COOPER: Needed, a Canadian Elon and some Musk-rats

The New Deal of R.B. Bennett during the late 1930s expanded the purpose of the federal government in Canada. The expansion continued during the war under William Lyon Mackenzie King, and afterwards as well, now justified by Keynesian economic intervention. For more than half a century the public service in Ottawa grew and grew.The Americans followed a similar trajectory and added the Great Society program of President Johnson in the mid-1960s. In Canada a few years later the impact of Pierre Trudeau’s “Just Society” proposals had less of an impact, but the centralization and triumph of expert bureaucratic control of the daily life of Canadians was, if anything, greater than it was in the States.This is the lengthy historical context for President Trump’s effort to redefine the scope of control by the bureaucrats of Washington, D.C. — to “drain the swamp” as he so colourfully put it in his first administration. Back then, he failed to make much of a difference. In his second administration, the appointment of two successful businessmen, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk and their quasi-department, the Department of Government Efficiency, DoGE, was his latest response. So far, they are much more effective than the earlier effort. This has implications for CanadaThe reason for the current success of DoGE seems to be that today Trump is far more informed about the way Washington works and thus more aware of the extent of the problem posed by the sheer size of the American federal bureaucracy. This time he has given DoGE, now directed only by Musk, the task of removing waste, fraud and abuse, or more generally, removing corruption from the administration of the American state. In short, by reducing government expenditures the goal is to eliminate, not just shave, the vast, reckless and unaccountable spending by government middle management.Perhaps more importantly, Trump seeks to do so by downsizing the proliferation of dozens of agencies that blur the lines between executive, legislative and judicial responsibilities and powers. The goal is to restore constitutional responsibility to American government, which means eliminating the arbitrary actions of the administrative state.In Canada, as in the US, there are many agencies and other bureaucratic entities that have been created by the legislature to undertake the executive function of administering laws. In both countries they do so with no executive control or oversight — and no legislative control or oversight either, even though the agencies are supposed to report to Congress or to Parliament.What looks to his opponents as an attack by the executive, namely President Trump, on the legislative branch, namely Congress, is not a “constitutional crisis” but a constitutional restoration. A few Canadians have drawn the conclusion that, if the Americans can do it, so can we. Even the Brits, who gave the word “establishment” a bad name, got into the act in an unusual way.On February 19th, Liz Truss, who held the office of Prime Minister for a total of 49 days in September and October 2022, called for a “Trump revolution” in the UK in an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC. It was her view that the “deep state” in Britain had sabotaged the shortest-lived government in British history. What was needed to operationalize a Trump revolution was another “Elon and his nerd army of Musk-rats” to conduct a DoGE purge of the British state.Whether the British deep state did undermine her government may be less important than that her remarks came from a parliamentarian, a person who knows how parliamentary government works. The message was clear: a parliamentary democracy, just like a constitutional republic, can be overwhelmed by unelected bureaucrats and experts. And it can be purged of them as well.That such an option is a real possibility for Canada is suggested by two woeful bits of evidence. First, the Canadian bureaucracy has grown by 40% under Justin Trudeau, which translates into an additional 110,000 tax-devouring gobs in Ottawa. A second statistic: 83% of hires during the recent COVID-19 event were of public-sector “workers.”Changing things in Canada has never been simple. Howard Levitt pointed out in the National Post (Feb. 22, 2025) that the difference between Canadian and American employment laws make it much easier to dismiss excess bureaucrats in the US without severance pay than it is here. In Canda, non-union public employees can sue for wrongful dismissal and receive anywhere from two to 30 months severance pay. That makes it way more expensive to fire non-union employees here.Voluntary retirement plans akin to what Musk offered American bureaucrats are also different here. Levitt said that a lifetime of observation of such plans in operation led him to conclude that marketable and competent workers would leave, resulting in only the deadwood left behind.Worse, Canada has a much more unionized bureaucracy than the Americans. In the US, it’s under 10% of the workforce; in Canada nearly 77% of all public sector “workers” are unionized. They can be laid off, but only in terms of seniority. Even worse than that, in Canada the courts have decided that dismissing an employee for poor performance means dismissal “without cause,” which entails a hefty severance package.And yet the abuse and waste remain. This may, in fact be the key to changing things in Canada.DoGE has gained a great deal of support from the American electorate by exposing some of the unusual expenditures approved by USAID. These include: support for a DEI musical in Ireland; a transgender opera in Colombia, and a transgender comic book in Peru; support for sex-changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala; meals for Syrian terrorists and fertilizer for Afghanistan’s poppy growers. None of these projects is in the American national interest.In Canada organizations such as the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation have discovered similar beneficiaries of our largesse. Global Affairs Canada, which swallowed our version of USAID, called CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, in 2013, has supported: “enjoyment of reproductive health” in the developing world; “bridging the digital gender gap” in Cameroon; a “youth radio show” in Tanzania to promote gender equality; travel costs of an Afro-Cuban jazz band to India; a disk-jockey workshop in Georgia; “culture support” in Mozambique; the Green Climate Fund in South Korea; the Asian Infrastructure Bank, which is controlled by China, and, of course the UN Relief and Works Agency, several of whose employees are devout supporters of Hamas.Domestically, the Americans were surprised to hear that their Social Security system had been generously supporting many of the dearly departed. In Canada we have similar extravagances to consider, including an $8M barn at Rideau Hall, nearly a billion and a half to Heritage Canada —better known as the Department of Cancellations and Renaming — along with well known subsidies to the CBC, Canada Post and VIA Rail, each of which exceeded a billion dollars.If ever there was an opportunity for the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre to capitalize on the stupidity, waste, and incompetence of the Liberals’ management of the Canadian deep state, this is it. DoGE has brought some significant truths to the attention of Americans. This is not an ideological matter, but a recovery of commonsense. Canadians deserve no less.