Opinion: Canada seems stuck in its own version of Groundhog Day

In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character eventually does escape his doom loop and is a better person for it. If only Canada can do the same. Photo by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

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Today is Groundhog Day. I wonder how many of us feel our country is living its own interminable Groundhog Day — like Bill Murray in the 1993 movie of that name.

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A review of the federal government’s budgets since 1985 shows that every government, whether Liberal or Conservative, has had good intentions. Their objectives have always been laudable. But several themes recur over these four decades: affordable housing, health care, clean water on reserves, removing internal trade barriers, trade diversification, better Indigenous relations, the environment, innovation, productivity.

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Despite countless programs and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in spending and tax concessions, these problems persist. And the same themes are a focus for the current federal government, too. Its website (Canada.ca/buildstrong) highlights: affordable housing; freer internal trade; major projects to create jobs, drive sustainable growth and diversify trade; bolstering business, industry and innovation; and Indigenous grants to encourage direct investments in major projects.

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After all this time, why haven’t these problems been solved? In several of our cities, housing continues to be unaffordable for young families. Wait times for critical health care have not shortened, many have got longer. Reserves still have periodic boil-water advisories. Income and other social gaps persist. Since 2013, our per capita GDP has fallen further and further behind the Americans’.

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Why so much repeated failure? Maybe governments haven’t correctly diagnosed these problems’ real causes. Few provincial governments have seemed willing to give up any of their autonomy for the good of the country. Canada has lots of resources and real estate, but do we lack entrepreneurial spirit?

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Maybe Ottawa and its provincial and territorial counterparts simply aren’t good at project management. There’s lots of suggestive evidence: the Montreal Olympics, Toronto’s Eglinton light rail line, ArriveCan, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Muskrat Falls dam, the federal government’s Phoenix payment system — still not completely fixed after all these years, its problems arising again and again, like its namesake.

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Governments certainly aren’t good at forecasting the future. Through their pure dumb luck we have been spared the massive waste of the EV subsidies Canada and Ontario were prepared to throw at companies to get them locate in Canada. Barely 18 months into the program the market has turned and the prospective recipients of the subsidies have changed their plans.

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Maybe Ottawa has tried to do too much or lacks the analytical and policy capacity to properly evaluate programs and policies, as some have suggested. If so, why should anyone have confidence that this time will be different?

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The “Building Canada Act” created the Major Projects Office (MPO) to conduct a “one-project, one-review” process. But this is not a new idea. In the March 2007 budget, the late Jim Flaherty announced the creation of a Major Projects Management Office.