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The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


If you want a clear, simple, "Most Interesting Man in the World" verdict on the Canadian government, it would have to be "No."  Especially after the latest Auditor-General's report.  The state is not just incompetent.  It seems to have given up.

News accounts of the latest AG horror stories might convince you the government is filled with complacent fools.  But actually the public service has high recruiting standards.  And hard as it may be to believe when confronting some demoralized, hollow bureaucrat on the front lines, it attracts idealists who believe that shiny rhetoric about "agents of change."  Sure, it also attracts time-servers who can't believe the pay and job security there compared to the real world.  But at the core are smart dedicated people doing an awful job.

Worse, they know it.  What you're seeing isn't complacency, it's demoralization.

Consider this tidbit from Wednesday's National Post: "Three federal bodies that are responsible for more than two-thirds of the government's historic structures don't have adequate plans to protect them.  National Defence, Fisheries and Oceans, and Parks Canada don't even have a handle on what buildings they own, let alone resources and strategies for conserving delicate heritage sites."

So has no bright young person damp behind their oreilles come in and gone hey, where's the inventory of historic structures?  And when told wearily there isn't one said gee, boss, can I create one?  And been told sure thing, kid, go have fun?  Of course.  Then they've hit the usual wall of paralyzing caution in which bureaucratic turf wars are just particularly big bricks.  Five years later they're the weary superior telling the rookie go have fun.

If it were possible to do such things within the federal government as currently structured, some gung ho recruit or sparkly high-flyer would have done it.  So clearly it's not.

If you doubt me, look at the cost estimates for fixing 24 Sussex.  Even a public service staffed by fools would see that the prime minister's residence should not be embarrassing to the nation and dangerous to its inhabitants.  And that estimates exceeding $35 million are painful evidence that government can't do anything on a reasonable budget, never mind the inevitable cost overruns.

Pop stars build mansions for less.  But again, put the requirements for security, structural soundness, suitable historical character, modern amenities, high environmental standards and so on into government's hyper-risk-averse structure in which time is not money and money is not your own and voila, you can't get a reasonable estimate.  So one day you give up.  And keep doing your job anyway.

If 24 Sussex isn't proof enough, how about every Canadian mission abroad checked by the AG having security flaws programs including missing or busted cameras, alarms and X-ray machines.  One "critical vulnerability" flagged in 2011 is still there.  Again, staff know, of course.  And know they can't get it fixed.  Sigh.  Sob.  Repeat.

Then there's our stopgap purchase of used Super Hornet fighters, brilliantly captured by Gary Clement's editorial cartoon of a maintenance guy telling Trudeau "We don't know how to fix it but that's OK since we also don't know how to fly it!"  We lack pilots period, let alone pilots familiar with this aircraft.  And instead of solving our critical maintenance problems the purchase makes them worse because our mechanics must be taken off repair for government training, agonizingly slow and politically correct at baffling cost.

Worse, we now know the capability gap that justified the purchase was not documented by the military, just invented by politicians caught in a tornado of spin around the Tories' proposed F-35 purchase.  And here "we" means the public.  Those inside the military procurement process have known for years.  And known they could do nothing about it except lumber forward spewing money and half-truths while no usable planes appeared.

Naval procurement is even worse.  There we applaud ourselves for planning to have a plan within years for ships within decades.  And here "we" means politicians.  Public servants do not applaud a career spent in obvious futility.

People rarely rock the boat because it's unreasonably well-paid futility.  If you actually get paid despite the shiny new Phoenix system, another crushing embarrassment nobody really believes can be altered or worked around given the structures that created and sustained it.

The resulting lack of mental energy is clearly visible in the government's response to the Canada Post strike.  It's bad enough to have a public sector union holding us hostage at Christmastime for even better pay and job security for doing even less work.  But in 2018 it's worse because in the increasingly insecure "gig" economy we shop online for household essentials and must deliver products to clients we never met.  Then with the Grinch looming, all cabinet can think of is to legislate an end to the strike, as though the best way to create investor confidence in a globalized world was an obsolete monopoly with an ersatz right to strike.

Speaking of the modern world, the AG also noted that endless rhetoric about extending broadband internet throughout rural Canada so everyone can order products the Post Office won't deliver has led nowhere.  Dang.

As for the deficit, they've long abandoned fiscal prudence and are reduced to spin I suspect they hate themselves for drafting and delivering.  Oh, and finally there's the AG's finding that people granted parole are often kept in prison because there aren't supervised spaces in communities.  This government can't even let someone out of jail.

Everywhere you turn people still express faith in the state's superior wisdom and virtue, and outline grand new schemes for it to take on.

In a word, no.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.