CORIN: Building Canada's Capacity for Collaborative Problem-Solving Across Sectors

Canada faces a growing number of complex challenges that extend beyond the mandate, expertise, or capacity of any single organization. Animal health, public health, food security, environmental stewardship, homelessness and addiction, emergency preparedness, housing, workforce development, and community resilience increasingly require collaboration across sectors, disciplines, and jurisdictions. The Collaborative Operational Response Integration Network (CORIN) is a practical framework designed to strengthen collective problem-solving through improved coordination, shared learning, pilot development, evaluation, and continuous improvement. Emerging from more than a decade of work involving Community Network Integration (CNI), CORIN provides a structured process through which governments, industry, academia, community organizations, producers, Indigenous communities, and citizens can work together while maintaining their individual mandates and organizational independence. Rather than creating new bureaucracy or replacing existing institutions, CORIN focuses on improving the effectiveness of existing networks by enhancing communication, information flow, relationship development, and collaborative action. The framework is intended to support practical implementation across a broad range of domains, including animal health, public health, food systems, environmental stewardship, municipal resilience, homelessness and addiction, housing, research, innovation, and future emerging priorities. This paper introduces CORIN as a national collaboration and implementation framework and outlines its relationship to Community Network Integration (CNI), its guiding principles, and its potential application across sectors. It is intended as both a practical reference document and an invitation to collaboration for organizations and individuals interested in strengthening Canada's capacity to address complex challenges through coordinated action.