OVERVIEW:
COVID-19 sets a new precedent for the scale of a public health response and its vast economic consequences, but also poses longer-term geopolitical challenges and risks for Canadian financial services. The pandemic illustrates a failure of transnational cooperation when faced with a complex and borderless risk, similar to threats from climate change, financial instability or data governance. It exemplifies the break toward greater economic segmentation, defying notions of a slow but steady convergence around free trade, open investment and shared regulation. And with disparities in the exposure to and underwriting of risk, the outbreak could plant the seeds for political resentment and institutional distrust.