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When the federal government released their mandate tracker early this week, it quickly became ripe for attack from all sides.  Within minutes, there were denunciations that this was an exercise in marking one's own homework, or that this was an exercise in government "propaganda."  The government, meanwhile, patted itself on the back for being open and transparent in ways that their predecessors didn't, not only for the exercise of publicly releasing mandate letters, but in tracking their implementation.

I will give the government credit on this point it is something that hasn't been done before, so points for that.  But with that in mind, it's not quite as open and transparent as they would claim because the framework underpinning the exercise isn't disclosed why certain mandate commitments were grouped under the categories they were, and what metrics were used to measure success or failure, or where the sliding scale in between those two extremes lies.  And before anyone raises the objection, the reason why the site tracks mandate letter commitments and not election promises is because this is an exercise coming out of the Privy Council Office, which is the civil service side of the government and not the political side, so it wouldn't be appropriate for them to track based on election promises, whereas mandate letters are marching orders to ministers and their departments, which can be tracked by the civil service.

This having been established, I do have to wonder if there isn't value that we could draw from this exercise in the government's own self-reflection, and what observations we can take from it.  In a way, it gives us a glimpse into how they see their own successes and failures (such as they deem them), which can then be used to glean some insight into their psychology.  After all, we have certainly seen governments for whom they can do no wrong, and where they went to great lengths to either retcon failures (remember the wait time guarantee?), or even attempt retroactive legislation in order to make illegal moves legal, and to date, we haven't seen that from this government.  And yes, they have had to wear some failures, like electoral reform but I will die on the hill that says that breaking that promise and smothering Rosemary's baby in its cradle was absolutely the right thing to do but how they wear it is just as instructive.  That they deem these failed mandates as "not being pursued" does actually say something about their ability to change direction when need be.

Some of the clues about this government's psychology to date are that they think that good intentions should count for a lot, even when the implementation doesn't follow through very well.  A great example of this is their bill to reform the Access to Information regime, and how the wording of the legislation can have terrible consequences for access rights.  Treasury Board president Scott Brison's response tends to be that they would never interpret the legislation in such a restrictive manner so everything is all good though that's a tough pill to swallow for those who have been fighting to reform the system for years, and could create huge problems down the road if a government that is far more hostile to access rights does go ahead and interpret the language in the Act that much more narrowly, as the critics of the bill currently foresee, then where does that leave us?

The ability and the willingness to change course is also something that we should look to this site to give some more clues as to governing psychology.  We've already mentioned that they were willing to change course on electoral reform, which is a good thing because it was a bad promise to make.  Hopefully it means that they will learn this particular lesson and not make such stupid promises in the future, no matter how well-intentioned it was.  I think the peacekeeping issue is a pretty good example of a place where they have been able to finesse their initial promises into something that may be better policy after consultation after all, the criticism of the initial pledge was that traditional peacekeeping was dead, and sending 600 troops somewhere was more about trying to win that Security Council seat than it was about making a difference.  Experts like retired general and senator Roméo Dallaire noted that it's not more battalions that are needed, but capacity-building, and lo, the Canadian government modified their pledge to focus on that capacity-building instead, which is likely to have a greater impact.  We'll see how they grade their own performance, but willingness to adapt and change is not something that we should turn our noses up at for the sake of a government simply checking off lists blindly.

Another thing that may be worthwhile noting is that while other promise trackers, like the one from Laval University or the TrudeauMetre, all have their own criteria for grading promises, I think that comparing some of their results will also give some further insights in particular because some of the mandate promises will track over the longer term, and that may not be captured by other trackers.  An example of this is the promise to end the ban on donating blood by men who have sex with men.  While the TrudeauMetre considers this a broken promise because an interim step was taken to reduce the waiting period to a year, the government also put a bunch of resources into ensuring that the science was sound before ending the ban entirely rather than just doing it at the snap of a finger, damn the consequences.  Moving slower and more cautiously is not necessarily a broken promise just one that takes longer to get there.  (The mandate tracker hasn't weighed in on this one yet, for the record).

All told, I'm not going to dismiss this exercise out of hand. I think there is still value to be had, so long as we approach it cautiously and not taking everything at face value but that's what good journalism should be about, and having another set of data to compare is never a bad thing, particularly as that data wasn't available previously.

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