A first step might include getting Canadians to fully understand and appreciate how their personal lives are being negatively affected by all this financial profligacy and how they will be improved through such a review.
With 25 years of experience providing management and IT consulting services to the GoC, the last 15 spent focusing on analytics and data science, this post gives me all the feels.
I agree with virtually everything written regarding the need for a full program review and a hard look at the size and growth of the federal public service, but there also needs to be some serious thought about how the public sector manages itself and its projects.
In the last decade, outcomes have taken a backseat to touchy feely priorities. Consensus building, ensuring everyone feels appreciated, and adherence to the specified methodology or approach are now the measuring sticks of choice, rather than quality, timelines and cost. Like peewee soccer games, there is endless undeserved praise, over enthusiastic encouragement, no scorekeeping, and everyone gets identical playing time irrespective of their ability to contribute. Maybe orange slices and juice boxes at halftime, too.
This kind of observation is an excellent illustration of the value of integrating feedback into the process. It's exactly people with your level of experience who could improve outcomes - assuming, of course, that anyone with authority ever got around to implementing such a review in the first place.
For sure there needs to be a review of public sector policies and the employees needed to administer programs. And there has to be a review of accountability. Always interesting to hear a federal manager administering a funding program dealing with, among other things, providing (hugely expensive) internet access to several remote native hamlets testify that, beyond signing approval for the (millions of taxpayer dollars) in funding, there is absolutely no follow up to see what the status of the project was at any point and no checks and balances of any kind. The money just disappears into a black hole.
But what about the elephant in the room (the one that is projected in the latest contingent liability report to be possibly $2 trillion): settlements connected to native grievance (I have ceased using the term "first nation" because, well, there is no such thing and it's a dangerous term to use in a democratic country) claims that, thanks to Jody's practice directive will NEVER be litigated, only settled. half of the budget deficit increase was because of ONE CLAIM and there are hundreds pending. Next year the project budget hit is somewhere around 80 billion. This money sure ain't going to fix up houses or anything measurable. This incalculable drain on the public purse (and it truly is utterly incalculable) needs to stop. Poilievre has never talked about it, as it's a political hot potato. Let's hope he plans to review the entire indigenous ministry and all spending related thereto before it gets completely out of hand for taxpayers.
That's a serious concern. I've never written about Indigenous matters until now - it's way too complicated and scary. But I will finally have a post touching on those topics in the next couple of weeks.
I look forward to it, as I'm sure others do. I would encourage people to write to the Academy, as in the one that awards the Oscars. The "documentary" Sugarcane is shortlisted for an Oscar for "documentary." Quotes are used because Sugarcane is anything but a documentary. It's almost pure fiction. The ease with which a casual researcher can refute the claims made in this "documentary" is ridiculous. If Sugarcane wins an Oscar for best documentary it will do irreparable damage to Canada and Canadian taxpayers. Imagine trying to argue a 48 billion dollar claim when entities like National Geographic (who used to be research-based) and the Academy can't even be bothered to fact check a film, but just give it all kinds of accolades and support because of the trendy victimhood narrative. How will Canada and Canadians look if a film that posits as its main premise that a priest in Williams Lake impregnated an IRS student and threw the baby in an incinerator. The story is completely fabricated and no one has the balls to come out and ask why this film is a documentary rather than the fiction that it is. I wrote to NatGeo and to the Academy and I encourage others to do the same. Michelle Sterling and Nina Greene have published substack articles on this film and Ms. Sterling has made a video available on YouTube that says it all much better than I ever could.
Well put. Anyone who lives in proximity to an indigenous community sees the actual cost of the current government’s reconciliation policy, both in squandered tax dollars and in the growing social inequality which mirrors that in non-aboriginal Canada. How do cannabis dispensaries, gas bars and gambling casinos serve their neighbours?
As a now retired, former government employee, Brian Mulroney was a ray of hope. He got Erik Nielsen to look into every federal project. Not sending out minions to do the job. Erik showed up in person. I worked at a facility in BC with 20 or so employees and he asked what the proms were. That is what we need
Having worked in goverment budgetting (both large and small federal departments), the not-for-profit sector, and the private sector (a large telco) in budgetting and forcasting this post is some of the best fantasy writing I've seen.
No one, I mean no one, does budgetting/program review like this. In part because it would be very very expensive to do. A full program review of every area of federal operation would take years and millions of dollars of accountants and policy experts.
The only way to effectively cut expenditure in large organizations is for leadership to pick a number. This is how Paul Martin did it. You top down assign a total budget. X Department gets 20% less than it did last time. No exceptions. Departmental leadership then has to assign those cuts internally and are held accountable to ensuring as much of their strategic mandate is fulfilled.
You make some strong points, but I'm not convinced there's all that much space between us. After all, how does the "departmental leadership" you refer to choose *which* programs within their departments to cut? Historically, I doubt they've flipped coins or even applies across-the-board percentages. There would be far too many political consequences for that. I would suggest that, as often as not, they're assessing things program-by-program. Which is basically a lower-level description of my proposal.
Absolutely they do across-the-board cuts. If a leader can get away from making the specific cut they will. The decision to cut is pushed down the lowest possible level where they only decision matrix is "what won't get me yelled at".
I've never seen an org actually do the kind of program review you are suggesting.
Well wouldn't it make more sense to apply cuts using rational priorities rather than bureaucratic small-mindedness? I appreciate that there are time and energy constraints involved, but there are also good people in mid-level management capable of making rational decisions.
This is a should/is debate. Should they do that yes. Folks will try their best - I've worked with many mid-level managers who were both talented leaders and good people. They absolutely try to do their best at rational planning with limited resources.
Middle management has incomplete information on the strategic context, has almost no quality data (I have never seen an org use more than a 2 year historical average to make any decision; the vast majority of the time its just last year's and often less), and extremely tight timelines (line managers get about 7 business days to prepare their budgets for the year), mid management is stuck. How do you make decisions in this context? What is rational when you are being asked to build the plane while you fly it? The rational decision is to do what will avoid you getting yelled at.
What a stupid article. Canada has a budget deficit that is a fraction of the US. National debt is almost 2/3 lower as well. This guy has zero sense. There are a lot of issues why Canadians should be worried about but the size of Government spending ain’t one of them. Look at the terrible performance of Canadian productivity compared to its neighbor.
And here you elegantly make the case in a single point. In many ways, as goes the public sector so goes the private sector... and you worry about your debt levels because sh#t like 25% tarriffs happen!
Sorry. I was a bit unclear there. By "government-issued ID" I meant a drivers license or something similar. It was just about being able to establish that the contributor is a real human being and speaking on his own behalf.
Which is not to say that anyone inside government will actually listen to me on any of this...
It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, the US' DOGE will have on us, particularly with Poiliever at the helm. Have you had a chance to watch the interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson? Pierre certainly seems to have a good grasp of monetary priorities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dck8eZCpglc).
Have you considered sharing your thoughts with him, David? The more brains on this, the better.
David, you write, "... to be completely honest, I find the idea of random mass firings way more attractive than I should." Amen, brother, amen! Oh, amen to the first part of the sentence after "honest," and before "than."
Although, perhaps it actually is a fairer way than any other? Must ponder ...
You advocate, "setting clear metrics for success and failure." I am quite religious today, it seems so I repeat, amen, brother, amen! I will not deal with previous administrations (although I certainly have my suspicions) but it is clear that our current federal government sets forth aspirational platitudes but neither sets out real goals, including way stations on the way to those goals nor does any measurement to determine if either way stations or goals are met and seems to have never found it necessary to adjust programs to deal with programs that have gone astray. [Long sentence that slams the current gang.]
Oh, so you want a program to be constitutional do you? I repeat my religiosity and shout to the heavens, "Amen, brother, amen!" Having said that, such a qualification would seem to eliminate a whole raft of existing programs as so many are "justified" as bringing uniform services and the like across the country and not by legality. Further, such programs often do not recognize that some provinces might like different programs. Put differently, why should someone in Manitoba be forced to have the same federal program as someone in New Brunswick when Manitoba already has a perfectly satisfactory program that covers the same thing or when Manitoba would like to have a totally different program than the one prescribed by federal "standards."
All in all, sir, well done!
I recommend that you forward this "modest proposal" [hmmm..... Jonathon Swift-esque, that phrase] to the office of the prospective new PM and cc it to the Conservative Party of Canada with the suggestion that they consider this as detail for an existing plank in their platform.
A first step might include getting Canadians to fully understand and appreciate how their personal lives are being negatively affected by all this financial profligacy and how they will be improved through such a review.
With 25 years of experience providing management and IT consulting services to the GoC, the last 15 spent focusing on analytics and data science, this post gives me all the feels.
I agree with virtually everything written regarding the need for a full program review and a hard look at the size and growth of the federal public service, but there also needs to be some serious thought about how the public sector manages itself and its projects.
In the last decade, outcomes have taken a backseat to touchy feely priorities. Consensus building, ensuring everyone feels appreciated, and adherence to the specified methodology or approach are now the measuring sticks of choice, rather than quality, timelines and cost. Like peewee soccer games, there is endless undeserved praise, over enthusiastic encouragement, no scorekeeping, and everyone gets identical playing time irrespective of their ability to contribute. Maybe orange slices and juice boxes at halftime, too.
This kind of observation is an excellent illustration of the value of integrating feedback into the process. It's exactly people with your level of experience who could improve outcomes - assuming, of course, that anyone with authority ever got around to implementing such a review in the first place.
For sure there needs to be a review of public sector policies and the employees needed to administer programs. And there has to be a review of accountability. Always interesting to hear a federal manager administering a funding program dealing with, among other things, providing (hugely expensive) internet access to several remote native hamlets testify that, beyond signing approval for the (millions of taxpayer dollars) in funding, there is absolutely no follow up to see what the status of the project was at any point and no checks and balances of any kind. The money just disappears into a black hole.
But what about the elephant in the room (the one that is projected in the latest contingent liability report to be possibly $2 trillion): settlements connected to native grievance (I have ceased using the term "first nation" because, well, there is no such thing and it's a dangerous term to use in a democratic country) claims that, thanks to Jody's practice directive will NEVER be litigated, only settled. half of the budget deficit increase was because of ONE CLAIM and there are hundreds pending. Next year the project budget hit is somewhere around 80 billion. This money sure ain't going to fix up houses or anything measurable. This incalculable drain on the public purse (and it truly is utterly incalculable) needs to stop. Poilievre has never talked about it, as it's a political hot potato. Let's hope he plans to review the entire indigenous ministry and all spending related thereto before it gets completely out of hand for taxpayers.
That's a serious concern. I've never written about Indigenous matters until now - it's way too complicated and scary. But I will finally have a post touching on those topics in the next couple of weeks.
I look forward to it, as I'm sure others do. I would encourage people to write to the Academy, as in the one that awards the Oscars. The "documentary" Sugarcane is shortlisted for an Oscar for "documentary." Quotes are used because Sugarcane is anything but a documentary. It's almost pure fiction. The ease with which a casual researcher can refute the claims made in this "documentary" is ridiculous. If Sugarcane wins an Oscar for best documentary it will do irreparable damage to Canada and Canadian taxpayers. Imagine trying to argue a 48 billion dollar claim when entities like National Geographic (who used to be research-based) and the Academy can't even be bothered to fact check a film, but just give it all kinds of accolades and support because of the trendy victimhood narrative. How will Canada and Canadians look if a film that posits as its main premise that a priest in Williams Lake impregnated an IRS student and threw the baby in an incinerator. The story is completely fabricated and no one has the balls to come out and ask why this film is a documentary rather than the fiction that it is. I wrote to NatGeo and to the Academy and I encourage others to do the same. Michelle Sterling and Nina Greene have published substack articles on this film and Ms. Sterling has made a video available on YouTube that says it all much better than I ever could.
Well put. Anyone who lives in proximity to an indigenous community sees the actual cost of the current government’s reconciliation policy, both in squandered tax dollars and in the growing social inequality which mirrors that in non-aboriginal Canada. How do cannabis dispensaries, gas bars and gambling casinos serve their neighbours?
As a now retired, former government employee, Brian Mulroney was a ray of hope. He got Erik Nielsen to look into every federal project. Not sending out minions to do the job. Erik showed up in person. I worked at a facility in BC with 20 or so employees and he asked what the proms were. That is what we need
As it turns out, someone who had played an important role in Mr. Nielsen's review contributed helpful input for this post.
Having worked in goverment budgetting (both large and small federal departments), the not-for-profit sector, and the private sector (a large telco) in budgetting and forcasting this post is some of the best fantasy writing I've seen.
No one, I mean no one, does budgetting/program review like this. In part because it would be very very expensive to do. A full program review of every area of federal operation would take years and millions of dollars of accountants and policy experts.
The only way to effectively cut expenditure in large organizations is for leadership to pick a number. This is how Paul Martin did it. You top down assign a total budget. X Department gets 20% less than it did last time. No exceptions. Departmental leadership then has to assign those cuts internally and are held accountable to ensuring as much of their strategic mandate is fulfilled.
You make some strong points, but I'm not convinced there's all that much space between us. After all, how does the "departmental leadership" you refer to choose *which* programs within their departments to cut? Historically, I doubt they've flipped coins or even applies across-the-board percentages. There would be far too many political consequences for that. I would suggest that, as often as not, they're assessing things program-by-program. Which is basically a lower-level description of my proposal.
Absolutely they do across-the-board cuts. If a leader can get away from making the specific cut they will. The decision to cut is pushed down the lowest possible level where they only decision matrix is "what won't get me yelled at".
I've never seen an org actually do the kind of program review you are suggesting.
Well wouldn't it make more sense to apply cuts using rational priorities rather than bureaucratic small-mindedness? I appreciate that there are time and energy constraints involved, but there are also good people in mid-level management capable of making rational decisions.
This is a should/is debate. Should they do that yes. Folks will try their best - I've worked with many mid-level managers who were both talented leaders and good people. They absolutely try to do their best at rational planning with limited resources.
Middle management has incomplete information on the strategic context, has almost no quality data (I have never seen an org use more than a 2 year historical average to make any decision; the vast majority of the time its just last year's and often less), and extremely tight timelines (line managers get about 7 business days to prepare their budgets for the year), mid management is stuck. How do you make decisions in this context? What is rational when you are being asked to build the plane while you fly it? The rational decision is to do what will avoid you getting yelled at.
What a stupid article. Canada has a budget deficit that is a fraction of the US. National debt is almost 2/3 lower as well. This guy has zero sense. There are a lot of issues why Canadians should be worried about but the size of Government spending ain’t one of them. Look at the terrible performance of Canadian productivity compared to its neighbor.
And here you elegantly make the case in a single point. In many ways, as goes the public sector so goes the private sector... and you worry about your debt levels because sh#t like 25% tarriffs happen!
"...invite all Canadians - with a particular focus on current and former civil servants.
Require login that includes a physical address and (perhaps) a government-issued ID.
here's the rub - - former employees don't have govt email accounts or access.
Sorry. I was a bit unclear there. By "government-issued ID" I meant a drivers license or something similar. It was just about being able to establish that the contributor is a real human being and speaking on his own behalf.
Which is not to say that anyone inside government will actually listen to me on any of this...
It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, the US' DOGE will have on us, particularly with Poiliever at the helm. Have you had a chance to watch the interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson? Pierre certainly seems to have a good grasp of monetary priorities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dck8eZCpglc).
Have you considered sharing your thoughts with him, David? The more brains on this, the better.
David, you write, "... to be completely honest, I find the idea of random mass firings way more attractive than I should." Amen, brother, amen! Oh, amen to the first part of the sentence after "honest," and before "than."
Although, perhaps it actually is a fairer way than any other? Must ponder ...
You advocate, "setting clear metrics for success and failure." I am quite religious today, it seems so I repeat, amen, brother, amen! I will not deal with previous administrations (although I certainly have my suspicions) but it is clear that our current federal government sets forth aspirational platitudes but neither sets out real goals, including way stations on the way to those goals nor does any measurement to determine if either way stations or goals are met and seems to have never found it necessary to adjust programs to deal with programs that have gone astray. [Long sentence that slams the current gang.]
Oh, so you want a program to be constitutional do you? I repeat my religiosity and shout to the heavens, "Amen, brother, amen!" Having said that, such a qualification would seem to eliminate a whole raft of existing programs as so many are "justified" as bringing uniform services and the like across the country and not by legality. Further, such programs often do not recognize that some provinces might like different programs. Put differently, why should someone in Manitoba be forced to have the same federal program as someone in New Brunswick when Manitoba already has a perfectly satisfactory program that covers the same thing or when Manitoba would like to have a totally different program than the one prescribed by federal "standards."
All in all, sir, well done!
I recommend that you forward this "modest proposal" [hmmm..... Jonathon Swift-esque, that phrase] to the office of the prospective new PM and cc it to the Conservative Party of Canada with the suggestion that they consider this as detail for an existing plank in their platform.