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Public administration is hard enough when all a government wants to do is tinker; a tax cut here, a few rule changes there, maybe a new trade agreement if the stars align.

It is extremely difficult when the objective is transformative change; think Jean Chrétien’s and Paul Martin’s overhaul of Canadian fiscal policy in the 1990s or the exertions of the Democratic majority in Washington to introduce universal health care in 2010.

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This brings us to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s infrastructure program, the latest reminder that good ideas don’t implement themselves.

In 2015, Trudeau told us voters that he would abandon balanced budgets in order to build roads, bridges, metro lines and other infrastructure that would make Canada’s economy bigger and more competitive. Canadian voters endorsed a return to deficit financing in surprisingly strong numbers. Four years later, many of those people must be disenchanted, notwithstanding what they might think of the prime minister’s ditching of electoral reform, his star-crossed sojourn in India, and his decision to take the side of the white men running SNC-Lavalin over the Indigenous woman running his justice department.