This federal election cycle has seen laudable efforts to raise awareness around neglected issues.

We've heard more about the need for greater co-operation between provincial and territorial governments to respond to chaos triggered by United States President Donald Trump's policies. In the same time frame, municipal politicans have been calling for climate change action through co-ordinated sustainable infrastructure development.

For policy experts and pundits alike, a growing consensus is emerging that Canada has for too long ignored deeper economic and political structural problems.

Some political analysts, (like pundit Andrew Coyne), have framed these issues as being part of Canada's growth crisis, underscoring problems like a lack of a coherent industrial policy, flat or declining productivity and weak competitiveness.

Others, including provincial, municipal and First Nations leaders, note Canada also lacks a coherent approach to infrastructure that addresses decades of neglect in cities, towns and Indigenouscommunities alike.

As researchers committed to advancing more intentional conversations concerning the future of public education, we also see a huge gap in terms of co-ordinated, pan-Canadian federal efforts to support young people's futures through education.

For example, we have a national early learning and child-care strategy, (which could be imperilled, depending on who wins the election). It's often shorthanded as being about "child care," which diminishes the long-term significance of paying attention to how we invest in young people and families, and the quality of early education.

A recent open letter by the chair of the Toronto District School Board called on the leaders of Canada's federal party leaders to address the growing diversity and complexity of the city's student population.

Read more: 'Child care' or education? Words matter in how we envision living well with children

We don't have a federal department for education. While the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC) serves as a forum to discuss policy issues, as education scholar Jennifer Wallner notes, "effective creativity and co-ordination" is needed.

In the early 2000s, the Canadian Council on Learning was making ground-breaking contributions towards helping Canada develop comprehensive and coherent approaches to lifelong learning. But the council's work was hobbled in 2011 when it was defunded by Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

Sen. Rosemary Moodie's introducton of Bill S-282, a "National Strategy for Children and Youth Act," in November 2023 is one example of a positive effort to develop a pan-Canadian youth development framework.

There are solid pieces of a puzzle that can contribute to nurturing hopeful young people and a socially healthy and empowered society. But these sorely need to be knit together, as they have in places like like Iceland and Finland to name a few.

The question of what public education actually means is much more than a semantic exercise; it's a practical and foundational exercise in building a civil society and nation.

Three decades ago, American cultural and media critic Neil Postman invoked the truism that "public education creates a public" - a reminder that the vibrancy of our communities and democracy can't be taken for granted. As we look at the U.S. and the rise of neo-liberalism and authoritarian populism, Canadians need to remember Postman.

Our colleague, David King, former minister of education in Alberta from 1979 to 1986, observes that of all institutions citizens have created, "public school education is the only such institution that remains where we can share common stories, and conventions and imagination."

Yet the role of public education in contributing to Canada's democratic traditions is often taken for granted. A shared sense of what we should value about public education remains elusive - and is played out amid debate about structural and political reforms, around matters like who controls schools.

Meanwhile, researchers highlight how families continue moving to private schooling. Consider Australians, who see public education as a universal right, yet 35 per cent of students attend private schools..

In Canada, a network of university researchers and advocacy groups - the Public Education Exchange (PEX) research network -has documented growing privatization and commercialization of public education. Sue Winton, PEX project director and education professor, describes how the privatization of public education in Canada continues to undermine equality and democracy.

Across Canada, processes towards privatization involve policies and practices that shift responsibilities from governments to private bodies, with corresponding shifts in lower investment in per-student public school learning.

Shifts towards privatization go beyond funding private and charter schools. They include underfunding school facilities and movements that promote sloganeering around "parent rights" and "parental choice."

Read more: 'School choice' policies are associated with increased separation of students by social class

In higher education, privatization has also accelerated. Students, particularly international students, have provided an increasing portion of funding. In Ontario, according to Higher Education Strategy Associates, international students contributed approximately 76 per cent of all tuition fee revenue in the college sector in 2023-24. In the university sector, it's more than 50 per cent. Other provinces saw similar shifts.

A decline in per capita public investment has encouraged the growth of the private college and university sector and investments in AI-enabled learning through corporate learning systems. Technology-related fields have developed corporate partnerships that shape what is taught and how.

The precarity of public higher education in Canada threatens our social and economic future.

Whether it's through local community schools, a university or college campus or larger community initiatives, we can't drop the promise of universal access to an inclusive and broad education.

Keeping this promise is even more pressing given generational inequity. As discusssed by Paul Kershaw, policy professor and founder of "Gen Squeeze" think tank, and Kareem Kudus, research analyst, "generationally unfair policies ... have contributed to today's housing, affordability, medical care and climate crises."

Read more: Wildfires in Alberta spark urgent school discussions about terrors of global climate futures

Initiatives established in the 1970s focused on building connections between different regions: Open House Canada was a high-school student exchange program, and Katimavik, a youth service program founded by the visionary author Jacques Hebert, who would later become a senator and champion for intercutural and global travel experiences for our young people.

Programs like these have presented significant and rich opportunities for building relationships across difference, and an equitable and inclusive sense of social cohesion. But governments at all levels have failed to sustain and expand such programs, or connect them with school learning.

The current existential threat to Canada fuelled by Trump's presidency should mobilize not just an "elbows up" approach, but also "heads up" when it comes to the need for a pan-Canadian a youth policy framework that bolsters public education. As many Americans are also realizing, we need public education to help address current challenges, but it's under attack.

As American organizational behaviour expert and writer Margaret J. Wheatley reminds us: "There is nothing more powerful than a community discovering what it cares about."

In the aftermath of the federal election, we'd love to see much more dialogue surrounding the "publicness" of public education - to go further in at least deciding on what we really care about as a country.