The Bank of Canada COVID‑19 stringency index: measuring policy response across provinces

Provincial governments in Canada have taken different approaches to containing the spread of COVID-19. This paper presents details on a stringency index constructed by staff at the Bank of Canada. The index follows methodology developed by the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, which we adapt to the Canadian context to capture granular differences in policy responses across provinces. The index measures the stringency of policies related to containment restrictions and public information campaigns across provinces and over time. It does not measure the efficacy of a province’s COVID-19 response or provide a direct measure of the economic impact of government policies. But it can be used to disentangle the effects of containment measures from other factors, such as varying transmission rates of the COVID-19 virus, voluntary business closures, physical distancing, and government support programs.