In the aftermath of the 2015 federal election the Liberal Government faced a Herculean task. How to implement the 200-plus promises made during the campaign. They called in the “deliverology” guru Sir Michael Barber.

Barber had built a minor reputation helping the Blair Government in the U.K. He attended several cabinet meetings, left some implementation ideas and a consulting bill for $200,000.

The only visible result was the establishment of a special cabinet committee tasked with overseeing the delivery and results of the government’s wide-ranging agenda. Ministers were given detailed mandate letters and expected to lead the implementation of promises that fell within their ministries.

Fast forward to today and it’s clear this strategy has yielded limited results. The non-partisan website TrudeauMeter tracks the Liberals performance against a list of 226 promises. The score so far? Only 59 of the 226 promises have been implemented, 36 have been broken and the remaining 131 are either not started or in progress.

This isn’t a stellar performance for any government at mid-mandate. The Liberal solution? Create your own promise-tracker system and — surprise! surprise! — the results look much better.

The new government website called the “Mandate Letter Tracker” claims to provide a status report on all the commitments found in the prime minister’s mandate letters to ministers. “The site is intended to help Canadians hold the Government accountable.”

In theory this seems a rather politically risky but welcome step toward greater transparency and accountability. In practice it’s a self serving, partisan interpretation by a government assessing its own performance.

Instead of listing specific promises, like the TrudeauMeter site, the Liberals have confused the picture by collating some 364 “commitments” that are contained in the PM’s mandate letters to his ministers. When you drill down into the site categories it becomes clear their interpretation of success is much different than the non-partisan TrudeauMeter analysis.

The Liberals claim 218 of their commitments are “underway on track,” 13 “underway with challenges” and 21 are “ongoing commitments.” This amounts to a 70 per cent underway self-grading. The non-partisan TrudeauMeter lists 73 promises of 226 “in progress” or only 32 per cent. The Liberals say they are “not pursuing” only 3 commitments. In contrast the TrudeauMeter lists 36 “broken promises.”

The three “not pursuing” commitments acknowledged by the government are electoral reform, an EI break for firms hiring permanent young workers and the removal of GST from low cost housing capital. The TrudeauMeter lists dozens of additional promises that have been broken:

Provide a costing analysis for every government bill. Two years into their mandate and the Liberals have yet to provide the public with a cost analysis of any legislation.

Run short-term deficits of less than $10 billion in fiscal 2016 and 2017. Instead the deficit will balloon to over $18 billion this year and $15 next year — with no plan to balance the budget in the foreseeable future.

Phase out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The government reneged on this promise recently by locking in a liquefied natural gas subsidy until 2025.

Re-establish life long pensions as an option for injured veterans. Two years after the election veterans are still pressing the government to fulfil this commitment.

The 2016 middle class tax cut will be revenue neutral. The promise to raise taxes on the wealthy and lower them on the middle class actually cost $ 1.2 billion.

Ensure Access to Information laws apply to the PM and minister’s offices. The new legislation does not make these offices fully subject to the access-request law.

And the list goes on ...

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The “Mandate-Letter Tracker: Delivering results for Canadians” is on a Government of Canada website. It leaves the visitor with the impression that the evaluation of the government’s performance is unbiased and assessed fairly. In reality it is a partisan evaluation paid for by the electorate.

If Trudeau wants to assess his promise-progress over the next two years he should move his Tracker to the Liberal Party website where it belongs. It should be paid for by the Liberal Party. Then visitors would treat the results with the caution they deserve.

R. Michael Warren is a former corporate director, Ontario deputy minister, TTC chief general manager and Canada Post CEO. r.michael.waren@gmail.com

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