Running Out of Gas?

September 30, 2023

HERE'S MY TAKE

Canada’s global media coverage the past few weeks has not been good news. While partisan critics of the government may see advantages in a government sputtering to make any progress, the consequences of an internationally sidelined Canada aren’t in the interests of any Canadian.

It began with Prime Minister Trudeau’s announcement to the House of Commons September 18^th that the government of India was somehow involved in the murder of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil. As best as I can piece together from the diverse coverage of the story, Canada received information about the Indian government’s involvement from American intelligence officials. This was at least several weeks prior and the government of Canada had been working diplomatically with India since then. Canada’s national security advisor travelled at least twice to India to meet with her counterparts on this file. This was all behind the scenes until there was a leak from within the Canadian intelligence system to the Globe and Mail. The Globe asked the Prime Minister’s Office for comment, indicating it was about to run with the story with or without PMO comment. It would appear that this prompted the PM to make this a public matter, with all of the geopolitical implications and repercussions that implies. There are many moving parts we don’t know, but there seems little doubt the decision of some individual within the Canadian intelligence service to share the information with the press is a key part of this story.

Interpreting this properly requires considering the broader context. For six months, Canada has been having a very public discussion regarding foreign interference in our elections. The publicly available evidence suggests that intelligence agencies have reported these concerns with regularity for several years with apparently little government follow-up. It seems that situation prompted frustrated intelligence officials to leak information to the media in February. The consequence is significant for Canadian politics and for relationships both domestically and internationally.

While we were still trying to make sense of the India story, the speaker of the House of Commons invited a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian constituent from his riding to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s speech to Parliament last week. It’s not unusual for politicians to try and get a bit of shine from recognizing notable constituents. So, the speaker took the opportunity to recognize him for his contributions and courage in World War II, “fighting the Russians.” That was the cue for the standing ovation even though historically literate folk would know that Russia was an ally in WWII, meaning if you were fighting against Russia, you were fighting for the Nazis. It’s understandable that in the heat of the moment, someone might not immediately connect those dots, so I’m not critical of Parliamentarians for joining the standing ovation. However, once the Nazi connection came to light, the question became: Who failed in vetting this guest and how did the speaker not know about the guest’s past before publicly honouring him? To date, we only have inadequate answers involving the constituent’s son contacting the speaker’s office and somehow getting the invitation and recognition arranged.

I should note that the fallout from this incident involved Anthony Rota resigning as speaker and the prime minister offering an apology on behalf of Parliament (which didn’t please opposition parties that wanted the PM to offer a personal apology instead).

So, whether we’re talking about the India allegations or the international embarrassment in the House of Commons, we have a couple of unnamed employees making decisions which created major international incidents. At a purely human level, I can understand how the leaders involved might feel frustrated for the blame they’ve faced. It seems a reasonable assumption that our leaders should be served by staff and systems that provide reliable information relevant to the occasion. That’s doubly important for decisions with security and diplomatic implications for Canada.

I started drafting this while sitting on the sidelines of a school principals’ retreat I was privileged to address this week. As I write, participants are dealing with case studies challenging them to work through hypothetical ethical or moral challenges involving students, staff, board, and community members. In almost every case, the answer offered is “it depends.” The key lesson for the principals is that one-paragraph case study dilemmas don’t provide the necessary contextual information–information that would make a real-life difference. Leadership isn’t just applying formulas; it is weighing information in specific contexts to come to a balanced judgement. Listening with half an ear to the current real-life political circumstances I’m writing about, I echo that lesson. Who is to blame in each of the Canadian political circumstances making headlines recently? Well, “It depends.” Making that call requires information that in almost every case—real and hypothetical—we don’t have.

Whether the partisan bickering we’ve seen this week is helpful or not, I understand it’s part of our adversarial political system designed to draw out information and force accountability. In these cases, it’s debatable to what extent that partisanship is accomplishing constructive things. What the circumstances do highlight, however, is that all leaders—from the prime minister to the business owner, the not-for-profit chair to the school principal—face the challenge of evaluating the information they receive from others, which informs the decisions they make. Five dimensions of that evaluation, made implicitly or explicitly but relevant in almost every case, come to mind:

1. 1. Leaders must seek information.
      Both the Ukraine and the China stories involved decision-makers seeming not to have the information required. The mindset regarding the importance of dealing with information, especially unpleasant information, was illustrated by the Liberals’ attempt on Monday (before the resignation of Speaker Rota) to deal with the matter by expunging from the House of Commons’ records all references to this incident. It really was an unbelievable attempt to think that pretending something didn’t happen could make the problem go away. It reminded me of the “old school” approach to sexual assault allegations–do your best to bury them and try to make sure that as few people know about it as possible. Thankfully that attempt was unsuccessful and abandoned within a day. Still, the very fact that a government attempted this as a solution betrays a deeper problem about how leadership seeks and deals with difficult information. Most leaders know that burying difficult information almost always makes things worse.
   2. Leaders can be accountable for decisions they personally may not have made.
      It’s part of the definition of leadership. You get resources. You get to direct others and receive their input. But at the end of the day, you make decisions (or decide not to make a decision, which is also a decision) and have to own it. Accountability doesn’t require resignation for every mistake. But it does require owning the processes and the results of the information-seeking you rely upon. I can accept that Speaker Rota likely was just following through on a staff recommendation, taking for granted it was based on reliable information, and was reading a script his staffers likely wrote for him. When the mistake of his introduction was exposed with consequences as far-reaching as they were, Rota had no choice but to resign. No other action could communicate the gravity of apology required given the consequences of his action. And while accountability demanded it, practically it would be impossible having made a mistake of this magnitude for him to continue with the confidence and trust that the execution of his responsibilities required.
   3. Leaders must ask questions or build systems to ensure they’re acting on reliable information.
      The degree of certainty required depends on the consequences of an action. I’m a fan of subsidiarity, pushing decisions down to the lower levels. That means leaders are relying and trusting the information they are getting. I’ve often encouraged team members to make decisions on their own as much as possible, but only after asking themselves about the consequences of being wrong. There’s nothing wrong with running out of gas, if you’re driving a car. I want responsible risk-taking and that means occasionally you’ll be wrong. The only consequence is you walking down the road with a jerry can, and if I drive by, I’ll give you a ride while teasing you a bit. Even so, 30 minutes later, life goes on. But if you’re flying an airplane, running out of gas is an entirely different matter. Determining the degree of certainty required about the reliability of information always requires us to ask, “What’s the worst that can happen if I’m mistaken?” And leaders who delegate need to ask themselves the same questions they ask those who serve them. If I’m wrong, what would happen? The answer to that question sets the standard of diligence required to verify information.
   4. Information comes with responsibility.
      The intelligence agent who receives significant information fails when he does not pass it on. Those who receive that information fail when they do not act on it. But this is a two-way street. Leaders’ persistent failure to act on information creates a vacuum followers may try to fill by “fixing things” by going outside of the system. Intelligence agents can absolve their consciences reasoning that “something needs to be done.” But whenever we start dealing with things outside of the institutional processes designed for them, it almost always leads to additional consequences and problems that sometimes are more consequential than the original ones. You might fix an immediate problem but you are creating a bigger one.
   5. Leaders need to fix what’s broken.
      It’s not clear who the others are besides Speaker Rota who need to lose their jobs as a result of these events. But it is basic for a G-7 country to have security and intelligence systems that are consistent and reliable. Whether the Royal Commission established to deal with the foreign interference scandal is the right vehicle to count on or not, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that the broken processes get fixed promptly and in a manner that can restore confidence. The headlines will move on soon enough to the next thing and political attention spans are short. Leadership is ensuring this stuff gets dealt with after the public attention has moved on.

Canada’s international reputation is a vehicle with an empty gas tank these days. And while there are many questions that our leaders still haven’t answered adequately, we’d all do well to remind ourselves that leadership only functions when we can rely on the teams around us. The decisions of a few individuals to share or not to collect information according to the usual protocols will go down in history as institutional failures with global political, social, and economic repercussions.

All of which is a good reminder to all of us, especially those of us who hold positions of leadership, to reflect on what information we need to know in order to make good decisions. How confident am I that the processes that bring me information are reliable and trustworthy? When I receive information, what are the consequences of action or inaction? This requires judgement, not a checklist. The answers “depend” on whether your responsibilities are similar to driving a car or an airplane. Canadians have the right to expect our pilots and our government to be alert and act according to the weight of their responsibilities, aware of the impacts on so many when they are mistaken.

WHAT I’M READING

Talking to Strangers

The Economist ran a fascinating review of three recent books on the benefits that can come from encountering and engaging strangers. I share the reviewer’s skepticism that the significant rewards of random personal encounters are often overblown, no matter how fascinating and insightful they may appear. However, the article suggests anecdotally several benefits from these unexpected encounters. These remind me that living by the principle that what I share in common with every other person is the image of God (imago Dei) we bear (and not a tribe we identify with), has very practical implications, including to whom I say “Hi!” to and ask questions of in the coffee shop.

Foreign Students, Foreign Surpluses

Reading about budget surpluses in the context of post-secondary education seems foreign, so I was a bit startled to see the Globe and Mail report that 23 out of Ontario’s 24 colleges posted budget surpluses, some of them substantial. The backstory is the story of international students, many of them from India providing significant tuition revenues (the immediate future of which is certainly put into question by this week’s political developments). While the article focuses on the budget and fairness aspects of the international student question, there are other significant implications (from housing to recruiting the brightest from other countries in the global competition for smarts) that the entire issue raises for reflection.

A.I. Travel

Catching up on my reading in an airport lounge, a McKinsey report on how Artificial Intelligence might redefine travel prompted me to linger a bit longer than I otherwise might have. It reads like an advertisement for improvements in comfort that seem to be just around the corner. I have little doubt that A.I. will find economic efficiencies in the business travel process that will be of benefit. I do wonder, however, whether the hyper-personalization that this brings with it is actually the good news it is sold to be.

Muslim Pushback

The statement by the Muslim Association of Canada this week, calling on the Prime Minister and other politicians to apologise for their “inflammatory and divisive” statements regarding protests in support of parental rights in education caught many off-guard for its directness. It is just the latest example of where progressive conceptions of diversity so often celebrated in the media run into the reality that many immigrant and faith communities hold perspectives that are not in line with culturally prominent progressive views.

MEANINGFUL METRICS

Declining Support for MAID

Regular readers will know that I’m invested in and active in the debate regarding the expansion of euthanasia (euphemistically called Medical Assistance in Dying or MAID these days). This week, the Angus Reid Institute released a poll commissioned by Cardus that shows significant concerns regarding the proposed expansion of euthanasia for those with mental illness scheduled to become law in March 2024. The poll contains a deeper look at the state of care for those with mental illness with the top-line results showing that more than 80% of Canadians have concerns with the current direction. As the above graph shows, popular support for the subsequent steps the government has undertaken regarding euthanasia is declining, something I suspect that is explained best by a slowly growing awareness of what Canada’s practice of euthanasia is really like on the front lines.

TAKE IT TO-GO

Punner’s Digest

Someone asked if I believed pun appreciation to be an innate trait or an acquired taste. I’ve been serving up a smorgasbord of puns for as long as I can remember. I do wonder if the monthly Reader's Digest that arrived with the predictability of lunch at noon may be a contributing factor. I wasn’t the sort to spend too much time on the 31 articles for 31 days, but as soon as a new edition arrived, I went straight to the mess hall of “Humour in Uniform” and “Laughter is the Best Medicine.” “Increasing Your Word Power” was a challenge that couldn’t be passed. But the most tasty dessert was certainly “All in a Day’s Work” which is, I suppose, what putting the wordplay at the end of this newsletter each week has become.

That said, next week is Canadian Thanksgiving. I’ll try not to be a turkey and ham things up too much but the very practical consequence is that Insights skips long weekends. I’m sure there was a “stuff it” story in “As Kids See It” but I don’t recall. I’ll try again with another serving of Insights for breakfast on Saturday, October 14th.