A Crisis of Confidence

Short-term, election-cycle thinking means our federal leaders are lacking national vision.

This is Part 1 of a four-part series that outlines the crisis of confidence in national governance, and the urgent need for Canada to develop clear long-term national goals for which our federal government is directly accountable. Part 1 focuses on Canada’s need to break out of election-cycle thinking and transform our approach to national governance and public finances.

Unnoticed in the heat of an all-too-short Canadian summer, with Parliament shuttered for an extended recess, the business of the nation quietly continues under the radar. Occasionally, a first ministers’ conference or a crisis of some sort will merit enough media attention to register fleetingly in our collective psyche. But, for the most part, billions of dollars of national revenue steadily flow out of Ottawa each month, channeled to individual Canadians and to other levels of government (provincial, municipal, aboriginal) with little or no direct accountability with respect to even the most basic national goals or objectives.

Despite a modest increase in the transparency of public affairs in recent years, the lack of meaningful oversight of intergovernmental transfers provides a poignant example of how unanswerable our federal politicians are to issues of national concern. While Ottawa transfers huge sums for a wide range of initiatives that may be justifiable in isolation, we are left with a serious lack of national coherence on the very issues these payments are meant to address. Indeed, if we measure the effectiveness of these expenditures against clear long-term national goals such as building and maintaining high-quality infrastructure, making Canada a leading green-energy power, or eliminating third-world living conditions among aboriginal Canadians, the collective impact of the spending falls well short.

The Conservatives must be held accountable to avoid ideologically driven cuts. Read more here.

Regrettably, bold, visionary national leadership that governs for the long term has been absent in Canada for a long time. Our national government rarely conveys any sense of public purpose or narrative other than winning the next election. Public action is diverted to expanding short-term opportunities for superficial consumption rather than fostering long-term opportunities for valuable investments, greater employment, and sustainable living across the country.

Not surprisingly, a growing number of Canadians are disillusioned and cynical about the prospects for good national governance and constructive public action. Our public finances appear to be constantly mismanaged, and our politicians seem incapable of looking beyond their political self-interest and re-election to respond to the national interest. Most Canadians, all too painfully aware of our new age of austerity and the need to deleverage and get out from under suffocating debt, believe that governments should do the same thing. A growing number of Canadians now support the more specific proposition that the national government should be substantially trimmed and money returned to us through lower taxes so that we can pursue private-sector alternatives to dysfunctional public services.

The great danger now emerging is that, if Canadians can no longer be persuaded of the legitimacy of national action – if we become indifferent to having a national government with the capacity to deal with matters of national concern on behalf of all of us – our collective ability to build on what we have in common will gradually, but inevitably, disintegrate.

Once we no longer believe in the value of bold national governance – that we are stronger when we act together to advance national ideals and goals – we will lose all sense of joint responsibility, shared sacrifice, and national purpose. Social bonds will crumble and generational bonds will attenuate.