Are we designing progress around human well-being?

We have become extraordinarily good at designing systems for efficiency. We should become equally serious about designing them for human flourishing.
Canada already has a Quality of Life Framework intended to bring measures beyond economic growth into federal planning, budgeting and decision-making. The next step is to use that framework as a genuine design test: judge policies not only by what they produce, but by the lives they make possible, writes Jacob Beaulieu. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
Opinion
BY JACOB BEAULIEU
October 26, 2026

OTTAWA—Imagine Canada was being designed from scratch today.

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