.
I totally agree. Let me explain my view of why that is so hard to do.
Our country, province, and municipalities are not run by elected politicians. It is run by career bureaucrats. These life-long appointed characters get salary increases by growing the size of their empires. If any politician tries to change that, they go into protection mode leaking info to the media, whipping up public sentiment, dragging up dirt on the politician, and taking forever to release information to facilitate change. They just need to drag things out long enough to outlast the politician. When the next guy gets elected, they drag out their favorite growth strategy, slather it in icing, and sell it as a political accomplishment for the next politician.
In my experience, most politicians are actually great people with good intentions. But they are no match for the bureaucrats with a whole career of experience, system knowledge, and a full network of like minded bureaucrats who all have other objectives.
This is largely true. The layers of government that actually get the work done (or don't) are what we refer to around here as the "mandarins". They're the ones who carry the institutional knowledge so that the wheels can continue to turn while politicians - both clueful and clueless - come and go. My most recent disappointment in Alberta in that regard (during the NDP's time in office) was that they continued to feed a bad program (created by the Conservatives) that I had railed against for years, even while it was being created. Had they understood it, I'm certain the NDs would have killed it off, but they were justifiably preoccupied with getting their legs under them for the first time in government and didn't have the chance to learn about this particular pot of evil bubbling on a back burner, out of their sight, where the mandarins who had created it under the previous government just kept it quietly running and are probably still feeding it in increments of $100M.
This bureaucracy is what's been (stupidly) labeled "the deep state", but those who demonize and attack it
en masse fail to draw the necessary distinctions between the structures and programs we need and those we don't, nor properly focus on where things really need to (and can) be improved. So you get debacles like Musk's DOGGY boys amputating entire departments, then scrambling to reverse themselves after learning that they do things that citizens actually
want - you know, like "nuclear safety".
Of course, the key to understanding this phenomenon is study, and heartily recommend James Boren's masterwork "When in Doubt, Mumble - A Bureaucrat's Handbook". In it he codifies the bureaucrat's creed:
When in charge, ponder.
When in trouble, delegate.
When in doubt, mumble.
It's absolutely hilarious, and includes a section on pondering poses suitable for various circumstances. I can't find an online copy, but it's available used at reasonable prices (and unreasonable ones too, it seems). Another of his titles attached.
Boren was also, interestingly, related by marriage to Laurence Peter (and who I didn't know was Canadian!), who formulated the Peter Principle:
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
Dude, are you doing a Vonnegut riff here?
