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I’m not a big fan of the Auditor-General’s office doing MBA-style “value for money” audits instead of boring accounting “was money lost or stolen” audits. It happens partly because proper oversight of the executive branch is not being done by the people who don’t seem to realize it’s their job, namely MPs. But clearly the AG’s office cannot possibly maintain continuous oversight over the entire executive branch. So they keep swooping in, scooping up handfuls of rot and waving it around, then retreating to prepare to do it all again. And the bureaucracy knows how to outlast such critics.

They don’t engage in bruising PR battles with the AG. Instead they kowtow, admit failings, promise improvements, and go back to business as usual. The CRA commitment to deal with 80 per cent of tax appeals within 180 days would only sound good in government anyway. But we all know it won’t happen because what are you going to do, file your taxes with a rival outfit next year?

Likewise, Ferguson noted, the Armed Forces are worryingly short of troops because their recruiting and training programs are lousy. As they were warned by the Auditor-General’s office in 2002 under Chrétien and 2006 when Harper was first PM. And will be again in 2026. Around and around and around it goes.

To some extent the problem is not that people within government, and in politics, don’t understand their trade. It’s that they understand it all too well, and play “frustrate the public” with consummate skill. But over time it’s perilous to everyone. Thus the AG reports that the volume of contested tax assessments has tripled in the last decade as frustrated citizens increasingly push back. And people in government can’t defuse such looming systemic crises because they really don’t understand what they’re doing wrong or why.

This bizarre ignorance explains the persistent appeal of “outsiders” in politics unlike, say, plumbing, where being untrained would not be a boast. But what we really need is people who know a bit less about politics and a bit more about governance, possess less low cunning and more wisdom, and know how to stop us all from drowning in bureaucracy, clutching frantically at auditor-generals’ reports as we go down for the 30th time.

National Post