The people meant to be governing the country are not governing it

Much could be said about the Canadian federal government’s fiscal update, and been. But what worries me is how it confirms my creeping suspicion that the people meant to be governing the country are not governing it. Which is not a paranoid lead-in to the WEF versus self-government. It’s that for all the high-falutin’ rhetoric, nobody knows how to make policy or much cares, and very few people even realize it. They couldn’t plot if they tried.

In this regard contrast the finance minister’s soothing burble about “restoring fiscal discipline” with the truth that the deficit came in below projections because of unanticipated external factors not deliberate government choices tough or easy, wise or foolish. And while people respond by cheering or booing as money is or is not sprayed at their personal favourite stuff, often including them, far too few worry that almost nothing that it describes will happen, and what does will happen through luck or inertia not initiative. Eighteen straight federal deficits isn’t choice, it’s paralysis.

As stuff like “Foreign Minister Anand announces launch and first meeting of Federal-Provincial-Territorial Francophonie Consultation Committee” is not activity. It does not get results. It may not even produce a report. But they lumber on because it’s what they’ve always done, and they struggle even to attempt active choices let alone deliver results.

I do not exaggerate. Indeed, at the risk of imperiling your sanity as well as my own, let me present a roundup of relevant and easily available news stories beginning with this gem from Blacklock’s Reporter: in 2019 the feds created an Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise to monitor the ethics of Canadian corporations’ actions abroad. But this person has not even tabled an annual report since 2022. One might, of course, sneer at the notion that government has anything to teach business aboutmorality. But the key point here is the contrast between the vaulting ambition to reform capitalism globally and the incapacity to write a basic document.

OK, that fatuity was under Trudeau, sent packing to universal relief and replaced by wise, sage, adult Mr. Carney. Whose “Build Canada Homes” project is building Canada rhetoric. Including “Prime Minister Carney delivers on commitment to accelerate homebuilding in Ottawa” before the thing really got going… which it won’t. But the self-praise will. (Just as, you may recall, Justin Trudeau said his housing policy “delivered for millions”.)

Or consider this one, also from Blacklock’s: at “the Special Joint Committee on the Exercise of the Powers Under The Building Canada Act”, a body I did not invent and would not want to, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc declared himself “very satisfied” with progress to date. So MP Aaron Gunn asked “How many projects to date have been designated by the Major Projects Office as in the national interest?” None: “We have not designated under the law a project yet.” “Are you satisfied with that?” “Yes, because there has been a lot of good work done.”

Not that we get to see any of it, nor is it “good work” as we might use that term. Essentially the politicians have no idea what’s going on including, say, with Nutrition North. But they are very pleased with themselves and good at saying so. That they can manage.

Also, and again Blacklock’s does invaluable work here while the subsidized media take government verbiage at face value, the Finance Minister finally produced a bill to create the federal Financial Crimes Agency first promised in 2021. And yet the RCMP Chief Superintendent said “We’re not sure exactly how the Agency is going to look.” It’s kind of important to the story. What if it looks like a money pit?

For it should not of course be supposed that the government is unable to spend money. On the contrary, it haemorrhages the stuff on a daily basis. Remember the old jibe about the spineless politician who’d sign a leaf if it blew in the window onto his desk? Well, these folks do it with grants, big or small.

Including “Today, Prime Minister Carney outlined this new $6 billion nationwide effort to recruit, train, and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal trades workers in the next five years.” And $6 billion is a lot of money, especially when you’re adding $66 billion to the national debt whose interest is eating your lunch. But this “Team Canada Strong” is not an example of people governing, albeit badly. Essentially it’s meddlesome spending on autopilot. Nobody knows how to change it, or is even sure they could. But again, they don’t care. It’s the kind of name that polls well. And that they can manage.

What they cannot manage is actually recruiting, training and hiring hundreds of thousands of skilled tradespersons. Just as when you hear that “Taleeb Noormohamed, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, on behalf of the Honourable Eleanor Olszewski, Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, will announce federal funding to support technology scale-up services for business founders in Saskatchewan” you should not suppose business founders will be assisted technologically in scaling up services. But money will be spent. And credit will be claimed.

Now if you’re tempted to laugh out loud at there even being a “Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation” please go ahead. Especially as you read Chris Selley’s takedown of the feds’ claim to be “building the first public AI supercomputer” including mocking the phrase “startups scaling”, part of the whole transformative leveraging of catalytics shtick. And really, from the people who brought you the Phoenix pay debacle, what could go wrong?

Selley thinks the computer could run Canada better than the politicians. And wonders what they’d do when the computer said stop using defence procurement as a jobs program and get rid of supply management to improve affordability. But I’ll tell you what they wouldn’t do. Act effectively. As for instance with the $3.2 billion Universal Broadband Fund meant to provide every Canadian household high-speed internet. Or remember the federal daycare program. Another massive, costly faceplant they couldn’t be more pleased with themselves over if they tried.

Or that one where they tried to give cameras to gay homeless veterans? (No, really.) Or the federal prison system having more staff than inmates. But I think the single most frightening confirmation of my thesis is this blasted “Canada Strong Fund” billed with preposterous insolence as a Sovereign Wealth Fund. No. Those things are entities governments create when they have a budgetary surplus and want to invest it for the future rather than blowing it.

In fact I contest any such policy since whatever government spends in any future year it will extract from the private economy in that year. So better to cut taxes and foster growth, not open a government bank account or, worse, investment fund. But put that quibble aside for now, because far worse is that Carney et al are creating one with borrowed money so it’s not even a sovereign wealth fund. And with a PhD in economics the PM must know it.

The trouble is, he’s so convinced of government’s magic capacity to catalyse the transformative leverage that he commits billions he hasn’t got to we know not what. And it won’t work. Nothing will come of it but debt. As Matt Gurney sneered, “I’m excited to borrow from the new Canadian Major Projects Infrastructure Development Bank Wealth Fund Pension Plan.” The BDC failed. The CIF failed. The MPO failed. And now this.

Speaking of debt, federal interest payments are rapidly crowding out spending and removing any room for decisions, choices and pet projects that might exist. They will hit $58.7 billion this year and keep rising, again on autopilot, to $65.7 billion next year and on to infinity, or insolvency, via $80.9 in 2030, not by choice but because nobody’s in charge. There are people in offices holding meetings, saying stuff and praising themselves and one another. But if there still are levers of power, they don’t know where they are or how they work and aren’t even looking.

It’s no better in Ontario under the Tories. It’s not a partisan or federal thing. It’s an overall collapse of governance. Ambitions may continue to soar, as when “Canada invests in climate competitive jobs for young people”. But on delivery, from controlling our borders, fixing health care or gun buybacks to parliamentary procedure or answering the phone, it’s incompetence across the board. But why should they care?

As politicians their key goal is to retain power not deserve it. So to me what is most amazing, and concerning, about this mess is that an Angus Reid email just informed me, “Confidence in Carney has increased by nine points since September”. On what possible basis?

Well, they’re leveraging the catalytic transformation. And until we insist they do their jobs instead, they’ll keep right on since it’s one thing they can do.