About the Forum
Mission and Scope
A joint venture of the Canadian Science Policy Centre and The/La Collaborative, the Forum convenes cross-sectoral dialogues that benefit from the input of social sector organisation leaders, social innovation practitioners, decision- and policy-makers, research and higher education policy stakeholders and social and human sciences researchers. Participants engage around deliberative dialogue workshops to create alignment on education, policies and practices and deliver concerted action plans.
The third edition of the Canadian Forum for Social Innovation Forum will be held in Halifax June 2-4 2025 in partnership with Social Innovation Canada and hosted at Dalhousie University.
This year’s gathering will explore themes connected to ecosystem capacity for mission-oriented innovation. Forum 2025 builds on a series of consultative and sense-making workshops, literature reviews, surveys and a national dialogue leveraging backcasting methodologies to produce a Roadmap for Canada’s Innovation Ecosystems that articulates the challenge.
– The Right Honourable David Johnston 28th Governor General of CanadaCANADA faces significant social, environmental and financial challenges. Such challenges – for example, poverty and homelessness, youth unemployment, demographic change and the marginalization of certain populations – require creative thinking and collaboration due to their complex, multi-layered nature. They call for social innovations that explore new approaches to building resilience, fostering inclusions and enhancing sustainability.
On June 2-4 2025 in Halifax, Forum guests will participate in an immersive deliberative exercise aiming at identifying support and policy levers to bolster place-based and cross-sectoral connectivity, and increase capacity for knowledge mobilization and innovation intelligence across the innovation ecosystem through collective action, talent and expertise.
