Canada's Black Mark

Let's take a step back from the debt woes of the world, a rather immediate danger to the global economy and look at a calmer issue. What to do about the massive poverty in native American (or aboriginal) communities in Canada? There's widespread mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse and even, of all things to happen in a first world nation, a tuberculosis outbreak. How is that even possible given a country with universal healthcare?

And so what to do? I'll skip over the current rhetoric and go straight to a solution.

-Settle land disputes and turn reservations into provinces
-Each native province will conduct its own elections, collect taxes and provide the social services
-Provinces will be part of the equalisation formula, and I would expect, given that most reserves are not doing well economically, they'll be considered have-not provinces

The entire point is to create a direction connection between the taxpayers and the politicians. Ruling chiefs will receive money directly from native tribes through provincial taxation. The chiefs will now have an incentive to listen to the local tribe because their cheque comes from the residents rather than outside the community.

Individuals who prosper in the community, allow the entire community to prosper, creating a positive feedback loop to better everyone. Currently, if a native individual prospers, the community receives no direct benefits because any taxes paid goes to the Ontario government and not the local reserve.

A Canada where all can succeed is beneficial for everyone.

Obscure To-Do List

The following is the forgotten to-do list for the government. Easily implemented and empirically proven.

1) Digital Telecommunications

The e-commerce growth in Canada has been extremely slow. Lagging behind in this new market sector would be incredibly damaging for the future of Canada.

The government should invest resources into developing the fibre optic backbone (for areas which do not already possess dark fibre) and implement this under a new government-owned crown corporation (let's call it Not-Crackpot Bell). The infrastructure is leased out to ISPs at cost-plus (a little extra for expansion of the network).

This results in an internet service marketplace which has almost no market entry barrier, giving consumers a better price and better service. With the increase in bandwidth, e-commerce is given an environment in which it can thrive.

Cost? Possibly 10s of billions.
Gain? Probably 100s of billions.

2) Space Programme

Throw an extra 100 million into the space programme, effectively doubling its budget. Then commit to every single robotics portion of space programs across the entire world. NASA, ESA, Russian Space program, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and so on will use Canadian robotics from Canadarm to Rovers.

Cost? 100 million
Gain? Depends on how much we sell the robotics for, but we also get ties with every single country's space program which should lead to a brain gain.

3) Medical Nuclear Reactor / Nuclear Medicine

Build a new medical reactor asap. Replace the one at Chalk River, or upgrade existing reactors to this capability, or build a totally new reactor. It's not hard.

With a new set of reactors we can easily edge up control of the radioisotope market to 90%+. This allows us to fund the entire world's anti-cancer programs.

Cost? A few billion.
Gain? Aside from saving millions from cancer, the increase in worker productivity and thus income taxes, we'd also be selling the isotopes to cover most of the costs anyway.

4) Safe Injection Sites

The Lancet journal backed the safe injection site because statistical evidence has shown a 30%+ drop in deaths. There was an accompanying drop in crime rate.

Cost? Put one in every city, probably a million dollars per year per city. So what 100-150 million?
Gain? It's likely to be a decrease in policing and healthcare costs of 1-2 billion dollars.

5) Mental Hospitals

Bring back mental hospitals. Safe, comforting mental hospitals for the mentally ill and take them off the streets.

Cost? Probably 100-150 million across the country.
Gain? Likely 1-2 billion per year due to decreased policing costs.

Shutting Down Government

The US Budget passed, luckily, avoiding a government shut down. Over 800 000 Federal employees keep on working and 1.4 million soldiers continue to receive their pay cheques. This is of course, very good.

So really we're left with a question in the aftermath of what makes sense to cut and what does not. Certainly at this point, with the size of American deficit, an austerity package makes sense.

But, really, the Tea Party has grown on the concept of "starve the beast" and presuming a positive correlation between government spending and oppression. I'd like to point out something written by someone else on the subject before I throw my own view out:

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/02/17/government-spending-and-liberty/

The issue is that protecting the rights of the people, upholding the US constitution, is a task that is far more expensive than letting the mighty rule over the weak. Freedom is about choice of action and defence against others who would take away your choices. As far as the United States is concerned, the government does both but it is not the only entity in play.

Many different factors affect one's freedom and combined make out your total ability to succeed in society. We cannot disregard the government as the primary instrument for defending one's freedom simply because it has a capability of also suppressing it. Afterall, most would agree that a world run solely by corporations is likely to be extremely piss poor with such rampant poverty that any amount of legal freedom amounts to naught when you don't even have food to eat.

Starving the government and eliminate essential services is more likely to do such heavy long-term damage to the economy that any temporary relief on the deficit from the cuts are far outweighed by the losses. For instance, one of the obstacles in passing the budget was Planned Parenthood, costly a measly 323 million dollars a year. In a budget that is 3.2 trillion dollars, one would imagine such an item would not even come under scrutiny before larger ones (such as the F-35 purchase which will amount to tens of billions in total). But the prevailing idea is that cutting it would "save" the money when in reality, the preventative measures put into place by Planned Parenthood saves the government tens of billions per year in healthcare costs. A condom costs pennies. Managing a teenage mother who then has decrease employment opportunities costs you a lifetime of social services.

So when we think of an austerity package, what comes into question is what is essential and what is not. Courts, infrastructure and economic multipliers are essential. Preventative measures that save money in the long-term, those are revenue positive measures. Those should stay. Things that are revenue negative in the long run are the services that you tackle. This primarily means the military but there are also non-defence spending measures that can be eliminated as well.

As well, tax revenue collection is another way to tackle the issue. Reducing spending is one prong, but how about increasing tax revenues? Recently, it has been revealed that General Electric paid zero dollars in tax on 12 billion in profit. That means the average American, earning 40k a year, paid more tax than a hundred billion dollar revenue corporation. That is tax money lost and the loss has to be picked up by the middle class in America. Efforts should be made to capture this money to reduce the deficit.

On top of this, congress can work to reduce corporate loopholes in taxation (and thereby make the system more fair to small business who cannot afford the high class accountants necessary to make use of such unfair loopholes), shift more of the tax burden to the rich (and also reduce the loopholes they use) and increase tax revenue.

CBO recently published a long list of items that could be cut in the budget that amounted to six hundred billion a year. Depending on your political ideology, not all of those are cuts that "make sense" but certainly, one can cut more than the forty billion in spending that the current congress has done.

Cut spending, increase tax revenue, and commit to long-term economic goals. That should be what everyone in congress strives for. Shutting down government is an extremist view that does nothing more than damage the very fabric of the United States.

Fighter Jets

So an election is on and one of the big topics is fighter jet purchase to replace the aging CF-18s. Before we begin I want to express my personal view on "how many" planes that the Canadian Air Force should receive.

The CF-18 purchase under Trudeau was 138 planes. This was in addition another 100+ planes of another type. In the 1970s we had over 200 combat aircraft of various roles (interceptor, heavy fighter etc). Flash forward to today, and we've 80 CF-18s left. The current purchase on the table is from Harper who suggests that we should buy 65 F-35s (which by PBO estimate will be around 130 million a piece and including maintenance costs will total around 30 billion over the lifetime of the aircraft). So, basically the suggestion from Harper is that we should have even less planes than before. Does he also believe we should have one rifle for every two soldiers? Don't worry the rifle is really awesome.

I believe that Canada should at least maintain and airforce of 140 planes or more. Any less and we won't even have pilots for the next generation of soldiers.

Before we begin, these are the key easy points for what I believe should be done in order to secure the purchase of aircraft to replace our existing force.

• The Canadian Forces military analysts should be the ones who decide which planes are purchased. This includes the type and number of each. Certainly they should be allowed to choose more than one plane. I believe that we should not allow politicians to make this type of decision for the military.
• The government should be clear on how much money should be spent on new plane purchase and allow the military to decide the best way to spend this money. Alternatively, the military can suggest the optimum plane purchase for expected missions in the future (which is likely to be primarily peacekeeping)

So the choice is really down to how many planes we want and how much will it cost. Obviously, the more we can get per dollar the better. It is ridiculous to believe the F-35 is the only plane on the market. For someone like me, who is not a military analyst, I can mention this many planes offhand:

1. Boeing F-18 super hornet (at a cost of 55 million USD each)
2. Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (at a cost of at least 130 million USD each, estimate)
3. Dassault Rafale (at a cost of 80-90 million USD each)
4. Saab JAS 39 (40-61 million USD each)
5. Eurofighter Typhoon (90-125 million Euros each)
6. Mikoyan MiG-35 (???)
7. Sukhoi Su-33 (55 million USD each)

We probably won't buy the MiG or Su since they aren't from NATO countries but they're still planes that could be considered. I leave it up to military analysts to judge the risk/reward factors. (Or hey, we could buy the F-22, I hear we can get them second hand and they've never been in combat missions before!)

Let's not put ourselves into the same problem as the United States, stuck into spending billions into the black hole that is the JSF program that produced the F-35. We don't need to throw tens of billions down the drain needlessly. Let's get the best our military can get.

The Economic Focus

Economics is the primary focus on any government in a stable society. Within that realm, many countries speak on different topics but in general what is the ultimate goal of the government? Make everyone rich? Eliminate poverty? Get everyone two cars? The best focus for a government is on two fronts: with respect to financial decisions it should focus on long-term growth, with respect to social economic decisions it should focus on eliminate poverty.

When we look at different countries in the world, the presence of affluence is not indicative of a well functioning society. In terms of the United Nations Human Index rating, those with the least poverty almost invariably score higher than those who focus heavily on increasing affluence versus targeting poverty. If we look at countries such as USA or South Africa, we see many of the richest in the world living there and yet, in terms of living conditions, some of the worst for the Western world (and in some cases, just worst in the world in general). In contrast, if we look at a country such as Sweden, with extremely low poverty, it scores very high and always ranks near the top for living conditions.

The reasons are typically simple and somewhat utilitarian. Every additional dollar above what is needed for the average comfortable life style adds very little to happiness. However, simply transferring money from the rich to the poor is an abuse of metrics. The problem is not that the rich hold too much money, hoarding it from the poor, it is that the poor were never given any opportunity to earn that money. Furthermore, opportunity is insufficient. Social mobility is an excellent trait for a society but unless the income divide is actually small, it is relatively meaningless.

So, countries and government should focus on tackling poverty. What are things that may be done?

• Income tax versus corporate income tax
• Rethinking welfare

Let's talk taxes. There's actually an extremely large variety of taxes today and in history; income tax, harvest tax, land tax, property tax, wealth tax, inheritance tax, tithes, inflation tax, sales tax, tariffs, export taxes, duties, debt interest. But by far, today in the modern age, in the big picture, the largest two are income taxes and corporate taxes.

Corporations pay tax only on profits. Individuals pay tax on everything.

The idea is to encourage corporations to reinvest the money they earn into creating more jobs, capital and generally investing in the economy rather than taking the profits home. On the other hand, individuals are taxed in a manner historically similar to completely broken systems such as the "peasant land tax" or "salt tax". It does not take into account the cost of living which is an important measure in determining poverty.

So, let's rethink welfare and rethink income taxes. We want people who are poor to move up into the middle class. We want the middle class to live comfortably and invest in our country's future (possibly moving up into the rich category by doing so). We want the rich to competently run corporations in an efficient market manner.

Structuring income tax to take into consideration the cost of living requires a measure for determining cost of living. Canada has the LICO (low income cut off) which indicates when you are poor. It would not be difficult to add another measure for "Oh my God, I don't have food", which sits even lower than the LICO. Now we convert income tax into a "individual profit tax" so that if you are having trouble earning enough to put food on the table, the government doesn't come to make your life even harder.

• Below the strict panic line, you should receive government money.
• Below the LICO line, you should not pay taxes.
• Above the LICO, you should pay graduated income taxes.
• We provide a variety of tax-free investment opportunities to encourage long-term growth (RRSP, RESP, TFSA etc)

We entirely eliminate provincial welfare systems and replace them with the negative income tax rates in this model. All of the administrative costs of welfare is to be turned over to tax auditing, which one hopes would not cost substantially different under this model.

If one is worried of welfare abuse then think of this; when you are using a spam filter for your email account, would you want it to eliminate all your spam but also blow away several of your good important emails per day or would you rather it let through a little bit of spam and allow all your important emails through to you? The answer is of course the latter (unless you wish to be facetious). I would rather ten poor people be given the chance at a better life than blocking a single welfare abuser from cheating the system.

So what about the other part of the government responsibility on long-term growth? I believe the key is for government to focus on being globally competitive. Ideology is exceptionally damaging to the Canadian economy and the best example is telecommunications. Mobile devices and internet prices are one of the highest in the Western world, with the lowest bandwidth caps and the slowest speeds. This is due entirely to private monopolies owning the market.

Forget neoliberal, supply-side or Chicago school of economics. Do what is best for the country! It is worth little to note that your ideology brings you to call something efficient when it lacks in comparison to the world. We could build our internet infrastructure through private monopolies and allow these companies to act without regulation, gouging customers and hampering the development of our digital economy, all in the name of free market, but at the end of the day, countries such as Japan or Finland forge ahead while we are left in the dust. What comfort is to cling to artificial principles when you live in relative poverty?

• Natural monopolies such as energy and infrastructure (including internet) should be socialised. In the case of infrastructure, this can be rented at slightly above cost to private corporations to provide service. For instance, the government laid fibre optic lines which they can then rent out to private ISPs at near cost who then resell to consumers in a highly competitive environment with nearly no bar to entry (afterall, an entrepreneur merely needs to fork out a small amount of capital to serve a small set of customers)
• Essential services need to be socialised. Healthcare, basic mail, licensing, regulatory bodies, inspections and so on, should be run by the government to reduce costs and corruption.
• Luxuries should be market run. In elastic demand environments, the government should not waste administrative overhead in trying to manage prices.
• Research and development. Universities product new technologies, corporations typically produce slight enhancements. The government should focus grants primarily to universities in order to encourage the growth of new industries and markets, which give our country a distinct time advantage versus others.

Growth and opportunity, that is the mandate of any government.

Atlas Did Not Shrug

Economic theory, a varied and confused mass, where few have certain answers and fewer still can make accurate predictions. Beyond the basics of Keynesian or classical theory, there is little that truly resembles the real world simply because the situation is far too complex. But what of the discussion of the power of a single individual? How much does one man matter?

Individualism, with one of the most extreme forms in Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy, accentuates the power of a single person to make for herself based on her own will power and skill. For Ayn Rand, it became a concept where a few people truly ran society and caused it to progress. In her novel Atlas Shrugged, an oil magnate disappears overnight and an oil well immediately spews its black gold and fire high into the sky. But in fact, such an ideology is ironically an argument against itself. If only a few people could truly achieve then it would make the argument for collectivism all the stronger; place these few people in charge of everyone and run society in a socialist dictatorship.

Beyond this, the general American mood on the issue is likely more accurately portrayed by the nebulous concept of the American Dream; any person can achieve to be the wealthiest most powerful man on Earth but at any given point in time, only one person holds the position. Therefore, by definition, the vast majority of people are in lesser positions. This culture reveres the successful businessman but the adoration of financial acumen intrudes upon society an unhealthy focus on a single aspect of skill. Why else, in contrast to Atlas Shrugged, does a corporation not immediately implode upon itself should its founder disappear? Whereas, in Atlas Shrugged an oil magnate disappears and the oil wells immediately breakdown into ill use, in the real American world, the workers would still continue their duties with someone taking up the mantle of leadership in due time. In fact, the larger the corporation, the less likely the loss of leadership would greatly affect it. Individualism succeeds because, in the real world, the vast majority of people are naturally motivated to work and only this complete skill set does it allow for success. A factory succeeds because a scientist discovered the theory that allowed the engineer to design it. It succeeds because the technicians, skilled labour and menial workers toil in its machinery. It succeeds because the leadership holds to a vision and its management efficiently handles morale and work distribution. Thus, the best addition to the economy is the holistic view of organizations to better understand them.

In the corporate world of today, marketing and sales construe the vast majority of personnel at any given organization. Beyond small businesses, additional workers are mostly non-producing individuals. These are administrative positions, advertising positions, sales positions and so on. When the vast majority of your workforce produces nothing but corporate propaganda and media advertisements, in the false cry of capitalism, it creates a sense that society can achieve much more if these workers had instead produced something tangible, even ideas or simply better products. The engineers, the menial workers, the general staff is largely unaffected by the upper echelons of management beyond the fourth or fifth level. Sales are predicted by the success of advertisements and not product quality. Maple Leaf foods can be responsible for the worst number of deaths due to food poisoning in recent history but still maintain its dominant market position without any adverse affect simply because it handled the public relations issue well. It matters little if the food is any safer. Small businesses are made up mostly of the individuals who produce the product and only a minority perform the business and marketing. If the economy were made up solely of small businesses, efficiency would rise, in terms of workers producing products but one does lose the economies of scale afforded by large corporations. Poorly run businesses with little market share and no power over price would immediately fail but corporations can outlast turmoil by brand recognition. Still, it is hard to predict the actual effect of small business capitalism.

When we see society, especially after the subprime mortgage crisis precipitated by short sighted lenders, dominated by the same individuals who decade after decade cause economic upheaval but government unable to form legislation to combat the waste then we see democracy undermined by financial interests. The corporate entity becomes inefficient because, depending on the industry, once it grows beyond a number of individuals, the extra individuals no longer actually produce tangible products. Thus, for large corporations, they do not obtain money from a superior product but rather from superior market share. Any single person has not the time or patience to sift through the possible products and thus most make a choice on either price or brand; brand if there is something recognizable, price otherwise. This results in a society where government is unable to purchase open source software because it has no one liable for a lawsuit should some component fail to run correctly. It results in people paying for over priced goods because they are unwilling to trust unknown companies. In this world, you never obtain the market price. Corporations become the same entity with all the wastes we blame on government; inefficient bureaucracy, incompetent leadership, money squandered to a few individuals, mass nepotism. No longer true is the argument that corporations fail if inefficient, such only occurs at the small scale but the adage "You're too big to fail" can be seen with only a quick glance to the American bailout packages for banks and lenders (whereas individual people who similarly suffered during the economic crisis obtained nothing, as if to accentuate the point that if you are small you receive no assistance whatsoever).

So, do we have a society where only a few truly run it, or do we not? Perhaps one can take a peek at statistics.

From http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil105g-eng.htm
Ontario population in 2006: 12,160,282
Welfare recipients: 391 800
Above 250k Income: 67,020

So, if we unrealistically presume all individuals above 250k are inheritance bums and all individuals on welfare are also welfare bums then 3.8% of the population consists of complete moochers. This gives us a certain idea of the number of non-contributors to the economy. It also gives us an idea of how few people can actually be moochers in a society with a good economy and stable government. Should the number of economic non-contributors actually rise to 3.8%, it is likely the effects would be readily apparent and beyond this number would seem like an anarchist state in constant conflict and misery.

From http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil108a-eng.htm
Above 35k income: 3,737,310
Median Total Income Per Family: 66,600 CAD

This gives us a rough idea that most people are in the middle class, a situation that is most desirable for society.

As individuals come and go, any number of people can take their place in society and continue on. The idea that a single man can be a focal point is not only inaccurate but a dangerous idea to behold. Uplifting single individuals above that of others leads to worship of dictatorial situations, where the collective gives up its right and wealth to a few individuals, to paradoxically support the notion of individualism. Instead, this philosophy should be defined by the idea that every person contributes to society because, as an individual, they possess a unique set of skills necessary for a particular facet of the economy. Much as communists contend that a factory cannot run without workers, capitalists also contend that businesses cannot run without businessmen. One does not need to take any philosophy to an extreme. A holistic view of the situation would ask only one question of any person; what is your skill so that it can be best positioned in the economy?

X-Ray Party

Here presented in simple format is a list of ideas that can be used for the improvement of Canadian governance.

The system envisioned is a group of intellectuals, for a country of Canada's size and current population of 33 million, of roughly 10 000 to head the various roles of governance. They would have authority over the bureaucracy and direct the projects. In turn, they answer to the elected officials, which currently is the House of Commons (although they would more formally answer to the Senate).

Therefore, the bureaucracy would have several well defined purposes.

-Collect information, likely this would be done through StatCan, as it currently already does so
-Process information for recommendations, this would be done by the intellectuals in charge of each government department to post recommendations on future policy
-Execute projects, the government will put in policies some of which require work to be done, the bureaucracy conducts such work

The possible risks involved is inter-department conflict and self-justifying agencies. In this regard, intellectuals in charge of a particular agency will have a reason to continue to see the agency thrive in the government budget and may attempt to create reports or recommendations which misrepresent the facts in order to better secure funding. A government watchdog, like the Auditor General, may be useful in this regard to axe departments that are not strictly required, as well as eliminating plum posts.

1) The Intellectuals


Much like corporate hiring policies, all applications are posted in an open manner and resumes are selected from this large pool of candidates. Then, depending on the difficulty of the project, there can be a number of rounds of technical interviews.

Intellectuals hired will be for the roles of

-Manager of teams
-Team lead
-Team base member

This is devised into a system that is basically, a manager in charge of a department with multiple teams to work on each project. Each project has a team lead and a number of base level workers. One project, one team. The level higher than a manager is the cabinet minister.

It is largely the expectation that more levels of management will only lead to poor communication and lack of utilization of the intellectuals.

2) The Bureaucracy

The bureaucracy's job is to ensure that the paperwork is done properly. As such you would wish to minimize the overhead. This would include people to ensure all information is filed properly, forms/digital forms are processed from the general public (for instance, a department which issues licences). As it is not an inherently physically dangerous job, there is likely no reason for a union. It can be handled with normal salaried employees.

It is important for the bureaucracy to be streamlined as much as possible to ensure the maximum amount of labour to use for the various purposes of government.

3) The Elected

The task of elected members of parliament is to be a go-between from the intellectual base, consisting of thousands of people, and developing a sense of the situation from the various managers. Each department, as it is now, would be headed by a cabinet minister. Likely, several departments fall under the same minister. The minister's role is to read, analyse and accept the recommendations arising from the managers.

The managers are intended to be hired based on their expertise in their field, so that their recommendations are logical and evidence-based. For instance, a highly qualified accountant may make recommendations for simplifying the tax code in order to achieve greater efficiency and lower overhead costs in the bureaucracy. Then it is up the minister to combine the wants of the people (ie. the political platform for which he/she won the election) and the recommendations of those qualified in their respective fields.

4) The Point?

The concept is to create a government which does both what is most recommendable by scientific analysis and what is wanted by the people. Satisfying both of these conditions would be a far superior situation to western democracy which primarily only concerns itself with satisfying what people want.

The intellectuals identify the problems in society or areas of improvement. They then lead projects to complete this work.

The bureaucracy facilitates the work by performing all the administrative duties. This is likely to be processing forms, issuing of material, collecting material, physical duties and interaction with the population (perhaps even customer service).

The elected officials are to ensure the government is doing what the people want, whereas the intellectuals are attempting to ensure the government is doing what is intelligent.

5) Role of Government

The primary role of government is to improve the economy, protect and guarantee your rights as a citizen and facilitate resolution of disputes. The constitution will largely and the criminal code will take care of most of the legal issues. Other than this, the largest government role is the economy.

Infrastructure:

The private sector is notorious for being the worst at implementing infrastructure. In a globalised society in which we today live, it is imperative that we minimize the time and effort required to install new infrastructure in order to allow the greatest and fastest economic growth. Failure to do so leads to our businesses operating at a disadvantage to other nations.

Governments should employ crown corporations or make a government led effort to install new infrastructures. As of this writing, the most imperative develop is fibre optic backbone for a digital economy, as well as wireless internet, and city-wide hot spots. Failure to develop this infrastructure will result in businesses being unable to utilize the Internet and fail against more technologically advanced competitors.

Employment Opportunity:
Governments should attempt to identify growing businesses and industries and make 5-10 year long plans for each, in the form of small business grants, tax breaks or other incentives, in order to encourage economic growth. Industries older than this should not receive any special government treatment; it would be a waste of tax dollars to support failing industries. Again, this would be the task of intellectuals to properly conduct this analysis and avoid the temptation of protectionism.

Development of Poor Neighbourhoods:
Poor people do not produce tax income, which from a government perspective is terrible. A good solution would be to pour development into poor neighbourhoods. This includes pouring extra money per capita for poor neighbourhoods for economic development, healthcare and education. The idea is not to bring poor people out of those areas. The idea is to make those areas liveable middle-class neighbourhoods because the people are more well off. It is beneficial for everyone to have more middle class to provide more businesses and thus more job opportunities and tax revenue.

Healthcare/Education/Social services:
Obviously one of the biggest expenses is healthcare, education and other social services (such as EI or pension plans). As these are almost entirely technical areas, one should expect technical individuals in charge. The government should strive to do two things. Reduce costs but also expand services. Improvements in social areas increase (rather than decrease) tax revenues because of the multiplicative effect it has in crime reduction, improved worker health (therefore less sick days) and a more efficient workforce (either because they are more well educated or because they can find more appropriate jobs to match their skill set).

6) Roadmap

Largely, we can begin this with more open hiring procedures in the bureaucracy. The first step is for the hiring of individuals in all government jobs to be open, well advertised and easily accessible on government websites and for anyone to be able to apply.

Next, it is likely that the first new job of the watchdog agencies in Canada to look after the hiring procedures to eliminate nepotism.

After this, as the bureaucracy grows more used to an open hiring procedure, it is probable that morale will increase due to improved skill sets in throughout the departments. While this may or may not occur, the next step is to lower the levels of management. Work environments in corporations are notoriously inefficient because of the many layers of management, a government is no different. Reduction in management layers would streamline communication between the base line workers and the people in control. This would hopefully both raise morale and competency.

Clear management mandates make for easier analysis of government agencies. Well defined goals for each agency would be helpful in determining the efficacy of government and bureaucratic policies. There should not be a reliance on metric based analysis but metrics are useful in a sense. Employees should also not be afraid of certain departments being axed, or projects cancelled. An environment in which individuals can suggest improvements of any kind, including cancelling their own projects, should be developed. Morale can be maintained by the fact that they will not lose their jobs and instead merely be transferred to another more useful project. However, the tool of downsizing should still be maintained.

Largely, today, upsizing or downsizing of government is a fickle policy based on the government in power and the ideology to which they aspire. This is a highly unintelligent manner of axing projects. It cares not the efficacy nor the skill of the individuals.

Intelligent government requires that we be prudent but selective about our actions. Well thought plans are far better than impulsive actions to gain a few votes but damage the country in the long run. Take for instance Paul Martin's refusal to deregulate banks based on the recommendations of bureaucrats under his wing. We see now that had the tories been in power, with their ideology of free market, our economy would have collapsed due to subprime mortgages.

No matter how government develops in the future, it is hoped that it develops for the better.