OTTAWA—The “deliverology” mantra of the Trudeau government has delivered a new toy.

The Liberal government has set up a new website to publicly report on the progress — or lack thereof – that federal departments are making on the marching orders Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered to each minister when his government came to power two years ago.

The “mandate letter tracker,” found online at www.canada.ca/results, is intended to track only specific assignments given in ministerial mandate letters, not Liberal party electoral platform promises, a senior government official said.

The official said it is not a political effort by the government to pat itself on the back, however there is “of course” political input into the status reports.

Unveiled Tuesday, the tracker showed for the first time the Liberal government has dropped two commitments — to give a 12-month break on Employment Insurance premiums for firms that hire younger workers into permanent positions, and to remove all GST on new capital investments in affordable rental housing.

The EI premium break was abandoned after the Department of Finance cited research to determine “this was not the most effective or efficient way of spending public resources to create jobs for young people,” the tracker says. It outlines other measures the government has taken on youth job creation.

Same with the GST break proposed on capital investment in housing. The tracker says the government “concluded, based on research and evidence, that there were more effective ways of encouraging the construction of affordable rental housing.”

Those two are listed under the heading “not being pursued,” as is a commitment to establish a special parliamentary committee to consult on electoral reform. The special committee was struck, but the official said everyone knows the government backed off Trudeau’s electoral promise that the 2015 election would “be the last one” held under the first-past-the-post system, and to suggest otherwise would be disingenuous, he acknowledged. It shows, he suggested, the tracker would not try to skirt touchy topics.

The public website — intended as an exercise in transparency and accountability — is a first for any national government, said the official who briefed reporters.

It is not intended as a “report card” nor to address overarching promises like “growing the economy” that serve as underlying guidance for the government’s moves, say officials.

Rather, it will report on detailed “bullet points” in the ministerial mandate letters, and is based on the sort of progress assessments conducted internally, he said.

The website search function filters ministerial commitments by theme like “Canada in the World” or by specific search terms like “peace operations” and provides links to the original mandate letters. Where a commitment was dropped from a subsequent mandate letter, after a cabinet shuffle for example, the status of the original commitment is nevertheless included.

Tuesday morning, the tracker said it has documented 364 commitments across all mandate letters; but on its first day 42 commitments had no status reports. The official said the tracker will be updated every two to three weeks.

The tracker says the Liberal government has:

“Completed, fully met” 66 commitments; like signing agreements with the provinces and territories on health care and CPP reforms, the Canada Child Benefit, and ratifying the Paris accord on climate change.

“Completed, modified” one commitment — to resettle 25,000 refugees from Syria, with 26,172 Syrian refugees (government-assisted and privately sponsored) between November 2015 and February 2016.

“Underway/on track” 218 commitments, like rewriting the national security law brought in by the previous Conservative government

“Underway/with challenges” 13 commitments including “balance the budget in 2019/20.” Instead, the government says there is a “result anticipated” as a balanced budget is foreseen “over the long term” and steady improvement in the government’s bottom line is tracked by a decline in the federal debt-to-GDP measure.

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“Not being pursued” are the three above: electoral reform, the GST break on capital investment and affordable housing, and the EI premium break on firms hiring young workers

“Ongoing commitments” include 21 commitments such as “making Canada a leader of international efforts to combat climate change” and “maintain constructive relations and deepen trade and commerce with the United States.”

In a written statement, Trudeau said, “Canadians should have the best tools possible to hold us accountable….we want Canadians to know exactly how we’re doing, and help drive progress on issues that matter most to them.”

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