Liberal Minority Government 2025 - ???

[QV]

Whatever Canada is doing isn't working.

We need Argentina's President Javier "chainsaw" Milei for a few years.

 

[Jarnhamar]

I think you are under some naive assumption that if we just had "proper oversight" and enforcement mechanisms that we wouldn't have cases like you listed above.

That's poppycock. Government will always waste, squander, misspend, and sometime downright embezzle, no matter how robust and well intentioned its oversight mechanisms are.

No home is 100% intruder proof.

Is a home with a locked reinforced door, fence, good lighting, motion cameras, guard dog, and an alarm system more secure than a home with a locked door?

 

[ArmyRick]

And you don't think that the Conservatives under PP would not?

He absolutely could. He may very well, and in my books, that would be his first red check mark.

He has an advantage. Lets say I am Pierre, I win the next election (settle down people), and I had decided fiscal priorities over defence (I hope he doesn't), I could hear the spin "..the financial mismanagement of the Liberals was worse than we thought, we have no choice but to cut the submarines....blah, blah, blah"

He will exploit the "blame the previous Liberals" card for a little while (hopefully not 8-9 years like Justin did), that is politics.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Whatever Canada is doing isn't working.

We need Argentina's President Javier "chainsaw" Milei for a few years.

All I know is that my passport expires in early Feb 2026 but I'm looking to get it renewed in the next week because whatever the wait times are now, they will only get worse after the budget cuts come in the next 6+ weeks.

 

[Remius]

Very possible.
I'm mixing oversight and efficiency. I'm not set on a DOGE model; I'm set on improving efficiency and waste.


Would you say we improved since 2015?

No clue. We are in the middle of it. But you can bet a lot of the oversight groups will be cutting their 15% like everyone else.

On October 19, 2015, the newly elected Liberal Government promised an “Open, transparent, and accountable government”. They promised to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and increase citizen access to information.

What makes the new massive efficiency promise different from the last 11 years of promises?

The fact that you can easily find what we spend money on shoes that some transparency exists..

Opposition parties. It's great they caught it but I don't think we should rely on them as being non partisan. I don't trust the CPC to report on something where they're guilty too.

They aren’t. They act in the info that is provided by oversight orgs.

Plus, the parliament, where this was reported, recently wasn't sitting for 10 months. That isn't an efficient reporting system.


We can't count on whistleblowers as a primary means of oversight and reporting.

And they aren’t the primary means either. But there are laws and tools that allow for actual whistleblowing. There is an org that oversees that.

It still exposed massive inefficiencies in the government. Inefficiencies the government promised to fix 5 years prior.

Sure.

The Auditor General didnt discover it. The opposition did and reported it. Again, it's great they did but opposition parties arent non-partisan. They're going to report on violations where their hands are clean.

Once again. Opposistion parties act on the info they get from a variety of sources including things like the AG.

My contention there is the risk of the money being stolen or misappropriated.

A doge like group won’t prevent that.

Gaza is a glaring example of the UN and NGOs short comings.
We're patting ourselves on the back for sending 200 million dollars to countries Africa with shoddy at best proof it's going to intended victims and not into the hands of warlords.

The answer isn’t getting rid of soft power though.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Okay. We need an organization to catch and curb inefficiency with our government including how it does business with contractors.

Finding failures isn't that hard. Usually the media get onto them eventually, particularly the big ones. The question is whether the people who failed are fired or otherwise encouraged to quit or move on. Another question is whether public employers are diligent enough about releasing weak performers - say, everyone more than a couple of standard deviations below the mean, every year (ie. about 2.5% of the work force).

 

[Brad Sallows]

Very possible.
I'm mixing oversight and efficiency. I'm not set on a DOGE model; I'm set on improving efficiency and waste.

The usable parts of DOGE were the tools and processes they developed for identifying probable points of improvement. The resulting products should have been turned over to agencies and Congress for investigation and, if warranted, action.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Okay. We need an organization to catch and curb inefficiency with our government including how it does business with contractors.


Why isn't it being used and enforced?



I don't see it my friend.

Phoenix Pay System (A conservative initiative originally)
Original budget was $309 million. Costs escalated to $954 million, with projections suggesting total costs could reach $2.2 billion by 2023.

SDTC
Awarded $59 million to 10 projects that were ineligible for funding and had frequently overstated their projects' benefits. Only reason it was discovered was a whistleblower.

COVID
25% of Canada's total COVID-19 spending, approximately $89.9 billion, was wasted due to inefficiencies and mismanagement.

ArriveCan
One of hundreds of projects.
$80,000 turns into $60 million? (ironically its estimated to be even more but the governments shitty record keeping cant track the true cost).

Not even a dollar has been returned.

In June 2025, the House of Commons passed a motion demanding the return of $64.5 million paid to GC Strategies, the primary contractor behind the app. The Auditor General's report revealed that there was no evidence of work performed for this payment, leading to calls for accountability and the recovery of taxpayer money .

The motion gives the government 100 days to return the funds. The government could jave made $16 million dollars on interest with that money.

$76 million dollars wasted on 1 project.

Finally it was the CPC and NDP who brought up this issue in the house of Commons. It wasn't a system whose mandate is to safeguard against this kind of stuff.
It's also a good example of why the parliament shouldn't rise for 10 months.

If you can rattle all this off, wasn’t it detected by the systems in place?

 

[Czech_pivo]

Finding failures isn't that hard. Usually the media get onto them eventually, particularly the big ones. The question is whether the people who failed are fired or otherwise encouraged to quit or move on. Another question is whether public employers are diligent enough about releasing weak performers - say, everyone more than a couple of standard deviations below the mean, every year (ie. about 2.5% of the work force).

Can we add the teachers unions to this mix please?

 

[Navy_Pete]

Here is a good summation of each partys stance in the last election. I don't see anything that would lead me to believe that. In fact I would say the CPC would be more apt to cut social and foreign spending.

Having said that we are all entitled to our opinions.

Where They Stand: Canada’s Federal Political Parties Defence Platforms 2025

This special report provides an objective overview of the newly elected minority Liberal government's plans regarding defence and discusses proposals from other opposition parties.

natoassociation.ca

Compare the election promises of Canada’s major parties

<p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Read the policies and promises of the six main parties on the election's pressing issues. These will be updated as parties add to their platforms ahead of the April 28 vote.</span></p>

newsinteractives.cbc.ca

Its the same Gov, it just has a new face and less fancy socks. Some people are just more inclined to forgive and forget is all.

The CPC never did ask the multiple questions I asked via multiple venues on whether the change to the pensions (from defined benefit to defined contributions) would impact CAF and RCMP members, but that would be a huge impact, and in my opinion a breach of contract.

Despite buying a bunch of new stuff for Aghanistan, the last Harper gov actually cut the CAF budget, but kicking the shit out of NP, particularly the RCN. MEPM had to prioritize the submarines at the cost of the CPF DWPs, and that's a big reason why they are now in the $500M dollar range (vice $50-80M, as we deferred major maintenance and repairs for 12-14 years (we extended our 5 year op cycle to 6-7 years to make up for the extneded downtime of the rest of the fleet). There was also DRAP 2.0, where we lost a lot of DND employees, generally with 20+ years of experience, and it was a massive brain drain we will never really recover from. We contract out a lot of services now because we lost a lot of know how on doing it internally.

Nothing in their past history or their platform suggests they would support an increased CAF budget or operational capabilities, but I'm sure they will just go on about a broken procurement system (that got worse under Harper, who came up with DPS). They absolutely made key contributions to a lot of the shit we are in today, but that doesn't make good soundbites or pithy slogans.

 

[Altair]

Remember when the LPC, under Trudeau, resisted lowering immigration numbers until a critical mass of Canadians were unhappy about the level of immigration coming in, and then they budged?

Nearly half of Canadians support scrapping Temporary Foreign workers program: poll - National | Globalnews.ca

A new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians support the idea of ending the Temporary Foreign Workers program, with the Prairie provinces showing the strongest response.

globalnews.ca

A new poll suggests 44 per cent of Canadians want to see the temporary foreign worker program scrapped as the country grapples with high unemployment, especially among young people.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently proposed eliminating the program in response to high youth unemployment.

The new Abacus Data poll, which was conducted online and can’t be assigned a margin of error, suggests that support for eliminating the program is higher among younger age cohorts, topping 50 per cent of 30- to 44-year-old respondents and hitting 48 per cent of those 18 to 29.

It's happening again. Will be interested in PMMC response to this, because Trudeau eventually caved to public pressure, but Carney is much more entwined in the business community and the business community likes their low wage worker stream.

 

[Jarnhamar]

No clue. We are in the middle of it. But you can bet a lot of the oversight groups will be cutting their 15% like everyone else.

When cleaners went on strike in Petawawa supervisors stepped in. I recall a supervisor doing the work of 3 cleaners (in 3 buildings) at half the time and if Im being honest she did a better job.

I have a feeling we'll see an increase in productivity, at least for a while, despite the 15% loss.

Speaking of which, looks like you were right on the money.

Treasury board just found 500 ways to cut red tape. Strange no one was able to come up with this sooner despite repeated promises. Nice that PM Carney is lighting a fire under their ass.

If you can rattle all this off, wasn’t it detected by the systems in place?

Sorta. Looking at ArriveCan it doesnt look like "systems in place" found it.

From what I'm reading, 2 years after the app came out independent software developers and IT professionals began talking shit saying they could recreate ArriveCAN in a weekend for a few thousand dollars. That contrast raised eyebrows and people started asking questions.

After hearing this from these independent softwear dudes MPs began asking the government for details, that's when the cost figure of $54 million came out. That number sounded wildly disproportionate compared to what the app delivered.

MPs noticed that much of the money went to contractors like GC Strategies, a two-person company that acted as a middleman. This looked suspicious and prompted further digging.

It wasn't some internal government system that discovered it. It was outside dudes saying the app was cheap to build, combined with Parliament learning about inflated contractor bills that didn’t match the app’s simplicity.

Had they not raised the flag we would have never known.



An efficient government would have safeguards in place so when a $80,000 project balloons to $60,000,000, 750x the original budget, it automatically raises alarms. We don't have those safeguards and the system didn't catch this. Shit talking did. Out of curiosity I'm going to dig into the other examples to see if it was this mysterious government system or some dudes saying what the fuck.

 

[The Bread Guy]

When cleaners went on strike in Petawawa supervisors stepped in. I recall a supervisor doing the work of 3 cleaners (in 3 buildings) at half the time and if Im being honest she did a better job.

I have a feeling we'll see an increase in productivity, at least for a while, despite the 15% loss.

I hope you're right, but I'd still bet money that when you cut staff, very generally, SOMETHING ends up not getting done, either at all, or not as quickly. How many platoon warrants, even if they have their crap tightly wired together, can get ALL the platoon's work done if they're down, say, 2/3 or 3/4 of their standard? No matter how good the individuals are, if there's fewer of them, something's gotta give ....

Most recent example: CRA - this from May ....

Canada Revenue Agency cutting up to 280 jobs, mainly in national capital region

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is cutting up to 280 more employees this spring, the latest announcement of job cuts at the federal department over the past six months.

www.ctvnews.ca

... followed by this from last month ...

Wait times at ‘bloated and Byzantine’ CRA frustrates Canadians, B.C. MP says | Globalnews.ca

"What we know is that when you owe the government money, they have no problem getting ahold of you," Gord Johns, MP for Courtenay-Alberni, told Global News.

globalnews.ca

... and this.

CRA extends contracts for 850 call centre workers amid complaints

Nearly 3,300 call centre employees have lost jobs since May 2024 as CRA works to reduce budget: union

www.hrreporter.com

That shouldn't be an excuse for not looking, but beware knock-on effects.

You pointed to a DOGE-like body needed here - remember when they recommended cuts to foreign aid that ended up almost letting ISIS prisoners held by Kurds to be released because they ran out of money from the cuts? Be careful what you wish for ...

Treasury board just found 500 ways to cut red tape. Strange no one was able to come up with this sooner despite repeated promises.

I'd say if you asked Chat GPT or something similar "outline different ways the government of Canada, over the past 10-15 years, has identified ways to cut red tape, and how successful the various systems have been," you're likely to find 1) loads of bureaucratic-sounding efforts to streamline things, 2) with a mixed bag of levels of success. I'm with you on what appears to be a lack of execution on all this work, but I also know having worked on the inside at a very low level that there may be levels of complexity I don't get that affects how much tinkering can be done without shit heading south.

... MPs noticed that much of the money went to contractors like GC Strategies, a two-person company that acted as a middleman. This looked suspicious and prompted further digging.

It wasn't some internal government system that discovered it. It was outside dudes saying the app was cheap to build, combined with Parliament learning about inflated contractor bills that didn’t match the app’s simplicity.

Had they not raised the flag we would have never known ...

That one was for SURE one for the ages, but yes & no -- the bits in yellow, to me, count as systems inside government. Did they work quickly enough? Given the size of the fuckery, probably not quickly enough.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Remember when the LPC, under Trudeau, resisted lowering immigration numbers until a critical mass of Canadians were unhappy about the level of immigration coming in, and then they budged?

Nearly half of Canadians support scrapping Temporary Foreign workers program: poll - National | Globalnews.ca

A new poll suggests nearly half of Canadians support the idea of ending the Temporary Foreign Workers program, with the Prairie provinces showing the strongest response.

globalnews.ca

It's happening again. Will be interested in PMMC response to this, because Trudeau eventually caved to public pressure, but Carney is much more entwined in the business community and the business community likes their low wage worker stream.

I would be in cohort of 44%.

I hope you're right, but I'd still bet money that when you cut staff, very generally, SOMETHING ends up not getting done, either at all, or not as quickly. How many platoon warrants, even if they have their crap tightly wired together, can get ALL the platoon's work done if they're down, say, 2/3 or 3/4 of their standard? No matter how good the individuals are, if there's fewer of them, something's gotta give ....

Most recent example: CRA - this from May ....

Canada Revenue Agency cutting up to 280 jobs, mainly in national capital region

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is cutting up to 280 more employees this spring, the latest announcement of job cuts at the federal department over the past six months.

www.ctvnews.ca

... followed by this from last month ...

Wait times at ‘bloated and Byzantine’ CRA frustrates Canadians, B.C. MP says | Globalnews.ca

"What we know is that when you owe the government money, they have no problem getting ahold of you," Gord Johns, MP for Courtenay-Alberni, told Global News.

globalnews.ca

... and this.

CRA extends contracts for 850 call centre workers amid complaints

Nearly 3,300 call centre employees have lost jobs since May 2024 as CRA works to reduce budget: union

www.hrreporter.com

That shouldn't be an excuse for not looking, but beware knock-on effects.

You pointed to a DOGE-like body needed here - remember when they recommended cuts to foreign aid that ended up almost letting ISIS prisoners held by Kurds to be released because they ran out of money from the cuts? Be careful what you wish for ...

I'd say if you asked Chat GPT or something similar "outline different ways the government of Canada, over the past 10-15 years, has identified ways to cut red tape, and how successful the various systems have been," you're likely to find 1) loads of bureaucratic-sounding efforts to streamline things, 2) with a mixed bag of levels of success. I'm with you on what appears to be a lack of execution on all this work, but I also know having worked on the inside at a very low level that there may be levels of complexity I don't get that affects how much tinkering can be done without shit heading south.

That one was for SURE one for the ages, but yes & no -- the bits in yellow, to me, count as systems inside government. Did they work quickly enough? Given the size of the fuckery, probably not quickly enough.

I turned down a PS offer yesterday. I don't like what the horizon looks like over there, and with the new pay and bennies it makes more sense to top up my last 5.

 

[Remius]

I turned down a PS offer yesterday. I don't like what the horizon looks like over there, and with the new pay and bennies it makes more sense to top up my last 5.

Looks like the new pay and benefits is doing exactly what it was implemented for. You are one of quite a few I know that are looking to remain to get their best 5.

Right now, unless you are headed to a government priority department and then a priority area within that department, then the next little while is going to be a bit of a rough ride.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Looks like the new pay and benefits is doing exactly what it was implemented for. You are one of quite a few I know that are looking to remain to get their best 5.

It would be pretty silly to walk away from another years at +13%, +6K a year. That's a good boost on my pension.

Right now, unless you are headed to a government priority department and then a priority area within that department, then the next little while is going to be a bit of a rough ride.

Ya I don't want to be the new man in that org right now.

 

[Remius]

Treasury board just found 500 ways to cut red tape.

Closer to my area of work they discovered they could save quite a bit of money by registering course students as a group to get group rates instead of each sub unit or individuals doing it themselves at the individual rate.

Small amount in the big picture but small amounts add up.

 

[IKnowNothing]

It's happening again. Will be interested in PMMC response to this, because Trudeau eventually caved to public pressure, but Carney is much more entwined in the business community and the business community likes their low wage worker stream.

I'd be very interested in seeing the math on what the "right" level is, and then implementing a path to get to there as a aggressively as possible. I have no doubt that the post covid intake run up has been a big contributor to current youth unemployment levels- but that being true is not the same thing as guaranteeing that we have the youth workforce to replace it in its entirety if we cut off cold turkey.

 

[Quirky]

I hope you're right, but I'd still bet money that when you cut staff, very generally, SOMETHING ends up not getting done,

….and the world doesn’t end. Then you realize that the SOMETHING you did before didn’t end up needing doing in the first place. Pretty much every made-up secondary duty unrelated to your trade.

 

[ArmyRick]

I have no doubt that the post covid intake run up has been a big contributor to current youth unemployment levels-

Seriously? COVID come and gone long ago. Lets really think about what is the root cause here (cough, cough, piss poor Liberal policies on economy, TFW, International mobility program, inflation caused by serious government overspending, etc)

Or you can blame Trump, say its "complicated", its "provincial responsibility" or some other horseshit excuse.