Further...
Starting with the Mulroney government's attacks on the policy/planning
appartus of Government-the Science Council, the Economic Council, the
Welfare Council (?)-the neo-Libs and then the neo-Cons have systematically
eliminated/defunded/destroyed the capacity of the Canadian Government "to
think". (The attack on StatsCan was just the latest in this process.)
The process of privatizing/outsourcing this to various (non) "independent"
think tanks as per the US model has proven to be useful only to politicians
looking for the means to rationalize their policy depredations after the
fact and as a hidden subsidy/retirement program for well-tamed/trained
academics and others too scrofulous even for the Senate (Bruce Carson et
al).
A Government that can't think, can't act (in the interests of its citizens)
it can only implement the (generally) short term tactical decisions of
politicians which in Canada have been for the most part reflections of the
variety of business interests ("louder voices").
One of the first things that a Layton Government will need to do is to
figure out, given the intellectual/policy/planning wasteland that Ottawa and
academe has become, how to rebuild/find/re-establish mechanisms for some
sort of rational thought processes as a basis for policy
planning/formulation/implementation/assessment.
The first thing that the CCF/NDP governments did first in Saskatchewan, then
in Manitoba, then (although much less successfully) in BC and Ontario, on
asceding to power was to establish central agencies for policy
research/planning/assessment.
M
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