Blog: [CANADA] Harper is incompetent –Dan Gardner

[Phantasee]

The Sledgehammer School of Management

Wednesday, 16 February 2011 16:59

Dan Gardner

The other day I picked up a sledgehammer and smashed my television.

The wife and kids were somewhat surprised. "Honey," my wife said gently. "Why did you do that?"

"Didn't like the picture quality," I replied.

"But we've had that TV for years and you never said a word about it before," she said.

I shrugged.

My wife expressed further disgruntlement. So did the kids. I thought they'd shut up about it but they just kept going on and on. It was annoying.

"OK," I said. "I'll fix the situation."

So I went to the store. "Fix the situation," I told the clerk.

The clerk showed me new TVs.

"Do these have better picture quality than the TV I smashed?" I asked.

"No," he said. "The TV you smashed is the best TV there is. No other TV is its equal. Would you like to buy a new one?"

Wow, I thought. This guy's not very sharp. "I'd look pretty stupid if I bought the same TV I smashed," I said. "I want a different TV. But it should be as good as the one I smashed."

The clerk frowned. "But I just told you no other TV is as good as the TV you smashed."

"I don't care about your problems, buddy, " I said. "Fix the situation."

This is how Prime Minister Stephen Harper governs Canada.

One day, he picks up a sledgehammer and smashes the census. Without warning. Without discussion. He just smashes it to bits. Asked why, the government says the census is an unacceptable infringement of civil liberty, which is odd given that neither the minister, Tony Clement, nor the prime minister had ever said a word about it before.

Canadians protest. Much to everyone's surprise, the census becomes a major political issue.

So now Stephen Harper has told Statistics Canada to fix the situation.

Other countries do things different ways, Wayne Smith, StatsCan's newly appointed chief statistician told the Globe and Mail on Saturday. For example, some northern European countries don't have a census. They collect data from national registries. "The government wants to step back and say, OK, let's look at those other models: what is possible in Canada?'"

This is funny stuff. If you have a black sense of humour.

See, what makes registry-based data collection work is - wait for it - mandatory reporting. And not just the modest level of mandatory reporting required by the census. No, with registry-based data systems, every person is given a government ID number, required by law to register a raft of personal data, and further required to constantly notify the government of any change in address, job, family relations, car ownership, etc. And all this information is linked and centralized.

In short, anyone who thinks the mandatory census is unacceptably intrusive should find this positively Communist.

But Stephen Harper has to replace the television he smashed with something. And it can't be the TV he smashed, after all. That would make him look stupid.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's my job to be blunt. So I'll just say it: Stephen Harper is incompetent.

I know that's not his reputation. Lots of people accuse him of being ruthless, or an ideologue, but he's usually credited with being a basically competent manager.

He doesn't deserve that credit. His government is badly run and incoherent. Promising fiscal conservatism, Stephen Harper spent money like crazy, expanded the federal government, cut taxes, and turned a surplus into a structural deficit (yes, it's structural, as even the International Monetary Fund agrees). He has no real plan for getting the budget back into balance.

Most of Harper's key tax policies were horribly designed (economists opposed cutting the GST and want to see the tax code simplified, not larded up with micro-credits). On climate change, he favours command-and-control regulation, not market-based policy (contrary to most expert opinion). His government doesn't even pretend to have evidence that its mandatory minimum sentences reduce crime (heaps of evidence says they don't). His handling of foreign investment issues has been so arbitrary and political that UBS Investment Research recently warned foreign investors "may begin to perceive Canada as not open for business.'"

Harper said setting a deadline to end the mission in Afghanistan would endanger the troops. Then he set a deadline. Then he agreed to a new mission without even consulting the military.

Harper recently announced by tweet that his government would overturn a decision by the CRTC. Yes, by tweet. It was in keeping with Harper's closed and secretive operating style, and his contempt for Parliament - the latest demonstration of both tendencies being the government's refusal to tell a parliamentary finance committee how much proposed legislation would cost if implemented. Then there's the cronyism. Most recently, Harper announced the new vice-chairman of the CRTC would be a man whose only qualification seems to be his friendship with Harper's spokesman.

Perhaps worst of all, Harper has centralized governance to an extent that even the Soviet Central Committee might think unwise. The predictable result is sclerosis. And government by impulse: When reporters asked the PMO about a pardon received by a notorious sex-offender, the prime minister immediately picked up the phone and ordered the justice minister to change the legislation. No investigation of the facts. No discussion. An executive who managed a two- bit toy factory like this would be out on his ear.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with questioning the census or any other status quo. Indeed, it's always good practice to consider the relative merits of alternatives.

But as any reasonably competent manager knows, you do that before, not after, you pick up the sledgehammer and smash stuff.

A little old, but it's been mentioned again in context of Harper's government fucking us on Expo 2017, and now the Royal Alberta Museum.

How do the rest of y'all feel about Harper's style of management?

[J]

How do I feel? Oh...same as the author, except more strongly so since Harper cost me my job along with the jobs of everyone in my division. The condensed version: our division did a bunch of research & economic analysis relating to Canada's existing & proposed trade policies & treaties with other countries. What we came up with did not jive with what Harper & his inner circle wanted to hear, so they decided to use the Ministry of Finance figures and quietly get rid of us. We were right. They were wrong. The MoF "analysis" proved to be heavily flawed and the revenues which were predicted never materialized. They still believe we can get rich selling oil & other raw resources to China while importing their finished goods. And wait until you see the doozies in the proposed free trade agreement with the EU.

[Uraniun235]

As long as the Conservative Party stays unified, the next election could be as far off as 2015, right?

[Sephirius]

I for one approve of the sledgehammer in the context of the long gun registry. Sometimes it is warranted.

[Coop D'etat]

Another example was how they created an artificial crisis in Canadian science by suddenly cutting research funding while going on a spending spree on everything else.

[aerius]

Another example was how they created an artificial crisis in Canadian science by suddenly cutting research funding while going on a spending spree on everything else.

Yeah, like when a bunch of researchers including guys from Environment Canada found an ozone hole over the Arctic. Harper's response? We'll just slash the shit out of Environment Canada's funding and consolidate them so they won't be able to monitor ozone levels in the Arctic anymore. If they can't monitor the ozone hole, then clearly it doesn't exist.

[Coop D'etat]

Another example was how they created an artificial crisis in Canadian science by suddenly cutting research funding while going on a spending spree on everything else.

Yeah, like when a bunch of researchers including guys from Environment Canada found an ozone hole over the Arctic. Harper's response? We'll just slash the shit out of Environment Canada's funding and consolidate them so they won't be able to monitor ozone levels in the Arctic anymore. If they can't monitor the ozone hole, then clearly it doesn't exist.

Being on the inside on it I got to see some of the resulting chaos from a cascade of labs having to be without funding for months at a time while having to go through multiple attempts to get their grants renewed. This is from a system that already suffered from not being able to compete financially with the big American universities (although the improved exchange rate helped a bit in getting the dollars to go farther since so much of the supplies and equipment is imported) and the anaemic investment from Canadian industry in R and D.

[Phantasee]

I for one approve of the sledgehammer in the context of the long gun registry. Sometimes it is warranted.

That's not really the sledgehammer approach Gardner is talking about. He said he was going to get rid of it, and now he's getting rid of it. Nothing like the wild swings and misses that he's shown with things like the Census and so on.

[Stark]

Don't worry, he has room for only one idea in his brain.

It's a laugh that the obvious solution (ie, 'lets forget the whole thing and do what we always did') is impossible simply because it's politically embarassing. Everything spent and every second lost to the issue is lost purely to Harper's pride/career.

[Fiji_Fury]

I am unimpressed by Harper and his leadership. I am unimpressed by his party, his backbenchers and his ministers. This disappointment comes from some of the factors mentioned in the blog (census fiasco, arbitrary policies, refusing to identify costs on crime bill) along with a host of other issues, but also from this little point:

In 2008, when the Conservative minority government had already cut the GST, increased spending and tax incentives to the point where the federal government during boom times faced a defectit (all the while with conservative drones chanting that Harper knows the economy and how to manage a budget) they screwed up even worse. As the US housing market began to collapse, currency markets became unstable, stocks started losing value and yes, a recession was becoming obvious within Canada and the international community, Harper and his stooge Flaherty insisted repeatedly that Canada would not face a recession. They proudly insisted that Canada had the best financial system and balanced government of any G8 country and there would be no major impact to the federal budget or to the Canadian economy. This kind of rose-watered idealsim (or lying which it was) could be expected from sleazy politicians who just want to get re-elected. Except that Harper's whole damn party had emerged from the Reform and Canadian Alliance which stood for: fiscal restraint (failed), increased government accountabilty (failed) and ellimination of patronage appointments (failed) among other policies. Now I would have expected some of this bumbling, but so much of it together is simply offensive.

Add to the above the fact that Harper is a trained economist... who claimed the recession all economists stated was effecting Canada was not actually effecting Canada. Incompetent? Yes. Or a bald-faced liar. Either way, my blood begins to boil when anyone talks about Harper's great integrity, "fair leaderships" or economic management. His actions in a number of ways (though not all) are consistent with the acusation that he is incompetent.

[Magis]

Being on the inside on it I got to see some of the resulting chaos from a cascade of labs having to be without funding for months at a time while having to go through multiple attempts to get their grants renewed. This is from a system that already suffered from not being able to compete financially with the big American universities (although the improved exchange rate helped a bit in getting the dollars to go farther since so much of the supplies and equipment is imported) and the anaemic investment from Canadian industry in R and D.

What funding mechanisms are you referring to? The research groups with which I am associated have seen an explosion in funding over the last five or so years, from both NSERC and CFI.

[Magis]

I don't think the author's argument re: the census has any merit. Harper isn't trying to "replace" the census with a national registry system or anything else like it. I personally agree with the Conservatives' premise that some of the questions in the old, mandatory long-form census were overly intrusive. I believe that in a free society, an individual should not be forced to disclose their sexual orientation to the government, for example.

Remember that the short-form census is still mandatory, just like it always was. The change was merely that the long-form census, which contained questions that were more personal and intrusive, would be voluntary. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

[SCRawl]

I don't think the author's argument re: the census has any merit. Harper isn't trying to "replace" the census with a national registry system or anything else like it. I personally agree with the Conservatives' premise that some of the questions in the old, mandatory long-form census were overly intrusive. I believe that in a free society, an individual should not be forced to disclose their sexual orientation to the government, for example.

Remember that the short-form census is still mandatory, just like it always was. The change was merely that the long-form census, which contained questions that were more personal and intrusive, would be voluntary. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

The problem is that this change means that the old data can't be compared to the new data (thanks to the fact that the collection mechanism has changed), which means that those old data are mostly useless. Many aspects of government policy depend on understanding the statistics generated by the long-form census, and if we can't determine long-term trends, then it's difficult to design policy well. Not that the Conservatives are likely to design policy well anyway...

[Coop D'etat]

Being on the inside on it I got to see some of the resulting chaos from a cascade of labs having to be without funding for months at a time while having to go through multiple attempts to get their grants renewed. This is from a system that already suffered from not being able to compete financially with the big American universities (although the improved exchange rate helped a bit in getting the dollars to go farther since so much of the supplies and equipment is imported) and the anaemic investment from Canadian industry in R and D.

What funding mechanisms are you referring to? The research groups with which I am associated have seen an explosion in funding over the last five or so years, from both NSERC and CFI.

Both CIHR and NSERC went through a sudden funding crunch. I have more experience with CIHR but I know both went through a period were funding basically wasn't getting renewed for months at a time because of the backlog. The strange thing was they essentially didn't save much in money because they upped the budget latter. Really what they did was waste a lot of people's time and disrupted productivity for no real gain or purpose, making primary investigators go through several rounds of resubmitting grant proposals that would end up getting accepted eventually later.