Personally, I have wondered but never researched, how many promises made in 2015 were actually followed by action rather than rhetoric. I am sure more than a couple but admire your tenacity in following these directions. I look forward to your ultimate editorial. Totally enjoying your perspectives.
This book suggests they did *something* on most of their 2015 promises. The authors, a large group of academics, are working on a second volume that will address the 2019 and 2021 platforms. The number of promises they're having to track is astonishing, nearly 1,000.
If memory serves, around the time of the study, Team Trudeau discovered that little of it mattered. The public believed they lacked
an economic plan needed to secure re-election. In fact their appeal had narrowed. A unique but cautionary tale on the evils of over promising and over delivering. Happily, they had a secret weapon. The CPC 2019.
Champagne’s answer this morning was something a thoroughly Otta’washed would offer up and 235 Queen would love.
But he was in luck.
Freeland was there. She boiled an ocean in not answering a question about something. I forgot what the question was based on the 5 minute Gulliver’s Travel yammering she was on and on about.
On behalf of the Mulroney Conservatives everywhere, I thank this government for making us look somewhat competent. It’s taken 30 years, be we have a new winner in sucking bad.
Thanks again for solid information that can lead to better analysis and results. I completely missed that reference and look forward to the new compilation. This is why this site is valuable for all.
Yeah, me too. I met with my freshly minted Liberal MP in the spring of 2016 and asked when my mail service-to-the-door would be restored. She smiled condescendingly at me: What sort of idiot was I? was the implicit message.
Here's my story. In 2019, I began research for a book on the RCMP's "Mr. Big" investigative technique. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the RCMP to ask some basic questions - such as how many "Mr. Big" operations has the RCMP conducted. I then got to work pursuing other channels of research. To be honest, I kind of forgot about the FOI request. The book was published in the fall of 2021. About that time, (two years after the request), I got a call from a very charming officer to tell me that the information I requested was unavailable. The backstory to the call was interesting. The only reason I got even this (likely bogus) response after two years of waiting was that the officer was on "light duty" after being thrown from her horse while performing the musical ride. Her rehab assignment was to whittle away at the pile of legally mandated, but unfulfilled, FOI requests by calling people to tell them they would not get the requested information. With this, the files were closed.
First off, Sir, as always, a good dispatch; you continue to impress me with your diligence and, especially, your memory and, of course, the copies of promises that you keep and regularly consult!.
Now, having said all of that, your penultimate paragraph is, to me, quite interesting: "Indeed, you should not need me to ask. This government sought credit for announcing these things. It should have the basic decency to explain why they have not gone well. This prime minister used to brag about believing this sort of thing."
You are right that WE should not need you to ask but, well, I don't have nearly your memory and I certainly don't have copies of the various promises, announcements, etc. Quite frankly, I find them boring in the sense that it is boring to continually hear lies, half truths and statements of intention with no intention to intend. So, I am sorry to disappoint you but I, for one, DO need you to ask. And I am so glad that you do.
Yes, the government sought credit but then this government seeks credit for the sun coming up in the morning: "Today the sun is rising in the east - Hallelujah! It's because of our environmental policies." said the Prime Face Painter.
You go on to say, "It should have the basic decency to explain why they have not gone well." I am completely flummoxed, Sir, because ALL government actions have gone SUPERBLY WELL. Especially, that ArriveScam thingy, oh, and passports, the Phoenix payroll program? Well, quelle surprise! It is working magnifique! All government programs and initiatives have worked so, so well, despite our marginally, possibly, poor communications.
Your paragraph concludes with "This prime minister used to brag about believing this sort of thing." I respectfully suggest that your sentence should be amended to read, "The prime minister continues to brag."
Paul, I remember telling my colleagues when it was first announced that the CDAP program was doomed. It felt as if it had been designed on a napkin by people looking for an easy public win, but with a patronizing and stereotypical attitude. They seemed to assume that small business people are not very bright and that young people know everything about technology. I got calls two or three times from young men peddling this program. They were very unsophisticated and had not bothered to find out anything about my business, my capabilities or my needs. I probably could have milked the program for some money — but I would have had to invest precious time in people I did not feel had much to offer me. It’s really unfortunate on all counts.
Thanks for the update Paul. Frankly whenever " I am giddy with optimism " when it comes to this government, I put the cap on the bottle and go for a long walk. I'm relatively new to your newsletter, and enjoy every edition so far.
Robert, with this government I suggest that you keep consuming the bottle and call your "optimism sponsor" - you know, like an AA sponsor. That OS can assist you in re-opening that bottle and emptying it down your gullet before going on the walk.
Does someone in the PMO create and maintain a “To Do list” when the PM makes a statement promising action to Canadians and the world?
I would like to know:
1. date promised;
2. details of promise (planned to say on campaign, unplanned and said on campaign, visit to NATO, meeting with US President, meeting which became known publicly and said on purpose, meeting which became public and not planned to say out loud);
3. Anticipated cost of promise
4. Timeline suggested;
Action plan: Steps to accomplish promise;
Anticipated hurdles for promise; Promise delivered
5. Actual cost of promise
6. Action plan to deliver promise
7. Media schedule for updating domestic and international public during points 1-6
With extra staff hired by PMJT this should be manageable, n’est-ce pas?
What you are enduring is appreciated. I hate not knowing what happened to promises I liked hearing about. Seems to me the entire operation works to soothe the brow of Dear Leader who should have long ago broken out in a cold sweat for public perception of incompetence.
The Liberal government and a huge chunk of the bureaucracy appear to treat legitimate inquiries from Parliamentary reporters as training sessions for opaqueness and subtle middle finger exercises. (Yawn, we have to pass this over to Global Affairs, but good luck to ya’!)
Considering that, my first thought is to wonder why reporters even bother? But then, that’s the whole point of the government strategy isn’t it? Especially with time sensitive story development. Pretend that an answer is forthcoming at 5:00, day to be announced sometime off into the future.
Well, indeed. One thing worth pointing out is that this process makes anything resembling a conversation impossible.
Say I think part of an answer is evasive or simply hard to understand, or heaven forbid, say it simply suggests a further question. Asking "What do you mean?" or "What does that answer imply about what's going to happen on this other file?" or "But last week, the minister suggested something a little different..." starts the clock ticking on another five-day exercise in delay and obfuscation.
This process is absolutely shattering, not only to hard-nosed journalistic inquiry, but to any basic understanding of what the government is doing. And I honestly believe it is also deeply corrosive to a government's *own internal understanding* of what it is actually doing.
Abacus this month showed more people were willing to *disagree* that the Trudeau government is "transparent and accountable" than disagreed with any other adjective Abacus tested. This government's bad habits are killing it. Meanwhile, I hear the opposition leader spent his day deleting old tweets. Gee, that's encouraging.
In an ideal world, some of the government “insiders” who follow your writing with great interest will take some cues as to how follow up messaging really works and what it can provide. (But I’m not counting on it.)
I believe there's no "system" that can address this. People in the government are empowered to speak in person or over the phone, or they aren't. This email shit is utterly useless, and I am increasingly convinced that's why everybody does it. It is designed to be useless.
Note that this bad practice has spread to all levels of government. The City of Ottawa has even stopped publishing its employee directory and answers any question only be email. As a journalist, don't feel too bad -- in so-called public consuiltations the general public gets to see City employees only on Zoom almost exclusively. Safety, you know.
I know some of the people involved with one of these files quite well, but I actually went through channels because I didn't want to trade friendship for news. I'd forgotten how utterly wrecked the channels are, however.
More generally, the assumption that everyone hangs in the same pubs drinking one another's bathwater is pretty seriously outdated. I had an old public-service acquaintance ask me for a comp subscription because she was reluctant to be seen by her colleagues to be reading me. I've gotten used to people adding me on LinkedIn as soon as they leave government, because they are suddenly free to enjoy my writing. I actually try not to write too much Ottawa sociology, "If the walls of this crazy town could talk," because that's gross, but it is now a much stranger place to work than it has ever been. Which, don't cry for me, but I also think it's strange in ways that don't improve governance.
You are shocked by the lack of information and follow up. But you know the drill about government coms:
1. promote good news: 'announceables' such as more or new program money (Minister's Director of Coms always asks, 'Do we have any announceables?' to which the federal public service scrambles to find some. Every ministerial trip has to have 'announceables'--something tangible and new to feed journalists. An accompanying news release and backgrounder eases the burden of writing up the story (AI will take off another 80% of production time).
2. avoid embarrassment -- especially when it comes to PM and your minister
3. bad news is 'responsive only'
4. Assume (correctly) that media doesn't have beat journalist who will ever follow up on announceables.
This is all 'controlled' media relations.
Them's the 'rules'. No surprise that our Correspondent is getting run-around.
Hi Evan! Yes, all true, and very helpful. (We should talk!). In particular, at least the designers of this system, if not the people condemned to work in it, are confident that the shit they push out through their channels constitutes *better information for citizens* than the tedious fight with dinosaur journalists, because it more closely matches their belief that government only ever acts with good motives and helpful results. I get the strong impression that the dwindling number of staffers who talk to journalists now feel that they are making less-than-ideal use of their time when they do, but that they're stuck doing it because we haven't vanished altogether yet. I struggle, with uneven results, to resist taking this personally.
As the Marxists say, 'it's structural''. Don't take it personally. In the 'old days' of which you are intimately familiar, a beat journalist (say, on Foreign Affairs) could literally paralyze the Foreign Minister's Office and his/her Coms Team for days/weeks so afraid were they about how their Minister would 'look' in the media coverage. These beat reporters could do feature pieces that appeared on front pages and could literally tell Canadians 'what to think about that day'. People like me in the bureaucratic coms world as opposed to the political staff doing coms for the Minister would be on tenterhooks as the Minister's Director of Coms called coms called early morning strategy meetings with GAC's Com managers on the 10th Floor of the Pearson Building. Today, though legacy media still sets the public policy agenda, it doesn't do so nearly as much as in the relatively recent past. Columnists (Sorry, Paul) have little name recognition even among our informed publics with the exception of a select few politicos and party apparatchiks. The Minister's Director of Coms doesn't need to leak something to a favoured columnist anymore, confident in the knowledge that everyone will be chatting about the issue the next day. Apart from a few high-profile crises (ArriveCan and the like) the power balance between government and media is definitely on the side of government, which makes it puzzling that the present government has had so much trouble managing the national narrative of late.
I guess I'll just have a refrain I sing a lot, here: this isn't the fault of the staffers with the actual answers; they'd love to tell you. It's getting permission, and just how many layers there are between them and permission. "How afraid are the top, of saying the wrong thing" is where all this comes from.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (and when there was a PM named Trudeau) the ink-stained wretches in the Gallery used to deal with such problems by interesting one or another opposition MP in raising the issue in QP.
Of course a good stone wall can withstand any number of oppo questions. But such queries, in the mouths of clever and/or prominent MPs, can sometimes wake up those dozing in the dimmer reaches of the Gallery.
Brian, doing that today would depend on the frankly astonishing notion that the Conservative Party of Canada would take any suggestion at all from any journalist at all. I'm not sure they'd serve as a conduit for Andrew Lawton, let alone me.
I really can't begin to explain, to somebody who was in Ottawa before 2006, how utterly the community spirit and shared assumptions of Ottawa have collapsed since then. One feature of that syndrome is that everybody blames somebody else for it.
Well … there is reason the governing party is 17 or more points behind in the polls, I’m willing to guess people are done with getting no answers to reasonable questions, or worse a word salad of nonsense wholly unrelated to the question asked.
It would have simpler just to provide some funds to an organization that has been around for a long time and has a track record, but has been limping along hand to mouth on projects.
Certainly a decision to help our friends at the Parliamentary Centre, in effective fulfilment of two elections' worth of campaign promises, would have the merit of being a decision.
Oh wow, Champagne likes to talk. A simple “we realized there are better ways to stimulate digital productivity” would have been fine. I heard somewhere (Curse of Politics?) that Champagne is well thought of and a potential Liberal party leader. Hard to see the appeal, but I guess the Libs have demonstrably bad taste.
Paul, you answered your own question a year ago in 2023 when in your January 23rd post you stated "we have a government that thinks announcements are results."
Personally, I have wondered but never researched, how many promises made in 2015 were actually followed by action rather than rhetoric. I am sure more than a couple but admire your tenacity in following these directions. I look forward to your ultimate editorial. Totally enjoying your perspectives.
This book suggests they did *something* on most of their 2015 promises. The authors, a large group of academics, are working on a second volume that will address the 2019 and 2021 platforms. The number of promises they're having to track is astonishing, nearly 1,000.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/a-look-at-policy-areas-scrutinized-by-a-new-book-on-the-trudeau-government
If memory serves, around the time of the study, Team Trudeau discovered that little of it mattered. The public believed they lacked
an economic plan needed to secure re-election. In fact their appeal had narrowed. A unique but cautionary tale on the evils of over promising and over delivering. Happily, they had a secret weapon. The CPC 2019.
Champagne’s answer this morning was something a thoroughly Otta’washed would offer up and 235 Queen would love.
But he was in luck.
Freeland was there. She boiled an ocean in not answering a question about something. I forgot what the question was based on the 5 minute Gulliver’s Travel yammering she was on and on about.
On behalf of the Mulroney Conservatives everywhere, I thank this government for making us look somewhat competent. It’s taken 30 years, be we have a new winner in sucking bad.
Thanks again for solid information that can lead to better analysis and results. I completely missed that reference and look forward to the new compilation. This is why this site is valuable for all.
I for one am still waiting for restoration of to-my-door mail service, as promised by the dazzling young Liberal leader in the '15 campaign.
Yeah, me too. I met with my freshly minted Liberal MP in the spring of 2016 and asked when my mail service-to-the-door would be restored. She smiled condescendingly at me: What sort of idiot was I? was the implicit message.
Brian, "the '25 campaign"? Say it ain't so!
Doh! "'15" of course. Fixed. Thank you
I actually wrote an article some time ago that tried to answer that question: https://www.theaudit.ca/p/canadian-parliamentary-budgets-and - I took two budgets (one Liberal and one CPC) and mapped out the outcomes.
Here's my story. In 2019, I began research for a book on the RCMP's "Mr. Big" investigative technique. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the RCMP to ask some basic questions - such as how many "Mr. Big" operations has the RCMP conducted. I then got to work pursuing other channels of research. To be honest, I kind of forgot about the FOI request. The book was published in the fall of 2021. About that time, (two years after the request), I got a call from a very charming officer to tell me that the information I requested was unavailable. The backstory to the call was interesting. The only reason I got even this (likely bogus) response after two years of waiting was that the officer was on "light duty" after being thrown from her horse while performing the musical ride. Her rehab assignment was to whittle away at the pile of legally mandated, but unfulfilled, FOI requests by calling people to tell them they would not get the requested information. With this, the files were closed.
A friend passed this along, the best recent system-level look at the CDAP cockup I've seen. And considerably calmer than I plan to be when I write about it. https://www.caninnovate.ca/p/cancellation-of-the-cdap
Looking forward to your thoughts on this.
First off, Sir, as always, a good dispatch; you continue to impress me with your diligence and, especially, your memory and, of course, the copies of promises that you keep and regularly consult!.
Now, having said all of that, your penultimate paragraph is, to me, quite interesting: "Indeed, you should not need me to ask. This government sought credit for announcing these things. It should have the basic decency to explain why they have not gone well. This prime minister used to brag about believing this sort of thing."
You are right that WE should not need you to ask but, well, I don't have nearly your memory and I certainly don't have copies of the various promises, announcements, etc. Quite frankly, I find them boring in the sense that it is boring to continually hear lies, half truths and statements of intention with no intention to intend. So, I am sorry to disappoint you but I, for one, DO need you to ask. And I am so glad that you do.
Yes, the government sought credit but then this government seeks credit for the sun coming up in the morning: "Today the sun is rising in the east - Hallelujah! It's because of our environmental policies." said the Prime Face Painter.
You go on to say, "It should have the basic decency to explain why they have not gone well." I am completely flummoxed, Sir, because ALL government actions have gone SUPERBLY WELL. Especially, that ArriveScam thingy, oh, and passports, the Phoenix payroll program? Well, quelle surprise! It is working magnifique! All government programs and initiatives have worked so, so well, despite our marginally, possibly, poor communications.
Your paragraph concludes with "This prime minister used to brag about believing this sort of thing." I respectfully suggest that your sentence should be amended to read, "The prime minister continues to brag."
As always, Sir, thank you.
Paul, I remember telling my colleagues when it was first announced that the CDAP program was doomed. It felt as if it had been designed on a napkin by people looking for an easy public win, but with a patronizing and stereotypical attitude. They seemed to assume that small business people are not very bright and that young people know everything about technology. I got calls two or three times from young men peddling this program. They were very unsophisticated and had not bothered to find out anything about my business, my capabilities or my needs. I probably could have milked the program for some money — but I would have had to invest precious time in people I did not feel had much to offer me. It’s really unfortunate on all counts.
Thanks for the update Paul. Frankly whenever " I am giddy with optimism " when it comes to this government, I put the cap on the bottle and go for a long walk. I'm relatively new to your newsletter, and enjoy every edition so far.
Robert, with this government I suggest that you keep consuming the bottle and call your "optimism sponsor" - you know, like an AA sponsor. That OS can assist you in re-opening that bottle and emptying it down your gullet before going on the walk.
Does someone in the PMO create and maintain a “To Do list” when the PM makes a statement promising action to Canadians and the world?
I would like to know:
1. date promised;
2. details of promise (planned to say on campaign, unplanned and said on campaign, visit to NATO, meeting with US President, meeting which became known publicly and said on purpose, meeting which became public and not planned to say out loud);
3. Anticipated cost of promise
4. Timeline suggested;
Action plan: Steps to accomplish promise;
Anticipated hurdles for promise; Promise delivered
5. Actual cost of promise
6. Action plan to deliver promise
7. Media schedule for updating domestic and international public during points 1-6
With extra staff hired by PMJT this should be manageable, n’est-ce pas?
What you are enduring is appreciated. I hate not knowing what happened to promises I liked hearing about. Seems to me the entire operation works to soothe the brow of Dear Leader who should have long ago broken out in a cold sweat for public perception of incompetence.
The Liberal government and a huge chunk of the bureaucracy appear to treat legitimate inquiries from Parliamentary reporters as training sessions for opaqueness and subtle middle finger exercises. (Yawn, we have to pass this over to Global Affairs, but good luck to ya’!)
Considering that, my first thought is to wonder why reporters even bother? But then, that’s the whole point of the government strategy isn’t it? Especially with time sensitive story development. Pretend that an answer is forthcoming at 5:00, day to be announced sometime off into the future.
Well, indeed. One thing worth pointing out is that this process makes anything resembling a conversation impossible.
Say I think part of an answer is evasive or simply hard to understand, or heaven forbid, say it simply suggests a further question. Asking "What do you mean?" or "What does that answer imply about what's going to happen on this other file?" or "But last week, the minister suggested something a little different..." starts the clock ticking on another five-day exercise in delay and obfuscation.
This process is absolutely shattering, not only to hard-nosed journalistic inquiry, but to any basic understanding of what the government is doing. And I honestly believe it is also deeply corrosive to a government's *own internal understanding* of what it is actually doing.
Abacus this month showed more people were willing to *disagree* that the Trudeau government is "transparent and accountable" than disagreed with any other adjective Abacus tested. This government's bad habits are killing it. Meanwhile, I hear the opposition leader spent his day deleting old tweets. Gee, that's encouraging.
Thanks for the wonderful reply.
In an ideal world, some of the government “insiders” who follow your writing with great interest will take some cues as to how follow up messaging really works and what it can provide. (But I’m not counting on it.)
I believe there's no "system" that can address this. People in the government are empowered to speak in person or over the phone, or they aren't. This email shit is utterly useless, and I am increasingly convinced that's why everybody does it. It is designed to be useless.
Note that this bad practice has spread to all levels of government. The City of Ottawa has even stopped publishing its employee directory and answers any question only be email. As a journalist, don't feel too bad -- in so-called public consuiltations the general public gets to see City employees only on Zoom almost exclusively. Safety, you know.
Do you and fellow scribes know these people?
I thought there was a healthy, collegial, community of gallery and bureaucrats in Ottawa.
I know some of the people involved with one of these files quite well, but I actually went through channels because I didn't want to trade friendship for news. I'd forgotten how utterly wrecked the channels are, however.
More generally, the assumption that everyone hangs in the same pubs drinking one another's bathwater is pretty seriously outdated. I had an old public-service acquaintance ask me for a comp subscription because she was reluctant to be seen by her colleagues to be reading me. I've gotten used to people adding me on LinkedIn as soon as they leave government, because they are suddenly free to enjoy my writing. I actually try not to write too much Ottawa sociology, "If the walls of this crazy town could talk," because that's gross, but it is now a much stranger place to work than it has ever been. Which, don't cry for me, but I also think it's strange in ways that don't improve governance.
You are shocked by the lack of information and follow up. But you know the drill about government coms:
1. promote good news: 'announceables' such as more or new program money (Minister's Director of Coms always asks, 'Do we have any announceables?' to which the federal public service scrambles to find some. Every ministerial trip has to have 'announceables'--something tangible and new to feed journalists. An accompanying news release and backgrounder eases the burden of writing up the story (AI will take off another 80% of production time).
2. avoid embarrassment -- especially when it comes to PM and your minister
3. bad news is 'responsive only'
4. Assume (correctly) that media doesn't have beat journalist who will ever follow up on announceables.
This is all 'controlled' media relations.
Them's the 'rules'. No surprise that our Correspondent is getting run-around.
All systems normal.
Hi Evan! Yes, all true, and very helpful. (We should talk!). In particular, at least the designers of this system, if not the people condemned to work in it, are confident that the shit they push out through their channels constitutes *better information for citizens* than the tedious fight with dinosaur journalists, because it more closely matches their belief that government only ever acts with good motives and helpful results. I get the strong impression that the dwindling number of staffers who talk to journalists now feel that they are making less-than-ideal use of their time when they do, but that they're stuck doing it because we haven't vanished altogether yet. I struggle, with uneven results, to resist taking this personally.
As the Marxists say, 'it's structural''. Don't take it personally. In the 'old days' of which you are intimately familiar, a beat journalist (say, on Foreign Affairs) could literally paralyze the Foreign Minister's Office and his/her Coms Team for days/weeks so afraid were they about how their Minister would 'look' in the media coverage. These beat reporters could do feature pieces that appeared on front pages and could literally tell Canadians 'what to think about that day'. People like me in the bureaucratic coms world as opposed to the political staff doing coms for the Minister would be on tenterhooks as the Minister's Director of Coms called coms called early morning strategy meetings with GAC's Com managers on the 10th Floor of the Pearson Building. Today, though legacy media still sets the public policy agenda, it doesn't do so nearly as much as in the relatively recent past. Columnists (Sorry, Paul) have little name recognition even among our informed publics with the exception of a select few politicos and party apparatchiks. The Minister's Director of Coms doesn't need to leak something to a favoured columnist anymore, confident in the knowledge that everyone will be chatting about the issue the next day. Apart from a few high-profile crises (ArriveCan and the like) the power balance between government and media is definitely on the side of government, which makes it puzzling that the present government has had so much trouble managing the national narrative of late.
I guess I'll just have a refrain I sing a lot, here: this isn't the fault of the staffers with the actual answers; they'd love to tell you. It's getting permission, and just how many layers there are between them and permission. "How afraid are the top, of saying the wrong thing" is where all this comes from.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (and when there was a PM named Trudeau) the ink-stained wretches in the Gallery used to deal with such problems by interesting one or another opposition MP in raising the issue in QP.
Of course a good stone wall can withstand any number of oppo questions. But such queries, in the mouths of clever and/or prominent MPs, can sometimes wake up those dozing in the dimmer reaches of the Gallery.
Brian, doing that today would depend on the frankly astonishing notion that the Conservative Party of Canada would take any suggestion at all from any journalist at all. I'm not sure they'd serve as a conduit for Andrew Lawton, let alone me.
I really can't begin to explain, to somebody who was in Ottawa before 2006, how utterly the community spirit and shared assumptions of Ottawa have collapsed since then. One feature of that syndrome is that everybody blames somebody else for it.
Wow that's depressing, even as seen from here. I can only imagine what it's like in the middle of it.
O brave new world. We are living in unprecedented and dangerous times.
Well … there is reason the governing party is 17 or more points behind in the polls, I’m willing to guess people are done with getting no answers to reasonable questions, or worse a word salad of nonsense wholly unrelated to the question asked.
The official CDAP website (https://cdap.tech/) now has an announcement that "CDAP Program is Closed." I think that answers one of your questions.
It would have simpler just to provide some funds to an organization that has been around for a long time and has a track record, but has been limping along hand to mouth on projects.
https://parlcent.org/
Certainly a decision to help our friends at the Parliamentary Centre, in effective fulfilment of two elections' worth of campaign promises, would have the merit of being a decision.
Very good idea, Michael.
Btw anyone reading this thread can go to the Parliamentary Centre website and make a donation…
Oh wow, Champagne likes to talk. A simple “we realized there are better ways to stimulate digital productivity” would have been fine. I heard somewhere (Curse of Politics?) that Champagne is well thought of and a potential Liberal party leader. Hard to see the appeal, but I guess the Libs have demonstrably bad taste.
Paul, you answered your own question a year ago in 2023 when in your January 23rd post you stated "we have a government that thinks announcements are results."