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Back when the current government was fresh and new, the word of the day was “deliverology.” Prime minister Justin Trudeau brought over British political advisor Sir Michael Barber to attend three Cabinet retreats in order to help create a culture of focusing on developing priorities and delivering results to Canadians. Those were also the days of “government by Cabinet,” and trusting ministers to run their own portfolios. A Results and Delivery Unit was created within the Privy Council Office and headed by former Ontario deputy minister Matthew Mendelsohn, and a public promise tracker was constantly being updated to show how the government was living up to this deliverology mindset. How things change.

Government by Cabinet fell to the wayside when not every minister proved themselves capable, and Trudeau increasingly relied on a close circle of trusted advisors to approve everything for him, which has led to an increasing number of items being bottlenecked in the approval process, especially as the number of trusted people got smaller when Gerald Butts resigned and so much of that has been left to chief of staff Katie Telford. That promise tracker stopped being updated by in June of 2019, and Mendelsohn left the job early in 2020. And yes, there were things that took the government off-course, whether it was needing to manage the relationship with Donald Trump’s America, and the subsequent renegotiation of NAFTA as part of that, or the issue of the two Michaels being detained in China. And then the pandemic happened, and it too took up a lot of resources and attention of the government, but that shouldn’t have derailed absolutely everything. And yet.

It has not gone unnoticed that this government has a seeming inability to walk and chew gum at the same time, where they can only handle one big file at any time. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are so few people in the PMO who are able to approve things because Trudeau’s trusted circle is so small, and there is only capacity to approve things related to one or maybe two major files at a time, and everything else is free to drop off the face of the earth because there appears to be little ability to manage anything else. And I’m not saying that no progress is being made on a number of files, because clearly there has—but it tends to be slow, and never mentioned. Very occasionally a press release will go out, but it mostly gets lost in the shuffle of all of the other events going on, and compounded by a shrinking media footprint that has neither the journalists who can track these things, nor the time to devote to keeping an eye on the things that aren’t the major stories of the day.

Making things even worse are the government’s particular talking points on any of the former priorities that have seen little action. They tend to follow a particular pattern—especially if brought up during Question Period. The minister will stand up, call the issue a priority for the government, proceed to pat themselves on the back for the work they’ve done on the file so far, and end with a slightly insincere remark that they realize that more needs to be done, and that they’re working on it. What makes this all ring hollow, however, is this government’s continued resistance to explaining absolutely anything. A lot of these files are challenging, and yes, hard things are hard, but when being held to account, the government should have an obligation to explain why things are hard, or what the particular challenges are that are causing it to take so much longer to deliver on their promise than hoped. But of course, “when you’re explaining, you’re losing” is the prevailing ethos of this government, so nothing gets explained, nobody can be held to account, and files languish in a mysterious nether-region where they may or may not ever see the light of day again.

While working on another piece this past week, I had occasion to ask Justice Minister David Lametti’s office about the status of a couple of promises that have been made and remain unfulfilled—two of them dating back to the start of this government’s time in office, and one of them made less than a year ago. Unsurprisingly, there has been almost no progress on two of them, and one of them has made some halting movement. The first issue—reforming the Harper-era sex work laws—has seen almost no movement from the government despite this being an early election promise, and the fact that the Commons’ justice committee has done a study calling for changes to the law. Lametti’s office says they’re “looking at the impact of these reforms closely,” and mentioned case law, which is an indication they’re waiting for the courts to once again force their hand. The other issue with no movement was a promise made last summer to consult on banning cosmetic surgery on intersex children (meaning those born with indeterminate genitalia), which should be fairly easy to accomplish, both in terms of consultations and a simple legislative fix. No consultations, no progress. There was some movement on HIV decriminalization, but again, this has been the subject of foot-dragging for years now.

A lot of this shouldn’t be that difficult. There are whole departments that should be able to handle these kinds of things, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. The supposed culture of developing and delivering on priorities seems once again fanciful when it was something that the government was priding itself on in those early years, whereas now we are being inundated with stories about things not working in government, whether it was the passport system, or the backlogs in immigration processing. Yes, they do eventually get fixed with focused time and attention, but should they ever have gotten to that point? Perhaps the government needs to bring Barber back for another Cabinet retreat so that they can get a refresher on how to deliver for Canadians like they’re supposed to be, before the “everything is broken” crowd makes that case to the voters for them.

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.


Doubtless there is a place where Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’ egregious fumbling of the “C-18” attempt to squeeze money out of major social media platforms and drizzle it onto Canadian journalists would still have gotten him fired. As his incompetent lies about Paul Bernardo’s transfer to a medium security prison would have gotten serial comic bungler Marco Mendaciousino sacked. But it is not Justin Trudeau’s Canada.

Instead, in his latest doubling down on a policy problem layered onto an attitude problem, Trudeau has accused Google and Meta of “bullying”. A subject which, to be fair, he knows all about. He is, after all, the guy who personhandled fellow MPs on the floor of Parliament when he wasn’t getting his way on a vote. The one who preaches sunny ways and trendy socks, but snarls about fringe minorities who take up space.

To remind you, the idea behind C-18 was to force Google and Facebook to give some of their money to faltering Canadian media because these internet giants had a lot of it and we did not. There was no issue of their having stolen the money or acquired it under false pretences (except perhaps claiming online advertising works much as in-paper advertising used to, but there caveat emptor applies). The problem was just that the world had changed, and the mass-media business model of selling audiences to advertisers that could not fail for a century could not succeed in the Internet era.

Speaking as a journalist, I hate it. The Ottawa Citizen, where I began my ink-stained-wretch career shortly after email became a thing, long had a licence to print money. And it was nice to be getting some of it. But them days is gone. Throughout the 20th century, if you wanted a new mattress you looked at the ads in the front section of the paper, and for a used crib you looked in the Classifieds. Now you don’t. You look online. Good for you, bad for us.

Maybe bad for you too, since a vigorous free press is important to a democracy however flawed both may have been. And most newspapers were biased to the left, sporadic in their coverage, prone to amusing errors and so on, while politicians were skunks and bullies. But the fading of newspapers has not reduced the latter problem and nobody wants to pay full cost for them.

So if there were some magic way to make the daily paper again a profitable central institution in the life of a city, a province or a country, I’d be inclined to say “Abracadabra”. But there isn’t. And everyone saw that the thuggish, inflexible approach in Bill C-18 was going to cause a disaster.

Or rather, everyone but cabinet. Because one important quality Justin Trudeau possesses in abundance is incapacity to attend to practical matters. From military procurement to productivityplanting trees, ethical conduct, fiscal prudence and drinking water on aboriginal reserves, the man is a deliverologist’s nightmare.

Here I want to quote a fellow newspaper columnist while I still can. Andrew Coyne recently wrote (on Twitter not paper) that he had “Never seen a government that so perfectly fused ruthless partisanship, ideological fanaticism and flower-child naivety.” Coyne added “Usually it’s one or the other” but it put me in mind of the old East Bloc joke: “Smart, honest and a Communist; pick any two.” Yet Trudeau is thoroughly ruthless, relentlessly woke and unaware of original sin, at least where he personally is concerned.

Curiously, he claims to be a Roman Catholic. Since he also claims to be inclusive and transparent it would be unwise to accept his self-assessment at blackface value. And he gleefully undermines Church doctrine on sexuality at every opportunity, which they scandalously tolerate rather than excommunicating him, and clearly has no interest whatsoever in their teachings on humility.

Instead another striking quality in Trudeau, this time metaphorically, is his overweening vanity. He never listens to critics. Like his father, he cannot begin to understand what they are talking about (Trudeau Sr. notoriously didn’t get Press Gallery Dinner jokes at his expense) and doesn’t waste his precious time trying to decipher it. Only enemies could criticize Justin for, say, firing Jody Wilson-Raybould over prosecutorial independence, using COVID as a wedge issue, groping what he thought was some cub reporter and so on and so forth.

None of us is perfect. And I’m told all sins appal God equally. But here on Earth there’s a hierarchy, with Trudeau some way up it. Imagine you are on his staff and you realize he’s charging arrogantly ahead with a blunder or worse. Would you dare tell him?

No, because he’s a bully. It’s his default mode whenever someone dares cross him.

When he’s trying to seem reasonable the ahs and ums stagger from his tied tongue. His apologies are as laughable as his contempt for practicalities is palpable. For instance in October 2022 he blithered that while Canada had missed every greenhouse-gas emissions target it ever set, it would work for sure this time, a mere seven years into his premiership, because “Every other plan was based on targets. Any politician can put forward a target. Can you actually put forward a plan to do it?”

It’s utter gibberish, not least because he himself had already put forward a dud plan in 2016. But he speaks nasty fluently. From pillorying the convoy as a fringe minority to his recent eruption at New Brunswick’s premier for thinking parents should be told if their kid shows interest in changing genders that “Far-right political actors are trying to outdo themselves with the types of cruelty and isolation they can inflict on these already vulnerable people”, his abusive tirades flow smoothly and coherently.

I realize politicians who fold at any significant sign of opposition are not persons of state. You want leaders with principles laid atop courage. But their ostensible principles should bear some important resemblance to their real ones, and their real ones should include thinking before acting, or speaking, and enough humility to take criticism seriously, recognize when you’ve made a tactical or even ideological blunder, and walk it back graciously.

I might mention here that Neville Chamberlain, whose Munich deal with Hitler rightly brought him the wrong kind of immortality, came back to Britain and speeded up rearmament efforts, and on being replaced by Churchill issued a genuinely moving public declaration that “you and I must rally behind our new leader, and with our united strength, and with unshakable courage fight, and work until this wild beast, which has sprung out of his lair upon us, has been finally disarmed and overthrown.” Which he did until his death from aggressive bowel cancer just six months later.

Chamberlain is not exactly my model statesman. But his character, and especially his reaction to having engineered a disaster, are rarely seen today.

There might be places where prime ministers showed dignity, and ministers who were belligerently obtuse even as their policies collapsed around them would be shown the door instead of those who upheld integrity when the boss did not being shown the window. But Trutopia isn’t one of them.

Instead it rots from the swelled head.

 

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.


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The “Fire Information for Resource Management” online map for June 5, 2023 was provocative. At this point active wildfires larger than 1,000 acres were much bigger and more widespread in Canada than in the United States. (Two days later the smoke from wildfires in Canada — especially in Quebec — had drifted all the way to New York City — and other US centres in the northeast and midwest.)

It could be argued that this just reflects the extent to which there are still a lot more forests left to burn in Canada, with a destructive human population equivalent to only 11.5% of the 330 million destructive human beings in the USA today.

At the same time, on June 5, 2023 federal cabinet ministers updated Canada’s wildfire situation — as smoke from fires north and west of Ottawa covered the downtown “in a grey haze.”

The ministers urged that wildfires across the country are among “the most severe ever witnessed in Canada.” Forecasts suggest “higher-than-normal” activity” for the next few months. On the late afternoon of June 6 there were “415 active wildfires across the country” with 238 “considered out of control.”

According to the Forest Service of the US Department of Agriculture, over the past few decades: “Longer fire seasons; bigger fires and more acres burned … have become the norm.” Even so the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre in Winnipeg reports that 2023 in Canada is “definitely an unprecedented season … It started early and it accelerated very quickly.”

Constitutionally, provincial governments have responsibility for the “development, conservation and management of … forestry resources in the province.” Disasters like the Canadian wildfires of 2023, however, can soon enough outstrip resources even in large provinces.

Prime Minister Trudeau has so far dispatched Canadian Armed Forces troops to help fight wildfires in Alberta, Quebec, and Nova Scotia .

Federal officials suggest that: “About half of fires in Canada” are started by lightning. Yet they must equally be fought by non-destructive human fire fighters (including much valued help from other countries with different fire seasons — and American good neighbours next door).

Some Canadian Armed Forces officers stress that their troops are not trained to fight forest fires, and this may not be a wise use of military personnel. Other observers have proposed an independent federal fire-fighting service.

The federal government itself is reported to be “studying options for creating a new national disaster response agency” — that would deal with wildfires and all other natural disasters.

According to The Canadian Press: “discussions on a new approach are already well underway and include analyzing the merits of creating a Canadian version of the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] in the United States.”

Meanwhile, freshly elected Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has remarked that federal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proved “very helpful” in dealing with wildfires in her province.

In the wake of her recent election victory she has also raised her longstanding objections to the kind of federal climate change policy that could ultimately reduce wildfires.

The rhetoric is that almost any such policy will thwart the continued development of a key current branch of the traditional Canadian resource economy. And in the real world Alberta’s (and Saskatchewan’s) oil and gas sector still does bring important strengths to the larger Canadian economy.

Yet as Don Martin at CTV News recently urged about federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s attack on an “expensive” Liberal carbon tax : “While the carbon tax could be a defining issue in the next election, his timing sucks. To focus on it with wildfires caused by climate change ravaging the country and Ottawa choking on smoke? Sorry, no.”

At the same time again, just before the Alberta election Premier Smith was talking about a “reset” and “more collaboration” with the Trudeau government in Ottawa. She has proposed such things before, and there are deep grounds for scepticism.

To see Justin Trudeau and Danielle Smith together in public is to similarly see an unusually odd couple. Yet they arguably both have strong political self-interests in some kind of new deal on the environment and the economy.

In the very end, they just may be odd enough to somehow combine a climate change policy that leads to less severe wildfires with a bright future for the western energy sectors in the traditional Canadian resource economy.

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.