From the COVID‐19 Pandemic to Crises: Lessons for Canadian Climate Governance

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic was the most significant governance stress test in recent Canadian history, revealing both the capacities and constraints of Canadian public administration under acute uncertainty. This article examines Canada's pandemic response as a diagnostic case for understanding governance capacity relevant to long‐duration challenges such as climate change. Drawing on interviews with senior public health and climate‐health leaders, and triangulating these insights with federal evaluations, the analysis focuses on coordination, trust, political will, and institutional learning across pandemic phases. Findings show that coordination and political will were episodic rather than durably embedded, trust was a fragile governance resource, and post‐crisis learning was only weakly institutionalized. Rather than treating COVID‐19 as a model for climate governance, the article argues that its value lies in diagnosis: making visible the limits of emergency‐oriented governance and clarifying the capacities required for more anticipatory, durable responses.