Saturday, October 29, 2016

Keeping Score



Justin Trudeau ran on the slogan, "Real Change." Lately, the change appears to have been to the slogan -- which now reads, "More Of The Same." To make sure that we won't be getting More of the Same, a conference is being held this weekend at Carleton University. Susan Delacout writes:
This weekend, Carleton University’s School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies is holding a conference about this whole business of criticizing the government. It’s called “After the Deluge: Reframing/Sustaining Critique in Post-Harper Canada.”

Conservatives might well see this conference as evidence that they did indeed have lots of enemies in the ivory tower over the past decade. Or at least many of them saw it that way.

Canada now has an activist government, determined to make itself relevant in people’s lives again. The ways in which it is inserting itself into the economy (slowing down the housing markets, for instance) need scrutiny to see whether results match the intent.

It’s also a government that has invited criticism and measurement, and for the first time in history, publicly releasing the marching orders for every cabinet minister.

Now we don’t have to guess or opine on whether a minister is doing his or her job — we have a published to-do list for every one of them. Those lists could well be stamped with the same words politicians put on their prepared texts for speeches: “Check against delivery.”
One of the most extensive such efforts is an online initiative called trudeaumetre.ca, a running progress report on 219 promises of the Liberal government. When I checked it this week, it was reporting 34 promises kept, 64 in progress, 26 broken and 95 not yet started.

It's clear that we're going to have to check against delivery because what was promised may not be delivered as promised.

We all should be keeping score.

Image:  NASA

4 comments:

Danneau said...

Any promises kept thus far are far outweighed by the ongoing support for CETA and TPP and the faint=hearted real (pretty rhetoric doesn't count) response to climate disruption. From where I sit, it doesn't look like much of a reset is happening in the relationship between Ottawa and First Nations (though, again, there is some lofty verbiage being spilled), and Morneau's recent comments on the euphemistically-termed "job churning" shows that he and his lot are firmly on the side of those creating precarity for the majority than the majority who have to face precarity. There may be knowledge, scientific and otherwise, out there in much more general circulation, but the way the tea leaves are being read doesn't necessarily coincide with the reality of life for most Canadians.

Owen Gray said...

Trudeau came to office with immense good will, Danneau. If he squanders it, he won't get a second chance to get it back.

Danneau said...

My concern is that he will leave a swath of destruction in his path in continuing the Harper program that will advance our progress to unnecessary oblivion, rather than righting the ship, as some had hoped. I'm less worried about a second chance for a pretty=boy cardboard cutout than I am about how we will live and die in the future. The damage already done and ongoing lends an urgency to the quest to bring the political and economic structures to reason.

Thank you for your perspectives. I read daily and find much on which to reflect.

Owen Gray said...

It's good to hear from you, Danneau. It's been awhile. We live in perilous times. As the planet heats up, the clock is ticking. Our resources and our time are limited.