Introduction

If asked, most Canadians can probably name a current or past public inquiry. Canadians and policy actors are well aware that public inquiries are part of the policy landscape and have contributed to the policy process on a wide range of policy issues. At any given time, politicians, policy scholars, the media, interest groups and the public are aware of ongoing public inquiries and pay attention to their role in policy analysis and the policy process. National inquiries often get significant media attention and some provincial inquiries are regularly covered on the national news. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, for example, has recently garnered the attention of the nation after its launch in 2016. In addition to public salience, generations of scholars have also been interested in questions about public inquiries and their role in the policy process and in policy analysis.

Public inquiries have been a part of the policy process since before Confederation as one of many political features inherited from the British political system. Public inquiries and ‘royal investigations’ stem from the British monarch's royal prerogative to order investigations, which date back to King Henry VII in 1517 (Makarenko, 2007). Indeed, the British government sent Lord Durham to the colonies in 1838 to investigate the causes of rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada; his famous report led to a series of changes in the policy process, including the union of the two Canadas into a single colony, paving the way for what became a policy system based on British-style responsible parliamentary government and the division of powers. The Government of Upper and Lower Canada passed the first Canadian public inquiry law in 1846, later modified after Confederation in 1868.

Since that time there have been hundreds of public inquiries at the federal and provincial levels across Canada on virtually every major policy issue, with modified versions of inquiries and investigations at the local government level. At the federal level alone there have been royal commissions on a wide range of important policy issues, including the Royal Commission on the Defence of Canada (1861), on Railways (1887), on Dominion–Provincial Relations (1937–1940), on Energy (1957–1959), on Canada's Economic Prospects (Gordon Commission 1955–1958), on Government Organization (1960–1962), on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963–1967), and on the Status of Women (1967–1970), among numerous other policy issues.