Since February, Canadians and Canada’s governments have been dealing with the world’s worst public health crisis since 1918. The COVID-19 pandemic has involved a major social and economic crisis which has affected many areas of life in the country with reverberations expected to last for many years.

Beginning in February-March 2020, the federal and provincial governments launched an all-out war on the COVID-19 virus involving deployment of policies and programmes affecting all sectors of Canadian society. Public policy research and researchers have both joined and examined this movement, with numerous conferences held on the fight against COVID-19 and many journals and publication outlets creating special "COVID-19" issues or sections supported by accelerated evaluation processes to ensure the rapid publication of results due to the time pressures involved in a pandemic situation. Although this may have given the impression that public policy research in Canada has focused solely on the immediate or short-term aspects of pandemic issues, much of this research is future oriented and is looking beyond the current aspects of the crisis to its future medium- to long-term aspects

And, of course, beyond the pandemic and the issues surrounding it, other issues in all areas of public policy in Canada are still alive and remain the subject of research despite having been pushed off the government agenda or otherwise altered by the coronavirus emergency. Perspectives are also changing as new angles are analyzed. This research needs a forum which the CPPN/RCPP General Meeting can provide.

For these reasons the CPPN will hold its annual conference in February on the theme “Beyond COVID-19: What Role for Public Sciences?”. 

Paper proposals on all topics of interest to the community of public policy scholars in Canada are welcome, however, papers addressing aspects of the Conference theme are especially encouraged.