It’s a hell of a way to go to war.

“You’re at war when you get attacked,” Prime Minister Mark Carney matter-of-factly stated in response to the very last question of his Saturday news conference after trade talks with the United States collapsed. Not a formal declaration of war, more a circumstantial statement of reality.

Still, many other elements of two warring nations are present. Midnight negotiations disintegrating. Withdrawal of negotiating teams. Blaming the other side. Refusing to re-engage. Retaliatory strikes readied. And that’s just Canada.

For America, retaliatory strikes are already landing. New ones threatened. Territory is being renamed. As for blame, it’s all ours not theirs.

At least ambassadors haven’t been recalled. Not yet anyway, although more than 225,000 Canadians have signed a petition calling for the government to declare U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra “persona non grata and request his removal.”

When it comes to names and memes, it certainly sounds like war. Chest-thumping insults are flying fast and furious. On both sides of the border. But you don’t win a war with words unless you’re in a war of words. Mark Carney says it’s more than that and Donald Trump’s escalating tariffs are proof of that.

If so, where’s the mobilization for war? Canadians are ready. Nationalistic pride is at its highest in years. If there was ever a moment when Canadians could be called upon to do their patriotic economic duty, now is it. What we need is our governments — all our governments — plus business and labour to find common cause for the struggle ahead.

That’s not happening. For three reasons.

First is the federal government’s use of retaliatory tariffs. It’s a strategy of “wield and shield.” Wield them against American businesses and workers; shield Canadian business and workers from the effects. They are designed to get attention in Washington to get to a deal. You don’t go to a DEFCON 1 war condition with all the attendant changes to your industries and economy if it’s a just a negotiating tactic.

Second, most provincial governments don’t want an economic war with the United States. They are reluctant warriors, at best — “Kiss my ass, Donald Trump” notwithstanding. That’s because our country’s diversified economy at the national level is much more concentrated at the provincial, regional and local levels. Think autos in Ontario, aluminum in Quebec, lumber in B.C., fish and seafood in Atlantic Canada and oil and gas in Alberta. There’s a reason Premier Danielle Smith in Alberta has kept American liquor on the shelves and inveighs strongly against an export tax on energy going south.

Third, business naturally wants to keep the American markets it already has rather than expend time, effort and money to secure new ones. It’s cheaper, easier and more profitable than retooling, rebranding and rebuilding abroad.

But if we truly are in an economic war with the United States, if we’ve come to a rupture in the relationship or a hinge moment in our history (as Mr. Carney has said), all those things must change. Canada’s mobilization machine needs to gear up, now.

We need to move at unprecedented rates if there is truly no going back to our previous economic relationship with the U.S. And Canada needs to move at unprecedented levels of collaboration across the full spectrum of the public and private sectors to make this work. In short, we need to deliver at speed and implement at velocity.

Governments showed a capacity to do this during the pandemic. Decision times were shortened. Risk aversion was jettisoned. Policy design and operational needs were considered jointly by public servants and politicians at the front end to make sure things happened not just more quickly, but more effectively so they worked better. And business, labour and civil society were brought together around many of the same tables to build consensus and give practical advice on what needed to be done. Do all this again.

A fast-burning public health emergency is not the same as a slow-burning economic war. But the implications are just as dire in the long run. We need to recognize as much and act accordingly. With much more determination and dispatch than we’ve exhibited to date.

“War. What is it good for?” was a 1969 anti-Vietnam War anthem. “Absolutely nothing” was the lyrical answer to the knee-deep in the big muddy morass it became.

But mobilization for war is different. Focusing public and private investment on new growth in strategic priorities, building resilience to American market pressures through diversification, and improving business competitiveness and productivity through tax reform and innovation will put us in a much stronger position to wage an economic war now and later.

Most of all, mobilization across government to focus on improving its ability to implement all this — and more — to deliver faster and more effectively for Canadians must be job No. 1 for the Carney government.

When it comes to war, Winston Churchill quotes are the best. “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war” is one the negotiators like. But in a fighting speech to our own House of Commons in the Second World War, Churchill quoted defeatist generals saying, after France fell to the Germans, that in three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.

His answer one year on, with Britain unconquered: “Some chicken; some neck.”

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

The Conservative Party of Canada has a troll problem. And it’s coming from inside the tent.

Once, trolls existed only in imagination. They were figures of mythical proportion, big and small. They lived solitary lives under bridges, in caves, or forests. They were considered dim-witted and mean. Best avoided.

Today, they are real, unavoidable, and ubiquitous on social media. They are anything but solitary. There are tribes of them out there and tribal is how they think and post. As for dim-witted and mean, others can opine but they are uniformly mean and dismissive.

Mean to anyone who disagrees with their views. Dismissive of any view but their own. They distribute questionable, at best, facts and opinions grounded in hostility towards anything or anyone deemed disagreeable or heretical to their world view.

Is that view a “conservative” one? Given that there is no one homogeneous conservative view across Canada today, they can and do claim as much. This gives them an outsized voice and influence in today’s federal Conservative party. And not for the good, if it comes to electing Conservatives.

Social media trolls, sorry, “influencers” are the most contemporary manifestation of politics today. The rise of social media gave rise to social media users who figured out how to monetize the digital marketplace through calculated outrage. By relentlessly posting opinion-driven content to generate clicks and views, they have built loyal audiences eager to engage by repeating and reposting their content.

The Conservatives recognize this. More than the other parties. At their January convention in Calgary, they had a special “content creator” access pass for influencers to attend, roam, and post, underlining their influence within the conservative movement. An influence begotten by a digital-savvy Pierre Poilievre, who has generated hundreds of social media videos of him speaking directly and pithily on his issues of the day. No wonder he was dubbed Canada’s first influencer politician by some. It fit nicely the populist image and policies he was presenting.

However, what began as a novel channel to rally conservatives in the age of Justin Trudeau wound up defining Poilievre and his party more than he realized. The “power of pith” in a social media post for some voters is always one step away from the “gift of glib” to others. When the voter vibe shifted to serious in the wake of Donald Trump, Poilievre’s determined use of the tool became a crutch hobbling his appeal to Canadians.

Meanwhile, self-styled “independent” influencers took up more and more of the online space surrounding the party, amplifying Poilievre’s populist messaging and “own the Libs” mentality. Not entirely new, there’s a direct line from the original Rebel Media to the short-lived Sun News TV network (dubbed “Fox News North”), to the current crop of online podcasters and livestreamers, some of whom rack up millions of views and engagements. Their content is a consistent stream of culture war pronouncements, pro-America leanings, and anti-Liberal screeds. COVID and the trucker convoy were perfect accelerants for their type of outrage content over government overreach and personal freedoms.

Now, in a time of Conservative duress plagued by bad polls and dismal leadership ratings, those influencers are seeking not just to amplify their version of conservative messaging, but define who gets to call him- or herself a “true” conservative in the first place. RINOs — Republicans in Name Only — is a well-known diminutive term in the U.S. In Canada, we have everything from Reformers to United Conservatives to Progressive Conservatives who generally, but not fully, subscribe to the federal version of Conservative.

But last year’s unforeseen election loss and subsequent leadership vacuum has now crystallized into a self-defeating rhythm of internal name-calling with all the characteristics of a circular firing squad. Into that vacuum have stepped the influencers, trolling views that run contrary to Poilievre’s leadership. They are branding anyone who disagrees with the current leadership as a Liberal, focusing on Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his team, in particular.

Needless to say, Poilievre will not cut ties or time with this conservative influencer network. Just weeks after his election loss, he was reaching out directly to them. At the time, with a leadership review to come, he understood their reach within his party. Arguably in a weaker polling position now, he can’t afford to separate himself.

Poilievre’s best argument for remaining as leader is that there is no obvious replacement. That’s code for the party descending into an internecine battle of factional conservative bloodletting that will leave the party worse off than it is now.

That may or may not be true. It’s not like a winning path to power exists now. What is true is that this breed of Conservative influencers is determined to choke off any dissent or divergence from their important and lucrative perches.

In myth, sunlight turned trolls into stone. They could threaten no more. Shining sunlight on the conservative movement’s troll brigade and what they are doing to the Conservative party might yet serve the same purpose.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

“No deal is better than a bad deal.”

This is the sentence that will define Prime Minister Mark Carney’s time in government.

Uttered last year to explain away the delays in negotiating a new trade arrangement with the United States amidst the high expectations of Carney’s election, it is now the benchmark against which he and his Liberal government are going to be measured. This time next week, we will know if he meant it. With all the consequences that ensue.

By then, we will have reached President Donald Trump’s Aug. 19 deadline threat to impose new 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian exports. This is not going down well with Canadians. Chief negotiator Janice Charette is reported as having called that a "cliff"in sessions with her U.S. counterparts. That means negotiations fall off and fail.

In short, Carney and Charette need to be clear and firm that Canada will walk away from talks rather than accept a sub-standard deal that subjugates us to a diminished economic relationship simply to please Trump. In turn, that would mean Canadians accepting sustained economic pain and discomfort inflicted upon us by America as the price for not signing on to a “bad deal.”

What would be a bad deal, anyway? Conservatives have a view. A changed view, but a view, nonetheless. Last year, they clamoured for a fast deal with the U.S., urging Carney to “negotiate a win” during his first face-to-face meeting with Trump. Last week, Pierre Poilievre sent a letter to Carney demanding he show “backbone” with "no more caving". Having misread the anti-American mood in the last election he lost, the Conservative leader is taking no chances now and is correctly channelling current feelings.

Substantively, though, he’s not serious. Poilievre is demanding Carney negotiate not just a “win” but a complete backdown by Trump on all tariffs imposed on Canada. This will not happen. Donald -“I’m a tariff guy”- Trump sees no reason to excuse its largest and most important trading partner from his economic fetish. Setting such a high bar is a political ploy, not a negotiating one.

Two years in, Canadians are wiser and more battle-hardened about dealing with Trump. We have become, in a word, resilient. We know, even if we don’t like, that some tariffs are to be expected. But we want them lower than anyone else’s, if we are to accept them. And we don’t want any new tariffs as Trump threatens us — and only us — via a hundred-year-old trade protectionist law never utilized for this purpose. This feels targeted against us because it is.

Last year, after meeting with Trump, Carney floated the prospect of reaching a deal on a new economic and security relationship. In May, he said “Canada strong will help make America great again,” calling for a “true partnership.”

All this suggests a deal that goes beyond tariffs and brings in defence, critical minerals and investment arrangements. “Everything is on the table” stated Carney about retaliatory measures following Trump’s current tariff threat. Certainly, a nice juxtaposition to his famous Davos rupture speech in January where he said about middle powers dealing with bigger hegemonic states like the U.S., “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Well, we’re at the table and maybe on the menu in Washington right now. Fact is, Canadians don’t know. Negotiating in secret is to be expected, but we’ve been kept as veritable mushrooms over the last year on the reality or not of discussions between the two countries. We don’t know what’s on the table for us to give up in exchange for who knows what. A deeper economic and security partnership or a narrow, tit-for-tariff reciprocity arrangement?

Carney has been circumspect to the extreme over the past year in his dealings with the U.S. president, not wishing to antagonize. That circumspection led to Canada rescinding the digital services tax last summer as a concession explicitly to “advance broader trade negotiations with the United States.” So far, it hasn’t worked. The mood for more concessions is simply not there.

If negotiations fall apart over the “no deal is better than a bad deal” red line, then the prime minister better opt for an immediate, prime-time broadcast to Canadians to explain what gives. The conflicting messaging surrounding the Gordie Howe International Bridge side deal last month is a case study in how not to communicate. His government will be in for some heavy weather with voters if they fail to come clean, in detail.

Last year it would have been harder to walk away from a deal. Canadians were of the expectation that Carney could deliver with Trump. Now, Trump’s behaviour and comments have left Canadians simultaneously ticked off at Trump and skeptical that any deal would even be honoured by him.

For the prime minister who campaigned as best able to get a deal with Trump, he now needs to be the prime minister most able to walk away from a deal with Trump.

All because of one simple, throwaway line: No deal is better than a bad deal.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

Abdul won and Avi is thrilled.

Federal NDP Leader Avi Lewis emerged from electoral hiding to tell us how it is “exhilarating to witness” a “wave of progressive populism” in the United States. He was referring to the upset winner of Tuesday’s heavily-watched Michigan Senate primary race, Abul Ed-Sayed who barely prevailed over his establishment opponent for the Democratic nomination.

Premier Wab Kinew’s favourite New Democrat (after himself) steadfastly hesitates to take a risk and run for a House of Commons seat in a byelection to kickstart Canada’s version of progressive populism. No hesitation, though, in Lewis immediately basking in the reflected glory of those international comrades and fellow travellers who do.

Writing about the state of Canada’s New Democrats feels like a hate crime — you hate wasting your time — and this is no exception. A better story is what’s driving this modest but undeniable political movement in U.S. politics and whether it might gain traction here in Canada.

Our country is no stranger to foreign influence in politics. Not the interfering kind that necessitates the federal government creating a foreign influence registry as it finally did last week to track and make transparent countries and interests seeking to influence election outcomes.

Rather, the influence of foreign political movements that animate and drive debate here at home.

The most obvious example is, of course, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) influence on the Conservative Party of Canada over the past decade. It found expression in everything from policy, such as immigration restrictions, to the dominance of “brocaster” influencers in the party ecosystem, such as Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan.

The success of Donald Trump led many to consider populism as solely a right-wing phenomenon raging against governing institutions and elites. Kid yourself not. Progressive populism exhibits the same rage, just against different governing institutions and elites. In their case, it is money and Israel.

MAGA was spawned by the Tea Party protests during the Obama administration. With Trump it took over the Republican Party to the point that one is indistinguishable from the other. To win a Republican nomination these days, you need to be as Trumpian as he is.

Progressive populism has its heroes — or villains — too. Sen. Bernie Sanders kickstarted its germination within the Democratic Party when he ran for the presidential nomination as a democratic socialist against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Ten years on, his endorsement of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani helped propel them to congressional and mayoral victories, respectively, in New York. He has now done the same with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

It is risky to prognosticate trends based on a few breakthroughs. Still, you must start somewhere. There is no incipient social democratic revolution in the offing in Canada. No new orange or pink wave has yet appeared on the horizon. But those same forces disrupting politics in America also have force here.

The most obvious is Israel. El-Sayed triumphed over his very pro-Israel opponent despite her receiving $30 million in donations from AIPAC, the powerful America Israel Public Affairs Committee. His winning coalition was powered by young, educated, white voters, and higher-income voters. The Israel-Palestinian conflict, turbocharged by the Gaza War, has increasingly laid claim to determine the political fealty of Democratic candidates, for and against.

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania says support for Israel is the No. 1 issue for him as he periodically supports Republicans in Congress against his own party. He is increasingly alone among Democrats. Support for Israel is dropping around the world. A Pew Research Centre poll of 36 countries found majority negative views of Israel in most of them, including a 65 per cent unfavourable rating in Canada and 60 per cent unfavourable rating in the U.S.

Once a bipartisan issue in the U.S. and Canada, support for Israel is splitting along ideological and party lines in both countries. The Pew poll found that negative views of Israel are strongest amongst those on the ideological left. In Canada, 80 per cent on the left were unfavourably disposed towards Israel compared to 52 per cent on the right, a 28-point difference.

Democrats are far more likely than ever to say the U.S. is too supportive of Israel — 58 per cent in a July Associated Press poll, up from 45 per cent two years before. Young Americans, Democrat and Republican, are driving this.

Canadian polls show the same results. A Leger poll in April found only 22 per cent had a favourable view of Israel, down 10 points from before the Gaza War. An Environics poll last fall found twice as many Canadians expressing sympathy for Palestinians over Israelis — 32 per cent to 15 per cent.

Diaspora politics are not new. Yet, there are 10 times as many Jews as Palestinians in Canada. That means there is a broader dynamic at play here. Conservatives are vocally far stronger for Israel than Liberals. The federal Liberal government has officially recognized the State of Palestine. The Conservative opposition vociferously labelled this as “recognizing the Hamas state.”

Where you stand on Trump’s America is today’s most salient political divide in Canada.

Where you stand on Israel may become tomorrow’s.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

Canada’s biggest challenge is no longer deciding what to do. It is getting it done.

Canada has big plans.

The federal government has announced strategies to build infrastructure, accelerate major projects, strengthen the North and prepare the country for rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

All to the good. But can the federal government deliver all this? Not as it currently operates.

Government is unnecessarily complex. Major priorities move slowly through burdensome approval processes. Decisions are made, but implementation stalls. Programs are created, but the systems required to deliver them are outdated or fragmented. Responsibilities are divided, and accountability for the final result has no clear home.

This isn’t about public servants but the system they operate in. Canada’s public service contains deep expertise and a strong commitment to serving the country. The problem is that even highly capable people struggle when authority is unclear, information is trapped in organizational silos, decisions take too long, and the work culture rewards caution more than results.

These weaknesses have existed for decades. But the consequences have become more acute.

Canada now faces challenges that demand faster decisions and much stronger coordination. We need to build major infrastructure at a scale and pace the country has not managed in recent years. We need to adopt artificial intelligence while protecting privacy, security and public trust. We need to strengthen Canada’s presence and capacity in the Arctic at a time of growing geopolitical competition.

Our public institutions were not designed for this environment. The public service was largely built for a period when government addressed issues through distinct departments, relatively stable technologies and predictable policy cycle. That is no longer the case. Today’s problems cross organizational boundaries and evolve faster than traditional government processes. Government is simply not designed for what’s at stake.

That gap between the way government operates and what it is being asked to accomplish is the reason this independent Task Force for Modernizing Government has been established. This group of experienced public and private sector leaders has come together to offer practical advice to the government on how it can improve the way it delivers for Canadians. We are focusing on three priority areas central to Canada’s national economic resilience: digital government and AI; major projects and infrastructure; and Arctic and Northern sovereignty.

Our purpose is not to produce another broad review of the government or a lengthy catalogue of what’s wrong. Canada has no shortage of reports diagnosing institutional problems. The urgent need is to identify and implement practical reforms that can produce results sooner not later. The name of the game is execution or, more simply, getting things done.

Task Force members bring decades of combined experience of working with and within government, federally and provincially. Its members have led major public institutions, infrastructure projects, Crown corporations and federal departments.

We are not a royal commission studying the problem. We are a practical, action-oriented task force singularly focused on how the federal government can improve its own implementation capabilities to deliver faster and better for Canadians.

The Government has an important stewardship role on behalf of all Canadians. These responsibilities are exactly why poor service delivery, uneven implementation, turgid decision making, and opaque accountability must be fixed wherever it exists. Public trust in a democracy depends upon its well-performing public institutions that operate transparently and effectively, delivering results for citizens.

Our Task Force will not solve every problem in its year-long mandate. Nor should modernizing government be treated as a one-time exercise.

The federal government must continue to make meaningful improvements. It needs to focus not just on what it does but how it does it. That means reducing duplication of effort and process inside, reducing risk aversion in decision-making, clarifying accountabilities, and giving public servants better tools and more authority to become more productive in how they do their work. And it means measuring success by results and outcomes, not announcements, activity, or money spent.

Canada’s ability to advance and prosper is directly related to the performance and effectiveness of our governing institutions. It’s time to pay attention to this truth.

Follow us here: Moderngov.ca and on LinkedIn here: Task Force for Modernizing Government.

David McLaughlin is the Executive Director of the Task Force for Modernizing Government.

As published in The Hill Times.

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

The shocks come daily, amplified by partisan influencers and societal manipulators via social media to gain power or money or both.

The downside is obvious and omnipresent. A public square meting out rough justice to whoever or whatever is caught in the crosshairs. We are quickly drawn in — entertained — and just as quickly dismissed to make way for the latest volley and victim. Rising polarization, rude discourse, ruined reputations, and retreat from shared realities or truths is all left in its wake.

Paying attention to all this is bad enough. But there is something worse. Not paying attention — if there is too much of ‘everything, all at once’ that the implications of what is being said trickles away like water off a duck’s back. It never registers.

Ask yourself if you are blutterbunged or not by President Donald Trump’s latest ramblings about bombing Iran, imposing tariffs over wildfire smoke, or annexing Greenland?

Or another Russian missile attack on Kyiv or Israeli bombing in Gaza or Lebanon?

Or even a Canadian company president musing about giving rich people more votes than poor Canadians?

Each of these episodes generates massive online reactions followed by vicious cycles of counteractions more akin to circular firing squad behaviour than anything sensible or, once depleted, even germane to the original topic.

Saying is not doing. We know that. Or used to. More and more we think it is.

Our society is caught in an entrapment cycle of galloping after the latest online stupidity. Oscar Wilde famously described English country fox hunting as “the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.” Nothing is “unspeakable” in today’s relentless pursuit for likes, followers, and engagement, with vapid, fleeting validation being the only prize at the close of the hunt.

In truth, it is all attention-seeking distraction. Unless it reveals underlying truths that merit deeper attention.

We don’t have to react to everything Trump says but we need to pay attention to what it might mean and react to that. Calling Canada the 51st state is clearly condescending. But it reflects a view of our country as a vassal, not a friend or ally.

It means we must prepare for American tariff policy designed to weaken us politically and economically, not just secure more advantageous trading arrangements for them. That is what we must counter with distinctly sovereign policy alternatives to make us resilient for what’s ahead, not just get a deal, any deal, with the United States.

Similarly, there is no real danger of Canadian voting rights being undermined. They are guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Section 3, if you care to look). But that doesn’t mean all is well with our democracy, that it is perfectly stable and performing as well as it should.

Radical expressions of change can reflect underlying tensions that require tending. It is the outcomes our democracy is producing — or not producing — and the citizen satisfaction that goes with it that will ultimately determine its enduring value.

We have become inured to the sights and sounds of another day of protests about Israel and Palestine. It is a conflict Canada cannot control or influence on its own. So, we turn the page or ignore the protest signs. We tut-tut about violent language or shocking behaviour of those protesters; meanwhile, the conflict is corroding community trust, creating conflict here, not just the Middle East, that is seeping into our streets, homes, churches, and lives.

When politicians or advocates or influencers pile one wild, wilful declaration unto another it is deliberate to “flood the zone”, exhausting opponents or distracting citizens to avoid scrutiny. It is insidious because it is effective.

Responding to every single outrage with one of your own is now the established, perpetuating procedure. We hurl right back, thinking the danger is in letting it pass. But the real danger is not pausing to let it pass; rather it is not pausing to consider and address the deeper meanings and implications underneath.

Social media is modern day’s opium for the masses. It dulls the senses at best, destroys our faculty to think at worst. At this rate, what it takes to be blutterbunged back to reality may be too late, too dark and too dear to envisage.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press, August 1, 2026

There’s an old saying in politics — that if you wrestle with a pig, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. Welcome to negotiating free trade with Donald Trump.

This is the unenviable position Canada finds itself in, a year and a half into a radically changed relationship with the United States. How do you negotiate with a president who practises the art of the steal? Is it principled to compromise with corruption simply to satisfy a president who is bankrupt of any principles except making money?

Answering these questions will say as much about us as it does about them.

President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat makes this starker. He is imposing 50 per cent tariffs on $28 billion worth of Canadian exports, covering more than 500 product categories.

The formal rationale is that Canada discriminates against American booze, dairy and cars. The real rationale is that we have not bent the knee to U.S. trade goals. Trump is retaliating for our retaliation.

“We have a tariff, which is, again, a natural consequence of the Canadian retaliation,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

What if we didn’t retaliate but rather offered concessions? To help pave the way for a renewed CUSMA, Canada has dropped its digital services tax and rolled back its Online Streaming Act. It made a deal to open the Gordie Howe International Bridge. The Trump administration’s response was, “you don’t really get credit for doing something bad and then undoing it.”

Pocketing concessions without anything in return and retaliating because we responded to their initial retaliation against us, shows there is no good faith way to negotiate with Trump and the United States. That raises the stakes for both sides, economically and politically.

Since we cannot trust the word of Donald Trump now, can we trust any signature he puts to keeping a new trade deal with Canada? That’d be like saying pigs can fly.

Canada should know now what it is up against. There is no special political relationship with America anymore. No deep well of friendship and respect we can draw from to protect ourselves from the Trump administration’s “America First” worldview, which sees allies as encumbrances and friends as freeloaders.

We need to shake off any lingering notion that history and geography count for capital in the Trump White House. They don’t.

Here’s why. Monday’s announcement of new 50 per cent tariffs targets us but is aimed at the rest of the world.

It is a shot across the bow of every other country that dares to stand up to Trump. The administration dug deep into the history books to dust off an almost 100-year-old law — the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act — to find the legal basis to levy these new tariffs.

Having been told by the Supreme Court in February that it could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify last year’s Liberation Day tariff-palooza, it is rummaging through every legal nook and cranny to find legal justifications that will stick. Using Section 338 of Smoot-Hawley is one answer, never mind it has never, ever been used for this purpose.

Another justification came Thursday, when the U.S. announced the results of a Section 301 investigation under the U.S. Trade Act. It is imposing 10 per cent tariffs on a range of countries, including Canada, for insufficiently ensuring forced labour is not used in supply chains for goods exported to the U.S. Although this measure won’t meaningfully impact Canada because of our CUSMA protection, it is meaningful that we were not exempted.

Carney has been criticized for not being successful in corralling Trump into a new trade deal.

Given he ran and won the last election very much on the message that he, in fact, was that guy, this charge will not disappear soon.

Increasingly, though, the question is becoming “Can anyone?”

This doesn’t excuse the prime minister from his obligations. Canada needs to preserve as much market access as is feasible with the United States. But it also needs to diversify away from the dependence on the United States.

It’s not one or the other, it’s both, at the same time.

This is where Carney is in better political shape than the headlines suggest. Every Trump trade tirade is a reminder that the U.S. may be a big trading partner but is not a reliable one. Increasingly, Canadians get this. A poll last week by Abacus Research showed 69 per cent of Canadians want Canada to hold firm on its negotiating positions with the U.S., even if this means persistent uncertainty.

Getting the right deal matters more than getting any deal. After all, you can’t fatten the pig on market day, can you?

Canada is banking on two things in the weeks and months ahead to fatten the pig: a change in power and a change in attitude.

If the November mid-term elections return a Democratic Congress, Trump is weakened. And the more economic pain and uncertainty that occurs in the U.S. because of tariffs raising prices and costs on families and businesses, then a change in attitude towards economic interdependence with Canada may blossom.

Prime Minister Carney has repeatedly said, “no deal is better than a bad deal.” Based on U.S. behaviour, he may need to amend that to “no deal is the same as any deal.”

Otherwise, we’d be buying a pig in a poke.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

The old Canada-United States relationship has entered its terminal lucidity phase. That sudden burst of cognitive clarity accompanying the Gordie Howe International Bridge shakedown reveals once and for all that there is no going back to what was before.

Canadians critical of the prime minister doing any form of “Donald Deal” will think this is a bridge too far. But the “dying of the light” illuminates a harder question: what choice did Carney have?

It stings now but it won’t hurt for long. Digging in our performative heels in protest would have amounted to a diplomatic blockade of trade by Canada. Matching Mafiosi tactics with the U.S. would have just kept the bridge closed longer when its economic benefits are needed and obvious. We built it for a reason, after all.

Does that mean any sort of deal was acceptable? No. Is this one? Yes, but.

“But” because we don’t really know what Canada gave up to keep what we already paid $6.4 billion to get. Details are scarcer than a list of truths ever told by Donald Trump. Neither side has given the full story on the new bridge deal, perhaps because it isn’t fully settled. Or perhaps because, as in any negotiation, both gave up something to get something, and neither wants to spell that out.

On the public record is this: in exchange for allowing the bridge to open on July 27, the U.S. will now receive 50 per cent of the net toll revenue for a period of 15 years, placed into an economic development fund controlled and spent by Americans. Where Canada would have received 100 per cent of that revenue under the original deal, it now has to share some of it for some time.

There’s also this interesting wrinkle: toll rate changes that affect future revenue for Canada will now have to be worked out with the U.S. first, not decided by the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, the Crown corporation that manages the international crossing. This is all because of local Michigan politics and the influence of two “Ambassador Bridges.”

The current, competing Ambassador Bridge crossing is owned and operated by a rich, well-connected, donating Republican family by the name of Maroun. Then there’s America’s ambassador to Canada, former leader of the Michigan Republican Party Pete Hoekstra, who ran interference for Republican and U.S. interests in Michigan to get this new bridge deal. Regulating future toll rates on the Gordie Howe Bridge will help mitigate any future revenue declines on the Maroun-owned Ambassador Bridge. And maybe help Republican fortunes in the important swing state of Michigan in November’s mid-term elections.

If these provisions had been part of the original Canada-Michigan bridge deal in 2012, few, if any Canadians would have batted an eye. Now, it sticks in Canada’s craw. It shouldn’t. Swallow hard and let the medicine digest. It is the transactional way of dealing with the Donald.

In doing so, it reveals patterns in both Canada and America’s negotiating patterns. Prime Minister Carney can and will do deals with Trump’s White House. What he won’t do is proactively tell Canadians much about the how and what of those deals. How they’re being done and what’s in them. Trump’s mercurial, capricious behaviour may be a reason for doing so. Carney doesn’t want to unduly risk another blowout from the blowhard.

Canadians get that. What they don’t get is being asked to stay in the dark on the most important political and economic relationship we have. By overcompensating on risk with Trump, Carney is undercompensating risk with Canadian voters. Without details, without explaining the trade-offs, voters will fill in the blanks themselves.

Negotiating in secret is one thing; keeping deals secret is quite another.

It is why the PM had to perform some fast cleanup on his own deal when Trump announced it first. Carney hastened to explain that bridge toll revenue sharing would be much smaller than you thought, as it would only cover net profits. That is, money left over after Canada receives payments on other costs it already incurred.

“We are sharing after Canada is paid back,” the PM said. “So, we get the revenues, then the servicing of the cost of the bridge and paying the debt of the bridge.”

That’s surely a better arrangement than first reported. Trouble is, the cleanup isn’t yet done. Details on the deal are as murky as Trump’s algae-infected reflecting pool. The sooner and clearer the PM makes those details public as part of the deal’s written text, the better. For us and for him. He needs to consider this first actual negotiated settlement with the U.S. since he became prime minister as a template for how he levels with Canadians to keep their support for the longer haul ahead.

Long-haul truckers crossing the new bridge in droves will be a welcome balm to our ongoing trading relationship with America. But for any Canadian who thinks the old Canada-U.S. relationship is coming back — have I got a bridge to sell to you.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is shuffling his office. Beyond the personalities, this caught my eye. It should catch yours, if you worry about good governance.

According to the Globe and Mail, the PM is appointing a Chief Operating Officer for the PMO. The article states this:

“The sources also said that Maia Johnson, whose relationship with Mr. Carney dates back to his work on climate finance for the UN, will now take on a role called chief operating officer, in addition to remaining as a senior adviser for Canada-U.S. relations.”

Not much detail, admittedly. But this is the first such styled position with this title. It is not unusual to have, say, a Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. Indeed, my first PMO role under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, was called Senior Advisor, Operations. It was kind of a catch-all for files and issues that didn’t neatly fit elsewhere. In practice, I led various policy and issues management files from NAFTA to Westray, attended Cabinet and Policy and Priorities Committee of Cabinet, and (most fun) staffed the PM for all his foreign travel and a lot of domestic travel too.

But that’s not the same as being the COO for the PMO as an organization. Chief Operating Officers classically have an organizational and management remit that covers operational delivery, HR, finances, and results. Not sure if that is what Ms. Johnson will have. They are also, typically, the #2 in the organization. Although clearly senior in the PMO hierarchy, that is not obviously the case here. And, in a very Canadian quirk of styling, tis the Chief of Staff who is really the CAO or Chief Accounting Officer for the PMO per the Accountability Act.

A more efficiently run PMO is very on-brand for this particular prime minister. He should take the next - obvious - steps and apply this brand to the rest of the government he leads. Appoint a Chief Operating Officer for the Government of Canada in the Privy Council Office, reporting to the Clerk. Then, appoint a COO for each department and agency of government. Embed an operational performance focus across, throughout, up, down, and sideways in every nook and cranny of the federal public service.

It’s an idea whose time has come. I recommended this last year and the year before in two Globe and Mail opinion pieces, here and here.

“…appoint a chief operating officer with real authority for improving public service operations, productivity and performance. Make superior performance and delivering at the speed-of-need the driving ethos of what government does.”

Here’s the COO role and rationale as I spelled it out in a previous Substack article here:

There is a COO for the UK Cabinet Office and a Permanent Secretary and COO for the Civil Service as a whole, here.

But Australia is the most complete example. There are chief operating officers across the system (for the most part). Their role and importance is institutionalized within the public service as you can see in this figure below:

Three Steps to Better Government

Time for Canada to crack on in three easy steps:

Step 1 - appoint a PMO COO.

Step 2 - appoint a PCO COO.

Step 3 - appoint GOC COOs.

Serious times call for serious politics. That means serious leaders offering serious solutions.

If all this sounds like a campaign slogan for the establishment, you’re probably right. But its rising resonance may well prove the unravelling of the conservative populist rage that has been driving politics in Canada, the United States and Europe.

Already we are seeing signs that the “burn it all down” rhetoric of more than a decade of MAGA Trump in the United States, Brexit and Faragism in the United Kingdom, and the angry and anti- establishment brand of Poilievre conservatism in Canada, has crested. Today, voters are yearning for stability and real solutions, the exact opposite of what divisive populist politics promise.

Events, current and past, rightly fuelled the anger. The 2008 financial crisis marked the beginning of our current “end times.” It was followed in short order by the first triumph of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement in 2016, Brexit in Britain in 2016, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities in Israel and that country’s two-year invasion and war in Gaza, and the triumphant return of Trump and MAGA in 2024. Now comes the ongoing war with Iran launched by the U.S. and Israel.

Individually and in combination, these events roiled economies and society. Public institutions in Canada, Britain and America all managed ably enough through the crises but had insufficient imagination and ambition to anticipate and address the ensuing economic and social fallout. Public trust in government plummeted despite record levels of public spending. From homes to groceries to wages, nothing seemed affordable or attainable.

If there ever was a time for populist gains, this was it. And gain they did. Until they stopped. Brexit would not win in a U.K. referendum today. Trump is deeply unpopular with everyone but his MAGA base. His Republican party will struggle to win Congress in the November mid-term elections. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives lost a sure-thing election and are further from, not closer to power than in the past decade.

Bad governing by flawed leaders is to blame. Trump’s government has bungled file after file, from DOGE cuts by Elon Musk to ICE raids by Kristi Noem to tariff hikes by Howard Lutnick. Each initiative was either bungled or reversed in some fashion after their high-profile and ill-conceived launches.

In Britain, revolving door prime ministers killed the brand of its most successful political party, the Conservatives. The current Labour government is showing the door to its first prime minister in 15 years, not halfway through its majority mandate.

Meanwhile, the poll-leading, populist upstart Reform UK party is imploding as its leader, Brexit-architect Nigel Farage, has resigned his seat in Parliament over allegations of concealing millions of dollars in personal donations. He plans to re-contest it as a classic two-fingers “up yours” to “the British establishment” to rekindle the rage flame of populism that is his brand. We’ll see.

Truth be told, populist leaders and movements just aren’t made for the serious work of governing. Today, competence and results are in vogue. Mark Carney gets it, has it, and is winning as a result. Even if that means upending every past Liberal policy of his predecessor or ditching his own strong personal values and views about climate change.

The lessons for Canada’s populist conservatives are dispiriting. Pierre Poilievre has a serious mien and takes himself very seriously. Mark Carney is a serious prime minister who does not. The image contrast is vivid.

More troubling for Poilievre is that he has allowed himself to become defined and, hence, trapped by the angry populist politics of the conservative movement.

Movements are not the same as parties. Yet, by running for leader the same month as the trucker convoy came to Ottawa, he symbolically and practically fused the two. Deviation from the movement’s harder ideological and angry edge, necessary to win votes beyond the base, risks his leadership.

Truth be told, Poilievre is more comfortable in the persona he has crafted. He must be, for he has rebuffed every attempt to soften his style or amend his message to broaden his appeal. His labelling of Ontario conservative critics last week during a high-profile Calgary Stampede event as “Liberal lobbyists from out east” is a case in point.

This Conservative leader is the genuine “movement conservative” article. Angry, populist and anti-establishment. He revels in rebellion, even to his own. His trouble is that the prevailing political zeitgeist in politics has changed.

The riptide of rage has ebbed. Being the tribune of the “outs” is satisfying, even important, but will keep him and his party on the outside looking in at someone else’s government.

Mark Carney recognized we are living in different times. He changed with it. Pierre Poilievre hasn’t. He had hoped to surf a wave of grievance and anger at Justin Trudeau’s government into the Prime Minister’s Office.

He would do well to take the advice of Bob Dylan, who wrote and sang:

“And you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’”

My regular Saturday Winnipeg Free Press column.

At last, some honesty in Canadian climate policy

Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke the truth last week about where greenhouse gas emissions were going in Canada: up, not down. This is the first time any prime minister has stated the reality of the country’s emissions trajectory. Until now, it’s all been about putting a positive gloss on far-off reduction goals and unrealistic ambitions.

The prime minister’s second instalment of "forward guidance" as he calls it, focused on what’s ahead on energy and climate. It was a refreshing and overdue pivot in crafting a more realistic and durable climate policy for the country.

Here’s what he said: “I want to be clear on this point. The changes we have made will mean that our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were projected to be under the previous government’s plan. But in my judgment, that plan was not sustainable over the long term.”

He didn’t spell out the “changes we have made.” But they amount to throwing much of Justin Trudeau’s climate plan under the bus. From eliminating the consumer carbon tax to softening clean electricity regulations to getting rid of the oil and gas emissions cap to supporting a possible new west coast bitumen pipeline, Carney’s climate stance is less ambitious for the future but more realistic for the times.

Affordability and unity are the reasons Carney gave. It would have been “too expensive for Canadians” and “would have been too divisive for our country”. This is an obvious if belated nod to how climate action has riven us. He could have added that Canada wasn’t on track to meet the target anyway. Instead, he pitched it as an economic necessity: “We can’t afford to restrain the growth of an important part of our energy mix, oil and gas, to meet a short-term goal.”

That’s that, then. Or is it?

The Carney government has not yet articulated what its alternative climate plan and emissions trajectory will look like. His public admission means Canada will not meet its 2030 GHG reduction target that is enshrined in law, courtesy of the Canada Net- Zero Accountability Act. That 2021 law requires the government to set out a plan to meet that target and future ones enroute to the main prize of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. That plan is now out-of-date.

This means his government will have to spell out an alternative climate plan and goals. Climate advocates will invariably see this as backtracking or giving up on climate. Actually, it offers the prospect of creating a stronger foundation and political consensus for ongoing climate action by a serious and popular prime minister. One who is realistic about goals and sensible about approaches. Something Canada has been lacking for too long.

The Canada/Alberta memorandum of understanding on energy and climate signed last year offers a template for a new collaborative intergovernmental approach to climate action. One that binds both orders of government in a joint effort to keep reducing emissions while growing the economy.

Rather than the coercive, top-down federalism of “backstops” and “command and control” regulations practiced by his predecessor, Carney should use the Alberta model and sign bilateral climate action agreements with each province and territory. This would commit both sets of governments to ongoing climate action, spelled out in specific joint actions relevant to that province with measurable goals and timeframes to hold both accountable. The “backstop” would not be federal laws but federal financial commitments to advance agreed climate actions that reduce emissions in that jurisdiction and prepare for net-zero. The more you do, the more you get.

Call it asymmetrical federalism if you want, or just collaborative federalism of carrots, not sticks. It would match bilateral climate action plans to the carbon emitting realities of each province. Oil and gas in Alberta, transportation in Ontario, agriculture and trucking in Manitoba, and so on. It has the added value of respecting each jurisdiction’s constitutional competence which is no small national unity matter these days.

There would have to be room for national climate goals including forging an achievable net-zero path. A key feature of each agreement should be building the clean national electrical grid the PM is already seeking. Equally, there should be a strong nature and natural infrastructure component to replenish carbon sinks such as boreal forests and wetlands that are needed to offset residual emissions to reach net-zero by 2050.

They say a political gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. If so, Mark Carney has spelled out a very inconvenient truth for his party’s large, noisy, and increasingly restless climate constituency. Inconvenient truths that led to reassuring lies about progress and outcomes.

He now needs to go the next step. Forge a made-in-Canada climate policy that reflects our economic and political realities and actually achieves carbon reduction goals the vast majority of Canadians will support and stick with.

Mr. Carney’s forward guidance may just mean the time has finally arrived when we will no longer be gaslit about greenhouse gases.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press, July 4, 2026

A

The British government is mired in a prime ministerial transition, yet again. No one is really in charge. Perfect timing then for the civil service to fill the vacuum.

In a rather assertive move for new cabinet secretary Antonia Romeo, appointed only in April by outgoing PM Keir Starmer, she has decided to embark upon what looks to be the most comprehensive review of how Britain’s civil service works, or doesn’t. No formal word on whether incoming PM Andy Burnham concurs with this, but it would be very bad civil service form if he didn’t. Since that would mean he wasn’t informed first and offered his concurrence, second. Breaks the 'no surprises’ rule every PM and Cabinet Secretary operate by.

Regardless, it is a both a bold and predictable move by a new, dynamic cabinet secretary who has a reputation as an "arse-kicker"who gets things done. Bold because it puts the whole civil service up for review, not just parts of it such as central agencies, or part of what it does, such as service deliver or values and ethics. It’s all rolled into one.

Predictable in that any veteran governance observer knows this is the time for a civil service to assert control and direction over its own destiny - while the politicians are preoccupied with theirs. Romeo is taking advantage to secure advantage.

An interesting and proper feature is that this review will neither be a quiet, behind the scenes one; nor will it be kept under wraps once it is done. The Terms of Reference (see below) commits to getting external advice and making the final product public when it is completed before Summer, 2027.

This whole approach is interesting because it promises to be so revealing. A civil service-led study publicly released will reveal what the civil service thinks about its own shortcomings and what must be done to rectify them. Will it pull its punches to preserve its dignity or provide an honest take on what’s wrong at the deepest, most fundamental levels? Will it then offer specific solutions that fix all this or earnest words that ‘something must be done’ and modest, incremental change?

She has her work cut out for her. British citizens are underwhelmed about their civil service. Public opinion tracking showed over 50% of respondents had “no or not very much confidence” in the civil service.

The danger in embarking upon such a comprehensive review is it freezes in situ, change needed now. Public servants around the world are excellent at cogitating and enumerating options and risks. The systems they work in and the culture imbued in them, fosters that behaviour. They are less excellent at making decisive change fast. It takes a pandemic to do that and on that front, public servants mostly excelled.

Such reviews also take time. Often, a lot of time (see above…). Romeo has stipulated a one-year timeframe to head-off this tendency to overthink and overanalyze. We will see just how successful she is.

Canada has had its share of comprehensive reviews. I wrote about them in a previous Governance Matters post here. This is how they rolled out over the years:

And this is what they covered:

Privy Council Office Clerk, Cabinet Secretary, and Head of the Public Service, Michael Sabia, has given no indication he plans to emulate the approach of any of his predecessors or his across-the-pond counterpart. No big, formal, comprehensive public service review is lurking. What he is doing is modernizing government structures, processes, and delivery vehicles based on the prime minister’s top priorities. See my Governance Matters take here and here. That’s fine. It would prove an undesirable distraction from what’s required now. Pause and ponder never fits well with get ‘er done.

Back to Britain. The civil service review about to commence follows upon two years of Labour government reforms already initiated and an ill-starred attempt to bring about "mission-led government" and "sludge busting" civil service reform. Perhaps then, a big picture review was inevitable.

But if the new cabinet secretary truly wants to fix what ails Britain’s civil service, inevitable cannot become insurmountable.

Terms of Reference

Review into the Organisation, Performance and Transformation of the Permanent Civil Service

Published 1 July 2026

Contents

1. Context and Objective

2. Scope

3. Approach

4. Outputs and reporting

Context and Objective

The Civil Service serves the duly elected Government of the day and supports it to develop and implement its policies and in delivering public services, in line with the Civil Service Code.

The Government has outlined its intention to strengthen the delivery, accountability, innovation and productivity of the Civil Service, and to consider proposals to safeguard its impartiality and core values within the constitution, to enhance trust and confidence in the institutions of government.

The Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service will lead a wide-ranging, fundamental review into the constitution, organisation and performance of the permanent Civil Service, with the aim of setting out a vision for its future as a world class institution serving the duly elected government of the day, building on its existing strengths.

Scope

The review will consider the wide range of activities undertaken by the Civil Service, at home and abroad, in every organisation and department.

The final report will include proposals on:

· strengthening accountability and capability to deliver for the country and for citizens, now and for the future, focusing on:

· delivery,

· innovation and productivity, and

· pride and trust;

· safeguarding its impartiality and core values, including refreshing the Civil Service Code; and enhancing trust in the Service by Ministers, Parliament and the public.

The review will consider:

· size, shape, and structure of the future Service;

· AI and technology as enablers of delivery and transformation;

· current and future capabilities;

· performance management;

· accountabilities and reporting lines;

· reward, remuneration, and incentives;

· recruitment systems to attract and retain the best talent in all regions across the country;

· core values and the Code; and

· statutory basis of the Service.

Approach

The review will consider a range of evidence, including but not limited to document analysis and interviews with relevant individuals within and outside government, and will consider best practice globally.

The review will draw on a wide range of expert advisers from academia, private, public, civil society, and international spheres. It will welcome views and input from across Parliament, and engage with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Lords Constitution Committee. An external expert advisory panel will be constituted to inform the review.

Outputs and reporting

The review will culminate in a report setting out a vision for the future Civil Service as a world class institution, to deliver for Ministers and the public. The final report will include a set of recommendations to reform the Civil Service to achieve this.

The review will report before summer 2027, and the report will be made available to the public.

Alongside this fundamental review, swift work to reform the Civil Service to improve delivery, performance, innovation, productivity and pride will continue, led by the Cabinet Secretary and Permanent Secretaries in support of the Government.”

It’s pretty rich that the richest province in Canada wants out. Or is it?

In politics, like life, emotion often trumps fact. It fuels grievance. It creates myths that morph into “common knowledge.” Once embedded, it is strikingly difficult to change.

This is where we have arrived with Alberta’s separation movement and the October referendum on whether to “remain in Canada” or “commence the legal process … to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada.”

By every financial metric, Albertans are the most well-off Canadians. So much so that for years the province marketed the “Alberta Advantage.” That is the factual argument. However, the separatist movement believes the province would have been even better off, but Canada wouldn’t let them. Alberta must therefore separate. That is the emotional argument.

Separating the two (pun intended) is not obvious because there is truth to both arguments. Let’s begin with the factual part: Being in Canada has enabled Alberta to prosper.

The before-tax average annual salary in Alberta was almost $136,000 in 2023, compared to a national average of about $110,000 — a difference of more than $25,000 per year. In 2024, the last full year of the Trudeau Liberal government, the after-tax, take-home pay of a typical Albertan household was $85,300, nearly $10,000 more than the national average. Fact. 1

More “one per centres” — the top income earners — live in Alberta than anywhere else; the province contains more than 15 per cent of Canada’s total “one per cent” population. Fact.2

It’s not just the uber-rich who reside in Alberta. Household incomes overall are higher and more concentrated in Alberta than the rest of Canada. Nineteen per cent of all Alberta households have after-tax incomes ranging from $125,000 to $200,000 compared to 15 per cent in the rest of the country. Fact.3

This is first and foremost due to the lowest set of tax rates across Canada. Famously, of course, Alberta has no sales tax. But its personal income taxes are the lowest, too. You can earn up to $61,000 before paying any provincial tax, a higher level than anywhere else in the country — about $8,000 more than in Ontario, $10,000 more than in B.C., and $13,000 more than in Manitoba. Fact.4

Looking at it another way, if Albertans paid the equivalent of all of Manitoba taxes and rates, they would pay almost $29 billion more each year in provincial taxes, $31 billion more at Quebec levels, and $17 billion more at next-door British Columbia’s levels. Fact.5

Alberta made these tax choices based on its current constitutional and fiscal status as a province within Canada. Right now, that same status enables Albertans to enjoy lower taxes and higher incomes compared to Canadians living in other provinces. Fact.

Far from holding Alberta back financially, its long-term financial situation is better than any other province. Its net-debt-to-GDP ratio is the lowest in the country at just 12.9 per cent. By contrast, Manitoba’s exceeds 38 per cent. Fact.6

Alberta separatists complain that they disproportionately subsidize equalization payments to other provinces. Higher incomes and the best fiscal capacity in the country will do that. But federal transfers to Alberta are also quite high. This fiscal year, it will receive $9.2 billion in support from Ottawa, a 56 per cent increase in 10 years. That compares to a 34 per cent increase in transfers to Quebec. Alberta’s population has been growing, and it is receiving more federal dollars to compensate. Fact.7

While Alberta does not qualify for equalization payments because of its above-average fiscal capacity, it has received a mirror-opposite sort of payment called a fiscal stabilization payment. This one-off federal program provides assistance to provinces facing “significant year-over-year declines in their revenues resulting from extraordinary economic downturns.” Alberta received two such payments in the past 10 years, amounting to over $800 million, owing to precipitous oil price declines. Fact.8

In the end, where does “chequebook federalism” take us? Not very far. A country is far more than a balance sheet. But Alberta separatists have made this their star argument.

Declaring Canada “unfair” in its treatment, never acknowledging that the same unfairness is allowing Alberta to prosper more than any other province. The question never answered is: “If Canada is so bad, why is Alberta doing so well?”

Exceeding the national average in prosperity shows Canada is working for Alberta. But the emotional argument separatists then make is that it would be even more prosperous, except Canada has held it back. Empirically, there is truth to this that Ottawa must acknowledge.

Federal policy choices over the past 10 years did hinder energy development in the province. Equalization payments are the result of a unilateral federal formula. Adjustments to both situations would benefit Alberta; factually, in the first instance, emotionally in the second.

Ultimately, the real solution for Alberta is not independence through unilateralism but prosperity through federalism. The Canada/Alberta memorandum of understanding on energy is a prime example of the latter at work.

More hard work along those lines is the best solution for Alberta succeeding even more in the federation.

Separation? That’s just cheap chequebook talk, which comes with a very rich price.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

3

Statistics Canada

4

Statistics Canada

5

Alberta Government, Budget 2026

7

Finance Canada

Hockey is Canada’s favourite sport. Any wonder then that our political parties have decided it’s time to take AI “slop shots” at their opponent’s net?

The Conservative Party of Canada was first and strongest out of the dressing room. The other week, it released a fully AI-generated video ad about food banks and hungry people lining up with empty shopping carts. Like much political advertising, this falls in the category of being accurate without being true.

Food Banks Canada statistics say there were 2.1 million monthly visits to food banks in the country in March 2025. Food bank usage rates have doubled, they say, since 2019. So, the issue exists but the talking “Canadians” in the ad do not. They are AI-generated avatars, not real people.

Welcome to the new frontier of campaign advertising. It is real even if the content it produces is not. If you’ve ever watched American TV during an election year — or just the drama series West Wing — you saw a version of this after every ad spoken by a candidate: “I approve this message.”

That requirement comes from the Stand By Your Ad provisions of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, itself a response to increasingly negative attack ads financed by candidates, parties and third-party funded interest groups and so-called SuperPACs. The legislation was meant to take the temperature down in political campaigns since throwing mud at your opponent always leaves some on you, too.

For years now, election materials in Canada have required a formal authorization statement. This is meant not to clean up the message but to clean up the money. It ensures campaigns stay within their legal spending limits. Provisions such as this in our election administration laws are meant to make campaigns fair and transparent.

AI advertising changes all this. It’s cheap and increasingly easy to manufacture, so spending limits are no barrier. That makes it a campaign manager’s dream but potentially a voter’s nightmare. Plus, AI is already demonstrating an uncanny ability to create easily digestible messaging that is far closer to voter mindsets than the traditional route of polling, focus group testing and ad-agency-created videos. This makes them that much more impactful and influential in driving voting behaviour.

But they also make a mockery of fair and transparent election messaging. No matter that an AI ad may be “authorized” by an official campaign. The images, voices and words are not real. They are, in the vernacular, “deepfakes.” In the hands of bad actors, foreign and domestic, they sow dissent and disruption about democracy, candidates and governments. As Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world and back again before the truth can put on its boots.”

How is this different from campaigns today, you may ask?

Election ads all stem from a form of creative licence and, let’s say, flexibility in context and facts. Micro-targeting of voters via data mining and social media algorithms exists now. AI simply shrinks the time, space and cost needed to produce a traditional political ad viewed on television or social media.

AI campaign advocates consider opponents to such ads modern-day Luddites. This is the same type of handwringing and tut-tutting, they contend, that accompanied the advent of radio or television or the Internet.

This is a cavalier, slippery-slope attitude. The impact that matters most is on voters, not campaigns. Making campaigns easier and more effective is irrelevant to the resultant impact on democratic trust and confidence in election outcomes.

The issue is not just AI-generated ads. It’s also about AI engagement with voters. A study published in 2025 of large language models as a persuasion tool in last year’s federal election in Canada found a 10-point increase in candidate preferences. AI was far more effective in shifting voter attitudes towards a candidate than traditional human persuasion. Put another way, a machine is becoming better at convincing a human to vote for another human than any human could.

None of this means elections as we know them are relics of the past. But the accepted determination of what constitutes legitimate and ethical election discourse has already arrived.

Manitoba’s decision to amend its election law to ban deepfakes — AI-altered images and audio recordings of candidates — is a strong step to regulate this corruption and protect voters. So far, no one else has followed suit.

Around the world, though, in 11 jurisdictions, including the European Union, we are seeing the emergence of codes of conduct to voluntarily govern the use of AI in elections.

This would be a good place to start in Canada. Political parties are notoriously reluctant to accept government regulation and proscriptions on their behaviour. The next best thing would be for them to step up and set up a common code of conduct for how they will use AI in campaigning.

That code would have three main components: a prohibition on using deepfakes, public disclaimers on AI-generated material and guarantees of data security by not using foreign brokers.

The AI revolution has arrived. Our political parties need to step up to stop the AI slop shots in politics. It’s their obligation to us, the voters.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

Climate change isn’t moderating but the Carney government’s approach to climate action is. At least that is the view of much of the environmental and climate community. The prime minister has been taking some hits from that community for his more pragmatic and, let’s say, less intensive commitment to climate action. Variably, he has taken a "wrecking ball" , a "sledgehammer", is "shredding", or "backsliding" on Canada’s climate policies. Take your pick.

There’s more…

Former Environment and Climate Change minister Steven Guilbeault first quit Cabinet and is now quitting the Liberal caucus and Parliament altogether. A stealth letter from some 14 Liberal MPs to the prime minister expressing concern over the Canada/Alberta MOU emerged showing real, if not yet deep, angst within the caucus on the government’s new environmental and climate direction.

More still…

The co-chair of the government’s Net Zero Advisory Body resigned as did one other high-profile NZAB member. One environmental group after another has levelled criticism at the Carney government for its dilatory actions on climate change and perceived weakening of environmental assessment laws.

Then, there’s this latest bit…

A lawsuit has just been filed asking the Federal Court for a judicial review that would declare Ottawa’s 2030 emissions reduction plan in non-compliance with the Canadian Net Zero Accountability Act, and require the federal government to take steps to add measures that would get Canada back on track to meeting its targets under the Act.

No lawyer, me, so I won’t hazard a prediction on how the court will rule. What this feels like, though, is not just your usual political reactions and posturing that accompanies a change in government policy direction. It is a demand that Ottawa continue its past approach of national policy prescriptions, centrally-driven mandates, and regulatory coercion as the best, only way for the federal government to take climate action. The very approach that the Carney government is binning.

In that sense, we are witnessing the ultimate denouement of the Justin Trudeau Climate Years. For when it comes to climate action by Liberals, Mark Carney has, to use a Maritime phrase I like, ‘changed the water on the beans’. In short, climate ambition is no longer the central impetus of the economic strategy of the federal Liberal government. That is what is causing the advocacy angst. The fear that climate action will be secondary not primary for the Carney government; never mind it wouldn’t have even made it to the bottom rung of a Conservative government priority list.

All this is leaving Liberals and their once close allies on climate action bemused at best, angry and at sea at worst. Disturbed is an understatement. A lawsuit was perhaps inevitable. Carney’s approach must feel like a breach of trust not just a break in policy. "Things change" sighs the prime minister.

They sure do.

For the past ten years, there has been a mutually-reinforcing dynamic between environmental groups and a welcoming government itching, even insisting, on making more and more climate progress. Shared purpose flourished between public and not-for-profit organizations. Public money helped forge a supportive scaffolding of bodies, groups, alliances, studies, and data - all designed to advance and embed Canadian climate action. That action centred around a strong central government command and control policies, programs, and signals. Alternatives tend to get dismissed in this dynamic.

It worked. Until it didn’t. It raises the question if after ten years of runway with sustained, mutually reinforcing commitment and policy led by the national government, Canada is not on a viable net-zero pathway, then how can it be? Harsh, perhaps, but here we are.

CNZAA: Ambition Overdrive

Ironically, the high point of ambition was the current nettle in the government’s climate briar patch: the 2021 Canadian Net-Zero Accountability Act. In a high moment of moral governance, the government decided to make sustained climate action and specific carbon emissions reductions the law of the land. Canada would, in one fell swoop, move from historical climate laggard to renowned climate leader.

It was a bold step and, for many who had experienced climate neglect during the Harper government years, a necessary step. Having consistently missed past emission reduction targets, Canada would now legislate away any ambiguity or doubt as to whether targets mattered. They would now matter. A lot.

Below is what Canada’s emissions profiles looked like in 2016, one year into the Trudeau government’s first mandate. Not one climate target by successive governments was ever close to being achieved. The new Liberal government was determined to fix this state of affairs and shift GHG projections downward once and for all.

They tried and made important progress. Targets would be met with measurable milestones and plenty of public accountability along the way to force a regular reckoning of climate progress. Backsliding would be caught in time and red-faced governments would be embarrassed into rectifying shortfalls. Carbon pricing got all the attention and opprobrium, but it was just one piece of the climate action puzzle. The CNZAA is the whole board that sets the frame for fitting in each of the emission reduction puzzle pieces. Why? Because it makes achieving GHG emissions reduction targets the law of the land. Which is why its future matters.

Since taking office, the Carney government has removed several climate puzzle pieces from the board . Eliminating the consumer carbon tax was the first and biggest. Adjusting the scale and scope of industrial carbon pricing, the clean electricity regulations, methane regulations, the oil and gas emissions cap, and EV mandates have all followed. It’s because this occurred rapidly and in short order alongside the contentious Canada-Alberta MOU. Never mind that MOU contains this statement: “Canada and Alberta remain committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”. The actions contained in the MOU are inconsistent with more carbon reductions and meeting Canada’s target of reducing emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, they contend. The graphic below from the Canadian Climate Institute illustrates this:

While the purpose of the CNZAA is straight forward - fixing GHG reduction targets - the means to do so are now deeply embedded in ongoing public accountability and governance requirements. It’s the means, not the ends, that government policy has consistently tripped over in the past, even though in every case (including the Trudeau government’s targets), the ends were always going to be hard and disruptive to the Canadian economy and federation to achieve. [Some ongoing honesty by successive governments wouldn’t have hurt, as achieving these targets has always been painfully difficult.]

The new goal then was to hardwire this altogether once and for all. More law meant more progress; better still, guaranteed progress. To fall short was no longer a policy failure, it would be a legal failure. In that respect, Canadian climate law became a gold standard internationally.

That means the CNZAA is no ambition outlier. It is the both the hallmark and guarantor of Canadian climate ambition. It is ‘the law that must be obeyed’. It came into effect at a time of renewed hope in the climate community. Much of the industrialized world was still committed to climate action, unlike now. Donald Trump had been banished from the White House and the Democrats under President Joe Biden were keen to resurrect the policy ambitions first launched by Barack Obama.

More influentially, internationally-set GHG reduction targets set first in Paris and then Copenhagen were being superseded by a dramatic additional focus on net-zero by 2050. The world’s economy was not just to become low-carbon but carbon-neutral.

What else could explain this bit of hubris in the Act’s preamble:

“Whereas the Government of Canada is committed to achieving and exceeding the target for 2030…”

Exceeding!?! Really? Was that actually ever in the cards? Someone apparently thought so.

This marrying of industrial and environmental objectives catalyzed a new framing of the climate problem. The old paradigm of sustainable development that had governed resource development and environmental protection at local and regional levels was replaced by a new, all-encompassing economic and social paradigm where transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy within three decades was to be achieved. Energy production and use was centralized as the main focus of net zero progress.

This was ambition overdrive. Even in the face of growing climate change impacts and warming trends.

To see it through, Canada would need not just more ambitious policies and actions; it would need a robust governance framework that matched that ambition. So, the Canadian Net-Zero Accountability Act was born.

The CNZAA is a big deal because it demands big things. It’s principal obligation is this:

“The Act establishes a legally binding process to set five-year national emissions-reduction targets as well as develop credible, science-based emissions-reduction plans to achieve each target.”

These 5-year targets are the “milestone” years to guide and measure progress. They form the core of the net zero accountability process.

For each target, the Act requires:

• an emissions reduction plan outlining the measures and strategies the Government of Canada will take to achieve the target;

• a progress report to update on the ongoing implementation of the emissions reduction plan; and,

• an assessment report to indicate whether a target has been met and to assess the effectiveness of the measures and strategies described in the associated emissions reduction plan.

For each plan, the Act spells out what must go into them, including:

• the greenhouse gas emissions target

• a summary of Canada’s most recent greenhouse gas emissions inventory

• a description of the key emissions reduction measures … to achieve the target;

• a description of how Canada’s international commitments on climate change are taken into account in the plan;

• a description of any relevant sectoral strategies;

• a description of emissions reduction strategies for federal government operations;

• a projected timetable for implementation;

• greenhouse gas emissions projections resulting from the measures and strategies; and

• a summary of key cooperative measures or agreements with provinces, territories and other governments in Canada.

This is no back-of-the envelope policy making and number crunching. How can it be when you are stretching for a veritable transformation in your economy in a defined time frame?

The Carney Shift

Which makes the Carney approach not just a temporal shift in climate priorities in the face of immediate economic rupture, but something more profound and deliberate. Where before, the traditional economic model in Canada was being subordinated to a new net-zero economic model, for now, the reverse is the case.

Does this mean Mark Carney has given up on climate progress? No. He is redefining it. Incrementally if not overtly; at least not yet. The Canada/Alberta MOU is exhibit number one. Other steps noted above are exhibits 2, 3, 4, and so on.

Stephen Guilbeault got to musing about what has changed. In an interview he gave to The Narwhal:

“I think where the prime minister and I differ in terms of our views of what needs to be done on climate change, is that I have come to the conclusion that he thinks that the markets are going to do it. And that governments don’t have an important role to play, if only to put in place measures to attract investors and tax credits.

But I don’t think he sees an important role for public policy, for regulations. I think we need markets to achieve what we want to achieve, but markets alone won’t get us there.

I think that’s perhaps something I had not understood before — and I suspect I’m not the only one — about his vision for change. I guess you could call it his theory of change, when it comes to fighting climate change.”

Mr. Carney’s climate sin to some is not that he is just softening climate ambition but reversing recent Liberal climate governance orthodoxy which put the state as the commanding force behind climate action and progress. Yet, arguably, a decade of state-sanctioned climate laws, regulations, policies, and actions did not sufficiently embed either the policy framework or a sufficiently robust consensus across the country to shaping a net zero future. Nor did it prove sufficiently effective in driving progress. Carney could change it because it either wasn’t popular (consumer carbon tax) or actually fully in place and working (clean electricity regulations).

Political Viability in Climate Policy

A momentary detour to the past… Below is an excerpt from a report called Achieving 2050 released in 2013 by the now-defunct National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which I led for five years during the Harper government.

It is NRTEE-nerdy stuff, to be sure. But it sets out what I still believe is a valid framework for evaluating climate policy choices. Check out the highlighted criterion:

We were telegraphing, as it turned out, the debate that ultimately sunk the consumer carbon tax. And a few other actions too. You need political purchase with voters to make sustained progress. For all the talk about sustainable development, there has yet to be any federal government that has been able to create and sustain a durable climate action consensus. [Quebec and British Columbia have had the most success in our country in this respect.] The climate cycle and the political cycle rarely align, although for a while, Justin Trudeau’s government rode that lightning and even prevailed in an election or two with it.

The CNZAA was meant to overcome all this. By embedding climate targets in law, any government that shirked its duties could be breaking the law and subject not just to public political pressure but lawsuits. That is the point to which the federal government has now arrived.

Here’s Guilbeault again on what this means:

“I think a lot of people don’t realize that our 2030 and 2035 targets are not voluntary targets in Canada, they’re legally binding, and there will be consequences if Canada doesn’t meet those targets.

I think they’re going to be faced with two difficult choices: either they keep the climate accountability act in place, and then what is likely going to happen is that the federal government is going to get sued by different stakeholders for not abiding by federal law. Or they have to repeal it, which would send a pretty powerful message to Canadians about how little this government is concerned with climate change.”

I think the ex-minister is wrong. The binary choice - repeal or get sued - is a false fear. But he is right on the political dialectic now emerging. An ‘all or nothing’ ambush on the government that seeks to force conformity over practicality. Never mind that a Conservative government would have repealed the whole thing in a nano-second. A more viable option is to amend the Act, but that might force an uncomfortable reckoning within the caucus, however sensible the step would be.

Fixing the CNZAA

Perfection is always the enemy of the good when it comes to government policy. Climate action is no different. Shaking off this impulse is key to making renewed progress.

So, what to do? Here’s a way out for the Carney government. And it’s all within the law and the Canadian Climate Change Accountability Act.

First, is a five-year review of the Act. Section 27.1 states:

“Five years after the day on which this Act comes into force, a comprehensive review of the provisions and operation of the Act is to be undertaken by the committee of the Senate, of the House of Commons or of both Houses of Parliament that is designated or established by the Senate or the House of Commons, or by both Houses of Parliament, as the case may be, for that purpose.”

The Act became law on June 29, 2021, five years ago this month. This obligation provides the government with a process to amend or adjust its approach to net-zero accountability and targets. This would not be without political risk given how environmental and climate activist groups would seek to challenge the government, it also provides the proper procedural cover to ultimately amend the CNZAA to make it more realistic and effective and forge a more sustainable consensus on climate action.

Much is being said that these changes mean Canada will never achieve its 2030 target and, by extension, net zero in 2050. Respectfully, achieving 2030 was possible but not entirely plausible even before the Carney government came to office. The effect on 2050 is a total mirage given the 25 year time horizon involved. It’s based on a modelling forecast, nothing more. Important as a guide for policy making but unreliable as the principal accountability measure to gauge success. There are simply too many unknowns the further out you go in time.

Still, the Canadian Climate Institute modelled the impact of the Canada/Alberta MOU on emissions. Read their report here. They say this:

“The end result is a major policy intervention that leaves Canada’s long-term emissions trajectory largely where it was before the MOU agreement was finalized. It results in negligible changes to a system already weakened.”

The difference in emissions is 7-9 megatonnes. Canada emitted 685 MT in 2024. Here’s a chart from ECCC:

The Chernobyl meme - “not great, not terrible” - seems not out of place here. Every emitted ton of carbon contributes to climate change. Every ton not emitted is therefore a good thing. But it’s the trend that counts in the long term. Flatlining emissions is good; reducing emissions is better. Canada had begun to ‘bend the curve’ (pandemic reference, here) on emissions. So, from a structural perspective, keeping that curve from sloping upward matters first from achieving the 2050 net-zero goal in this recalibration moment.

Second, is broaden the nature of the advice the government receives in setting targets. Section 8 of the CNZAA states this obligation of the ECCC minister:

8 When setting a greenhouse gas emissions target, the Minister must take into account:

(a) the best scientific information available;

b) Canada’s international commitments with respect to climate change;

(c) Indigenous knowledge; and

(d) submissions provided by the advisory body under section 13 and advice it provided in its report under subsection 22(1). (more on this later)

Let’s concentrate first on what’s missing. For some reason, economic considerations were not seen as germane to driving climate action when drafting the Act. This is a fundamental departure from how governments had been and should be approaching climate change. Stephen Harper didn’t like that the NRTEE was giving advice on climate change, so he dissolved it via an act of Parliament. But that advice was grounded in considerations of both environmental and economic concerns together. It had to be; it was in the Round Table’s mandate and guided how it did its work.

Enumerating “the best scientific information available” understandably privileges both the urgency and the speed of climate action. This inevitably leads to deeper changes sooner to get Canada onto an emissions reduction pathway consistent with the science and our Paris target, 5-year milestone targets, and ultimately, net zero. No mention of climate tradeoffs - as in cost-effectiveness or economic impact - are noted. Yet, this too is part of any real-world equation of how to take viable climate action.

Meanwhile, the Carney government has stated its view that climate action now needs to incorporate certain economic realities. Budget 2025 labeled it Canada's Climate Competitiveness Strategy. It recasts climate action as “an economic necessity” and positions this as key to achieving net-zero by 2050. What follows are measures for clean electricity grids and tax credits, clean economy investment tax credits, sustainable investment guidelines, not to mention continued industrial carbon pricing and carbon capture and storage. And engagement with provinces on future federal benchmarks, something not seen as much in the latter Trudeau government years.

On May 14th, the prime minister announced the first steps towards a "national electricity strategy”. It explicitly links getting to net zero through electrification. "The path to affordability is electrification; the path to competitiveness is electrification; the path to net zero is electrification,", he said at the announcement.

The goal remains, but the means are changing. Hence, Steven Guilbeault’s belated realization about Mark Carney quoted above.

If the government is not prepared to amend Section 8 of the CNZAA to insert “economic” or “competitiveness” considerations, which would be sensible, then it requires another way to get those views on the table. Here too, the Act provides a mechanism.

Third, fix the role of the Net-Zero Advisory Body. Section 20 (1) of the CNZAA creates an independent advisory body “…whose mandate is to provide the Minister with independent advice with respect to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050”. NZAB’s future role is in doubt following resignations and an institutional reticence of the government to engage with it. This reticence was cited by the former co-chair as a reason for his resignation in testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development on June 9th. Revealingly, he also said this: “The NZAB structure was never ideal.” It served only the ECCC minister but climate action is a whole-of-government issue. NZAB’s work was not aligned with government policy timelines for what it was doing. And it was chronically understaffed with members.

During that same testimony, the two ex-members expressed some dismay that NZAB had not been consulted on the Carney government’s shift in policy approach. There is, in fact, no formal obligation to do so in the CNZAA. They can legitimately have a view as to the effects of those policies AFTER the fact when they assess their potential impact on emissions pathways for achieving targets and milestones.

Fixing NZAB

Based on this, it is hard to accept that NZAB has enjoyed a legacy governance model that must be revitalized. Far better to fix its role now to become a more durably useful body to government. That requires these three things:

1. Make it a truly expert advisory and consultative body on policy not just an accountability or advocacy body on progress. Use the minister’s authority under S.20(2) to” determine and amend the terms of reference of the advisory body” to align its work more directly with government policy direction so it can provide useful, timely advice. Incorporate climate competitiveness as an essential focus. Move its centre of gravity from ‘government watchdog’ to ‘government enabler’. This is a fundamental governance matter. The difficult experience of Parliament forcing the NRTEE to undertake annual assessments of the government’s actions on the Kyoto Protocol via the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, should have sufficed to appreciate the importance of having a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities. It cannot flourish as an entity independent of government; its mandate is for is advice to be independent not for it to be an independent creature of Parliament. Otherwise, it would have its own statute not be embedded as a series of sections within a separate law.

2. Give it targeted policy references to study to advance net-zero understanding, achievement, and implementation. This is provided for under S.20(1)(c) which states that NZAB can provide independent advice on “any matter referred to it by the minister”. The core of NZAB’s accountability function is to give advice on emissions pathways as they lead to net-zero. Keep this but expand NZAB’s overall utility to the government by directing it to sound out new policy directions that create the conditions for achieving net-zero through specific research and engagement references. Net-zero is a systems transition, indeed transformation, task. Use NZAB to research and convene more broadly and deeply on how this can be achieved to better inform government policy-makers. Transitions are messy to say the least and the centrality of technologies’ adoption, for example, matter.

3. Broaden the NZAB with stronger, more diverse expertise that includes business, economic, and industrial backgrounds. NZAB can have up to 15 members. Section 21(1.1) enumerates “the need for the advisory body as a whole to have expertise in, or knowledge of” “climate change science”, “climate change policy”, “Indigenous knowledge”, “energy supply and demand”, “relevant technologies”, and “economic analysis and forecasting”. This is fine but insufficient. On its own, this list replicates expertise found elsewhere such as the Canadian Climate Institute. What is missing is any reference to economic transition expertise in general and economic benefit generation in particular. Rectify this. Don’t be duplicative to where other research and advocacy can come..

   ---

A Different Pathway

As much as some may desire, governments cannot command economic or social transitions. There is no ‘single authority’ in a democratic, open, free market society that exists (or should exist) to direct net-zero. We are not China. It has to be collaborative and connected across all actors. That’s because net-zero transition is not a singular economic transition but a series of companion transitions across multiple sectors and systems, such as electricity grids, transportation, buildings, and so on. Understanding this means accepting that there is more to this than ‘pollution control’ through carbon pricing, for example, or hyper-focusing on emission reduction pathway progress. Building the conditions for net-zero - economic and political - are more important to achieving net-zero over the longer-term than any one year of carbon emissions.

Climate policy has long suffered from a form of ‘target tyranny’, being graded on whether Canada will ever achieve its GHG emissions reduction targets. We never have. Yet, every time governments are called to account for making insufficient progress today for something that is meant to materialize tomorrow. Policy choices then become hostage to GHG modelling and forecasting outcomes. They are derived from the model with sometimes excessive expectations of what, when, and how policies can be actually implemented.

An existential focus on targets does everyone a disservice. It generates a ‘why bother’ attitude amongst Canadians if we are repeatedly told targets are not on track and will never be achieved. They do nothing but create an atmosphere of exhortative flagellation that is fundamentally dishonest about just how hard achieving net-zero by 2050 is and will continue to be.

NZAB can play an important role in helping government achieve its net-zero by 2050 goal. But not as it is now constituted. And not as it had been previously envisaged. Now is the right time to reframe it so it provides the right balance of providing ongoing accountability and useful, aligned policy advice that helps Canada build the durable conditions and foundation for the essential goal of achieving net-zero by 2050.

Postscript: A Postcard from Manitoba

Postscript: I wrote Manitoba's Climate and Green Plan. It was the first province in Canada to implement climate accountability legislation. The Canadian Climate Institute called it a “Big Step Forward”:

Manitoba’s Climate and Green Plan Implementation Act is a significant step forward for climate policy in Canada. The legislation of an accountability framework— complete with formalized governance processes, cumulative emissions reduction targets, and expert advice—is something that could benefit governments across Canada as they seek to reduce emissions and tackle climate change.1

Manitoba’s plan was born at the time of the federal government’s Pan-Canadian Framework on Climate Change and the contentious carbon pricing backstop. That meant some formal elements were missing at that stage such as setting long-term emissions reductions. Net-zero was only just emerging as a focus of climate policy and could easily have been incorporated into the existing framework. But there was a deliberate focus on emissions reductions ‘now’ rather than ‘later’. The plan was, in part, a response to the negative experience of governments fixing long-term targets with no short-term pathways to meet them. Manitoba’s plan sought to bright the timetable forward.

Then there was our version of an NZAB-type body. From the Plan:

We created an “expert advisory council” through The Climate and Green Plan Act to institutionalize climate accountability and foment climate progress:

8(1) The council is to (a) provide advice and recommendations to the minister on programs, policies and measures to be included in the climate and green plan; (b) review progress on the implementation of the climate and green plan, and provide advice on any required changes to the plan; and (c) provide advice and recommendations to the minister respecting greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals to be established under section 3.

Alberta beware.

Ten years ago this month, the United Kingdom held its Brexit referendum. It voted by the narrowest of margins — 51.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent — to leave the European Union. The decade since has seen an economically stagnant Britain, struggling to regain lost financial ground. It has fallen behind its competitors in growth, trade and productivity.

The siren call of “freedom” proved sufficient for the Leave campaign to prevail. It has not proved sufficient to make Britain and its citizens richer and better off. Four different studies show the numbers and impacts. It’s not pretty.

The Office for Budget Responsibility, an independent government agency in the U.K., akin to Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office, has conducted regular, updated analysis of Brexit’s impact on the British economy.

“Both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the U.K. had remained in the EU,” it found.. Brexit advocates said this would be made up by new trade deals with non-EU countries. Not so fast, says the OBR, whose analysis said any such deals “will not have a material impact” on replacing lost trade with Europe.

These findings were echoed by Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research. Its study found that “Brexit had reduced U.K. GDP by six per cent to eight per cent, with the impact accumulating gradually over time. We estimate that investment was reduced by between 12 per cent and 18 per cent, employment by three per cent to four per cent and productivity by three per cent to four per cent.” Stanford’s study found that “U.K. investment, employment and labor productivity are all estimated to have grown by less than in other comparable countries since 2016.”

Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Economic Researchin the U.S. found “longer-term impact of six to eight per cent” GDP loss, exceeding initial Brexit forecasts.

There was no economic cliff over which jobs and investment tumbled post-Brexit, no single shock. Rather, it was cumulative with “fewer firm trading, weaker investment, lower competitive pressure, less integration into European supply chains and a reduced flow of knowledge and technology across borders,” according to an economic analysis from a British think tank, UK In A Changing Europe.

Britain negotiated a mostly tariff-free post-Brexit relationship with the EU. It traded this, however, for new non-tariff barriers such as customs checks and fees and restrictions on free movement of workers. Who paid the most for this? Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who must now contend with more rules, more paperwork and more delays in what had been free and easy before. If Alberta separates from Canada, the cost of doing business with Canada would rise for Alberta SMEs.

Canada already suffers from weak productivity and investment performance. A form of Wexit would compound this for both Alberta and Canada, making things worse, not better. Less investment means less productivity, which means less wealth for Albertans.

Alberta separatists assume they would be starting from a position of strength as Canada’s richest province. They take for granted that independence would be a springboard up, not a diving platform down. Brexit reality proves this belief as false. There are big economic trade-offs with departing from one fully integrated relationship to a novel, uncertain one that keeps some things intact but not others.

Why is instructive. As Albertans consider voting to begin the process of separating from Canada, they should look to the Brexit experience. It took the United Kingdom almost five years after the referendum to negotiate and implement a Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union — eight years to fully resolve it.

Alberta and Canada would require their own transitional period to negotiate the terms of a new relationship. For how long, no one knows. Brexit tells us it would be a protracted process creating uncertainty that hurts.

Economic uncertainty is the enemy of economic growth. Not knowing the eventual terms of the future Canada/Alberta relationship would chill new investment, maybe even freeze it. Companies currently trading into Alberta would wonder if their current relationships could continue.

Hedging their bets, they would soon contemplate diversification, just as Canada is doing, given the underlying uncertainty with its United States trading relationship. New investment dollars headed for Alberta would be reduced or even halted altogether.

Alberta separatists are waving their own counterfactual argument around.

They contend lost economic opportunity by remaining in Canada, mainly for exporting more oil and gas. Independence would free the province from this constraint. And it would mean keeping Alberta tax contributions to Canada within the province.

None of this considers the price Alberta would have to pay for separating, including taking on its share of the Canada Pension Plan, national debt, national defence, let alone setting up its own new national governing infrastructure. Provincial sales tax, anyone?

Prime Minister Carney’s first response to Alberta’s referendum gambit was to compare it to Brexit’s “bluff.” As governor of the Bank of England, he was charged with helping navigate Britain through the economic consequences. Those consequences have become real and, for now, enduring.

Be careful what you wish for, Alberta.

My regular Saturday Winnipeg Free Press column.

Can Prime Minister Mark Carney be blamed for not speaking the truth about Israel and antisemitism in this post-truth era we live in of emotions over facts? Maybe he was just channelling his inner Jack Nicholson with his famous line to Tom Cruise in the movie A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth!”

But it begs a bigger question. How can a society eradicate the dark attitudes in its midst if it doesn’t shine its righteous light on the exact voices and causes?

The prime minister’s speech last week at Toronto’s Holy Blossom synagogue on combatting antisemitism was titled “The Canadian Covenant.” Having spoiled us with his penetrating Davos speech in January, listeners expected more. Not that he didn’t bring some receipts.

It was erudite in the extreme, demonstrating an intellectual and theological understanding of Jewishness, all from a practising Catholic. He quoted ancient Hebrew prophets and a Canadian philosopher. Clearly, he wrote this speech himself. Which makes the “meh” feeling even more, well, “meh.”

The reason is not what he said, which was good, but what he didn’t say. He did not shine the laser beam of public disgust and opprobrium on radical, anti-Zionist actors and attitudes that have given rise to record levels of antisemitic incidents and attacks.

B’nai Brith Canada’s annual audit of antisemitism documented 6,800 incidents last year, equivalent to an average of 18 per day. This is the highest volume it has ever recorded. Canada now holds the disturbing record for the greatest number of such incidents, more than Germany, Britain, Australia and France. It is urgent and necessary to combat this.

Always present, antisemitism has skyrocketed since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. Attacks that killed almost 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, took some 250 persons hostage and which were followed by Israel’s destructive war on Hamas in Gaza that has claimed the lives of over 70,000 Palestinians.

The Israeli government’s ferocious assaults in Gaza fuelled anger and concern around the world, including in Canada. The scale of death, destruction and suffering continues to shock, ceasefire notwithstanding. Over time, it obscured and diminished the original crime of Oct. 7, replacing it with Israel’s decades-long occupation of Gaza and the stateless state of subjugation or submission in which Palestinians live. “Globalize the intifada” replaced “Remember October 7.”

Protesting Israeli government policy, a legitimate right in Canada, has degenerated into protests against Israel’s existence. The right of all states, including Israel, to defend themselves is replaced with challenging the right of Israel to even be a state. It is not, then, a leap in this logic for Jews anywhere — including Canada — to be considered complicit in Israeli government policy, whether they agree or disagree or even had anything to do with it in the first place. Which legitimizes hatred and violence against them. It has put a large Jewish star on them, as an unspeakable symbol of hatred and violence.

The prime minister said strongly and rightly “that Canada’s civic compact is failing Jewish Canadians.” Canada’s pluralism is about “recognition”; meaning “to be received as who you are.” In this sense, he called out Canadian society as a whole for letting Jewish Canadians down and making them unsafe.

State “failures” inevitably lead to state “solutions.” So, the PM created a new committee — a ministerial advisory council on rights, equality and inclusion — to figure out how to combat racism and hate “in all their forms.” But racism is not a governance problem. It is a moral problem, and you cannot legislate morality.

Civic norms emanate from civic behaviour. We model what we learn and observe. From our parents, our friends, our neighbours and our fellow citizens. What they decree as good or bad, moral or evil, shapes us.

Civic leaders have a particular role in decreeing and enforcing those norms. But in today’s post-truth world, too many have shied away from doing their civic duty. Anodyne “thoughts and prayers” — rinsed and repeated — are subbed in when shame and blame are what’s called for. Fear of giving offence trumps saying the hard truths essential to fixing the problem.

It is not a crime to be Jewish in Canada. Say so.

It is a crime to call for or wreak violence upon Jewish Canadians for being Jewish. Call out those who do so and the nationalist and religious extremism behind it.

It is a moral stain upon this country to call for the erasure of another country. Zionism is the right of Jews to exist in their own country.

Disdain the policies and actions of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu all you want. It is not antisemitic to do so and should not be equated as such.

But in Canada you need to know there are civic lines that we do not cross. If this new council does anything, state those lines clearly and unambiguously. Re-establish the Canadian covenant the prime minister says has been tattered in precise terms. Tattered because we have allowed foreign conflicts to be transposed onto Canadian soil and each other.

If not, this speech will, in Abraham Lincoln’s famous words about one of his own, “not scour.”

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s separation referendum is federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s opportunity. If he takes it.

Alberta is ground zero for the conservative movement in Canada. It has long asserted a more populist, free market, small government hold on the Conservative Party of Canada, past and present. It has outsized political influence on the direction of the party, given the reliable 30-plus CPC seats it delivers each election.

That has grown more intense under Poilievre’s leadership. He has championed Alberta’s economic and energy interests for years now. “Alberta deserves a fair deal in this country, which means that we unblock the resources, we allow the oil and gas sector to grow, we get the federal government off their backs and out of the way,” Poilievre said recently.

Now, as the newly minted MP for Battle River-Crowfoot, deep in the old Reform and current United Conservative Party landscape, he can keep doing it. But with a visible and vocal twist — Alberta’s interests are best served by remaining in Canada.

This is both true and necessary. True in that it is hard to concoct any kind of guaranteed prosperity for an independent, landlocked Alberta, subjected to massive economic and financial uncertainties. The land of pipelines is chasing separatist pipe dreams.

Necessary in that any cavilling by Poilievre on this existential question of national unity is an automatic disqualifier for him to ever become prime minister. It’s that simple.

Early signals suggest he gets this. “I will be campaigning across the province encouraging Albertans to stay as part of the Canadian family,” he said the other week.

Good. He could say no less, but he now needs to say more.

He needs to say more for two reasons: the country’s future and his own. They are inextricably tied.

A separating Alberta would gut Canada. Never mind that Alberta would be an enfeebled orphan on the global stage. It would sunder the very nature of Canada’s Confederation. No federalist in Canada can abide this. But it would also gut the Conservative Party of Canada. Losing its Alberta base would mean it would never form government.

This is a notion some CPC caucus members have yet to comprehend.

The response to Smith’s separation referendum gambit by Poilievre’s immediate predecessor in his riding, Damien Kurek, is evidence. In a May 25 post on X, he challenged any criticism of the referendum being held, blaming it on the Liberal government. Another MP, Michelle Rempel Garner, also said as much in a media scrum, excusing Smith by putting the whole thing on Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal government.

This is party politics, not nation-building.

Albertans’ grievances have built up over time. No country arrives at such a juncture overnight.

But if the message from Poilievre’s Alberta caucus members is that this is going to be all about blame and shame, they will do two things to themselves. First, they will boost the separation vote in the Oct. 19 referendum, and they will disqualify their party and leader as having the country’s interests at heart.

Here’s the rub. You can blame the Liberals for policy choices that have alienated Albertans, especially energy and environmental ones.

But the serial failure of the Conservative Party to convince Canadians they are a serious government in waiting and should be elected is part of that. Excusing their endemic inability to reach beyond that Alberta base and vie for sufficient other votes to win is no doubt contributing to Conservative frustration.

But “blame Canada” is cheap recompense. They need to look in the mirror and start winning if they want to change the policies that are causing those grievances. That’s how democracy works.

Right now, the separation referendum means they have a choice to make. Are they on Conservative Team Canada or Conservative Team Alberta? With many provincial and federal conservatives sympathetic to and even supportive of separation, this may make the choice difficult. In fact, it is dead easy.

That’s where Poilievre comes in. His opportunity is to speak for Canada. A full-throated, unconditional roar of love and respect for his country and fellow Canadians. He is uniquely positioned to do so, as a respected voice of Alberta in Ottawa.

If he does so, he will not just undo the leadership damage he did to himself by failing to call out U.S. President Donald Trump last election until it was too late. He will reintroduce himself to future Conservative voters as a national leader able to speak to and for Canada as a whole. They will see him as a legitimate prospective prime minister, something sorely lacking for him at present.

That is a path to political redemption Poilievre should embrace. Showing Canadians he is fighting unconditionally for Canada in his own backyard will get noticed. The man who once campaigned on “Canada is broken” now needs to campaign on “Canada is better.”

That may be a hard swallow for the Conservative leader. But the alternative is even worse.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

Gotta hand it to Nigel Farage and the Reform UK punters. They’re not the shy, retiring crowd. No obfuscation of goals. From “Stop the Boats'“ to “Leave the EU'“, they’ve been forthright about what they want. No surprise then they are equally forthright about how they’re going to go about it.

Here’s their website. It’s all about creating an Ozempic civil service - leaner and slimmer:

Lots of right-leaning, conservative parties promise much of the same. Not just in the UK. Here’s the Conservative Party of Canada’s platform section from last year’s election:

Along comes Reform MP, Danny Kruger, who has usefully published a detailed policy proposal on how a brand, spanking new Reform government will, well, give a hiding to the centre of government. Whitehall will have a very red bottom after this.

Kruger has an interesting background. Elected as a Tory MP, he defected to Reform last September. He’s worked for two Conservative leaders - David Cameron and Boris Johnson - including as the latter’s political secretary, a very senior advisory role. So, worth taking his writings seriously. He has a view on the centre of government. It’s not a charitable one.

His missive is called Fixing the Centre: Proposals for the Heart of Government. Here’s the short-form version of what Reform is proposing:

At its heart is a simplistic, bureaucratically reductionist vision for the civil service and a politically expansionist one for the prime minister. Summed-up by these three sentences:

“The Civil Service simply provides staff for politicians to inform and then implement their decisions.”

“Real power is held not by the elected government but by the permanent Civil Service, especially the Cabinet Secretary and the sprawling, incoherent bureaucracy of the Cabinet Office.”

“It is time to restore the power and authority of the Prime Minister.”

How will Reform go about this. First step is to abolish the Cabinet Office:

“The Cabinet Office will be abolished and be replaced by two new institutions: an Office of the Prime Minister and a Department of the Civil Service.”

Having abolished the Cabinet Office, the second step is to abolish the position of Cabinet Secretary itself. It would be split into three distinct jobs:

1. Chief of Staff to the PM (a political position reporting to the PM) - serves as chief political, policy advisor, and gatekeeper.

2. Chief Secretary to the PM (a political position reporting to the Chief of Staff); oversees domestic policy secretariat and manages all information flow and decisions in and out of Cabinet

3. Head of the Civil Service (a non-political position filled by the CEO of the Department of the Civil Service); “likely to be a business leader with experience of transforming large organisations”.

Here’s how a Reform PM’s office is envisaged:

Ok. What about policy development and decision-making? Easy. Empower ministers and departments at the expense of the centre and the Cabinet Office:

“Departments of State will be responsible for developing policy and delivering policy in their respective areas.”

What about all those pesky ‘deep state’ bureaucrats embedded in departments? Won’t they just gum up the works? Nope. Ministers will be able to choose their own officials with full hiring and firing responsibilities:

“Crucially, under a Reform government the Secretary of State will have the power to appoint or dismiss the Permanent Secretary of his or her Department. The Permanent Secretary will direct the staff of the Department but the principle should be clearly established that Ministers can request the appointment or dismissal of particular officials.”

It will start at the top: “it is likely”, Reform says, “that a significant number of Permanent Secretaries will be appointed from outside the Civil Service.”

To ensure stronger political control and direction, ministers will get more staff:

“To support the work of Ministers and the Chief of Staff, there will be a significant increase in the number of Special Advisers.”

The intention is clear. Reduce the influence of an independent civil service and increase the influence of partisan, political staff. Indeed, by granting hiring and firing authority to ministers and their politically-appointed deputy ministers (or permanent secretaries), officials will be accountable for keeping their jobs based on to what extent their conduct and performance pleases the minister.

This is further reinforced by a move away from centralized or system-wide civil service recruitment and talent management. This will now reside with individual departments.

“Departments should manage their own recruitment schemes, competing for talent and developing strong career pathways for specialists in their field.”

Reform UK puts its finger (rightly) on another issue: “the split between ‘policy’, ‘analyst’ and ‘operational’ roles.” They want to privilege operational and delivery chops over policy and analytical skills. They propose to “significantly cut the policy profession” in government. The aim is to induce a less risk-averse civil service culture in government.

This has echoes of Prof. Donald Savoie’s “poets and plumbers” analogy contained in his book Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service. Poets are the policy idea folks; plumbers the implementation folks. Not just a British problem.

Reform would go a step further. They plan to abolish the recently-announced National School of Government. They call it “…an expensive echo chamber where the Civil Service trains and evaluates itself and which is lacking the external disruption and input that is urgently needed.”

This de-centralization impulse would occur in procurement too. No longer would this be the responsibility of the Department of the Civil Service; it would reside with individual departments:

“As with HR, procurement properly belongs with Departments. We need more domain-expertise and commercial savvy in procurement teams - to avoid being ‘end-run’ in contract negotiations by highly expert suppliers - and we need more flexibility and innovation to ensure that the government buys goods and services that deliver real value as fast as it is needed.”

Just in case, though, Reform UK would create “procurement hit squads” to roam around the departmental landscape conducting reviews and audits of procurement decisions.

What about central coordination and political cohesion? All these changes empowering ministers and departments would create friction and confusion between and amongst ministers and their departments given shared responsibilities in areas. Reform UK admits as much:

A system of more powerful - autonomous and responsible - Departments creates a centrifugal risk, i.e. Ministers pursuing independent lines without proper coordination.

The solution is obvious. Having demoted the centre in daily ministerial life, they will bring “Ministers themselves into the centre.” A shared co-working space will be created in the form of a “Combined Ministerial Office”; ironically at 70 Whitehall, which is where the Cabinet Office is located. Reform hastens to add this will be a political office, employing no civil servants.

For the record, Canada has a similar form of Ministerial Regional Offices across the country, explained like this:

“The Ministers' Regional Office program has been operational… since 1986, with the mandate of providing secure accommodations, administrative and logistical support for on and off-site meetings and events for the Prime Minister, as well as Cabinet ministers and their staff, when conducting government business outside the National Capital Region.”

This is not Britain governed as it has been in the past. How’s that for an understatement?

Classically, though, it is what populist, anti-establishment, institutionally-skeptical politicians would do should they ever find themselves in high office. Having organized against ‘the state’ all these years, they are not likely to acquiesce to it once there. Indeed, they see their fight as one not just FOR the ‘common people’ but against the ‘institutions of state’ that have placed their country and society in such deep doo-doo, so to speak.

This goes beyond institutions to encompass civil servants themselves. Fewer and less independently powerful civil servants are necessary. They need to bend themselves to the will of the people - via elected politicians - rather than the other way around

Which is why ‘the centre of government’ is always the prime villain. Reform UK’s “Proposals for the Heart of Government” seek to arrest its beating heart. “All power to the departments!” may have proletarian Leninist echoes, but it would mean a complete overhaul of Whitehall decision-making. Here’s how:

First, it would emasculate the central coordinating and yes, decision-making levers now bound up with the prime minister and arrogate them to ministers. Far from fostering a strong Prime Minister Nigel Farage, it would place him at the fulcrum of division and dissension over government policy choices being made by his ministers. He might preside over Cabinet, but his ability to impose his will is limited to one Chief of Staff.

Second, it would foster chaos and confusion over direction and decisions of the government. Britain’s cabinet government is a leaky one at the best of times. Ministers on the public hook for their policies and programmes would have every incentive to ‘brief against’ their colleagues - and even the PM - to lobby for their choices and get their side of the story out. Voters don’t like seeing the sausage made and will figure out soon enough that the ‘smack of firm government’ Reform UK promises may not just be offer.

Third, it would create a disturbing mistrust between independent civil servants and their political masters. That can only hamper a unified and collegial working environment. Officials would know that ‘sucking up’ is the best way to keep their jobs because hiring and firing is now in the hands of ministers directly and their politically-appointed permanent secretaries. Speaking truth to power would vanish. The independence of the professional public servant would erode.

Fourth, it ignores the reality of modern governing and the multiple cross-cutting public policy issues that require internal coordination and integrated approaches to resolve. Whether its a Cabinet Office or Privy Council Office or Executive Council Office in provinces, there is always a need for an authority to convene and cajole on behalf of the prime minister or minister. No more so during crises or when necessary trade-offs in public money or policy choices are on the menu. Someone has to arbitrate, resolve, and advise the prime minister or premier accordingly. In other words, he needs someone just on HIS team.

Fifth, this is more costly, inefficient, and even Darwinistic government. Devolving procurement and HR decisions to departments at the expense of the government as a whole, might make for speedier decision-making. But will it make for more cost-effective decision-making? Centralized procurement on at least some items and services makes sense for everyone. They are common across the system and can generate cost-savings by avoiding multiple contracting efforts. Disappearing these into the ether of ‘department land’ to compete with each other means reducing the collective purchasing power in favour of customized procurement. It empowers suppliers at the expense of taxpayers.

Makes you wonder how long before they would change it all back?

This column is irrationally angry. Furious, even. Born of deep frustration and irritation with my government. Not any one government but successive governments. Not because of something they did, but something they didn’t do.

They failed to keep Canada’s iconic Snowbirds flying. They knew they had to and still didn’t. They knew the aircraft had to be replaced and waited and waited until it was too late. They kicked the decision can so far down the road, it may be a decade after this season before Canada’s elite aerobatics team punches the sky to thrill Canadians.

Last week’s decision to ground the Snowbirds cannot be challenged when it comes to crew safety.

The 11 CT-114 Tutor aircraft of 431 Squadron are 60 years old. Tune-ups go with aging.

Still, they should have been replaced years ago when no interruption would have occurred. Instead, they were “modernized” kept aloft with engineering upgrades and maintenance Band-Aids.

Why? Because it was cheaper than buying new.

That made sense — for a while. Maximize the value of public assets. Don’t spend money needlessly. But that comes with another obligation. Plan for what comes next. When cheap and cheerful winds up describing your country’s approach to its Armed Forces, then you get what you pay for.

Canada sought and got years of inspiring Snowbirds performances on the cheap. The skill and professionalism of the pilots was matched only by the skill and professionalism of the ground crew that serviced them.

Not that this was costless. Necessary upgrades to the Tutor jets for avionics, navigation systems, and ejection seats were pegged at $30 million in 2021. This was supposed to keep them airworthy until 2030.

Instead, after spending the money, they are being retired four years early.

Maintaining the Snowbirds is not the same as replacing them. The government acted as though it was. They missed their own memo. Numerous, in fact. Going all the way back to the early 2000s.

A specific proposal to buy new aircraft was first made in 2012 under the Harper government. It balked at the $755-million price tag. Seven years later, the Trudeau government rejected an interim aircraft replacement proposal that could have bridged the period between when the inevitable grounding of the Tutors arrived, and a newly outfitted Snowbirds squadron could take wing.

Five years after that, in 2024, then minister of national defence Bill Blair said the RCAF would start looking for a replacement aircraft. Now, two years on, we get current Defence Minister David McGuinty (there have been eight in the last 20 years or a new one every two and a half years), announcing the Snowbirds will have their wings clipped until the new CT-157 Siskin II turboprop aircraft can be procured.

To put it bluntly, everyone at the defence department knew this day would come. They just hoped it wouldn’t come on their watch. With actual pressing military capacity needs — fighter jets, frigates, and weaponry that sharpened the fighting teeth of the CAF — finding budgetary room for ceremonial capacity took second or even third place.

Cannibalizing parts to keep the Snowbirds airworthy was a better option than cannibalizing money slated for other equipment.

That’s the way our armed forces have been treated for more than two decades. There was always another priority, civilian not military, that had its hand out first. It’s not like government spending was at risk. Rising deficits have been the norm since 2008 in Canada. Increased military spending just didn’t matter.

Until now. This year’s federal budget announced $81.8 billion over the next five years in increased military spending to meet the five per cent NATO defence investment pledge by 2035. So, there’s money to replace the Snowbirds. But, weirdly, no mention of doing so in the budget.

Such a high-profile decision would have earned a prominent place in any finance minister’s speech. That it didn’t suggests it was hoping not to. At best, it had a plan to have a plan. Even now, there is no actual contract in place, cost, or timeline attached to the new aircraft.

Running out of runway, the government finally made the right call. But years of prevarication and an inability to properly plan and procure military equipment is as distinctive to Canada as the Snowbirds themselves. Which means Canadians can be properly skeptical as to whether and when this commitment will ever materialize.

“Keep ’em Flying” was the exhortative motto of the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War. It encapsulated the fighting spirit and industrial might of the U.S. as the world’s “arsenal of democracy.” It helped win that war and defeat Canada’s enemies.

Keep ’Em Flying was also the title of a period Abbott and Costello comedy movie about joining the air force.

It would be nice if equipping Canada’s Armed Forces going forward feels a lot less slapdash and slapstick than it has up till now.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press, Saturday May 23, 2026.