FEATURE 24 / Canadian Government Executive / Spring 2025 The Rise of Short-Term Politics A second threat to adaptability has to do with a shift in the character of politics and political culture in Ottawa. Politicians and senior bureaucrats are more likely to think about long-term questions of strategy if they are reasonably secure in their positions and are not distracted by the immediate pressures of work. However, such conditions are increasingly rare in Ottawa. Political competition has intensified. Among citizens, party loyalty has declined sharply. Governments are less likely to enjoy durable majorities than they were in the twentieth century, and parties have experienced dramatic reversals in fortune. The Progressive Conservative Party that dominated Parliament in the 1980s collapsed in the 1990s and disappeared in 2003. The Liberal Party that governed from 1993 to 2005 was pronounced dead in 2011, only to recover power four years later. The New Democratic Party has also experienced substantial swings in its parliamentary representation. Under such conditions, political leaders have become increasingly fixated on the short-term task of winning elections. Parties themselves have sharpened their operations: they are more centralized, professionalized, and technologically sophisticated than they once were. Meanwhile, party platforms have become more detailed and function as quasi-contracts with voter blocs. Parties make promises that are designed to be fulfilled within one mandate, and dedicate their time in government to delivering on these commitments in time for the next election. Public servants who once played an important role in long-term planning have been sidelined in this new style of platform-driven governance. An additional challenge for decision-makers in Ottawa is an escalation in workload. Advances in information technology mean that leaders are bombarded with more information and demands for attention than ever before. As the 2023 Rouleau inquiry observed, mass protests can emerge “at a previously unachievable rate and scale.” Meanwhile, globalization means that Ottawa is more vulnerable to economic and political shocks originating abroad. A more dynamic information environment also means that political gaffes can have sudden and dramatic consequences. One result is an unprecedented, and sometimes counterproductive, emphasis on centralized communications control in Ottawa. Leaders want to maintain “message discipline” in an increasingly noisy environment. Another result is stress and burnout among decision-makers. Ministers, their political advisors, and public servants have all described how an increasing workload has corroded their capacity to deliberate well. Moreover, decision-makers are less likely to have the time needed to consider long-term challenges. In 2023, government house leader Mark Holland described the pressure on Ottawa politicians to work eighty or ninety hours a week and asked, “Where do you get the time to sit back and reflect?” Disinvestment in Foresight The capacity of leaders to take a long and broad view of national challenges has also degraded not just by socio-economic trends, but by governmental actions after the 1990s. In the mid-twentieth century, leaders within the federal government had devised institutions to counteract short-term thinking. However, these institutions were abandoned after the 1990s. Between the 1930s and 1980s, the federal government often relied on royal commissions to examine long-term challenges. The model was the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, also known as the Rowell-Sirois Commission, which completed its work in 1940. The commission had a profound influence on the evolution of Canadian government after World War II. It was followed by several other commissions with similar ambitions. The last was the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, which completed its work in the 1980s, and charted a course for Canada in the age of globalization. Its chair, Donald Macdonald, said that the commission’s mission was to help Canadians see where they “were going as a nation, as well as the great events that were going to shape the world around them.” Enthusiasm for royal commissions of this type waned after the 1990s. Governments may have thought that commissions were no longer useful in a world in which politics was more accelerated and contentious. Commissions operated slowly, while governments felt pressure to launch new programs and deliver results more quickly. And commissions were independent, which meant that they might deliver advice that was at odds with the government’s own ambitions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government also devised another instrument, the independent advisory council, to study longterm challenges. One prominent example was the Economic Council of Canada, which emerged out of decisions taken by the Diefenbaker and Pearson governments. By the 1990s, the Economic Council was the largest think tank, public or private, in Canada. Another prominent example was the Science Council of Canada, established in 1966. The Economic and Science Councils were eliminated in the 1990s, along with many others. The Mulroney government justified this action as an austerity measure, although some observers thought ministers were actually frustrated by council reports that contradicted government policy. At the time, government officials suggested that private sector organizations would pick up the work previously done by royal commissions and advisory councils. Experience has disproved this hypothesis. Canadian think tanks do not have the staff and resources to undertake long-term policy work on the same scale, while Canadian universities priMinisters, their political advisors, and public servants have all described how an increasing workload has corroded their capacity to deliberate well. Moreover, decision-makers are less likely to have the time needed to consider long-term challenges. In 2023, government house leader Mark Holland described the pressure on Ottawa politicians to work eighty or ninety hours a week and asked, “Where do you get the time to sit back and reflect?”
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