MacDougall: Trump’s tariffs will demand all the skill our public service can muster

Yep:

…The bonus of the size of the challenge is that all options will be on the table. There is no idea too crazy to get a hearing. Here are several areas of focus:

• For those in the Department of Finance, there is the immediate work of a response to tariffs. But there is also long overdue work on tax simplification and (hopefully) tax reduction. If you’re the team with the plan to put the tax code on a postcard, now is the time to present it. Canada will need to become a far more attractive place to invest and do business.

• A similar challenge awaits those in the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, who will need to keep being ambitious on competition law and the granting of basic science research. Cartels and oligopolies need to go, and scientists looking for a new home as Trump blazes the National Institutes of Health need a reason to come North.

• If you’re in the Privy Council handling intergovernmental affairs or in Natural Resources Canada handling the energy sector, now is the time to find ways to get to “yes” faster than ever before. Streamlining environmental approvals and knocking down interprovincial barriers to trade will require a major reworking of federalism as it has been practised (or not practised) for decades. And while Quebec has traditionally been a roadblock, the prospect of becoming American should create more wiggle room for how to be Canadian.

• But the most ambitious action needs to happen at National Defence and Global Affairs Canada. Canada will need to work the rooms at multilateral fora like the G7, G20 and NATO to create a coalition that can counter the new American direction. And while this must address military spending and new avenues for trade, it must also include ways for like-minded democracies to place constraints on the platforms of the “attention economy” that have done so much to skew debate around public policy.

Lenin would have loved the propaganda potential and network effects of a global Facebook. He would have loved to be Elon Musk, with his thumb on the scales of truth. We can be sure the current Vladimir in the Kremlin loves them, too. Indeed, it’s why Putin doesn’t let them operate at home while exploiting them abroad.

Source: MacDougall: Trump’s tariffs will demand all the skill our public service can muster