Policy Horizons Canada, the federal foresight unit, and its 2024 disruption scan

• Phoenix pay system, and its prolonged failure

  Canada rolled out the Phoenix federal pay system in 2016, then spent more than C$2.6 billion by April 2022 to support and stabilise it and correct pay-file errors, with a further roughly C$1 billion allocated through the 2024-25 fiscal year.

• Canadian long-gun registry, its information system overrun and its dismantling

  Canada began registering all firearms under the 1995 Firearms Act from December 1998. The registry's first information system, CFIS I, had an initial estimate of $13 to 20 million and had cost $190 million by March 2005. Its successor CFIS II rose from $32 million to at least $87 million and was halted. In 2012 Parliament ended long-gun registration and ordered the destruction of about 7.5 million non-restricted registration records, which the RCMP deleted from CFIS in October 2012.

• The 1997 Canada Pension Plan financing reform

  In December 1993 the Chief Actuary projected that the pay-as-you-go contribution rate would reach 14.2% by 2030 and that the fund would run out by 2015. The federal and provincial governments agreed a reform package in 1997. It took effect on 1 January 1998, raised the combined contribution rate in steps to 9.9% by 2003, replaced pay-as-you-go financing with steady-state funding and invested net cash flows through the CPP Investment Board. The 2024 valuation puts the minimum sustaining rate at 9.19% from 2034, below the legislated 9.9%, with assets of $651 billion.

• PPP Canada and the P3 Canada Fund, and its dissolution

  Canada's federal Crown corporation PPP Canada, operational from 2009, committed over C$1.3 billion through the P3 Canada Fund to 25 public-private partnership projects across the country before the government dissolved it, with operations ceasing at the end of 2017 and the corporation dissolved effective March 31, 2018.

• Samuel De Champlain Bridge corridor

  Infrastructure Canada delivered the Samuel De Champlain Bridge corridor in Montreal as a public-private partnership signed in 2015, opening the bridge in July 2019 against a contractual in-service date of December 1, 2018, at a total project cost the department reports as C$4.2 billion, after a C$235 million settlement in 2018 that paid for delay-recovery measures and oversized-part transport issues.

• CSA Regulatory Sandbox, succeeded by the Financial Innovation Hub

  Canada's provincial securities regulators, acting jointly as the Canadian Securities Administrators, authorised 13 firms through the CSA Regulatory Sandbox between 2016 and 2021, before it was succeeded by the CSA Financial Innovation Hub and its decision list stopped being updated in December 2023.

• Mitacs Accelerate research internships

  Mitacs, the federally and provincially funded not-for-profit, placed 4,859 students, recent graduates and postdoctoral fellows in Accelerate research internships with 2,314 host organisations under 2,406 professors in 2024-25, out of 20,885 internships across all its programmes that year.

• Skills Development under the Labour Market Development Agreements, and its 2024-25 funding cut

  Canada's provinces and territories delivered 154,892 employment-benefit services under the federally funded Labour Market Development Agreements in 2024-25, 92 percent of them Skills Development training, in a year when Part II funding fell by $425 million as a temporary top-up in place since 2016-17 ended and Skills Development spending fell 19.7 percent to $798.9 million.

• Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements

  Public Safety Canada's Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements paid $1.84 billion in contributions to provinces and territories between 2011–12 and 2015–16, almost 45 percent of everything paid since the programme began in 1970, while 53 disaster events were approved by the Governor in Council between 2011 and 2016.

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• Embrapa, a fifty-year bet on tropical agriculture

  Brazil created a public agricultural research corporation in 1973 to make acidic tropical soils productive, kept it funded across every change of government since, and cereal production rose from 46.5 million tonnes in 2000 to 155.9 million in 2023.

• The Delta Programme and its fund

  The Netherlands legislated a standing programme against flooding and fresh-water shortage, run by an independent Delta Commissioner and paid from a dedicated Delta Fund that expects 27.4 billion euros to be available through 2050.

• CGEE, the strategic studies center

  Created in 2001, the Centro de Gestão e Estudos Estratégicos was designed to produce prospective studies and long-term recommendations for Brazilian science, technology and innovation policy, with 273 researchers and specialists signing its creation record.

• Centre for Strategic Futures, foresight inside government

  Singapore established the Centre for Strategic Futures in 2009 inside the Prime Minister's Office strategy system to study blind spots, run long-term futures research and develop foresight methods.

• Legally binding carbon budgets

  The United Kingdom's 2008 Climate Change Act made five-year emissions budgets a standing legal cycle set twelve years ahead, and by July 2026 seven budgets covered 2008 through 2042 while the first three had been met.

• Fukushima decommissioning roadmap, a 30–40-year risk-reduction horizon

  After the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident, Japan adopted a government-led mid-and-long-term decommissioning roadmap and set completion at roughly 30–40 years after cold shutdown, treating the work as continuous risk reduction rather than a one-off rebuild.

• PLANAPP and REPLAN, a centre-of-government foresight network

  Portugal's PLANAPP operates as a Centre of Government body for evidence-based foresight, planning, monitoring, evaluation and impact analysis; its REPLAN network lists five multisectoral team remits and held its inaugural meeting on 23 November 2022.

• Labour Market Intelligence Programme and forward skills planning

  South Africa's Department of Higher Education and Training ran a Labour Market Intelligence Programme from 2012, published the fifth iteration of its national occupations-in-high-demand list by April 2024, and identified 138 occupations for the emerging hydrogen-economy value chain.

• Government Report on the Future and the parliamentary Committee for the Future

  Every Finnish government since 1993 has submitted a Report on the Future to Parliament, answered by a standing Committee for the Future; Part I of the Orpo government's report, a 20-year scenario process prepared jointly by all ministries and informed by 40 dialogues on Finland's future, was submitted on 18 September 2025.

• Foresight Centre at the Riigikogu (Arenguseire Keskus)

  Estonia's parliament set up a statutory Foresight Centre within the Chancellery of the Riigikogu under the Foresight Act of 2016. In 2025 the centre published four research-direction reports and 17 short reports, drawing on more than 30 researchers and experts.

• Office of Technology Assessment, defunded and closed in 1995

  Congress gave the Office of Technology Assessment, created under the Technology Assessment Act of 1972, the statutory function to provide early indications of the probable impacts of technology; it appropriated $21,970,000 for the office with a cap of 143 staff for fiscal year 1995, then appropriated $3,615,000 for fiscal year 1996 to carry out its orderly closure, with no more than 17 employees paid except for severance.

• Rządowe Centrum Studiów Strategicznych, liquidated in 2006

  Poland's Government Centre for Strategic Studies, attached to the Prime Minister, with tasks of strategic programming and forecasting of economic and social development set in article 14k of the Act of 8 August 1996 on the Council of Ministers, was liquidated as of 31 March 2006 by the Act of 17 February 2006, in the year its budget had been planned at PLN 10,016 thousand.

• Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB)

  Since 1990 the German Bundestag has kept an Office of Technology Assessment, run under contract by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, whose tasks include horizon scanning of scientific and technological trends at early stages; by 2026 it reported more than 200 projects and over 400 publications.

• National Assembly Futures Institute

  Korea's National Assembly enacted the National Assembly Future Institute Act on 12 December 2017 and opened the institute on 28 May 2018 with a statutory duty to predict and analyse changes in the future environment and derive mid to long term national development strategies; its English-language research report archive listed 203 reports in 2026.

• Federal Chancellery situation and environment analysis (Perspektivstab)

  Switzerland's Federal Chancellery runs a long-term, continuous situation and environment analysis for the Federal Council that looks 10 to 15 years ahead; it produced Herausforderungen in 2007 with expertise from 30 federal offices, Perspektiven 2025 in 2011, Perspektiven 2030 in 2014, the Schweiz 2030 and Schweiz 2035 reports and the scenario report Perspektiven Schweiz 2040, which feed the Federal Council's legislature planning.

• Senate foresight delegation (Délégation sénatoriale à la prospective)

  The Bureau of the French Senate created a foresight delegation in April 2009, succeeding the planning delegation set up by the 1982 planning reform law, with a mandate to study changes in society and the economy and to build scenarios; it has 36 senators appointed in proportion to the political groups and adopted reports in every year from 2010 to 2022 listed on its page.

• Senate Commission on Future Challenges, Science, Technology and Innovation

  Chile's Senate created the Commission on Future Challenges, Science, Technology and Innovation in April 2012, modelled on Finland's Committee for the Future, with the Academy of Sciences, National Prize winners and university rectors as permanent members; by July 2024 more than 700 scientists had worked in more than 20 of its expert tables.

• Framtidskommissionen, the Prime Minister's time-limited future commission

  The Swedish government appointed Framtidskommissionen, chaired by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, in November 2011 to identify the societal challenges Sweden faces in the longer term, and by its final report in March 2013 it had held eight meetings, organised 40 open meetings, seminars and workshops, published twelve background reports and an anthology, and carried out four sub-inquiries.

• National Planning Commission foresight work for Malawi 2063

  Malawi's National Planning Commission, which signed a UNDP initiation plan in November 2020 to create a foresight unit and horizon scanning capability, reported for 2022/23 that it produced a foresight modelling report with modelled scenarios for the Malawi 2063 vision, policy briefs on three of the vision's pillars with UNDP and the finance ministry, and foresight modelling training for planners from ministries and academia.

• Bureau National de la Prospective et de la Veille Stratégique and the national prospective studies

  Côte d'Ivoire's Ministry of Planning and Development completed its fourth national prospective study, Côte d'Ivoire 2040, under the technical responsibility of the Bureau National de la Prospective et de la Veille Stratégique, after earlier national studies in 1973 to 1974, 1983 to 1984 and 1993 to 1995, and built eighteen thematic and three global scenarios to the 2040 horizon.

• Teknologiraadet, the Norwegian Board of Technology

  Norway's Board of Technology, an independent public advisory body created in 1999 on the Storting's initiative that also serves as secretariat for the Storting's technology group, delivered eight publications and held eleven meetings, four of them for the Storting's technology group, in 2025 on operating income of NOK 13.8 million.

• Teknologiraadet, the Danish Board of Technology, abolished in 2012

  Denmark's parliament abolished the statutory Board of Technology, set up by Act no. 375 of 14 June 1995 to assess technology and report to the Folketing, by Act no. 559 of 18 June 2012, after an all-party budget agreement of 15 November 2011 withdrew its annual grant, which had been DKK 10.5 million in 2011, to fund the research reserve.

• Bureau federal du Plan

  Belgium's Federal Planning Bureau, which produces the government's economic forecasts and long-term demographic, ageing, energy and transport outlooks, published 34 publications in 2025 and employed 91 full-time equivalents at the end of the year, down from 96 at the end of 2023, after it stopped replacing departing staff in 2024 to meet savings targets.

• Special Secretariat of Foresight (now of Long-term Planning)

  Greece's Special Secretariat of Foresight published its Megatrends 2040 report and seven megatrend notes in February and March 2022 and then six further foresight studies to September 2026, including Generative AI Greece 2030 (January 2024), The Future of Work and Skills in Greece (February 2025) and Mediterranean Foresight (September 2026).

• STRATA foresight for the Lietuva 2050 state progress strategy

  Lithuania's Government Strategic Analysis Center (STRATA) followed six thematic public discussions on the country's future in May and June 2022 with nine foresight studies on megatrends and scenarios by policy area, which fed the vision and strategic ambitions of the draft state progress strategy Lietuva 2050.

• Institut Royal des Etudes Stratégiques (IRES)

  Morocco's Royal Institute for Strategic Studies, announced in the 2003 Throne Speech to strengthen the country's capacities for analysis, adaptation and anticipation and created by Dahir No 1-07-183 of 30 November 2007, published the twelfth edition of its strategic dashboard on Morocco's international positioning on 28 November 2024 and was still issuing general reports in 2025.

• Long-term Insights Briefings under the Public Service Act 2020

  New Zealand's Public Service Act 2020 required every departmental chief executive to publish a Long-term Insights Briefing on future trends, risks and opportunities at least once every three years, and nineteen were published in the first round, which concluded in mid-2023, four of them produced jointly by several agencies.

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