Investments are frozen and long-term planning decisions are largely on hold in the manufacturing sector ‘as everybody tries to figure out where this is going to go,’ said a vice-president of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. #cdnpoli

The federal government and the Canadian dairy industry are vowing to protect the country’s supply management system in the face of threats from the United States.

William Mouw making a 13 today is incredible to watch.

Union blasts comments by Quebec minister mulling law to intervene to end strikes

I briefly worked in government and learned the primary defense mechanisms that the government (like any large organization) has to thwart any attempt at meaningful reform. I found my time there massively useful in my career building products. Here are the top three defense mechanisms and my advice on how to change it: 1. Running out the clock: The system knows all it has to do to kill any reform is to run out the clock till the next election. Therefore studies about any large project or change will take forever. You want a radical reform? Great, the existing team will first need to study it for 2.5 years. By the time they are done, you will not do it. 2. Expert Language: The government is full of experts speaking in acronyms. It will take any reformer at least 6 months just to learn the acronyms and expert language. But language isn’t neutral. By the time you are speaking that language, your brain has changed to think in that way and therefore you are far less likely to want reform. 3. Status Quo Bias and Information Protection: Almost all the information you will need to institute a reform well is hidden or unavailable. This makes designing a great program very nearly impossible. Your choices then become: 1. Make change knowing some of it you will be wrong and you will look silly 2. Go with status quo. Almost everyone goes with status quo. How do you get around these? 1. Start with burning bridges on the status quo. Move the urgency from how to change status quo to coming up with a replacement. Loudly state that by x date the status quo will end. Then everyone will have incentive to come up with an alternative rather than run out the clock on whether change will happen or not. In product reviews, I frequently say “By X date, Y will be true.” That creates certainty that change is coming. 2. Avoid expert language and refuse acronyms. Do not read any document that has acronyms in it and create a policy that you will not accept expert language. If folks want to change your mind, they have to speak to you plainly. In my product job, I’ve frequently asked my teams to read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language for this reason. 3. Be very okay being publicly wrong. The main defense the people hiding information have from you is that you will be afraid to make change because you will not know the perfect solution. This is easily defeated by you publicly saying “this change will not be perfect, once we’ve made the change we will make other changes to it to make it better.” Commit to making all decisions you can with the information you can gather in a limited time. Say “I will make this decision by x date”. You’d be shocked how much information will magically appear.