Searching for economic salvation
It’s become an odd little staple of leadership campaigns and elections: the “first 100 days” promise, (not to be confused with the hazardous “three shot challenge.”)
People running for office hand out a slew of things they promise to achieve in just over three months — as if moving quickly is somehow also a stamp of good governance.
Well, Liberal leadership candidate Andrew Furey has started to drop his “first 100 days” promises, starting with one that bears a little review.
“I will immediately create the position of Chief Economic Recovery Officer to help drive our economy forward. They will be an expert in their field and independent from government. They will provide timely and frank updates to the public. They will work with government on the best opportunities to pursue now and for the future. They will play a critical role in my evidence-based decision making approach. Our Chief Economic Recovery Officer will be a name you will come to know and trust.”
It’s something he expanded on — a little — in a tweet: “I will immediately create the position of Chief Economic Recovery Officer to help drive our economy forward, and function very much like the Chief Medical Officer of Health.” It’s an interesting comparison. The chief medical officer of health — along with the premier and the minister of health — are, in fact, offering regular updates. The other thing about the chief medical officer of health? She has unique powers that reach well beyond the standards found in democratic governance, but strictly for the duration of a recognized public emergency.
There are those who believe our economy should be seen as a public emergency, and they’re not really wrong. Our government spends more than it brings in, oil revenues are in a tailspin, and the Muskrat millstone — dragging us down by millions in interest and bond repayments — is pulling us deeper every day.
We may indeed need to hire an independent fiscal officer. We may not. It’s a technique that has been tried before — all the way back to the government of Joey Smallwood — and has had mixed results. Actually, pretty much uniformly poor results.
Responsibility for the direction of the economy should remain as it is now — essentially split between the efforts of government to make the right choices to help business, and the entrepreneurs and businesspeople willing to spend their capital to invest in opportunities in this province. We should really be in a position to elect the people we want to lead us — not simply elect someone who then appoints someone else to a seat of particular power.
Installing an unelected overall economics czar may have results that are just as dismal as building the province’s “energy warehouse” — complete with its own industry superstar — turned out to be.