In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
What’s the point of winning a mandate if you don’t do anything with it?
There are different ways to measure one’s political legacy. Longevity is of course a key one. According to this measure, Doug Ford is one of the most successful politicians in modern Canadian history.
His third consecutive majority win this week is the first in Ontario since 1959 and now puts him among a select group of provincial leaders including Bill Davis, Peter Lougheed, and Gordon Campbell. That his party’s seat count has remained steady and its share of the popular vote has actually increased over the three elections is particularly impressive.
Ford’s broad personal appeal and wide voter coalition—including urban, suburban, and rural, rich and poor, and capital and labour—has remade the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party into an electoral machine.
Yet as genuinely impressive as his ballot-box success has been, the biggest criticism of Ford has been that winning has become an end in itself. His governing record is otherwise marked by a mix of inaction and triviality. There are no signature policies or lasting accomplishments.
The Ford government’s mere existence seems like the entire point. The whole thing reminds me of the line in the movie Animal House: “But sir, Delta Tau Chi has a long tradition of existence both to its members and the community at large.”
Maybe this time will be different. The government has made interesting nods to nuclear energy. It has finally stiffened its spine on ridding the province of the excesses of the harm reduction model for drug addiction. And during the campaign, the premier signaled far greater ambition on interprovincial trade barriers than he’s shown in the past.
One can hope that the combination of Trump’s economic threat and a third majority mandate expands the window of policy reforms that Ford and his government are prepared to consider. It should seize on its broad public support and weak political opposition. Now would be the moment to tackle big issues like education and health care that the government has previously passed on.
If it does, Ford has the opportunity to build a policy legacy that matches his already solidified electoral legacy. If it doesn’t, his political epitaph will read: he won but for what?
Canada desperately needs its own DOGE
There has been a lot of anti-DOGE commentary in Canada in recent days. Some of it raises legitimate issues—including its reporting requirements to Congress or the limits of relying on external advisers—with the Elon Musk-led exercise. But much of it just amounts to typical left-wing defences of government bureaucracy and high public spending.
The process is unorthodox and Musk himself can be a lightning rod these days, but Canadian policy and political observers shouldn’t be instinctively opposed to it. One can argue that Canada’s experience in the 1990s with Program Review was a more sophisticated and evidence-based version of DOGE while still recognizing that the latter incorporates ideas, issues, and technologies that represent useful improvements.
Take the small example of DOGE’s focus on software licenses and hardware (such as computers and cellphones) within the government. It has identified instances where the number of paid licenses far exceeds the number of employees in government agencies.
There are no doubt similar cases in the Canadian government. More than a decade ago, when I worked in Ottawa, it was clear for instance that the government didn’t know how many Blackberry phones it owned and paid for. Rationalizing its software and hardware arrangements won’t eliminate the deficit by any means but that hardly makes it a bad idea.
And then there’s the case for the greater use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to boost the federal government’s productivity. Something like this wasn’t part of the 1990s Program Review mandate. Yet it’s an idea that’s found support from both Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney. It’s also been thoughtfully advanced by a new initiative led by tech entrepreneurs called Build Canada which has argued in favour of making Canada “an AI-first nation.” I’ve similarly written that AI can play a key role in eliminating interprovincial trade barriers.
There are various other ways in which the application of a tech mindset to public administration can make a useful yet different contribution to public sector reform than something like Program Review. The two shouldn’t be viewed as incompatible. Think of it as Tobi Lutke meets Donald Savoie.
The purpose of a Program Review is to determine what government does. The role of DOGE (or a DOGE-like process) is to ensure that it does it more efficiently. After a decade of rising spending and growing inefficiency, we undoubtedly need both.
We could really use Bill Buckley right about now
This week marked the 14th anniversary of William F. Buckley Jr.’s death. It seems notable that it coincided with President Trump’s berating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
Although we cannot know for sure where Buckley would have stood on the proper American policy response to the Russia-Ukraine war, it’s safe to assume that as an anti-Soviet hawk, he would have instinctively sided with the Ukrainians.
The whole ugly episode reinforces how much we miss Buckley. In today’s fragmented intellectual and media landscape, no one has been quite able to succeed him. Even National Review magazine itself has struggled to stand up to Trump. The incentives to affirm him rather than challenge him have proven too powerful.
It’s quite possible that these dynamics—both market-driven and political—would have overwhelmed Buckley too. After all, George Will’s (who is probably his closest successor) principled opposition to Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party had no effect. Other NeverTrump conservatives have since left the party or reconciled themselves to Trump’s distorted version of conservatism.
But if anyone could have been a successful intra-conservative critic, there’s a strong reason to believe that it would have been Buckley. Not only did he have unparalleled source credibility on the Right, but he would have flourished in the internet age. His charm, charisma, and intellect would have made him a formidable opponent.
Buckley also understood Trump’s fatal flaw. As far back as 2000, he wrote that the now-president was a “narcissist” and a “demagogue.” These incidentally are the same characteristics shared by other cranks and charlatans that he policed out of the conservative movement in previous decades.
Today there’s no such policing. The cranks and charlatans have taken over. The moral and intellectual void created by Buckley’s passing was on full display in the Oval Office this week. We sure miss him.
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…
