Why we exist
Canada's policy community is home to some of the country's sharpest analytical minds. Graduate students, researchers, and early-career professionals spend years developing the tools to understand complex policy questions — reading economic literature, studying governance structures, examining data, and thinking carefully about how decisions get made and who bears their consequences.
That intellectual energy rarely finds a public outlet.
Public Policy Compass fills that space. We aim to showcase products of genuine intellectual curiosity. Our contributors write as independent thinkers, not as representatives of any employer, government, or organization.
We believe that serious policy analysis does not have to be locked behind institutional prestige or paywalls. The most important questions in Canadian public life — where people can afford to live, how trade shapes labour markets, how technology is governed, and who bears the cost of policy decisions — deserve the clearest possible treatment.
What guides our work
What we cover
Public Policy Compass covers the political economy of Canada and the international forces that intersect with it. We treat our topic areas not as separate silos but as parts of one interconnected system — competing for the same scarce inputs of land, capital, labour, and political attention.
Tariffs, investment, supply chains, industrial policy, and who actually bears the cost.
Land, zoning, capital, and the politics of where Canadians can afford to live.
Institutions, elections, federalism, and the mechanics of how decisions get made.
The economics of Canada's energy transition, carbon pricing, and the tradeoffs involved.
Workforce trends, collective bargaining, immigration policy, and wages.
AI governance, digital policy, platform regulation, and Canada's innovation capacity.
Provincial system performance, wait times, federal transfers, and the reform debate.
NATO obligations, Arctic sovereignty, and Canada's defence commitments.
Editorial independence
All work published in Public Policy Compass is based exclusively on publicly available information, published academic and policy literature, and independently developed analysis. No piece draws on, reflects, or discloses confidential information from any government body, employer, or institution.
Views expressed are entirely personal to each author and do not represent the positions of any employer, government department, or affiliated organization. Contributors employed in the public or private sector publish strictly in their personal capacity.
Public Policy Compass does not accept contributions that draw on non-public government files, confidential institutional materials, or privileged professional information of any kind.
Contribute your analysis
Public Policy Compass is built to grow beyond a single byline. If you do serious work on any of our coverage areas — grounded in publicly available research, your own academic work, or independent analysis — we want to read your pitch.
We publish argued commentary and original analysis. Not press-release summaries, not rephrased wire copy. We are particularly interested in work that crosses disciplinary lines or challenges conventional readings of the evidence.
Send a short pitch — two or three sentences on the argument, not the topic — and a writing sample. All submissions are reviewed on the understanding that the work is based on publicly available information only.
Submit a pitch →Artjom founded Public Policy Compass to create a platform for rigorous, independent policy analysis from emerging voices — work grounded in academic scholarship and intellectual curiosity rather than institutional position.
Public Policy Compass is editorially independent. It takes no position on behalf of any party, firm, funder, or employer. All views published are those of the individual authors.
Contact: artjom.gavryshev@alumni.utoronto.ca