Public health in Canada is at a turning point. Frank et al. (2022) suggest that Canadian public health practice should be reformed by incorporating three key principles: recognition of health inequities, complex causation and coordinated upstream intervention. This response suggests that there is far too little focus on implementing automatic stabilizers: systems that would automatically respond to shocks of all kinds without the need for experts to recognize a problem, develop solutions and then implement them during social upheaval. Our goal should be to develop robust systems that will support resilient societies.