Wanted: Hard-headed policy wonks

These are exciting times for policy wonks at McGill University, where I have my day job. Tuesday was the official launch of the new Max Bell School of Public Policy, which admits its first students in September 2019. As you might have guessed, the school is made possible by a generous grant from Calgary’s Max Bell Foundation, a $10 million example of western nonalienation. The luncheon speaker, appropriately enough, was Rona Ambrose, former MP for Sturgeon River-Parkland in suburban Edmonton (not Calgary). She warned the audience that “We have a population in Alberta feeling as though their goals aren’t the federation’s goals — it’s dangerous.”

Other speakers, as the afternoon proceeded, included former PM Paul Martin, Inuit leader Sheila Watt-Cloutier, foreign policy experts Roland Paris and Jennifer Welch, veteran NDP adviser and one-time leadership candidate Brian Topp, and Caisse de dépôt CEO Michael Sabia.

When you ask panels to suggest solutions to Canada’s problems you usually get repeated invocation of the need for “agreeing the status quo is unacceptable,” “re-thinking how we do things,” “finding new ideas and approaches,” “going back to Square One,” “needing creative and innovative solutions.” And in truth there was a fair amount of that on offer. But honestly: What’s the point in saying “we need creative and innovative solutions”? Duh. Does anyone favour dumb, unimaginative solutions? Tell us in as exact terms as possible: What are those creative and innovative solutions? What precisely do you want us to do?

The new school’s motto is “Public policy for the real world” and in fairness its incoming director, my McGill colleague, economist Chris Ragan, pressed speakers for specific policy suggestions. Paul Martin offered one he’s been involved with: regular pre-natal visits by older Aboriginal mothers to help younger expecting ones. The idea is that greater social support will pay off in better outcomes after children are born. For his part, Roland Paris suggested Canada lead an international effort to provide good primary education to the millions of children currently growing up in unstructured environments in refugee camps around the world. He also pitched the idea of increasing support for Canadian university students spending a term or two outside Canada as part of their formal program, an idea reinforced by a new report from the Canadian Bureau for International Education, which proposes a target of 15 per cent of students spending time overseas. (This supposedly will help us take advantage of all the trade deals we’ve been negotiating.)

The goals of these suggested policies are admirable: better outcomes for Aboriginal children, sound education for refugee kids, greater “worldliness” for Canadian university students. But hard questions have to be asked. Will they actually work? Does government really have to be involved? How do you measure success? What are each initiative’s costs — its all-in costs, including unanticipated consequences? How big is the potential payoff — the real payoff, not the blue-sky, happy-talk payoff? How do you design the program? (Martin insists pre-natal visiting won’t work unless Aboriginal communities design it themselves.) If it’s worthwhile, how do you get it through the political and bureaucratic process? What interests will oppose it? How do you prevent it from being hijacked? How do you monitor it once it’s in place? Are there better ways to do what’s being suggested?

These are tough questions that often aren’t asked. In fact, they needn’t be disqualifying. Government shouldn’t do everything, a good school of public policy will teach its students, but it shouldn’t do nothing, either. Some purposes only government can pursue. Even so, it’s important it pursue them effectively.

Many of the speakers at Tuesday’s inauguration were old enough to know President Kennedy’s characterization of himself as an “idealist without illusions.” Ok, ok, with all we’ve learned since 1963 about Kennedy’s private life it’s hard now to read him as an idealist. But it’s a nice phrase and a good model to aspire to.

My guess is most students coming to a school of public policy will have the idealist part of the equation covered. What the school therefore needs to do is temper their idealism with skepticism. Temper but not destroy. Skepticism needn’t morph into cynicism. Some policy proposals will make it through even a tough screen. But in both its teaching and research a good policy school will emphasize that, with all manner of proposal and petition bombarding governments every day, the screen is key.

Princeton economist Alan Blinder once wrote a book called “Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough-minded Economics for a Just Society.” There’s no shortage of soft hearts in the policy world. What we need more of are hard heads. Let’s hope the country’s policy schools, now including McGill’s Max Bell, work on that.