
Kathy L. Brock and Geoffrey Hale

References
List of Contributors
Index

“The COVID-19 pandemic created massive policy challenges closely intertwined with Canada’s federal institutions. In this book, expert contributors assess the impact of the pandemic on federalism and intergovernmental relations. Managing Federalism through Pandemic covers a diverse array of topics while keeping an eye on the big picture, making it a most valuable resource for readers interested in federalism and public policy in Canada.”“This is a timely and valuable contribution to understanding the unique nature of Canadian federalism and the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. From cooperation to confrontation, the Canadian case exhibited it all. This book unravels the many governance challenges the pandemic presented and considers how the federation fared in steering a course through them.”