Is It Time For A Canadian DOGE? Kind Of!

On A Federal Commission Of Audit

One of the questions going around the Canadian public policy sphere is whether or not we need a Canadian DOGE - a cost cutting, waste exposing instrument designed to reduce costs and save money. It’s an idea that some on the right seem to think will be a winner for them, partially because they live in a right wing media bubble where Elon is way more popular than he is and partially because it’s a fair political point - what’s wrong with finding waste and fraud?

The answer for the left is not to shirk from this conversation, because it’s true. Governments are massive bureaucracies, and through a combination of inertia, failed initiatives that didn’t work, and a refusal to spend a medium amount of money to fix a problem one time that ends up costing more over time, we have things we can cut. There is no coherent way that people can look at government and see a perfectly efficient system.

The problem with DOGE as it is current constituted in the US - and as many want to replicate it in Canada - is it’s the dumbest possible way to achieve a reasonable outcome. The theory of DOGE is that by bringing in people with “expertise” outside of government into government, they will use their intellect and their capacity to be a fresh set of eyes. (I really have negative interest in arguing about Elon Musk’s intellect or otherwise.) The problem is, DOGE is giving these people who don’t know shit from a hole in the ground the ability to make decisions about systems they don’t get.

The Social Security stuff is the clearest example, where there’s allegedly tens of millions of people who are older than 125 years old in the system. There’s not, but because Elon and Big Balls and the crack team at DOGE don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, they take context-less information at face value and make stupid decisions, many of which they end up immediately rescinding.

The actual answer is that there are smart people across this country who know where the bodies are buried, in a sense. There are competent, honourable ex-Ministers or longtime Parliamentarians who I’m sure if asked would put in another shift for their country. It’s time for a tri-partisan Commission of Audit, with a wide remit to examine all areas of government spending and find as many savings and efficiencies as possible while not impacting core services. The decision about what to do with those savings would remain with the politicians, but it’s a smart idea for the left to embrace.

There are a lot of things progressives want to do, be it social welfare, more defence spending now, infrastructure projects, and more. We need a robust economy to pay for those things, and while we shouldn’t look at borrowing to pay for those things as necessarily evil in all cases, it would be preferable to pay for what we want as a country with our own fiscal position. Put differently, what is progressive about spending money inefficiently when we could spend the money on lunches for poor kids or a pay rise for the Armed Forces? Nothing.

There is nothing progressive about the idea that the system as it is is perfect. There’s nothing progressive about waste and mismanagement being coddled. There’s nothing progressive about pretending everything is hunky dory. The government IT systems in this country are jokes in desperate need of update. If there wasn’t so much of our government running on 15 year old operating systems and machines not that much younger, you’d likely have a productivity revolution. It would cost money up front, yes, but money you’d get back in less hours of extra tech support and better outcomes. What if our government ran efficiently enough it didn’t take weeks for the system to acknowledge a tax filing and pay the return or months in some cases to get a passport renewed?

Current Ministers are too busy running their departments to be able to push through these sorts of reforms, because they’re putting out day to day fires. That’s how you get this inertia. What we need is people who have been in the trenches, who have served before, who know where to look. The fundamental crisis of DOGE is it’s a decent idea being ruined by the worst possible execution - a shitton of people who do not actually know what they are looking at or where to look. It’s like putting someone who’s watched every episode of Grey’s Anatomy into a brain tumour removal and expecting them to know where to cut first.

The advantage of bringing in smart people from across the political spectrum is they all know the landmines and they know the trip wires. They know where to look and where to start. They won’t accidentally recommend firing nuclear waste treatment workers or air traffic safety inspectors or whatever nonsense DOGE has done, and the tripartisan nature of the commission means you’d have to get some cross aisle consensus - it wouldn’t be enough to just ram through foreign aid cuts as “fraud” and call it a day.

If there are serious and credible savings to be achieved, fantastic - that’s more money for whatever priorities that could actually help Canadians. Whether it’s through tax relief or program spending or some of both, those dollars if they exist in meaningful numbers should be better spent. Canadians deserve a government that is mindful of their tax dollars, and will look well at a party that makes clear that tax rises or increases in deficits is a last resort after auditing the books. It will buy us political capital if and when we need more deficit spending. And it’s the right thing to do.

If it doesn’t show much meaningful waste, then it’s still worthwhile as an exercise. By having tripartisan names attached, it makes it easier for us to rebuff the idea there is all of this waste and fraud in the system, by giving us an instant retort: “if there’s so much waste and fraud why couldn’t Rona Ambrose/James Moore/Erin O’Toole/whoever and Megan Leslie/David Christopherson/Charlie Angus/whoever find it?” It’s a win win - either it’s there and we get the credit for finding it and then get to repurpose the money for better, more popular, more effective shit, or there’s nothing but we look like responsible adults for looking.

Ceding the territory of Fiscal responsibility and sanity is a bad idea. It will make it easier for the right to take that mantle and use it to destroy valuable programs. There is nothing antithetical to progressivism about making sure every dime and dollar is spent well and if it’s not, cutting it and putting it where it will help change people’s lives for the better.

It’s time for a Federal Commission Of Audit.