Network Failure: Procedural Lessons from Canada's COVID-19 Vaccine Program

• In Event: Poster Session: New Research in Information Technology and Politics & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Canadian Politics

Abstract

Why were some components of Canadian Covid-19 vaccine policy design effectively coordinated across federal-provincial-territorial (F/P/T) levels while others were not? With effective coordination of F/P/T policy as a central challenge to Canadian federalism, this paper argues that the process failures of the coordination of the F/P/T Covid-19 vaccine rollout were the results of ineffective executive-level intergovernmental network management of health policy by the Conferences of Deputy and First Ministers of Health within the Pan-Canadian Health Network and Health Portfolio Operations Center decision-making hierarchies. Within a comparative best-practice case study framework, this paper uses network management and procedural policy tool design theories to examine F/P/T policy coordination and executive-level network management activity in Health Canada and Transport Canada during the first 18 months of the pandemic. Through hypothesis coding, archival analysis, and the relation of executive-level network management activity to the dependent variable of intergovernmental policy coordination in different relevant ministries, this paper finds that the Council of Health Ministers was underutilized as a horizontally collaborative network manager in coordinating invasive Covid-19 vaccine policies. In addition, it finds that there is a positive relationship between levels of executive activity in intergovernmental network management and increased coordination of intergovernmental policy. Drawing on these findings, the study concludes with policy lessons which could help the coordination of F/P/T policy in the next pandemic or other intergovernmental health policy initiative. These lessons include the usage of the Councils/Conferences of Health Ministers as a collaborative network manager which naturally preserves P/T jurisdictional autonomy; that collaborative executive horizontal network management is an effective and viable tool for increasing F/P/T coordination and harmonizing national policy mixtures; and that the executive-level management style of this network can reduce policy coordination issues, lower compliance barriers, and raise compliance levels in times of national crisis.

Author

• Connor Gerald Ramsbottom