Remember Meech Lake?

ByDoug Anderson Canada
Let’s get on with the constitutional crisis so we (the people) can build a new constitution that serves citizens rather than politicians

Doug Anderson

May 22, 2025

So a bunch of Alberta right-wingers want to have a referendum to make Alberta a sovereign country. The core group likely wants it to become part of the USA but that’s clearly a non-starter so they’ll start with suggesting a sovereign country and if it runs into trouble they will beg the US to take them over. Maybe. They like Trump, but politics goes in cycles and Trumpism is very unlikely to survive beyond his current 4-year term. Then what would they want?

This is a new-old scenario as we’ve been through this a couple of times with Quebec. The last time was in the late 80s and early 90’s when Mulroney was still Prime Minister. He beat them in their sovereignty referendum … More

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Cutting Government Waste

ByDoug Anderson Canada, Government Policy

Where Bloat Butts up Against The Peter Principle

Prime Minister Carney laid out an ambitious program in his press conference a few days after winning the election. A lot of heavy spending predicated significantly on saving money by cutting government waste. All parties have made this promise for decades but the bloat continues. Governments just tend to be inefficient.

There was a thin little best seller book in the early 1970s entitled The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter. Its main thesis was that in any large hierarchical employment structure (like the civil service) people get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. Incompetence is perhaps too blunt a term – it simply means that they can’t for whatever reason fulfill the responsibilities of their position to the degree expected. Be that as it may, we’ll stick to the term incompetent. People who have reached their “final placement” … More