Going Your Own Way

We live in difficult times. The Israeli-Hamas War is only the latest in a long series of crises. Susan Delacourt asks:

What happens to a government that’s constantly in crisis mode? There are a couple of obvious answers, none of them great: burnout, distraction and exhaustion. Trudeau and his government, not faring so well in the polls right now, can certainly lay some of that unpopularity at the feet of the big and controversial things they’ve had to manage. As well, there’s a real risk of a public growing weary of hearing end-of-times talk from their leaders, a crisis fatigue mentality that sets in, both within and outside government.

The answers are uncertain. But there are lessons to be learned:

In discussions with people who have been doing that crisis management, it is possible to see some ways in which each big world-shaking development has taught some lessons for dealing with future ones.

Trump’s existential threat to free trade taught the Trudeau government the value of networks abroad, using other relationships at the state level or in other countries to leverage Canada’s interests with the U.S.

Those networks came in handy when Canada had to shut its border with the U.S. during the pandemic, but also keep business and trade moving. The pandemic, in turn, forced the Trudeau government to put new programs and procedures in place quickly, with what one adviser described as “high-risk tolerance for implementation.”

So when war erupts in Eastern Europe, or now in the Middle East, Canada has some practice in putting out a suite of quick-response measures.

What you learn during constant crisis management, [an] adviser said, is that “you can’t operate in a zero-risk policy environment.” So when the next crisis comes along, the government knows there are new levers to pull, ways to speed up its notoriously slow bureaucracy.

In sum, while Trudeau’s government might have preferred to avoid the constant-crisis mode, each one has given it new ways to deal with the next one. And what should be clear by now: there will be a next one. That may be the only safe prediction to make in a world where each week brings a new crisis

 In an uncertain world, one thing is certain. Those international connections are vital. Anyone who claims you can make your own way in such a world is a fool.

.Images: United Nations Development