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This policy brief discusses recent international policy experiences in developing e-learning and digital business diagnostic tools for entrepreneurs. E-learning tools can develop entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and competences among users and increase their confidence and success in business creation. Business diagnostic tools offer entrepreneurs ways to assess their business management practices against peer companies or good practices, building competence and diffusing good practice. This brief sets out considerations for the successful development and implementation of these tools. It presents eight international cases of tools and discusses the public policy lessons from these international experiences.

For many years now, a growing number of economists, policy makers, and civil society groups have pointed to the limits of using only GDP as the primary measure of national economic progress. Accordingly, a progressively greater focus has been placed on the concept of well-being and its optimal measurement, as well as its appropriate use in budgeting and other aspects of policymaking. Canada has had a long history of measuring subjective well-being and a good pre-COVID 19 record on many of its determinants but has not yet decided on an official government-wide framework. This chapter delves into the topic and then looks at some of its crucial aspects, in particular: inequality and poverty including food insecurity; housing affordability and homelessness; physical and mental health and long-term care, with a special focus on Pharmacare; and environmental conditions. It includes a special section on the problems facing Indigenous peoples and those belonging to racialise.

The Arctic is a vital region that helps preserve the balance of the global climate. The Arctic environment is particularly sensitive to short-lived climate pollutants, including black carbon, due to their strong warming effect. With ambitious policy action to reduce air pollutants, Arctic Council countries would obtain a positive effect on health and the environment throughout their territory, while also helping to slow down climate change by reducing emissions of black carbon. This report calls for ambitious policy action to reduce air pollution in Arctic Council countries, highlighting the environmental, health, and economic benefits from policy action.

This policy brief uses online job vacancy postings as a partial indicator of the impact of COVID-19 on skills demand in five OECD countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) between January and November 2020. The pandemic, as well as containment and mitigation measures designed to halt its spread, had a large but heterogeneous impact on the demand for skills. By early May, the total volume of online job vacancies had fallen by over 50% in all the countries analysed with respect to the beginning of the year, with even larger declines in some sectors. However, the demand for specific skills in the healthcare sector and in logistics increased. There is also evidence of an increase in vacancies involving remote-working arrangements. The brief also shows that the crisis affected differently individuals with different levels of educational qualifications and that such effect differed across the countries analysed.

This paper examines explicit northern and Arctic connectivity policies in Canada, recognising the vital importance of air services in economic and social life. It comments on existing legislation, regulations, policies and programmes of the federal government as well as of Canada’s three northern territories. It also looks at recommendations from past transport policy reviews.

This paper presents a stocktaking of standalone chapters in trade agreements dedicated to good regulatory practices and international regulatory co-operation. While standalone regulatory policy chapters in trade agreements remain a new development, they signal countries’ increasing interest in elevating the visibility and ambition of regulatory policy, in line with their commitments in the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance and the 2005 APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform. Still, the level of ambition of these chapters varies widely depending on the state of play of regulatory policy in trading partners. By comparing the main substantive and structural features of these chapters, this stocktaking aims to inform the development of similar chapters in future trade agreements.

The development of transit-oriented communities (TOC) is a central element in the promotion of accessibility in the Metro Vancouver Region (MVR). The entity is building on its wealth of experience in public transport development in the region, which has contributed to its high levels of well-being and economic progress. TOC aims to incentivise people to drive less and walk, cycle and take transit more. A solid culture of community engagement, the existence of a coordinating body for transport planning, and the links between transport and land-use policy are the main assets MVR has to enhance accessibility. However, tackling the affordable housing deficit around transport hubs remains a challenge for local authorities. The purpose of this paper is to draw lessons from the MVR’s experience in transit-oriented initiatives to contribute to the development of compact, connected and green urban centres.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.

Populations in OECD and emerging economies are ageing rapidly, which will have significant macroeconomic impacts, including on public expenditures and tax revenues. The rules and practices that govern fiscal relations among different levels of government, such as their responsibilities for taxation, spending and debt management, have a bearing on economic efficiency and ultimately growth. The consequences of population ageing at subnational government levels are especially intense. Many local governments are vulnerable to the ageing of their populations from a fiscal perspective. The economic and fiscal challenges of an ageing population go beyond intergovernmental boundaries, and they require complex intergovernmental policy responses. This volume brings together cross-country studies of fiscal policy, demographics and spatial productivity, as well as country studies of Brazil, Canada, China and Germany.