Incompetence, Crises, and Responsibility
“You don’t care which government does what...” —Seamus O’Regan
The government Justin Trudeau heads, even following the support of the New Democrats, has been in a cycle of crises to fix things they break or make worse. Most of these crises are born out of neglect and incompetence, compounded by consistent attempts to cover up the blunders.
Who does what, when, and how matters significantly for accountable, responsible government.
It is undeniable that the Trudeau government is constantly making promises and announcements at an impressive pace. If the effectiveness of governing was solely judged based on these announcements, Justin Trudeau and his cabinet would undoubtedly be ranked as the most successful government in Canadian history.
The government is quite good at making announcements and promises. You can often see this in their press releases, conferences, and even social media platforms such as Twitter. However, they seem to struggle with fulfilling their promises and turning them into a reality. Trudeau often announces initiatives without following through on them, leading to unfulfilled promises. Deadlines are often missed, and when they do deliver, it's often not on time. A prime example is the current shortage of judges, a topic I'll return to in the upcoming posts.
Housing is one of the best examples. Despite promising in 2014-2015 to deal with housing and homelessness, the Liberal Party has failed to deliver. Their failure has turned the fast-growing need into a housing crisis, with prices soaring and many Canadians unable to afford a home. The government's attempts to appear effective and their refusal to recognise this failure shows a broader pattern of avoiding accountability.
In 2014 Justin Trudeau started to talk about bringing solutions to housing problems in Canada, blaming the then government in office for not delivering sufficient solutions to the problem. In 2015, Trudeau's Liberal Party put housing at the forefront of their election platform and promised to invest in a comprehensive National Housing Strategy. The Liberal Party pledged to prioritize affordable housing and seniors facilities, build more new housing units, and refurbish existing ones. Despite these promises, Canada's housing crisis has worsened, with home prices skyrocketing and rental rates increasing. Their governing coalition partners readily admit it: The government's promise to remove 500,000 families from housing needs by 2020 has not been fulfilled. Like many 2015 promises, housing promises fell behind unceremoniously.
At least the promise to deliver a new electoral system had to be confronted, and Trudeau admitted that he was not going to fulfil it. But his housing promises were ignored and nearly forgotten. Nine years later, the housing situation in the country is, as Trudeau now readily admits, a crisis. By 2021, the National Housing Strategy, launched in 2017, had only achieved 13% of its goal to create 150,000 new housing units. The Parliamentary Budget Officer reported in 2019 that the National Housing Strategy provided less funding than the average spent on housing between 2000-2015. The promised removal of GST on new capital investments in affordable rental housing, took 8 years to implement. Having made affordable housing a priority, Canada's house price-to-income ratio increased from 3.9 in 2015 to 5.9 in 2020.
The Official Opposition party picked up the issue and has inflicted serious damage to the government’s popularity. But the government’s troubles are primarily self-inflicted. They have contributed to the crisis through monetary policy, lack of planning, inability to follow through, and the large surges of immigration, refugees and foreign students that they have allowed into the country without regard for the pressures on housing that their numbers bring.
Put simply, there aren’t enough dwellings and not enough dwellings being built to accommodate the influx of legal and illegal newcomers. For years, you might recall, Ottawa did nothing to plug the torrential influx of illegal immigrants coming in through Roxham Road. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's 2020 report showed that the number of Canadians in housing need increased by 9% between 2017 and 2018 and still the government saw no urgency to pick up the pace on housing. Until very recently, their response was to accuse of racism anyone who pointed out the gap and the need to correct it by plugging the torrent coming in. The name-calling strategy was echoed by CBC and the regime media in general.
It is only in the last couple of months that the Liberals have switched gears, paying attention to housing. Just last Fall, some of you might recall, Justin washed his hands off the “crisis” when he pointed out that housing is not a primary federal responsibility. This is true, of course, but he never bothered pointing that out until attention shifted to housing troubles and his unfulfilled promises of a "national strategy" on housing. Suddenly mentioning that the provinces are largely responsible for housing was Justin doing what Justin does best, running away from assuming responsibility and blaming anyone else.
Lack of accountability has been the more important byproduct of Trudeau's inclination to flee responsibility. A stable pattern links the lack of fulfilment with a lack of accountability.
Their lack of timely delivery and lack of action puts the government in crisis mode. And because the lack of effective action spreads, it leaves the government hopping from crisis to crisis. Some are minor crises and some are larger crises that spill onto the public view. Mostly, they mismanage each crisis.
One of the most significant examples of crisis mismanagement by Trudeau's administration is the handling of the housing need but it is by no means the only one. Another example is the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite having access to early warnings about the virus, Trudeau's government was slow to respond, leading to a lack of preparedness that had devastating consequences. The government's decision to prioritise economic concerns over public health, as well as its failure to secure sufficient “vaccine” supplies promptly (back when the government blindly believed the jab would be a viable solution), have been widely criticised.
Then there is the issue of ethics. Trudeau's government has been embroiled in a steady series of scandals, including the SNC-Lavalin affair, the WE Charity scandal, and foreign interference in election processes, to name but three. These incidents have raised serious questions about the government's commitment to transparency and accountability, and have contributed to a wider sense of crisis. Despite these scandals, the government has often sought to downplay or dismiss the issues, further eroding public trust.
Operating in crisis mode has consequences. Once in crisis mode, the Trudeau government pushes and rams things through, hoping to appear to be doing something and deliberately obscuring their lack of action to conceal their incompetence.
Trudeau's government has employed strategies to present themselves as the solution to problems they have created. One such strategy is the use of strategic communication and public relations campaigns. This involves carefully crafting messages and narratives that highlight their efforts and achievements while downplaying or ignoring their shortcomings and failures. For instance, they emphasise the small number of affordable housing units built under their “strategy” while neglecting to mention that they have fallen short of their targets.
Another strategy is the use of deflection and blame shifting. When confronted with criticism or failure, Trudeau often points the finger at other parties or external circumstances. This is evident in the way they have handled the housing crisis, blaming market forces and the previous government for the lack of affordable housing, while overlooking their unfulfilled promises.
Trudeau also tends to resort to policy announcements and legislative measures as a way to portray themselves as proactive and solution-oriented. They frequently announce new initiatives or reforms aimed at appearing to address the very issues they are criticised for. However, these announcements often lack concrete details or timelines, leading to doubts about their feasibility and commitment.
Lastly, Trudeau and his cabinet use gaslighting techniques, a form of psychological manipulation where they present their version of events as the absolute truth, causing others to doubt their own perceptions. This strategy allows them to portray themselves as competent and in control, even when their actions suggest otherwise (more below).
The net result of the crises is a government unwilling to follow the slow and measured processes one typically expects of serious governments, and in so doing they are also willing to trample on laws, policies and rules, as well as on processes that ensure accountability. They are willing to trample on provincial jurisdictions for the same purpose.
The real problem isn't just their lack of competence. Repeatedly, they fall short of their promises, which pushes them into a state of crisis. But rather than solving these problems effectively and the recurrent problem of failing to deliver, they're all too eager to simply look as if they're doing something. This rush for solutions and for affecting effectiveness often neglects important rules and procedures, undermining accountability. ArriveCan is another example of how rushing, if one interprets the procurement failures generously, leads to egregious accountability failures.
The Trudeau Liberals promised consultation and cooperation, but cooperation and consultation require a will to cooperate, forward-thinking, deliberate planning and careful execution. Despite promises of creating a Federal-Provincial-Territorial Partnership in Housing, no such partnership has been established. The Trudeau government has been repeatedly accused of overstepping constitutional boundaries, such as when it imposed federal carbon pricing on provinces. Mostly, consultation and cooperation require time and patient work, which crisis mode does not allow.
The last phase is gaslighting. The Trudeau government often gaslights the public by claiming to have always been on top of issues, despite evidence to the contrary. The constant pretence is that they never said what they said, never promised what they promised, never committed to doing or not doing what they committed to doing or not doing. In the case of housing, for example, the prime minister speaks about their "national strategy" as though it is something they have been continuously working on since 2015. The intent in that false claim is to hide the fact that they dropped the ball and there was no meaningful follow through to solve the issues effectively. They want to hide the fact that they made matters worse.
Outside of the Official Opposition, not many have asked questions about the lack of results, assuming as the government claims, they have been working hard on it all these years. Why, if they have been implementing their housing "strategy" since 2016 as Trudeau claims, is the country now in a housing crisis?
Seamus O'Regan's phrase “You don’t care which government does what” is a gaslighting phrase. It is designed to shift blame to municipal and provincial jurisdictions for the failure of the federal "national strategy" in delivering promised solutions nearly a decade after it started. It suggests that the failure is caused by the dereliction of the other players involved. But do remember that the Trudeau Liberals promised to bring everyone together and cooperate like no other government had done before. Sunny ways, right!?
Of course, the whole also suggests a desire to obscure the even more practical question about the presumed success of the new thrust to deliver housing. If the Trudeau Liberals and their NDP partners were unable to deliver the needed housing for Cnadians10 years into the Liberal "strategy," why should Canadians believe that they are going to "deliver" an even greater number of badly needed dwellings now in an even shorter time?
Suggesting that Canadians should not care who “does what” is a manipulative way to detach the action (or lack thereof) from those responsible for carrying the action, and puts distance between the actor and the requisite accountability when the action is not accomplished. If “you” don’t care who does what, you might never discover who failed to meet their objectives and who has made matters worse.
Canadians are free citizens. They should ’t fall for O'Regan's distracting trick urging them not to care. Free, active citizens must and should care who in government is doing (and not doing) what and when.