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Canada, like other industrialized countries, is confronting the challenges of rapid technological change (including AI), an aging population, affordable housing, stubbornly persistent homelessness, youth unemployment, the upending of decades-long global trade relations, and the mounting ecological crisis of climate change. The list is much longer. Any one of these challenges is enough of a headache for any government. Canadian federalism makes things even more complicated. If you’ve ever tried to fix a messy public problem, like adjusting the economy to the imperatives of global change, accelerating innovation, or delivering digital services across jurisdictions, you’ve likely bumped into the classic conundrums of Canada’s federal system. My argument here converges on a simple, energizing message: Canada needs what I term boundary-spanning multilevel governance (MLG) that is clearer, more inclusive, and much more agile. Below, I make my case, spotlighting the Innovation Superclusters Initiative (ISI) as a concrete, on-the-ground illustration of how boundary spanning can work in Canadian federalism, and where it can stumble.
Let’s get precise: what really counts as multilevel governance?
“MLG” can be a slippery label. The term has expanded into a catch-all, to the point that it risks becoming fuzzy and trivial. Christopher Alcantara and his colleagues proposed a fix that is refreshingly practical: treat MLG not as an entire system, but as specific instances – episodes where government and non-government actors co-produce public goods across different territorial scales. If governments are negotiating only among themselves, that’s intergovernmental relations (IGR); if non-government actors are genuinely inside the decision-making tent, not just “consulted,” now we’re in MLG territory. This instance-based definition provides clear analytical edges: focus on who’s involved, at what scales, and how decisions are made.
The digital twist: why the old Westminster playbook is under strain
It is also worth bearing in mind that governance is being reshaped by major currents that Davide Cargnello and Maryantonett Flumian identify as digital culture, disintermediation, and distributed authority. As I argued in another blog post, digital isn’t just tech; it’s changed how people work, learn, mobilize, and consume services. The combined effect of these three currents is that digitally enabled platforms can span traditional organizations, and authority can be easily distributed across agencies, boards, municipalities, and Indigenous governments, enabling cross-boundary collaboration. Federal systems can evolve from vertical, siloed, process-heavy models to flexible, adaptive entities that keep pace with problems that span sectors and scales.
This is where the EU-inspired distinction helps. Broadly speaking, think of MLG in two forms: Type I MLG looks like federalism – stable, general-purpose jurisdictions with neat boundaries and familiar accountability lines. Type II MLG is issue-specific and flexible: task-oriented units that bring together the right mix of actors, sometimes with intersecting memberships and temporary architectures. Canada needs a hybrid: keep Type I’s legitimacy and clarity (our constitutional backbone), but embrace Type II’s agility for complex, cross-sector challenges. Translation: create purpose-built platforms that assemble governments, Indigenous authorities, NGOs, issue-expert academics, and industry as needed; and disband or morph them when the job changes or the task is complete. This is boundary-spanning MLG. It demands leadership that convenes, measures outcomes (not just outputs), is data-literate, and is comfortable with managed risk.
Boundary Spanning MLG in Practice: Canada’s Innovation Superclusters Initiative (ISI)
Now, let’s see how this plays out on the ground. In a paper I co-authored with my former student, Brittany Harding, we use the Innovation Superclusters Initiative (2018) as a case study to examine how boundary-spanning MLG works – or should work in Canada. On paper, ISI is a boundary-spanning poster child: industry-led consortia, public-private co-investment (a 1:1 match), and regional ecosystems geared to knit together firms, research institutions, and multiple governments. It’s classic Type II style MLG; task-specific, flexible, collaborative, and outcome-oriented.
What worked well
• Horizontal collaboration: The consortia created platforms for knowledge exchange and pooled resources. Firms and universities grew closer; supply chains became more integrated; and regional innovation ecosystems gained structure.
• Shared skin in the game: Co-investment signalled seriousness and distributed risk, nudging Canadian firms (often risk-averse) toward bolder innovation bets.
• Regional conduits: Superclusters acted as connectors across dispersed actors, improving the odds that promising ideas would find partners, capital, and test beds.
Where it ran into headwinds
• Ambiguous vertical roles: Provinces were told not to lead applications but encouraged to support them. That muddled the sanctioning (who authorizes?) and coordinating (who steers?) capacity that durable MLG needs.
• Political volatility: Changes in provincial governments and priorities led to funding cuts and skepticism, reminding us that boundary-spanning ventures must be architected to withstand electoral cycles.
• Accountability gaps: Without formal agreements and robust monitoring, partnerships felt exposed to policy reversals and accusations of favouritism or opacity.
• Process friction: Private sector actors criticized restrictive application processes, questioning whether “industry-led” really meant shared decision-making or merely structured input.
The human factor: strategic agency
Despite these constraints, the case highlights policy entrepreneurs and local leaders who improvised to sustain collaborations. They convened multi-provincial coalitions, normalized consultative routines across governments and industry, and framed compelling narratives of regional reinvention to maintain momentum. That’s boundary spanning as craft: convening the right people, framing co-benefits clearly, and finding funding and data pathways that bridge mandates. It’s also the part of MLG that you can’t legislate; you have to cultivate it.
A practical blueprint: how Canada can make MLG durable and effective
Drawing a few lessons from the ISI case study, here’s a pragmatic recipe for a “made in Canada” MLG that’s clear, inclusive, and resilient:
A) Make it default to think beyond the formal boundaries of government.
No serious-minded public official would entertain the idea that governments can solve twenty-first-century problems alone. MLG offers a template for deploying non-government actors to co-produce decisions with governments across various levels. Within this template, the next task is to design appropriate structures, align expectations, and measure performance. It also focuses the minds of key actors on organizational flexibility and boundary-spanning leadership rather than turf protection and energy-draining jurisdictional squabbles.
B) Design purpose-built, Type II MLG Platforms on top of Type I foundations.
Nothing wrong with keeping Canada’s constitutional vertebrae of federalism (Type I) for legitimacy and core accountability. However, where problems cross sectors and scales (which is almost all the time), set up task-specific units with intersecting memberships; municipalities, Indigenous governments, NGOs, issue-expert academics, and industry – with clear mandates, sunset clauses, and pathways to evolve as issues change. Think “modular governance” that can be reconfigured without a constitutional redo.
C) Hard-wire boundary spanning guardrails.
The ISI example above shows that informal ingenuity isn’t enough. We need formal agreements clarifying roles (who sanctions, who coordinates), co-benefit charters (what each actor gains), and accountability frameworks (shared metrics, independent evaluation, transparent reporting). Add multi-scalar funding instruments that can braid federal, provincial, municipal, Indigenous, and private dollars without tripping over jurisdictional tripwires. These guardrails make collaborations survivable when the winds of politics change.
D) Lead like a convener, measure like an analyst.
Today’s public leaders need a different toolkit: convening and facilitation, outcome orientation, data literacy, and risk stewardship. They should champion interoperability – of people, datasets, and platforms – and reward cross-boundary wins. Crucially, they must shift attention from process outputs (meetings held, memos issued) to policy outcomes (water quality improved, emissions reduced, patents commercialized). That’s how MLG earns trust.
E) Bring citizens into actual co-production.
MLG isn’t just about more actors; it’s about shared authority. Co-production that includes Indigenous governments as rights holders, not stakeholders, and citizens’ groups as formal decision partners (not advisory sidebars) strengthens legitimacy and improves problem-solving with local knowledge and lived experience. The water governance examples point the way.
Spotting MLG in real policy spaces
Run this lens over the innovation policy example. ISI’s strengths – industry leadership, co-investment, and ecosystem building – should be kept and scaled. Its weaknesses – ambiguous authority, accountability gaps, and vulnerability to politics – should be corrected with compact, codified collaboration rules and evaluation regimes that survive government changes. Do that, and boundary-spanning collective action becomes durable MLG platforms rather than one-off programs.
The bottom line
Canada doesn’t need to jettison its Westminster traditions or its constitutional architecture. However, it needs to augment them with sharp, flexible, and robust boundary-spanning MLG structures and processes. When we’re not beholden to organizational turf, we can be crystal clear about who needs to be at the table, how decisions ought to be made, and who will be held to account. That’s how we’ll tackle policy and governance complexity in the digital era: delivering public value through agile, inclusive, outcome-focused governance that feels as modern as the problems the nation is trying to solve. The ISI case shows both the promise and the pitfalls. The task now is to standardize the craft: build more platforms where co-production is real, accountability is shared, and results speak louder than process. Canada needs boundary-spanning MLG more than ever to stick together and stay united as the country navigates a turbulent geopolitical and economic landscape.