One of the most eccentric yet interesting parts of Donald Trump’s presidential transition has been the announcement of a forthcoming government efficiency exercise led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
The Department of Government Efficiency (or D.O.G.E as they’re calling it) is supposed to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful spending, and restructure federal agencies.” Trump’s statement characterized the exercise as “potentially the ‘Manhattan Project’ of our time.” He said it would be completed by July 4, 2026—just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Musk and Ramaswamy have both made different claims about the D.O.G.E. including its aims, scope, and the process that they intend to follow. It’s difficult at this stage to know how it will work or whether it will ultimately be successful at “driv[ing] large scale structural reform and create[ing] an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before” as Trump’s statement puts it.
But the basic notion that the U.S. government ought to be subject to a systematic review that’s more about institutional reform than it is about realizing marginal fiscal savings is correct. The same thinking applies to the Canadian government which has seen its employment footprint grow by 40 percent and program spending nearly double since 2015.
This large-scale expansion of the federal bureaucracy and the government’s involvement in the economy and society requires more than a mere “weed-whacking” exercise. Mandating departments to identify some small share of their budgets (say 3 or 5 percent) for fiscal savings won’t be proportionate to the 10 percent average annual growth to program spending that we’ve seen over the past decade. It would effectively fix in place a larger and more costly government. Trudeau-era spending would become the new baseline.
It’s not enough therefore for a Pierre Poilievre-led government to merely pursue fiscal savings that can offset new spending or tax cuts and lower the budgetary deficit. It should aspire to something more like a “zero-based budgeting” exercise to pressure test the basic assumptions of government departments and the programs that they operate and conceive of new and different approaches to government itself. Everything in short should be on the table.
Poilievre and members of his cabinet will be familiar with the Harper government’s deficit reduction action plan which successfully reduced spending by about $5 billion between 2012 and 2015 in an effort to balance the federal budget in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. That exercise served its budgetary purpose but it didn’t really lead to structural changes. Departments handed over their pounds of flesh. They didn’t however open themselves up to more fundamental questions about what they do and how they do it.
Fiscal savings are of course necessary and good. But if they’re the overriding goal, it risks a ratchet effect whereby the government massively grows, an incoming Conservative government cuts spending (or spending growth) on the margins, and the trajectory of government’s expansion continues unabated.
Ottawa requires a broader exercise in public administration reform. Several issues need to be on the table, including low public service productivity, the centralization of the federal bureaucracy in the National Capital Region, the Trudeau government’s expansive use of the federal spending power, and stalled momentum on privatization and the role of the federal government itself.
Progress on these more structural challenges is a crucial precondition for a Poilievre-led government’s broader policy agenda. Withdrawing from provincial and local jurisdictions for instance is necessary to be able to invest in core federal competencies such as national defence and national security. Similarly shifting to a more merit-based human resource model is key to raising productivity and producing better governmental outcomes.
This point is worth emphasizing: although there usually isn’t much political upside to public administration reform—in fact, it’s often understood as a source of political risk—, if a Poilievre-led government’s policy agenda is going to be as ambitious as he and others have insinuated, then improving the basic functioning of the federal government may determine whether it’s ultimately successful or not.
The D.O.G.E. exercise may therefore represent something of an inspiration. Its mandate to go beyond immediate-term savings and ask more structural questions about the operations and role of government is precisely the type of exercise that Ottawa needs. It should be understood as an effort to get out of counterproductive activities and boost federal state capacity where necessary. The Trudeau government has been a renewed education of the old conservative adage: limited government is better government.
As for who ought to lead such an exercise, my former colleague Rachel Curran has rightly argued that you probably don’t want to fully outsource it. Information asymmetries and the need for bureaucratic and political buy-in require that ministers and their departments be actively involved.
But there is something to the idea that entrepreneurs and technologists can bring a different perspective to the ones represented within the government or the management firms that are typically tapped to advise it. They bring a creativity and energy that’s often undersupplied in government. They’re unconstrained by bureaucratic assumptions and thinking. And they tend to have better track records of successfully overseeing structural reform.
Put simply: Outsiders like Musk and Ramaswamy may come with risks but they may also be more likely to overcome the public choice barriers (including confirmation bias and sunk-cost fallacy) to serious public administration reform.
Who then should lead the Canadian version of D.O.G.E.? How about Shopify’s co-founder and CEO Tobi Lutke?
Not only is he arguably the country’s most successful technologist and is increasingly commenting on Canadian public policy, including its state capacity and poor productivity performance, but Lutke’s background and experience make him an ideal candidate to deliver on a D.O.G.E.-like mandate in time for the 160th birthday of Canadian Confederation.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well as a think-tank scholar and columnist. He previously served as a senior economic adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper....
