Coordination Failure, Pandemic Prevention, and Political Polarization in Global Perspective

The aftermath of the February 2022 public order emergency in Canada offers a timely opportunity to modernize the Emergencies Act and revisit the coordination imperative with the complexity of global emergencies squarely in mind. The failure to coordinate globally in the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak, despite a vast repository of knowledge of how to do so—set against the backdrop of increasingly polarized politics and geopolitics—transformed an avoidable public health emergency into multiple humanitarian, economic, social, and political crises. This short article highlights Commissioner Rouleau’s focus on coordination failure throughout his report. It then situates the public order emergency in a global perspective, focusing on pandemic preparedness and the polarized political context that framed it. The goal of this essay is to stress the importance of viewing emergency powers holistically, and to advocate reading the Commissioner’s recommendations not in isolation, but as a small and partial response to a wicked—or super wicked—problem of global proportions.