Thursday, November 5, 2015

An Auspicious Start



Today, the first full day of the new Trudeau government, is a day that suggests what is to come. The long-from mandatory census, whose importance I discussed in a recent post, is returning in 2016, clearly an encouraging indicator that the ideology informing most of the decisions made by the previous regime is being replaced with data-driven policy considerations.
Navdeep Bains, the newly named Minister of Innovation, Science and Development, confirmed the news to reporters on Parliament Hill, declaring that the country needed access to high quality data.

The announcement rolls back one controversial decision by Conservatives, one that prompted critics to charge that government was turning its back on fact-based decision-making.
We all, I am sure, look forward to more signs of progressivity in the days, weeks and months to come.


6 comments:

  1. If he's got enough mops and pails, Lorne, there's a great deal Mr. Trudeau can do in short order to clean up the messes of the past decade. There will be no end of interests clamoring for priority. I would like to see the National Energy Board stopped dead in its tracks until the industry-sourced panel can be replaced. It needs people who represent Canada, not the Canadian Petroleum Producers Association. I also want the west coast defences reinstated - shuttered Coast Guard stations re-opened, fisheries, waterways and navigation regulations brought back, scientists and monitors axed from the Fisheries & Oceans department re-hired and put back on the job. Yet these things can't be done with the flip of a switch.

    Perhaps the most important matter is the Paris climate summit just weeks away. That is widely considered the "make it or break it" opportunity to find global consensus on effective emissions reductions. I believe the consensus that holds if that opportunity slips through our fingers it's unlikely we'll ever get another chance in the time that remains.

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    1. I read your post on the NEB, Mound. That swamp certainly has to be drained with dispatch. With regard to the other issues you raise, I'm not sure if they are regulation issues that can quickly be enacted, but if so, as you say, there is little time to lose.

      One of the questions on my mind is when the entourage goes to Paris, will Canada make a specific commitment on reduction targets, the details to be worked out afterwards with the provinces, or will it be something less? There is obviously no time for consultations at this point, but I would rather see the former than the latter.

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  2. An excellent omen, Lorne. Let's hope there are more of them to come.

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    1. There are a lot of hopes riding on this new government, Owen.

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  3. Jesus Christ on a crutch, Lorne, the silly buggers chose Rona Ambrose as their interim leader.

    https://youtu.be/OL5BZtdumcw Blue Swede "Hooked on a Feeling"

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    1. And I just read in this morning's (Friday's) paper, Mound, that the same Con Kool Aid is being served.:
      " .... newly elected Conservative MPs who met in Ottawa Thursday for the first time since the Oct. 19 loss. All underscored the need for the party to change its tone and communicate its message better. But most insisted the party’s policies were sound and “compassionate.”

      No further comment, I take it, is needed here.

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