The End of Institutional Trust?
If only governments would agree to answer hard questions
A delicate and unspoken contract between governments and their people seems to be breaking. Justified or not, millions of citizens in Western countries are convinced that their governments are driven by incentives unconnected from the public good. With their wealth, communities, and lifestyles crumbling around them, individuals increasingly see themselves with nothing left to lose.
King’s College London historian David Betz believes that the new English civil war has already begun. As I’ve written, the situation in Canada probably isn’t as desperate as what’s going on in the UK. Yet.
A major driver of the conflict is the popular sense that government and public institutions no longer represent the will of its people. This sense isn’t just built on vibes. The people behind the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer asked more than 2,000 Canadians for their feelings and discovered that:
67 percent of Canadians worry that government leaders purposely mislead people (up from 46 percent in 2021)
62 percent of Canadians worry that journalists and reporters purposely mislead people (up from 49 percent in 2021)
63 percent fear facing discrimination/prejudice/racism (up from 52 percent in 2021)
Canadian trust levels were consistently behind global norms
If official and traditional media sources lack public trust, elections don’t seem to address the problems felt by regular folk, economic and social irritants appear to grow unchecked, and governments in general appear unable to solve even the problems they themselves identify - then what are leaders doing?
To some degree, this could be a problem of perception. Perhaps governments really are tuned in to the national mood and really are doing the very best they can to address serious problems. Perhaps their hands are tied by forces most of us can’t see.
Perhaps. But because governments don’t like sharing, there’s no way any of us can know. Oh, political machines are big on tightly-controlled press conferences and sanitized official announcements. But that’s not communication.
However, what if there was an industry that existed to bridge the gap between governments and governed? What if the professionals who worked in that industry were carefully trained to understand and then - I don’t know: report? - on how government functioned? What if those professionals even used their skills and training to gain access to senior government officials so they could ask tough questions and then report (there’s that word again) what they discovered back to their readers and viewers? And what if the people saw those professionals as their representatives in the halls of government?
Couldn’t the noble work of such an industry create a world where the actual thinking that informs policy decisions was clearly displayed in public and where citizens could be confident that their needs and aspirations were at least being heard? Wouldn’t such a world be less likely to suffer violent social rupture?
What’s that you say? There already is such an industry?
So then how come the perception that Canadian governments don’t work for the people is so powerful? How come there don’t seem to be a lot of Canadians who look to reporters as their representatives in the halls of government? (Also: how come they don’t call themselves reporters anymore, but seem to prefer journalists?)
To be fair, video-based media organizations like CBC, CTV, and Global News can point to many long-form interviews they’ve done over the years with prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and senior officials. And media outlets in all sectors can also justifiably claim that they’ve engaged in in-depth analysis of government bills and policy issues.
Great. But none of that seems to have moved the dial. Confidence in Canada’s public institutions still rates somewhere between dismal and abysmal. And for all intents and purposes, the only people tuning in to legacy media at this point seem to be the companies that measure audience size.
Here’s something that I believe could make a difference. It would involve hosting discussions between someone well versed in the real-world problems facing a policy’s implementation on the one side, and an official representative of the relevant government body on the other. And it would involve actual discussion (rather than debate) where real questions are asked and answered: questions real people wonder about, like:
If you knew that Canada’s immigration policies would cause economic, social, and housing market stress, why did you push them so hard?
If flooding the COVID-era economy with public debt (quantitative easing) led directly to devastating inflation, why did you do it?
If, as we now know, Canada’s environmental policies haven’t succeeded in even slowing global warming, why did you spend (or commit) $200 billion to the effort?
If you knew that natural immunity was at least as effective in reducing COVID transmission as vaccines, why did you implement divisive and harmful universal mandates?
If the federal single use plastic ban led directly to crushing a major export industry - and was predictably withdrawn - why did you impose the ban in the first place?
If financial experts (including the Parliamentary Budget Officer) are warning that ballooning budget deficits will lead to unsustainable and dangerous economic pressures, why are you ignoring them?
How healthy and healing would it be to hear a responsible party respond in good faith to the sincere question: “If you didn’t realize this would happen, why should we trust your judgement in the future?”
I know the greatest “strength” of this idea is its naivety. After all, the whole thing depends on somehow convincing government communications offices - which famously and fanatically specialize in anything but communication - to go along with it. But maybe even public officials care about their nation’s future.
Even if everyone leaves such a discussion unsatisfied, just hearing “I’m aware of your legitimate concerns but…” could be enough to generate at least some measure of good will.
There’s more great reading available on The Audit:
Does Democracy Need a Healthy Traditional News Media?
I often hear people saying that a "healthy news media industry enhances democracy”. But is there any objective way to measure what "healthy" means, what "enhancing democracy" means, and whether the two are actually correlated?
Why the ICC Misses Atrocities — and Why Canada Still Pays
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been making news lately - and not necessarily in a good way. Since Canada is both a financial supporter of the court and a party to the Rome Statute that created it back in 2002, it’s worth seeing exactly what we’re getting out of the deal.
Why Controlling Government Waste Matters
I admit to a feeling of satisfaction whenever I identify a government department that’s sinking $101 million, $400 million, or even $3 billion into ongoing programs that are demonstrably failing. Perhaps, should the right people hear the news, I will have made a difference.
The refusal to answer hard questions shows up clearly in the raw parliamentary data. I review Order Paper Questions every week, and when MPs ask for the specific economic impact assessments you mentioned regarding the plastics ban, the government often replies that no such record exists. It suggests the problem isn't just secrecy, but that they often implement policies without doing the math to begin with.
The other institution designed to allow for debate of the issues and holding the government to account is Parliament (or, in the provinces, the Legislatures). Increasingly, and sadly, decisions are made by a small number of people in the Prime Minister’s Office (or Premier’s Office) without detailed analysis, then rammed through Cabinet, rammed through Parliament, and implemented without any subsequent evaluation (because who wants to prove that their centrepiece legislation was a dud?). Yes, the media could ask tough questions, but politicians avoid the media and, increasingly, also avoid questions from other elected people. To be in the Opposition is framed up as being unreasonable and objectionable, whereas in fact it’s the purpose of Parliament to debate the issues and proposed solutions. If the system was working as designed, such debate would happen within parties, as well as between parties. To pretend that there’s one “best” solution that can be arrived at by a small group of people is a set-up for failure. Better solutions come with broader input from groups of people with a variety of perspectives. Even so, some mistakes will happen, and the post hoc analysis is required to show which policies failed and need to be abandoned or fixed.
It’s somewhat refreshing that Carney has been willing to reverse some of Trudeau’s policies, but a pity that he’s done so ad hoc, allegedly in response to events elsewhere, rather than admitting that the policies had been reviewed and were failures.