Canadian Government Executive - Volume 27 - Issue 02

March/April 2021 // Canadian Government Executive / 13 INNOVATION as the prime minister’s personal representa- tive at the G20; and, for nearly five years, led Health Canada, where he managed the gov- ernment’s response to the opioid crisis. In September 2019, only a few months before the pandemic took hold, he transitioned to his current role. Besides boosting Canada’s PPE production, Kennedy’s ministry has supported businesses under extreme stress and accelerated a program to roll out broad- band access amid an unprecedented surge in demand. Kennedy and his team are also looking to the future, leading initiatives that will fuel Canada’s recovery by building an inclusive digital economy and embracing decarbon- ization. It is a vision that will be enabled by bold innovation. As Kennedy explained to strategy+business in a recent video interview, government can play an active role in creating the environment and facilitating the collabo- ration needed for innovation to flourish. Q: What are some of the critical challenges for Canada’s post-pandemic recovery? The immediate focus of the government and of my ministry has been to protect people’s health and safety. At the end of the day, good economic policy is also good health policy. There’s no sense in advancing an ambitious recovery strategy only to have a third wave or to not have the pandemic under control. A related and critical concern is to sup- port the business sector and workers. This crisis has affected all sectors of the econ- omy, but some have been hit harder than others, such as tourism, hospitality, and air transport, and aerospace. Small busi- nesses’ needs have diverged from those of large firms. Canada’s a big country, and our regional economies have been affected differently. One of the things that we have been trying to do over the last nine months is to make sure that, to the extent possible, the economic effects of the pandemic are blunted and the risk of permanent scarring is reduced — so that when the pandemic starts to recede, we can come roaring back as quickly as possible. In the medium term, and as we look to the future, many of the challenges we faced pre- pandemic are the same kind of challenges we’re going to face post-pandemic. And in some ways, the pandemic has really put a red line under them — it has highlighted these challenges as being even more impor- tant to address than perhaps we had thought previously.