Roundup: Getting Stuff Done?

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While everyone concerned themselves last night with the ice hockey and the by-election, I thought there was an interesting tweet out that deserved a bit more consideration.

Usher is not wrong here. The early focus on “deliverology” fell to the wayside and the Liberals stopped measuring the number of promises that they had fulfilled, and which ones they could not fulfil or which ones they were abandoning (such as the promise around electoral reform, which was a dumb promise to have made, and where the committee process around it resulted in a hot garbage report that was functionally useless other than to prove it was a dumb promise to have made in the first place). But it’s also cultural. Paul Wells has observed that the Liberals are increasingly made up of the kinds of people who go to leadership conferences, but who haven’t really accomplished much else. Once upon a time, they were people who had built things and a record of professional accomplishment, but now it’s mostly people who just talk about doing things without actually doing them. And it’s a fair observation, but also points to a broader malaise in Canadian culture, where as a country we’re building fewer things while MBAs manage what we have, and wealth funds acquire companies and then strip them for parts until they’re forced to declare bankruptcy. You can’t pin that entirely on the Liberals, but Getting Stuff Done is proving a challenge for this government, and they should put some energy on doing that rather than just churning out some more communications pabulum.

And to make the point about Pwning for Pwning’s Sake, here’s Andrew Scheer wishing the country had fallen into a full-blown recession, because reasons.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russian missiles struck Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, killing at least five people and wounding at least 41 others. A Russian missile also struck a storage facility in Odesa, injuring three. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that Ukraine has hit over 30 Russian oil refineries and depots thus far. Zelenskyy also ordered a purge of the country’s state guard after an assassination plot was uncovered. And today is the day that the EU begins membership talks with Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1805173797705728292

Good reads:

  • Shockingly, the Conservatives won the Toronto—St. Paul’s by-election, confirming the Elder Pundits’ declared narrative of this being very bad for Trudeau.
  • Chrystia Freeland announced the start of consultations that could lead to tariffs on electric vehicles from China, as the US and the EU have already imposed.
  • The federal government is “strategically planning” for evacuating Canadian citizens from Lebanon if a full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupts.
  • The Kitselas First Nation in BC is in the final stages of signing a treaty that would allow for self-government, after three decades of negotiation.
  • Three AFN regional chiefs say that the organisation is making child and family welfare decisions without properly consulting their members.
  • Princess Anne has been forced to cancel her trip to Newfoundland and Labrador this weekend after suffering (likely horse-related) injuries and a concussion.
  • The Commons’ heritage committee tabled their report on abuse in sport, and is calling for sweeping changes to how athletes are protected.
  • Conservative MP Ryan Williams used some ChatGPT generated bullshit about capital gains rates in a tweet, which is less a cautionary tale than sheer lazy theatre.
  • NDP MP Niki Ashton has repaid some of the expenses from her holiday to Quebec City under the rubric that she doesn’t want to name the “stakeholders” she met with.
  • Alberta’s oil and gas industry has exceeded the provincial regulator’s limit for natural gas flaring, even though other methods are available.
  • Naheed Nenshi is promising to explore ways to formally distance the Alberta NDP from the federal party given the trepidation of provincial members.
  • Andrew Leach explains the contracts that certain unscrupulous media outlets have tried to “expose” him with.
  • Paul Wells suspects that we’ll have a summer of Liberal MPs considering and reconsidering their futures regardless of whether Trudeau stays on.

Odds and ends:

https://twitter.com/HNHughson/status/1804830342232354957

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One thought on “Roundup: Getting Stuff Done?”

  1. That observation about the Liberals…I have no insight about their operation, but what you describe is a reflection of the culture at large. I’ve heard it described as, people know how to play with concepts on the computer, but they don’t know how to do things. It can be very trying in the work place.

    With respect, that can extend to the media. Often I listen or read Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne et al, and it occurs to me that they’ve probably never had to manage anybody at all…maybe an intern now and then. Never mind working in three dimensions. The constant patter about how badly the government is managing is wearying, from that point of view, and also a reflection of trying to get things done in real life.

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