As you’ll know if you’ve heard the podcast before, the bills for what I do there are, in large part, paid by the good people at Calgary’s Max Bell Foundation, in conjunction with other good people at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy. This week that affiliation is a bit closer to the show’s foreground than usual.
A while ago the Foundation wrote to me and said, hey, we’re going to have a meeting of our board of directors at the School. Would you like to have a panel discussion there? My answer to such questions is always, You bet, but as a bonus, this time I found the question interesting.
The title of the panel was Shaping Public Policy from Outside Government. The panelists were a journalist (me); a think tanker, with experience in the public service (Rachel Samson from the Institute for Research on Public Policy); and an academic with experience in the policy trenches (The Max Bell School’s Taylor Owen, whom you met here during the campaign). Boiled down, the discussion was about how people outside government — that’s us — affect decisions inside government.
To me the first answer is obvious. We certainly should influence government decisions. Every other answer is trickier, as Taylor Owen points out at the top of the panel. Who’s “we”? Who decides? What does “shaping” public policy entail? It’s not even clear where definitions of “government” begin and end. But tricky questions make for good discussion, and I think we had one.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts and a bunch of other platforms via the “Listen On” button that you can see at the top of this post when you view it on your desktop browser. If you listen on a podcast platform, hit “Like” and “Subscribe” buttons, and leave a good review, to help spread the word.
You can read a (machine-generated) transcript of this week’s episode via the "Transcript” button at the top of this page which should be visible on most platforms when you view it on your desktop browser.
I am grateful to be the Max Bell Foundation Senior Fellow at McGill University, the principal patron of this podcast. Antica Productions turns these interviews into a podcast every week. Kevin Breit wrote and performed the theme music. Andy Milne plays it on piano at the end of each episode. Thanks to all of them and to you. Please tell your friends to subscribe to The Paul Wells Show on their favourite podcast app, or here on the newsletter.
Share this post