I have been waiting all week for someone to make the equation between having a Liberal government and the collapsing economy.
After all, the Canadian dollar is trading below 70 cents, the price of oil is exploring unprecedented territory, and the cost of everything is going through the roof while unemployment hovers around seven per cent.
But I guess the luster has yet to fade from the come-from-behind win by Justin Trudeau. It is only a matter of time before the honeymoon is over when the pundits will start to point to our lackluster economic performance and blame it on the Liberals.
Is it fair to do so?
I have a longstanding discussion with one of my colleagues on the role of government in the economy. I should preface this by pointing out there are two levels to government in this discussion.
The first is our elected officials. The putative heads of ministries dealing with everything from finance to agriculture and agri-foods. These are the people out in front of the camera and answering questions on the floor of parliament.
They are the captains of their respective ships. They are the ones who set the path a ministry will take.
However, anyone who has ever seen an episode of Yes, Minister knows there is a second layer of government in the form of the civil service. Whether a minister can enact changes, reforms, or legislation depends on the will of the civil service. No one in the civil service would actively disobey a minister but there are other ways of making things work more slowly or not at all.
That said, I have never worked for a minister, but I know people in positions of power within the ministries tend to keep their jobs by doing what is required most of the time.
The point of bringing this up in the context of a discussion over the role of government is to distinguish between the politicians and the bureaucracy. It is a distinction that often gets blurred but an important one to consider in discussing the role of government in the economy.
For example, one of the Liberals campaign promises was to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015. They didn't make it. Indeed, I don't think anyone really expected that they would.
When they took office, they even realized 25,000 was an unrealistic target.
They shifted to 10,000 by the end of 2015 and 25,000 by the end of February 2016. They didn't make it.
In the end, the bureaucracy just couldn't move that fast and process the applications in time to allow the government to meet its numbers. Or, as Robbie Burns put, it "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."
In this case, the political will was their but the bureaucratic performance wasn't.
I mention this because "government" - the bureaucracy - can often get in the way of economic growth. We have all heard tales of red tape blocking what some people think are good ideas.
Just think of New Prosperity or the Northern Gateway. Others would argue that it is a good thing we have regulations that prevent such projects from going ahead.
In either case, though, it wasn't government - the politicians - that were involved. I would suggest that government has been thwarted, to some extent, by its own bureaucracy.
The problem for government with independent review panels is they are independent.
However, when it comes to the economy as a whole, I would argue further that government really doesn't has much control. Or maybe another way to put it is that they have about as much control as a person riding a tiger.
Simply put, there are way too many variables at play in the economy for any government - Canadian, American, Chinese, European, etc. - to control the outcome.
Every move a government makes is met with a rippling response of moves by all of the other players and their moves changes the game, often to the detriment of the government's move.
Bring in the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Sounds like a good idea to some politicians but it will hurt the economy in other areas.
However, if the government chooses to pass the deal then some parts of our economy will quickly adapt to take advantage of the opportunities. Conversely, the economies of other countries will adapt to take advantage of us. Yes, it opens the doors to millions of potential consumers but it also opens the doors to the very rich Canadian and American markets. It works both ways.
As many economists have pointed out, globalization is here to stay and it is changing the economic landscape in ways quite unpredictable with governments left holding the bag.
Or, as the saying goes, the trick isn't in riding the tiger. The trick is getting off.
