Although most of the real work of Parliament is done in committee, Question Period has always been the one program designed to inform the public about what government is doing and why. This is where Government can be openly challenged by the Opposition and held to account for their activities. While government is not bound to answer at all or even truthfully, the public is able to judge them by their responses.
At the end of the day, what we have are inflated announcements of exaggerated programs and very little real action on any of the so-called initiatives. Canrey’s lexicon of adjectives is long: bold, transformational, turbo-charged, dynamic, resilient, generational…. it all sounds glorious, until you come to the bottom line and find a bucket of nothing. Photo credit supplied photo
The odd time Prime Minister Mark Carney shows up in Question Period – this first year of his office he has attended, according to Hansard, 28 times, just over 29% of the days – it is clear that he doesn’t take it seriously. He never answers a question with sincerity, and his non-answers are often shouted, as though he were in drama class. He may feel that this is all about scoring points in the House, but it appears to be a sign of his contempt for Parliament and, by extension, for the Canadian people.
We can see this attitude in his unfortunate Ministers, most of whom don’t have any idea about what is really going on, reading scripted answers and without real understanding. With the exception of a handful of his closest colleagues, ministers have reported that they feel powerless and left out of the details in their own departments. The old mantra of “tell the minister only what is good for him” has been expanded to the point of the ridiculous and even once well-informed staffers are being left out of the loop.
So, who is running the show? It appears Mark Carney is.
He has collected a growing network of hand-picked acolytes, most of them unelected. Among the elected is Tim Hodgson, now Minister of Energy and natural Resources. He was Carney’s special adviser as Governor of the Bank of Canada and worked with Carney at Goldman Sachs. Evan Solomon, now Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, is particularly close to Carney’s wife, Diana Fox Carney. Solomon served as climate adviser at the Eurasia Group and worked closely with Mrs. Carney in that capacity. Solomon was fired from CBC for taking secret commissions brokering art deals with CBC contacts, including Mark Carney.
Mark Wisemen is Carney’s appointment as Ambassador to Washington. He is former CEO of the Canadian Pension Board and was an executive at Black Rock.
In addition to these personal friends and luminaries, Carney has been acquiring another level of management, handpicked by him to run these special operating agencies. The Prime Minister would defend his actions by saying the SOAs have been around since the Mulroney days, and that Is true with one big difference. The activities and rules of play of these small, niche-focused agencies are open and available to the public and must be renewed annually.
If the Carney-created SAOs will have an open management framework, they are not yet available to the public. Although a government structure map lists them as coming under one ministry or another, so far, there are no management frameworks available to the public and this despite requests from CBC.
So far, the Big Three arm’s length agencies are the Defence Investment Agency, with CEO Doug Guzman, former Deputy Chair of RBC; Build Canada Homes, led by CEO Ana Bailao, former deputy mayor of Toronto; and the Major Projects Office with CEO, Shawn Farrell, former chair of the Trans Mountain Corporation.
These initiatives were announced in the much-delayed 2025 budget last fall. In the spring update, there was a raft of new agencies announced, the most controversial being the so-called Canada Strong Fund, supposedly a legacy investment pool – but one with a legacy of debt rather than assets. Now we await the rules of engagement which have not surfaced, except that it will be a crown corporation.
In addition, he announced the Financial Crime Agency to investigate financial crimes; the Team Canada Strong agency to promote education and skilled trades training; the Borealis Bureau, a specialized bureau for technology research, AI quantum computing, and robotics; and finally, the Asset Optimization agency to explore new ownership options for Canada’s federally-owned airports and ports. There may be some I have missed.
All this raises the question: Why can’t this work be accomplished under a well-managed public service framework? These multiple agencies simply set up a rival bureaucracy that controls billions of dollars and ultimately reduces control by our elected representatives.
Meanwhile, we were told that 40,000 jobs would be eliminated from the federal public service, a number that has been reduced to 12,000 over three years, but so far, all that has happened is a notice of “you could be laid off” to 26,000, while it seems that no one has actually left.
At the end of the day, what we have are inflated announcements of exaggerated programs and very little real action on any of the so-called initiatives. Canrey’s lexicon of adjectives is long: bold, transformational, turbo-charged, dynamic, resilient, generational…. it all sounds glorious, until you come to the bottom line and find a bucket of nothing. But before we find that bucket, how would we know?
Refusing to allow ministers to be summoned to report to committees, shutting committees down, secret rules and agendas for the new agencies, keeping ministers ill-informed — all this spells loss of autonomy for our parliamentary system. And a bleak day for the future of our True North, Strong and FREE.