Policy Coordination in a Federal State: Lessons from the Canadian Covid-19 Vaccine Implementation Experience

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? Effective coordination of F/P/T policy is a central challenge to Canadian federalism. The Covid-19 vaccine rollout was subject to F/P/T coordination process failures which this paper examines as a symptom of ineffective intergovernmental health policy network management. Using network management and procedural policy tool design theories, this paper examines F/P/T policy coordination and executive network management activity in Health Canada and Transport Canada during the first 18 months of the pandemic. Through hypothesis coding and archival analysis, 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 collaborative executive horizontal network management is an effective and viable tool for increasing F/P/T coordination and harmonizing national policy mixtures with minimal P/T jurisdiction infringement.