Government and the Fine Art of Chasing Rainbows

Should governments be in the business of solving unsolvable problems?

A common theme running through much of my research into government policy outcomes has been how often and how tenaciously the real world simply ignores government decision makers. Some problems simply refuse to go away, and all the cash in the world won’t make a whiff of a difference.

Browsing through The Audit’s own deep archives, the most spectacular failure that comes to mind is Global Affairs Canada’s three billion (with a B) dollar investment in curing malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS. By GAC’s own stated expectations, it was clear that they’d wasted our money.

That’s the nice thing about being a cynic: if the government spends a gazillion dollars to eradicate a disease and then the disease actually disappears, I can always claim that correlation does not equal causation: for all we know it was slimy space aliens and not our government’s program that made the difference here. But when the disease continues to rage unabated, we can legitimately be 100% certain that the program failed.

To be fair, most of us are probably happy that the government at least tries to help address suffering where possible. The problem is that some suffering just can’t be successfully addressed.

Perhaps doubling funding for public education won’t actually improve educational outcomes (however you prefer to measure them). Perhaps forcing landlords to take on tenants at sub-market rent levels won’t actually solve the housing crisis (see Sweden).

And perhaps - just perhaps - there’s actually no way to balance the legitimate healthcare needs of all Canadians regardless of their ability to pay, against the systemic constraints of a healthcare industry in crisis.

Canadians are a generous people, but that doesn’t justify willful waste. As they log into their first Zoom each morning, policy makers should ask themselves whether what they’re currently planning makes sense. Any sense. I mean, whether there’s a snowball’s chance in Haiti that anything good will come from a project.

Ah, Haiti. They’ve had more than their share of troubles. And recent news describes a country that’s desperate not for good governance, but for the most basic social order. Sadly, that’s been the story for decades, right? Whatever the solution to their profound troubles, no one in the international aid community has yet identified it.

So then why do we keep executing hopeless programs?

According to the international assistance information they publish, GAC gave two million dollars to an organization called Biothermica Technologies Inc. for “Improving Gender Equality, Waste Management and Clean Energy in Haiti”. Another ten million went to St. Francis Xavier University - Coady International Institute for “Women's Empowerment and Active Citizenship”.

Really? I mean, I can understand how some people might see value from such projects in theory. But I really think 21st Century Haiti has a different and more urgent set of priorities.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking: how will the country ever make any progress if no one teaches them the basics of living in healthy societies? Don’t these “soft-skill” programs plant the seeds for important macro changes later?

Well I’m not convinced that the good folk at GAC necessarily have anything helpful to share in that department. Let me put my cynic’s hat back on to show you the receipts.

The Canadian government has been pushing these buttons for a very long time - so long that such policy initiatives stretch all the way back to when they went by Department of Foreign Affairs rather than the quel sophistiqué GAC.

In fact, we spent more than $101 million on aid to Haiti in 2005. That included eight million dollars on 64 projects classified as “democratic participation and civil society”, another eight million on 36 projects involving “promotion of development awareness”, and $300,000 on “population policy and administrative management”. Those are topics that surely seem to make sense in the context of “planting forward-looking soft-skill seeds” in a troubled community.

And yet, given the current violence and chaos that characterize Haiti in the years since, every penny spent on those programs was demonstrably wasted. It might have been born of the best of intentions, but 20 years of abject failure has eventually got to teach us something.

Some problems have no solutions.

Some solutions don’t involve government.

A wise people can tell the difference.