Federal Government & Politics II

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You really need to stop talking about DND and the CAF like you understand it, despite not having served.

Look at the data. DND has not grown much at all. And a lot of those positions are absolutely essential and we cannot function without them. Most of them are ex-military too. Taking them out of uniform is a way to retain their skill because they are not getting posted out and not getting replaced. Saves the training cost of having a replacement trained every 3 years. And saves uniformed positions exclusively for work that requires a uniform (and unlimited liability that comes with). Arguably, we should be doing even more of this.

Give you an example. The team that certifies all our air weapons ranges is an army of one. If he got hit by a bus tomorrow, we would be shutting all air weapons training involving anything from throwing out flares to dropping live ordinance from fighters. Can a military guy do his job? Sure. But then that Capt is one less uniform for a unit. And we aren't going to be flying around on uncertified ranges because that means we'll inevitably kill people.

There's a whole lot of DND that is similarly 1-2 deep with a handful of (usually ex-military) public servants holding down the fort. This is routinely why you see reports that say DND can't spend money or is behind on xyz.

Alternatively, we can save quite a few positions if we simply change a lot of procurement rules. We can get warships from South Korea for half the cost in a third of the time, with a third of the public servants involved. And this has certainly been discussed at DND before with a lot of support from the uniformed side. I wonder what folks in Halifax would think about that idea to save money.

The DND number was shocking to be honest having not grown at all.

For ships there is two sides to it for sure. I notice you agree with spending $40 Billion to get battery manufacturing in an already booming part of the country. Shouldn't we spend extra to keep our ships built here. Also there seems some risk of even an ally building them for us. For example a conflict erupts we might get our orders pushed to the back of the Queue. It's a balancing act for sure.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

The DND number was shocking to be honest having not grown at all.

Grown about 21% since 2015. But yeah. No growth since 2010 net. And there's a been ton of consolidation inside to save positions. Three operational command were merged into one in 2012 to save money and personnel. There's probably places here and there we could cut. But I think we're actually relatively lean.

Originally Posted by YOWetal

For ships there is two sides to it for sure. I notice you agree with spending $40 Billion to get battery manufacturing in an already booming part of the country. Shouldn't we spend extra to keep our ships built here. Also there seems some risk of even an ally building them for us. For example a conflict erupts we might get our orders pushed to the back of the Queue. It's a balancing act for sure.

It's a question of priorities is what I'm saying.

The $40B (which are tax breaks mostly) win us an export industry that supports a whole lot of jobs. If you think that's too expensive, what the justification for a frigate program that is 5x the cost and has zero exports customers? One can say national security, but we have no issues buying fighter jets and tanks and all the weapons on those ships themselves from our allies.

The first set of cuts to the departments that gained the most will be easy. The second set is the tough one. That requires the hard kind of choices I suggest above. These are jobs that exist as a direct result of policy. Cutting them requires a change of policy and outlook. We can save a thousand positions tomorrow simply by saying that the federal government will no longer promote regional development. That's a provincial responsibility. Let's see MPs from those regions get onboard. Always easy to cut somebody else's budget and services. Much more difficult when your own interests are in play.

[casper]

The other way of doing this is to contract out.

For example. if the decision is made to contract out the administration of employment insurance. The feds write an RFP for the number of offices, minimum hold time, processes that need to followed. That all goes into a service level agreement. They call on the private sector to submit proposals.

Once the contract is in place, all the employees associated with that program move over to being employed by the contractor and its there problem to figure out if they provide value or not.

[Truenorth00]

Part of the problem is that the federal government doesn't have a lot of competency designing, monitoring and managing large contracts in new areas. See Phoenix and ArriveCan for reference.

I would argue Fed Gov functions and business needs to be put into three buckets: core government function, should be contracted, not federal function. Any functional review should start there. After that, whatever needs to be contracted out, can be done.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Seems like the bulk of Employment and Social Development Canada is actually Service Canada.

Yes that is correct. There has definitely been big time hiring for CPP and OAS over the last 5 years. Probably quite a bit as well for passports and EI. The pandemic related programs likely added a fair bit too.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by casper

The other way of doing this is to contract out.

For example. if the decision is made to contract out the administration of employment insurance. The feds write an RFP for the number of offices, minimum hold time, processes that need to followed. That all goes into a service level agreement. They call on the private sector to submit proposals.

Once the contract is in place, all the employees associated with that program move over to being employed by the contractor and its there problem to figure out if they provide value or not.

The problem with that is that it can end up costing more over the long run. And there's a much higher risk of breaches of information and corruption. The employees will continue to be unionized and will often demand more than they would from the government as the employer.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You really need to stop talking about DND and the CAF like you understand it, despite not having served.

Look at the data. DND has not grown much at all. And a lot of those positions are absolutely essential and we cannot function without them. Most of them are ex-military too. Taking them out of uniform is a way to retain their skill because they are not getting posted out and not getting replaced. Saves the training cost of having a replacement trained every 3 years. And saves uniformed positions exclusively for work that requires a uniform (and unlimited liability that comes with). Arguably, we should be doing even more of this.

Give you an example. The team that certifies all our air weapons ranges is an army of one. If he got hit by a bus tomorrow, we would be shutting all air weapons training involving anything from throwing out flares to dropping live ordinance from fighters. Can a military guy do his job? Sure. But then that Capt is one less uniform for a unit. And we aren't going to be flying around on uncertified ranges because that means we'll inevitably kill people.

There's a whole lot of DND that is similarly 1-2 deep with a handful of (usually ex-military) public servants holding down the fort. This is routinely why you see reports that say DND can't spend money or is behind on xyz.

Alternatively, we can save quite a few positions if we simply change a lot of procurement rules. We can get warships from South Korea for half the cost in a third of the time, with a third of the public servants involved. And this has certainly been discussed at DND before with a lot of support from the uniformed side. I wonder what folks in Halifax would think about that idea to save money.

Oh Boy, I did look at the data you provided and there most definitely has been an increase of civilian DND positions since 2015 from 22,000+ to 27,000+ and yes I know many ex Military that now work for Lockmart and other companies, especially here in Halifax. I agree that that institutional experience in quite frankly invaluable. Stuff does not get done without them. How many uniformed Members are we down in the same time frame?

Lets talk about the National shipbuilding program. You are correct in that Canada could have purchased Ships from say the South Koreans( I would bet that's where any new Submarines are coming from) but that was not the intent of the Program. Its intent was to rebuild a Canadian shipbuilding capacity and more importantly the small business supply chains to support them. What other G -7 Country ( now 15) would get others to build their Warships let alone Coast Guard? Heck even the Dutch still build their own.

Its interesting that NATO has never complained about our Naval deficiencies nor the Americans. Its part of the Halifax security conference every year to give detailed tours of Halifax Shipyard to the Congressional delegations and NATO allies. I have been in the the assembly hall. It impresses. The Irvings are generating thousands of new tradepersons literally from High school.It has been a very slow process and Covid did not help but HMCS Max Bernays cleared the Panama locks the other night on her way to Esquimalt. Things are happening and yes the Destroyers SHOULD have been the first built but it is what it is.

To your last point,Halifax has absolutely boomed since the 2011 Contract announcement and as a Maritimer its about time the rest of Canada made a real investment in this part of the Country other than EI, ACOA and other thumb on the scale schemes like Cape Breton University.Halifax has added 100,000 people since 2015 and the City is far more cosmopolitan and far less white. Which was long over due. The flood of young South Asian folks, mainly from Ontario, has really made a positive difference here. Very Nice folks with a very positive energy. If for that point only the NSS has been a net positive.

Canada will have a combined Federal fleet (RCN, CCG) of OVER 400,000 tonnes when built out and I honestly can never see ANY federal government justifying that much displacement ever being built elsewhere.

Once again True thank you for your service and I am just a dude on the Internet. Don't misperceive my comments as a chuck everything out comment but you know better than all of us that Reform is needed.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

Oh Boy, I did look at the data you provided and there most definitely has been an increase of civilian DND positions since 2015 from 22,000+ to 27,000+ and yes I know many ex Military that now work for Lockmart and other companies, especially here in Halifax. I agree that that institutional experience in quite frankly invaluable. Stuff does not get done without them. How many uniformed Members are we down in the same time frame?

I will go over this again since you seem to struggle with this idea. Defence civilians and military are not interchangeable. We won't end up having more military members just because we get rid of a few civilians. Instead, what will have what happened in 2010-2012. Less work got done and now we don't have institutional capacity to actually rebuild the military.

You'll also notice that we were down 20% from 2010 to 2015. That's under the leadership of a supposedly pro-military Conservative government in the middle of a war. Those cuts are a substantial part of the rust out we face today. A number of programs we are running today should have happened a decade ago. But like you, they believed that cutting the headcount was more important. And now we don't have the engineers and project managers necessary to rebuild. And every military person we post in means one less in a field unit.

Originally Posted by Dartguard

Lets talk about the National shipbuilding program. You are correct in that Canada could have purchased Ships from say the South Koreans( I would bet that's where any new Submarines are coming from) but that was not the intent of the Program. Its intent was to rebuild a Canadian shipbuilding capacity and more importantly the small business supply chains to support them. What other G -7 Country ( now 15) would get others to build their Warships let alone Coast Guard? Heck even the Dutch still build their own.

Its interesting that NATO has never complained about our Naval deficiencies nor the Americans. Its part of the Halifax security conference every year to give detailed tours of Halifax Shipyard to the Congressional delegations and NATO allies. I have been in the the assembly hall. It impresses. The Irvings are generating thousands of new tradepersons literally from High school.It has been a very slow process and Covid did not help but HMCS Max Bernays cleared the Panama locks the other night on her way to Esquimalt. Things are happening and yes the Destroyers SHOULD have been the first built but it is what it is.

To your last point,Halifax has absolutely boomed since the 2011 Contract announcement and as a Maritimer its about time the rest of Canada made a real investment in this part of the Country other than EI, ACOA and other thumb on the scale schemes like Cape Breton University.Halifax has added 100,000 people since 2015 and the City is far more cosmopolitan and far less white. Which was long over due. The flood of young South Asian folks, mainly from Ontario, has really made a positive difference here. Very Nice folks with a very positive energy. If for that point only the NSS has been a net positive.

Canada will have a combined Federal fleet (RCN, CCG) of OVER 400,000 tonnes when built out and I honestly can never see ANY federal government justifying that much displacement ever being built elsewhere.

Thanks for proving my point about how easy it is to chop somebody else's budgets. Everything is you say is great for Halifax. But mostly irrelevant to the job of those of us in uniform. Korean built warships work as well as the American built fighters we are going to buy. If we don't need to build fighters in Montreal, then we don't need to build warships in Halifax either.

Sure, the government used defence procurement to bolster the Halifax economy. There's nothing wrong with that. But it torques me a little, when somebody who is directly or indirectly a beneficiary of that kind of largesse than complains about other regions having the same or even worse argues that the very staff that makes that work possible are a waste. Who the hell do you think wrote the contracts that keep people at Irving employed?

Originally Posted by Dartguard

Once again True thank you for your service and I am just a dude on the Internet. Don't misperceive my comments as a chuck everything out comment but you know better than all of us that Reform is needed.

I wish you stopped making assumptions based entirely on your father's and son's service. Neither of which are frankly relevant to the current environment. And both of which are full of the usual complaints that every enlisted and junior officer has about HQ, with zero knowledge about how the institution works and what it provides for them. This is common to virtually every military I've encountered. And usually just as wrong everywhere (except maybe in some authoritarian country like Russia).

Finally, and I'll say this politely so you learn. Using the military experience of family member's to justify your opinion is toeing the line on stolen valour. They served. Not you. Those same gripes from them would be eye roll inducing but something we can bond over. Coming from someone who hasn't worn the cloth, it's not the same.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I will go over this again since you seem to struggle with this idea. Defence civilians and military are not interchangeable. We won't end up having more military members just because we get rid of a few civilians. Instead, what will have what happened in 2010-2012. Less work got done and now we don't have institutional capacity to actually rebuild the military.

You'll also notice that we were down 20% from 2010 to 2015. That's under the leadership of a supposedly pro-military Conservative government in the middle of a war. Those cuts are a substantial part of the rust out we face today. A number of programs we are running today should have happened a decade ago. But like you, they believed that cutting the headcount was more important. And now we don't have the engineers and project managers necessary to rebuild. And every military person we post in means one less in a field unit.



Thanks for proving my point about how easy it is to chop somebody else's budgets. Everything is you say is great for Halifax. But mostly irrelevant to the job of those of us in uniform. Korean built warships work as well as the American built fighters we are going to buy. If we don't need to build fighters in Montreal, then we don't need to build warships in Halifax either.

Sure, the government used defence procurement to bolster the Halifax economy. There's nothing wrong with that. But it torques me a little, when somebody who is directly or indirectly a beneficiary of that kind of largesse than complains about other regions having the same or even worse argues that the very staff that makes that work possible are a waste. Who the hell do you think wrote the contracts that keep people at Irving employed?



I wish you stopped making assumptions based entirely on your father's and son's service. Neither of which are frankly relevant to the current environment. And both of which are full of the usual complaints that every enlisted and junior officer has about HQ, with zero knowledge about how the institution works and what it provides for them. This is common to virtually every military I've encountered. And usually just as wrong everywhere (except maybe in some authoritarian country like Russia).

Finally, and I'll say this politely so you learn. Using the military experience of family member's to justify your opinion is toeing the line on stolen valour. They served. Not you. Those same gripes from them would be eye roll inducing but something we can bond over. Coming from someone who hasn't worn the cloth, it's not the same.

Have a nice day. Stolen Valor huh? WOW!!

The Gutting started btw in the 95 Budget with the Force reduction of 20,000.
The institution has never recovered and Canadians seem to like it that way.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

Have a nice day. Stolen Valor huh? WOW!!

Reminds me of spouses who insist on getting respect for their husband's or wife's service.

The opinions of the Defence Civilians who work beside us are more credible than any family member on anything besides impact on military families.

Originally Posted by Dartguard

The Gutting started btw in the 95 Budget with the Force reduction of 20,000.
The institution has never recovered and Canadians seem to like it that way.

Yes. The Cold War ended and the military got cut. Canada was not the only country to do this. What is somewhat exceptional is actually cutting staffing and putting off substantial capital expenditure during wartime. Acknowledging that, doesn't mean that the LPC by comparison is a lot better. It's just a fact.

Also, for someone who claims to want to see the CAF rebuilt, you sure spend a lot of time cheering on cuts to parts of the institution. From the HQ whose functioning you don't understand, to GOFOs and public servants whose jobs you don't understand. Somehow, you don't seem to get that this is not a zero-sum game. Cutting some generals and laying off the strategic analysts who work in Defence Intelligence or Project Managers at ADM(Mat) isn't suddenly going to create more infantry corporals. It's probably going to mean less support for the ones we already have. If the next government wants to make cuts that's their prerogative. But it's highly disingenuous to go around pretending that these cuts are somehow doing the military a favour. That's not concern for the institution. That's pure political bias.

[Marshsparrow]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Part of the problem is that the federal government doesn't have a lot of competency designing, monitoring and managing large contracts in new areas. See Phoenix and ArriveCan for reference.

I would argue Fed Gov functions and business needs to be put into three buckets: core government function, should be contracted, not federal function. Any functional review should start there. After that, whatever needs to be contracted out, can be done.

And the missing part of this statement is that many of the large suppliers and their Cdn affiliates or shell companies are simply incompetent and don't know how to meet government requirements or standards and only interested in their bottom line and screwing over the taxpayer.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Marshsparrow

And the missing part of this statement is that many of the large suppliers and their Cdn affiliates or shell companies are simply incompetent and don't know how to meet government requirements or standards and only interested in their bottom line and screwing over the taxpayer.

They are only able to screw over taxpayers because incompetent procurement officials make it so easy. Nobody asks even basic questions like why are we giving a contract worth 10s of millions to a home-based business with 4 employees.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

They are only able to screw over taxpayers because incompetent procurement officials make it so easy. Nobody asks even basic questions like why are we giving a contract worth 10s of millions to a home-based business with 4 employees.

Because project management and oversight is not substantially resourced in government. DND has gotten better at it, in the time I'm been in, with more requirements tracking software and the development of a project management culture and system of practices (PMCD levels and PMBOK derived from civil professional practice). Not sure if this has traveled to other departments. And I doubt they are well resourced to properly implement these practices either.

The other problem is the over-reliance on contractors. Ironically, that's what led to the ArriveCan Scandal. CBSA relied on them to write the requirements which they wrote in a way only they could win. That's what happens when you don't have sufficient capacity and capability in-house to do pre-bid work.

This is kinda where absolute cuts can be problematic. Some effort needs to be made to develop these competencies so that we can avoid more ArriveCan problems in the future.

There's also a broader debate about separating contracting authorities from the departments doing the work. PSPC is good at writing contracts. But they aren't experts at the actual work contracted. So they need to rely on the actual departments to monitor. But sometimes that can mean somebody who has zero project management skills (like a technical specialist) tasked to watch a contract as a secondary duty among many things. Whether this setup is useful or not remains up for debate. Most at DND would love to see the department reduce reliance on PSPC or even completely take over contracting internally for the department's needs. But not sure this works for departments with a few hundred or thousand employees. They might need a central clearing house.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Yes that is correct. There has definitely been big time hiring for CPP and OAS over the last 5 years. Probably quite a bit as well for passports and EI. The pandemic related programs likely added a fair bit too.

If this is true they aren't going to cut those positions without hurting service times and seeing big complaints. Unless these are policy positions examining the gender impact of expanded CPP. (Actually it benefits women and hurts men)

[casper]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

If this is true they aren't going to cut those positions without hurting service times and seeing big complaints. Unless these are policy positions examining the gender impact of expanded CPP. (Actually it benefits women and hurts men)

For those types of programs we should be talking about why the automation does not work. People are stepping in to resolve issues or do steps that are not automated.

While automation is never going eliminate everyone involved in that process, the number of people needed should be the same or going down.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

If this is true they aren't going to cut those positions without hurting service times and seeing big complaints. Unless these are policy positions examining the gender impact of expanded CPP. (Actually it benefits women and hurts men)

You should expect substantially degraded services with the cuts and plan accordingly.

Originally Posted by casper

For those types of programs we should be talking about why the automation does not work. People are stepping in to resolve issues or do steps that are not automated.

While automation is never going eliminate everyone involved in that process, the number of people needed should be the same or going down.

Process automation takes time. And given the government's stumbles on automating tax filing, we should expect delays.

[P'tit Renard]

Despite TruAnons bragging about the Trudeau's government bragging about their evidence-based policy and relying on experts, on the immigration file they're clearly not following this axiom:


Des experts se sentent ignorés par le ministère de l’Immigration
https://francopresse.ca/politique/20...-limmigration/

[casper]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

Despite TruAnons bragging about the Trudeau's government bragging about their evidence-based policy and relying on experts, on the immigration file they're clearly not following this axiom:


Des experts se sentent ignorés par le ministère de l’Immigration
https://francopresse.ca/politique/20...-limmigration/

Yes, this government has been far more evidence-based that previous. Quite clear looking from the outside on decisions it has made in public health or environment.

Getting a large organisation to have a culture where people think about what they are doing and raise concerns that make their way to decision makes is extremely hard. Not working in government, can't say if it is improved or not. Not surprised they don't have it right. Am not going to be surprised the next government does not either.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by casper

Yes, this government has been far more evidence-based that previous. Quite clear looking from the outside on decisions it has made in public health or environment.

Getting a large organisation to have a culture where people think about what they are doing and raise concerns that make their way to decision makes is extremely hard. Not working in government, can't say if it is improved or not. Not surprised they don't have it right. Am not going to be surprised the next government does not either.

I suppose it depends what type of evidence you're looking at.

When it came to exploiting the population's fears of a virus that was already endemic, having an extended border shutdown and travel restrictions was clearly the right evidence-based move to stay in power.

When it came to providing an ample amount of cheap labour and customers for their pals and Loblaws and Rogers, increasing immigration numbers to over 4x historic norms was clearly the evidence-based move.

When it came to shoring up tanking polls in the Atlantic, the Liberals definitely made some evidence based climate change policy changes in the past year.

[casper]

Originally Posted by theman23

I suppose it depends what type of evidence you're looking at.

When it came to exploiting the population's fears of a virus that was already endemic, having an extended border shutdown and travel restrictions was clearly the right evidence-based move to stay in power.

When it came to providing an ample amount of cheap labour and customers for their pals and Loblaws and Rogers, increasing immigration numbers to over 4x historic norms was clearly the evidence-based move.

When it came to shoring up tanking polls in the Atlantic, the Liberals definitely made some evidence based climate change policy changes in the past year.

Not wanting to rehash the covid discussion. I will leave that as we look to different experts.

I think they did the wrong thing in Atlantic Canada. They should have stepped up subsidies to transition off of oil heating combined with incentives to insulate homes. In situations where electric operating costs would have been to high it would still have been better to facilitate a transition to propane or natural gas and reduced carbon tax on those forms. Removing carbon tax on the worse form of home heating was a mistake.