Towards a theory of Carneyism

He's not a systems guy. He's not above the occasional partisan play. Two cases.

Mark Carney chatting with Patty Hajdu after a cabinet meeting. Photo: PW

1. Grateful for colleagues’ good work

I’m catching up today to two fascinating stories other reporters broke.

Estelle Côté-Sroka at Radio-Canada got her hands on a copy of the report from the “Working Group on Public Service Productivity” that I wrote about when it was Anita Anand’s major project as Treasury Board president just over a year ago. The government finally posted the (redacted) report, which they’ve had in hand for most of the year, after a patient reporter finally exhausted the access-to-information process and received her copy. Here’s a shorter English-language version of Côté-Sroka’s story.

Separately, and not directly related to that story, Natasha Bulowski at Canada’s National Observer wrote about a newly overhauled government program that “would quickly embed 50 business executives in the federal public service to ‘improve the governments’ technical capabilities to accelerate AI adoption, strengthen defence capabilities, improve strategic procurement, negotiate optimal trade agreements and more.’”

Here’s the interesting part: this substantial overhaul to an existing exchange program was proposed by a business group called Build Canada that’s been trying to figure out how to improve tech businesses’ influence over government decisions. Here’s the pitch Build Canada made to the government. Bulowski got a briefing note, also through an access request, that says the Carney government liked the pitch so much they essentially implemented it wholesale, even renaming the program the “Build Canada Exchange.”

These stories tell us a lot about how Ottawa has been working and how it will keep working, to the extent it even does work. By inference, I think they also tell us a couple of things about this still-new prime minister.