The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us once again the importance of quickly developing and approving the use of innovative drugs. This publication has two recommendations to help ensure that Canadians have quicker access to medications.

The Montreal Economic Institute is one of five organizations calling for a timely examination of our collective finances, health care systems, options for economic growth, and more in the free e-book entitled “Life After COVID: What’s next for Canada?”

With the different levels of government intensifying their efforts to promote the use of the French language, an analysis of the economic history of Quebec identifies the real winning conditions for favouring the vitality of French. This publication shows the strong connection between the prosperity of francophones and the attractiveness of French in the province.

It has already been over a year since the pandemic turned our lives upside down and governments severely curtailed our individual freedoms. Thankfully, the vaccination campaign is now in full swing, so we can hope for a return to a better quality of life in the near future. This publication argues for the introduction of a non-mandatory, decentralized vaccine passport to help make this happen.

On Monday April 19, the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented its first budget in over two years. In this publication, Montreal Economic Institute researchers shine a spotlight on the rapid growth of debt service charges.

Nearly one year ago, the Quebec government decreed a temporary end to the transfer of COVID-19 patients to CHSLDs, Quebec’s long-term care centres. To this day, Quebec’s extremely high death count among seniors in CHSLDs continues to raise eyebrows. This publication from the Montreal Economic Institute calls into question the inevitability of these deaths.

With the vaccine rollout in full swing, the public’s attention is increasingly focused on economic recovery. The authors of this Research Paper propose a very simple solution: a true free trade agreement among the Canadian provinces. This publication includes among other things a ranking of the provinces and territories according to their openness to internal trade. Alberta takes first place, and Quebec comes in last.

For over a year now, the spotlight has been on governments and the actions they have taken in the context of the pandemic, sometimes obscuring the great contribution of entrepreneurs in maintaining a certain quality of life for Canadians in these difficult times. This publication lifts the veil on the efforts made by entrepreneurs to reinvent themselves, pick up the pace, and help us meet this challenge.

The revoking of Keystone XL’s permit by US President Joe Biden his first day in office highlights the risk for Canada of depending on a single country for its petroleum product exports. This Economic Note points out that the construction of new pipelines on Canadian soil would help the country reduce this risk and maximize revenues from oil exports, thus encouraging job creation and improving Canadians’ living standards.

The return to a balanced budget in the medium term is necessary, and it must be achieved by controlling governmental expenditures. One way to do this is to set up a standing expenditure review committee, as the federal government did following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, shows this publication.