I signed up early to follow Build Canada because I wanted to, well, help build Canada and that’s what your name implied. A little disappointed to see negativity in early posts and now saddened by the ‘damned by faint praise’ tone of parts of today’s post, especially:
“We were curious to see what the government’s plan is for getting Canada building again, and if anything in the goes beyond what we’ve heard thus far. The answer is, not really.”
And
“If there was nothing much new here, then at least we can give the Carney-led Liberal government points for consistency. Their election platform made clear their agenda, they have since doubled and now tripled down on its scope and ambition, and it is now time to start getting things done.”
I do agree with the last clause - it is now time to start getting things done - but I really hope to hear/see Build Canada working with the current government for improvements; building together rather than splitting apart.
Is that part of the plan? Looking forward to hearing back.
Hi Barb — thanks for this feedback, it is really helpful. I have to be completely honest, it was not my intention in the slightest to "“damn with faint praise”. The “not really” wasn’t meant in a negative way at all; part of our worry at BC was that the government would actually backtrack on or downplay what we saw as a lot of the positive stuff that was in the mandate letters (see our previous post on that). So when I wrote that there was nothing in the speech that went beyond the two previous documents about their plans, it wasn’t meant derisively.
But this is good feedback because we want to strike the right tone; part of the difficulty is that we want to be pretty scrupulously non-partisan, so we were trying to avoid cheerleading too much here as well.
But to your last comment: We are absolutely planning to continue to provide as much constructive advice and support as we can — we are actually relaunching our memos very soon, as well as bringing new tools and products online. We want to build Canada — it’s pretty much our only reason for existing. And we will help any government, of any partisan stripe, if they are open to our ideas.
I signed up early to follow Build Canada because I wanted to, well, help build Canada and that’s what your name implied. A little disappointed to see negativity in early posts and now saddened by the ‘damned by faint praise’ tone of parts of today’s post, especially:
“We were curious to see what the government’s plan is for getting Canada building again, and if anything in the goes beyond what we’ve heard thus far. The answer is, not really.”
And
“If there was nothing much new here, then at least we can give the Carney-led Liberal government points for consistency. Their election platform made clear their agenda, they have since doubled and now tripled down on its scope and ambition, and it is now time to start getting things done.”
I do agree with the last clause - it is now time to start getting things done - but I really hope to hear/see Build Canada working with the current government for improvements; building together rather than splitting apart.
Is that part of the plan? Looking forward to hearing back.
Hi Barb — thanks for this feedback, it is really helpful. I have to be completely honest, it was not my intention in the slightest to "“damn with faint praise”. The “not really” wasn’t meant in a negative way at all; part of our worry at BC was that the government would actually backtrack on or downplay what we saw as a lot of the positive stuff that was in the mandate letters (see our previous post on that). So when I wrote that there was nothing in the speech that went beyond the two previous documents about their plans, it wasn’t meant derisively.
But this is good feedback because we want to strike the right tone; part of the difficulty is that we want to be pretty scrupulously non-partisan, so we were trying to avoid cheerleading too much here as well.
But to your last comment: We are absolutely planning to continue to provide as much constructive advice and support as we can — we are actually relaunching our memos very soon, as well as bringing new tools and products online. We want to build Canada — it’s pretty much our only reason for existing. And we will help any government, of any partisan stripe, if they are open to our ideas.
If you want to chat more about any of this, you can reach me at andrew@buildcanada.com
Thanks, I will!