British Election

I usually don't comment on politics, but since this is about what is happening across the Pond, I though I would give it a go. It has been fascinating watching the British election unfurl. They held their first ever televised leaders debate - something that we take for granted here in Canada. And the outcome of that debate has been an increase in support for the third party in the UK, the Liberal Democrats under the leadership of Nick Clegg.

With voting scheduled for May 6, 2010, polls indicate that the outcome will be a "hung" parliament - a minority government in our nomenclature. One of the things that I have found rather strange is how partisan the media in the UK is. Rupert Murdoch controls 40% of the newspapers in the UK and his papers have been slagging the Lib Dem leader in screaming headlines. In the language of Yes, Minister, I believe that these papers have been "economical with the truth". The Sun has also been accused of censoring a poll that was favourable to Nick Clegg the Lib Dem leader. Take a look at the Independent's article that lays out the claim made by these papers and the truth.

Another interesting aspect of the UK election is the work of various think tanks in providing analysis of the platforms of the various parties. One such think tank is the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Over the years I have read a number of their analyses and always found them sound. They have just published quite a number of papers analyzing various aspects of the platforms, including Taxes and benefits; education policy; green policy; welfare reform; productivity, innovation and corporate tax; and the public services. They are well worth the read.

Wall Street Crooks

Making big headlines in the last few days is the charge brought of Fraud brought by the SEC against Goldman Sachs as a result of the subprime and related financial fiasco that precipitated the existing world wide economic recession and the bail out of hundreds of companies. I ranted about the larceny behind the subprime mortgage debacle in a previous post.

The Huffington Post has a fascinating article explaining how one of these massive frauds by Goldman Sachs was orchestrated. In essence one man is alleged to have bundled $2 billion of subprime mortgages that he knew had a very high likelihood of defaulting into an investment vehicle called a "synthetic collateralized debt obligation"...isn't it amazing how these smart wall street types come up with names of investment instruments that sound important but are really JUNK! These debt obligations were sold to pension funds, banks and others and when the mortgage holders defaulted the whole scheme went under and ever one lost money, except of course for Goldman Sachs and the originator of this vehicle who made a fortune.

But the Goldman Sachs charges could be just the beginning of many other charges of fraud against these smart wall street types. Lets hope so!

The people who created these elaborate schemes and caused losses in the billions should be brought to trial.

Wayne Reports & Social Media

At the end of March, Wayne Wouters, the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet of the Government of Canada (boy that's a long title), released the 17th annual report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada - it is also Wayne's 1st report as Clerk.

I found it to be a very interesting report on a few fronts. The first is in Wayne's introduction where he underscores the importance of values as a cornerstone of the public service. Values underpin everything that we do and how we do it. It does not matter what the issue is or what new technology exists, public service values matter.

in 1987, IPAC put forth its Statement of Principles Regarding the Conduct of Public Employees that underscore that the public services of Canada be seen as neutral, non-partisan, effective and innovative institutions that serve the best interests of the governments and citizens of this country. In 2005, IPAC, after a wide consultative process put forward the Public Servants Commitments which reflects the values of public servants. Both these documents reflect the values that underpin public service and are reflected in Wayne's report.

The second area that caught my attention was the discussion on the use of Web 2.0 technology to enable public servants to accomplish their jobs more effectively. These collaborative tools are changing the way we do business and I am glad that Wayne is embracing these tools. I have written in the past about the need for governments to embrace these technologies so as to engage in meaningful consultations and dialogues with citizens - what I termed as open source policy development. IPAC has just completed the 1st phase of a study entitled “Social Media and Public Policy Dilemmas” that addresses some of the issues related to Web 2.0 in the public sector.

We held a series of roundtables in cities across Canada to get the views and input of public servants, academics and other interested parties. It is evident from this first phase of the study that there is a need for a concerted and focused attempt to look at the impact of social media on government – from the management of information to how we run our organizations. We will be shortly publishing this report.

If you have not read Wayne's report yet, I would highly recommend that you do so. In future posts I will come back to Wayne's report, especially as it deals with Public Service Renewal.

150!Canada Conference - a few pictures

Here are a few more pictures from our recent 150!Canada conference. These pictures were taken by the amazing David Pike.

This first picture is of me in my Captain Canada pose. Do you like the Canadian flag behind me?

All the presenters signed a few of our 150!Canada posters...what a great souvenir.

The stage at the NAC had these wonderful BIG numbers that matched our conference logo.  They are now at the Museum of Science & Technology in Ottawa.

 Here are some pictures of the delegates hard at work planning & imaging Canada's sesquicentennial.

And here is a picture of our great facilitators (the "red" shirts)

These pictures just give you a taste of the energy at this conference.  Hope you enjoy them.

Clerk 2.0

Bravo to Wayne Wouters for joining the Web 2.0 crowd. Wayne now has is own website and is also on Twitter!!

It is great to see the head of the Canadian Public Service embracing technology and engaging in on-line discussions. This is an example to all the other heads of public services across Canada - I hope that they follow Wayne's lead.

I'm sure that this public face is just the tip of the iceberg,as I presume that Wayne is probably using similar technology to communicate internally with Government of Canada public servants.

Kudos!

150!Canada Conference - Videos

The videos of all the amazing speakers at our recent 150!Canada conference are now available on line. If you missed the conference you will not want to miss these amazing talks. To give you a feel of the calibre of the talks, below you can watch and listen to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Right Honourable Beverly McLachlin speak on Citizenship.

A special shout-out to our great videographer, John Hall of Stretford Media for an amazing job on these videos.

150!Canada: Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin on Vimeo.

Man made environmental disaster

I was surfing the web when I came across the story of the Aral Sea.  In the space of 50 years, what had been the world's 4th largest fresh water lake has now shrunk by 90 percent due to the diversion of the rivers feeding the Aral Sea to cotton production. Towns that once were thriving fishing communities next to the Sea are now hundreds of kilometres away from what little water there is and are stranded in the middle of a dessert.

After the Meltdown

On March 24th I had the opportunity to attend an interesting session entitled "After the Meltdown: The limits and possibilities of economics" that was organized by the Centre for Global Challenges of the Glendon School of Public & International Affairs.

After introductions by Alex Himelfarb and words of welcome by Mamdouh Shoukri (President of York University), the microphone was turned over to Chaviva Hosek, President of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research to introduce the illustrious panelists.

The panelists were George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate & Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley; Tim Besley, Professor of Economics & Political Science at the London School of Economics; and Pierre Fortin, Professor of Economics at the University of Québec at Montreal.

George Akerlof spoke about "animal spirits" and how they impact the economy (this is from his recent book entitled "Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism". The term "animal spirits" is derived from Keynes and relates to the confidence and gut feelings in determining business decisions.

"Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits - a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities." (161-162) - J.M.Keynes, General Theory.

By this he meant that data alone (profit/loss, eps, etc) are not enough to explain business decisions and that psychology has a role to play in it. Prof. Akerlof talked about the five animal spirits, with a special emphasis on "snake oil" to explain the meltdown.

In his talk, Prof Fortin outlined the three economic tasks that governments will have to respond to in the next decade: namely, drawing lessons from the recession, responding to the demographic forces  that will impact western countries and accelerating economic growth.

On demographics, he quoted David Foot who said "Demographics explain about two-thirds of everything".  This is especially true if you look at the demographics facing western industrialized countries like Canada.  I have previously written and spoken about this (In fact I gave a speech which contained some of this information and my analysis a couple of days before this session). The combination of demographics and ever increasing health care costs will impose a squeeze on public finances over the medium term according to Prof Fortin.  There are only two possible solutions: 1) radical change to our health care sector , and 2) accelerate economic growth.

It was an interesting discussion and I will post my remarks on the demographic challenges to either this blog (if I can figure out how) or to the IPAC website.