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I'm nominally on 'staycation' but am actually spending hours building a course site for next term.
Just noticed that several folks I think very highly of are reading this (v good) piece https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-a-diminished-department-of-finance-brings-into-question-canadas-fiscal-future I was interviewed for a while back. Some more that didn't make edit:
Just noticed that several folks I think very highly of are reading this (v good) piece https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-a-diminished-department-of-finance-brings-into-question-canadas-fiscal-future I was interviewed for a while back. Some more that didn't make edit:
1) If you think that THE BUDGET should be the MAIN/ONLY big policy vehicle for a gov, then you would be sorely disappointed by most #cdnpoli budgets of 20th C. Some of the story is that gov't got bigger. Some of the story is that budgets became stories.
2) There is a particular budget from Trudeau (père) era that stuck with me. It's the one with a cover of a young couple walking with their daughter in full bell-bottomed-panted retro glory. I once went through paper copies of all budgets in the @FinanceCanada library and that...
one was the one that jumped out at me as the harbinger of the 'modern' budget that is as much a comms doc as it is a fiscal plan. Who controls that narrative, on top of entering the values in the Excel spreadsheet to track the draw on the fisc., is an important Q made more ..
sexy if you think THE BUDGET is where all the action is.
3) The narrative appeal can fool you. Lots happens off cycle. But if you think in terms of spenders/guardians (or even the broader 'village' per David Good), then a budget has often been a useful ex-post funnel.
3) The narrative appeal can fool you. Lots happens off cycle. But if you think in terms of spenders/guardians (or even the broader 'village' per David Good), then a budget has often been a useful ex-post funnel.
Ie: Let caucus/Cabinet/stakeholders advocate/ask so they experience months of aspirational effort but have a hard backstop with a far more restricted set of decision-makers who can say 'No. Sorry, not in the fisc'.
4) Another way to funnel is to set, ex ante, envelopes for certain policy areas: X for health, X+Y for economic dev., etc.. But I think this risks a 'first to the trough' problem so that ideas that are 'ready' draw down the fisc instead of a more optimal allocation.
5) If you care about optimal allocation (ie: it's not just how big a draw on the fisc but what is the expected full ROI), then you need an institution that can ask 'why' more than just reflexively saying 'no' or 'less' to protect the fisc.
6) If FIN is switching to a focus on 'why' over 'no /less' that's not, IMHO, a marker of fiscal carelessness or loss of institutional power. The department's efforts to bolster GBA+ (hate on haters!) and more sophisticated analysis of tax expenditures seem to me....
more consistent with a 'why' challenge function and I think it's valuable.
7) The counter to this is that 'why' is supposed to be handled by the Privy Council Office - the sanctum sanctorum, the innermost central agency.
7) The counter to this is that 'why' is supposed to be handled by the Privy Council Office - the sanctum sanctorum, the innermost central agency.
So, if it's true that FIN is evolving from reflexive 'no/less' to 'why', some will still want a 'no/less' voice somewhere in the system. I can only point you back to my 5) above. AND, if true, then there is a central agency that has lost a lot in recent years and it ain't FIN.
With that, Happy New Year all. It's been a seriously crappy year. Hoping that you and yours have a much healthier and happier 2021.
