Preston Manning

Many years ago, when I was in the consulting business, I visited Washington DC to re-connect with some Republican contacts I had previously made in California and who had since risen to positions of influence with the Nixon administration. In their California days they had been idealistic advocates of change, but when I met them in Washington most of that idealism had evaporated. As they ruefully explained, “ Here in Washington DC, the real name of the game is simply “appearing to cope”.

And how do politicians in high office play this game? When issue X arises, hold a news conference or give a speech acknowledging X’s existence and expressing deep concern. Convene a hearing or a conference on X, calling for decision makers and experts on X to attend and testify. Issue an executive order or send a draft bill to Congress with X in the title, the preamble, and the news release. In other words, substitute announcement for action, conferencing and discussion for results, and appearance for substance.

Flash forward 50 years and regrettably the “appearing to cope” strategy is very much alive and now practiced in Canada by the newly elected Carney government.

Is Infrastructure Development, long neglected and even obstructed by the discredited Trudeau administration, a pressing issue? Of course. So, borrowing from the Conservative platform, now make Infrastructure Development a theme of speeches and commentaries by Liberals seeking and winning election. Post election, convene a federal provincial conference with Infrastructure Development high on the agenda and post-conference communiques announcing “cooperation” on the subject. Introduce a bill in parliament purporting to facilitate Infrastructure Development by reducing federal regulations and interprovincial barriers while prophesying billions of dollars of investment in Infrastructure Development. As yet no actual infrastructure development has occurred – there are no shovels in the ground – but the appearance has been given that the federal government is successfully addressing the issue.

“Appearing to do” as a substitute for actually doing is now complemented and amplified in this age of social media by the ease with which governments and politicians can also “appear to be” something or someone they are not. The exhortation to “Do, rather than appear to do” should now be accompanied by that of the old Latin motto – Esse Quam Videri – “Be, rather than appear to be”.

As the contractors complete the future Chamber of the House of Commons in the refurbished Parliament Building in Ottawa, maybe they should carve into the ceiling of the Chamber – in a prominent place visible to all members of the House. “Do, rather than appear to do. Be, rather than appear to be.” Would not the acceptance and practice of those two exhortations render our politics and our government more worthy of public trust?

David Clinton

To my great surprise I recently noticed that, despite being deeply engaged in wars against at least four determined enemies, Israel doesn’t spend all that much more on their military than Canada does on its forces. What might that tell us about government efficiency?

There’s fairly universal agreement that Canada doesn’t spend enough on its military. But before we can even ask how much we should be spending, we should understand how much we’re already spending. And figuring that out isn’t nearly as easy as I’d expected.

According to the 2025–26 Expenditures by Purpose data released by the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of National Defence (DND) was allocated $35.7 billion (CAN). However, the New York Times recently reported that Primer Minister Carney’s $9.3 billion increase would bring the total defence-related spending to $62.7 billion – which suggests that, prior to the increase, we were set to spend $53.4 billion (CAN).

So I’ll work with both of those figures: $35.7 billion ($26 billion USD) and the pre-announcement $53.4 billion ($39 billion USD). By contrast, Israel currently spends around $37 billion (USD) on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) which is in the neighborhood of 18 percent of their total budget.¹ The IDF is (literally) getting a much bigger bang for their buck.²

I’m going to compare the military inventories of both countries to get a sense of what a dollar of government spending can get you. I understand that this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison and there are many complicating factors here. But I think the exercise could lead us to some useful insights. First off, here’s a very rough estimate of existing inventories:

I’m sure there are plenty of caveats we could apply to those numbers, including how much of that equipment is actually fit for service on any given day. But they’ll have to do.

In addition, there are currently 68,000 regular troops in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) along with 22,500 reserves, while the IDF employs 169,500 regular troops and 465,000 reserves. They also cost money.

Based on some very rough estimates,³ I’d assess the value of IDF assets at around 2.6 times the value of comparable CAF assets. That means that the IDF – using their procurement systems – would need to spend just $14.4 billion (USD) to purchase the equivalent of the current set of CAF assets.

Now compare that with our actual (pre-increase) expenditures of either $26 billion USD or $39 billion USD and it seems that we’re overspending by either 80 percent or 270 percent.

I think we’d be wise to wonder why that is.

3

If you’re really interested, you can see my calculations here.