Wicked problems, virtuous solutions

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

  • Published as “Wicked, entangled problems call for virtuous solutions”

Complex issues interweaving climate change, widening inequalities, pandemics, political unrest and more, were very much on the agenda this past week at the Victoria Forum.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 August 2026

703 words

We live in an era of polycrisis, which the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University defines as a situation in which “crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that cause major human harm.”  The Institute identifies a set of fourteen global systemic stresses that create systemic risk, including “climate change, biodiversity loss, widening inequalities, pandemics, financial instability, political unrest — all influenced by long-running demographic trends.”  

These stresses constitute wicked problems, defined by Rittel and Webber in 1973 as a “complex issue that defies complete definition, for which there can be no final solution, since any resolution generates further issues, and where solutions are not true or false or good or bad, but the best that can be done at the time.”

These wicked problems were very much on the agenda this past week at the Victoria Forum, an annual gathering jointly hosted by the Senate of Canada, the University of Victoria and Royal Roads University. The Forum “brings people together from across Canada and around the world to . . . explore the complex tapestry of challenges facing our world and search for solutions to them.”

Monday’s opening plenary featured Thomas Homer-Dixon, Founder and Executive Director of the Cascade Institute, and Dr. Courtney Howard, Chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and a leading advocate in Canada for a Wellbeing society.

Professor Homer-Dixon began by laying out his Institute’s latest thinking on the polycrisis. The Institute is developing “a new, complexity-informed approach to policymaking: one that anticipates cascading failures across interconnected systems and integrates the best available knowledge about both known and emerging risks.”

Their work has enabled them to explore plausible futures for the planet in 2040. The bad news is that of the ten stable global scenarios they found, eight are as bad as or worse than today, with the most likely outcome being deterioration – which is where ‘business as usual’ is headed – and the second most likely being collapse. Of the two more positive futures, one is not so attractive because it would be a high-tech autocracy.

But the good news is that there is one plausible outcome they call the Hope Scenario.  This is not simply a speculative or aspirational future, said Homer-Dixon, but “a scientifically grounded basis for honest hope.” Such a future would involve a cleantech breakthrough in energy and in the agri-food sector, a managed roll out of AI, ‘guided’ pro-social and pro-environmental economic growth and a strong democracy, and would result in a low burden of disease. 

So how do we get there? In a speech at an international conference on urban health in 2014, I suggested wicked problems need virtuous solutions. By virtuous, I meant solutions that move us towards a more sustainable, just and healthy world, solutions that are rooted in a commitment to the public good. Dr. Howard’s presentation focused on that.

Her key message was that we have focused on money as the measurement of progress and success, but people and communities understand that wellbeing is about much more than that. They know it is about our level of human capability, our social relationships and the quality of our environment, as well as the quality of our institutions and our financial status.

But by focusing on the last of these, we have actually destabilized the other key elements of our wellbeing. So we need to measure these societal foundations and manage them to optimise for wellbeing. In the words of the World Health Organization, we need to become a Wellbeing society, “committed to achieving equitable health now and for future generations without breaching ecological limits”.

In the following plenary, Dr. James Orbinski, a highly respected leader of the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders and now Master of Massey College, put it very simply: “We have choice . . . We must make the right choice”, while Lord John Alderdice stressed we solve problems by coming together and by committing to a positive future.

In short, to address the wicked problems of the polycrisis we need to commit to working together to find virtuous solutions rooted in the common good. In my next column I will discuss some of the solutions discussed at the Victoria Forum.

© Trevor Hancock, 2026

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

National food security? Not without a healthy diet

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Canada’s new National Food Security Strategy fails to pay much attention to either the field or the fork end of the system.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

21 July 2026

698 words

The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization describes an agri-food system as encompassing everything from ‘field to fork’. Unfortunately, Canada’s new National Food Security Strategy (NFSS) fails to pay much attention to either the field or the fork end of the system.

At the field end, noted Professor Asim Biswas, Canada Research Chair in Digital Agriculture at the University of Guelph, in an article in the Globe and Mail on July 6th, the NFSS “has little to say about the ground in which that food is grown,” adding that “a food-security strategy that omits the soil has overlooked the one thing on which all the rest depends.”

Moreover, as I pointed out in my July 12th column, there is an almost complete absence of any reference to the environment in the NFSS. So we have a food strategy that doesn’t mention the most fundamental underpinning of our food security, our environment, including the soil.

Nor does the strategy do any better at the fork end of the system. You would think that a national food strategy would have something to say about the nutritious quality of the food that is consumed and the meeting of dietary needs to enable a long and healthy life.

After all, a 2023 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that in Canada “poor dietary pattern is the leading risk factor for loss of life years at the national level”, contributing to between 27 and 39 percent of all deaths in men and between 9 to 23 percent of all deaths in women.

Yet astonishingly, none of that is apparent in the Carney government’s approach to food security, which displays an almost complete disregard for a healthy diet. Diet is only mentioned once, and in passing, in their 27-page document, where it is noted that because of climate and agricultural specialization “not enough fruits and vegetables are produced year-round to meet the full dietary needs and recommended consumption levels of Canadians”; no mention of the unhealthy levels of fat, salt, sugar and red meat in the average Canadian diet, never mind ultra-processed foods.

Indeed, health itself is only mentioned eight times, mostly in a recurring phrase about protecting the health and safety of our food.  But bizarrely, half of those references are found in suggestions to reduce the regulatory burden and thus the costs to the agri-food industry, a position that seems to have been championed by the industry itself.

Even worse, Canada’s Food Guide, issued in 2019, is also only mentioned once and in passing, where it is suggested that “based on Canada’s Food Guide, the domestically-produced share of healthy food available to Canadians will increase from 75% to 85%, by 2032”. Well, that’s fine, but shouldn’t the fundamental aim of the entire agri-food system be to produce a healthy diet, based on Canada’s Food Guide.

 It seems the government is ignorant of – or is choosing to ignore – its own policy initiatives and expertise.  The government could have looked to the 2019 Food Policy for Canada, which set out “a framework to align and coordinate federal food-related initiatives . . . to improve social, health, environmental and economic outcomes.” It could have used the Canada Food Guide as a goal. It could have consulted with its own Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council, which was established in 2021 – except that it has not met nor had new members appointed since 2023. 

As Professor Biswas pointed out, it could have linked its food security strategy to the National Agricultural Soil Health Strategy that Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald committed Canada to in March 2026. But not one of these is mentioned in the NFSS.

Frankly, the NFSS comes across as an amateurish report cobbled together by people with a narrow economic understanding of food security – as one might expect from a government headed by an economist. But a national food security strategy that pays scant attention to either field or fork or to the government’s own policies and recommendations is not worth the paper it is written on. The Carney government should try again, this time by talking to people who actually understand the full depth and breadth of food security.

© Trevor Hancock, 2026

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy