Unlike the private sector, senior public servants are rarely removed for persistent underperformance. And tone from the top, however well calibrated, cannot substitute for rigor on the ground.
Ministers must be equipped to interrogate advice with the same skepticism, financial scrutiny, and risk discipline that any serious investor would demand before committing billions of dollars of capital.
The real change is architectural. It’s less about trimming fat than resetting the bones of fiscal management, turning Budget 2025 from a spending list into a structural blueprint.
Cuts should focus on non-essential administrative or back-office functions that don’t directly contribute to service delivery.
Rather than chasing headlines or diplomatic distractions, we should focus on delivering value—exporting food, medicine, energy, and innovation to the world’s fastest-growing markets: China, India, and ASEAN. The demand is there.
HR teams have grown into sprawling bureaucracies, often mirrored by similar functions hidden within other branches. These duplications add cost, complexity, and confusion.
Too often, well-meaning restructurings don’t have the right execution plan, or reforms add complexity. If the Carney government is serious with this spending review, it must be honest about what hasn’t worked and why.
The public service needs a culture of outcomes, not optics. That means making executives accountable, and, yes, having the courage to dismiss those who fail in ways that cost Canadians millions.
The choice before Parliament is binary: strategic reinvention or fiscal drift. It’s time to stop pretending this business model can be modernized with enough public cash injections. It can’t. The smarter move is a managed exit—structured, deliberate, and designed to maximize public value.
The old playbook of trimming travel budgets and giving departments arbitrary cut targets won’t cut it.
Why are billions in public funding flowing offshore instead of helping to develop Canadian industries and foster intellectual property ownership?
If Canada can’t turn its economy around—can’t match the AI-driven global economy with productivity and economic growth—it won’t just lose its seat at the table, it will be relegated to the shelf in the backroom, next to the old Nortel telephones and Blackberries.