While I was away: Government and other

Where intent meets reality: Embedding implementation into government decision-making. 

Good reminder by former DMs Flack and Wallace on the importance of implementation. As noted previously in my blog, that was the premise, along with citizen-centred service, that was being the creation of Service Canada, largely neglected subsequently:

• Implementation considerations need to be at the heart of federal government decision-making.
• Sequencing of the cabinet review process needs to be altered so that implementation issues are canvassed from the beginning.
• Political parties should be able to consult departments on implementation issues when developing their campaign platforms.
• The “challenge” function of central agencies, focused on reducing risk, should be recalibrated with a complementary “lift” function, focused on helping successful implementation.
• Projects should be funded to enable success, including through realistic costing ranges. There should be greater delegation of project authority, with more timely approval of interim decisions for complex projects.
• Program design should be simplified to improve delivery and reduce costs.

Hancock: Spectators at the Apocalypse

Hard to be optimistic these days…:

… Fear, complacency, helplessness – each is amplified by the digital world we now inhabit. The same screens that frighten us also distract and tranquillize us. The outrage that once gathered people in the public square is now discharged in the comments section – just as angry, perhaps more so, but detached from an organizing movement or even an organizing idea. Together with our virtual comrades, we like, mock, share, sign online petitions, and post those memes, satisfied that we have registered our dissent. Then we close the tab. We have not stopped protesting; we have dematerialized protest.

Worse, as Neil Postman warned 40 years ago, our media turn disasters into entertainment. We consume looming global crises in the same format, and with the same thumb-swipe, as sports highlights, celebrity gossip, and ads for sneakers. An existential warning from a climate scientist is queued between a book review and a cat video. Wildfire devastation becomes striking drone footage. Catastrophe becomes content.

Historian Christopher Clark described the leaders who stumbled into the First World War as “sleepwalkers” – actors who helped create a catastrophe they neither intended nor fully understood. Our predicament may be stranger. We are sleepwalking with our eyes wide open. The warnings are everywhere. We see catastrophes unfolding. We can even imagine how they end. And still we sit and watch.

Candice Malcolm wins the 2026 George Jonas Freedom Award

Well worth reading for a better understanding of some right-leaning media entrepreneurs. Interesting mix of being off the grid in terms of one’s personal life, and very much on the grid for one’s political life:

…So we have to ask why. What happened? How did our country fall apart so fast in my adult lifetime?

While I feel incredibly lucky and truly blessed by God, over the last few years I have become incredibly disillusioned with our institutions — because I can, I mostly avoid them.

I don’t trust the media establishment, so I built my own media company to report the news and tell the truth.

I don’t trust the medical establishment, and so I chose an unmedicated homebirth rather than stepping foot in a hospital post-Covid.

I’m so distrustful of our food systems that Kaz and I bought a farm where we raise our own chickens; eat grass-fed, hormone-free beef; we grow our own vegetables; and bake our own bread.

And finally, we homeschool our children.

That’s the anti-establishment trifecta: home births, homesteading and homeschooling.

Anil Anora: Neither Uncontrolled Acceleration Nor Technological Paralysis – Here’s What AI Governance Should Look Like

Nice to see this thoughtful and comprehensive look at AI governance issues. Elephant in the room of course it that Canada, like many other countries, are largely at the mercy of the US-based tech companies:

• Every AI initiative should begin with articulation of the public or organizational purpose it is intended to serve.
• AI governance cannot be separated from data governance.
• For consequential and frontier systems, a developer or deployer should be required to present a safety case: a structured, evidence-supported argument that a system is acceptably safe for a defined operating context. 
• A so-called “kill switch” should not be treated as a single button or a rhetorical promise.
• Responsibility must follow the capacity to prevent harm.
• Trust cannot be created through communications after the important decisions have already been made.
• AI systems, model weights, data and compute cross borders, while legal authority remains largely national.

Finally, governance must be able to learn and adjust. Legislatures should set rights, duties, prohibitions and institutional mandates. Technically capable regulators should update evaluation protocols and standards as evidence develops, subject to transparency and oversight. Regulatory sandboxes, public-interest research capacity, shared testing infrastructure and clear procurement rules can lower barriers to responsible innovation. Adaptive governance should mean disciplined learning within democratic boundaries, not permanent discretion for governments or firms.