The Liberals have realized that talking about building things is a far more cost effective means of corruption than actually building things. All the money spent can go to PMC Liberal voters, clients and crooks. Building things involves payments to foreigners, small business owners, and blue collars, few of whom vote Liberal.
This is all the proof I need that the US "existential threat" and "war" are fake. If there was truth to any of this, even our bloated corrupt government would get its ass in gear in a substantive way.
Nobody with a brain is afraid of invasion. But it could be an existential threat to our government: if the Libs keep wrecking the economy and the Americans get tough with trade but make a generous offer to any province that peels off, sometime could go.
And as soon as one province goes, the country would disintegrate.
Regarding “publish the rules” as one way the government could shrink the habitat, sometimes I don’t believe our government starts off with any knowledge on what the rules are they should be publishing.
It’s much safer spending defence money letting consultants take educated guesses at what those rules might be. Then from a battery of hits and misses something publishable might emerge. If a sizeable chunk of that defence money disappears into the habitat hole without producing an actual deliverable, we can still show our NATO partners we’re doing our bit percentage-wise.
The defence equipment requirements for Canada are too heterogeneous and few in number for published rules to make sense. The actual process should be deciding on a strategy and then getting public spirited officers to run the procurement of each thing needed for the strategy without tying their hands.
Unfortunately, both strategy and public spirited officers are lacking.
I’m not disagreeing, but by “publish rules” what I mean are signed-off specification documents for what is supposed to be procured. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that the original specifications military consultants are given are a lot closer to blank sheets of paper than they are to an actionable set of requirements. What I got from the article is that an entire industry is flourishing with the sole purpose of trying to guess what the military needs.
And I think of the shoddy treatment of recently retired Vice Admiral Norman as a cautionary tale warning off any would-be public spirited officers. Norman eventually did receive an all-party apology from the House of Commons, but who would want to go through what he was subjected to.
I don't care if AI was involved but, for the record, it doesn't signal AI to me. The article is well written, relevant, frank, based on engagement/skin-in-the-game experience. BZ
Interesting piece. I appreciate the honesty in playing the game.
Some people love the process but dread the end game. Making decisions means taking action and ultimately responsibility. We are living with Trudeau’s legacy. He increased the amount paid to consultants and enlarged the public service. Chasing data and insight to avoid action is an action. His predecessors demonstrated the risks of taking action and he gleefully enjoyed criticizing them. Hindsight is always 20/20. Action is risky so instead he pursued perfect knowledge at a cost that Canadians will pay for generations to come.
One of the elephants in the room (excellent overview BTW - and it doesn’t matter if AI is involved as long as the content makes sense to me) is the incentive for burrocrats and politicians to deliberately keep things vague and uncertain to ensure they get lucrative consulting, advisory, or finders fees (apologies for the Oxford comma -trying to prove I’m not AI) when they retire or form a small consulting operation as a side gig.
Excellent insight into one sector of the Canadian economy. Any ecosystem closely tied to the public purse, that exists to siphon off funds better spent elsewhere, should be exposed and eliminated. That being said, there are plenty of examples of this kind of unnecessary expenditure in the private sector as well. Let's start with real estate transactions.....
One of the smartest pieces Ive read lately. Its so basic and telling reading it gave me a sinking feeling. You know the one. Publish the rules! But wait, first the 3 ministires and the new agency involved in procurement have to decide what the real goals are as in craft the rules that will lead to bids that produce great equipment and support economic development where possible and feasible. There are far too many people involved and a terrible inertia has set in.
The key to better procurement will be to remove industrial benefits as a consideration. If the best companies win, the industrial benefits will follow organically. Of course, the Feds will never pass up the opportunity to buy votes east of the Ottawa River.
Has this been ever truer than the past decade of talk but not walk. If Canadian bureaucracy was an ocean it would be called the Arctic. How can anyone step-up or innovate in a climate of promises that emanate from the tomorrow-land of Ottawa. The response is always that “it’s not that easy, it’s complicated”. The only complication is the timidity of the decision makers who are not measured on productivity, but rather on longevity. Grow some balls and make the executive decisions that you are paid for or take the package and get out. The public is fed-up with the immovable ice that surrounds government, perpetually clogging up progress that is blindingly needed.
Indeed. I love reading the honesty. Most industries work like this to some extent (including my own), but defence is its own special and much bigger thing, obviously.
By the way:
Quote: 'Al Vigier is the founder and CEO of Caseway, a Vancouver-based AI company. He served seven years in the Canadian Army.'
Now, is it a.i. Vigier or AL Vigier? Do you run an a.i. company or an AL Company? Perhaps both?
Couldn't resist - it's just one of the vagaries of today's fonts where AI (Artificial Intelligence) looks exactly like Al (as in Albert, Alan, etc.).
In this all too serious world, where Canada needs to ramp up our own defence so we can help our allies provide a deterrence to and/or eventually more actively participate in WWIII, during which artificial intelligence will no doubt play at least a passive, and at worst an active, part in it, the nagging eye-ell typography equivalence problem can yield a bit of dark humour. At least for me.
Anyway, Thank you for your service, AL. Canadians don't say that enough!
As an Al I find this whole Al thing quite frustrating. Why oh why could it not be Ai? Anyway I’ve reverted to Paul Simon’s lyrics, Betty, or anyone else, when you call me, call me Al.
"Al" was one of Gary Larson's "go-to" names for proprietors of businesses involved in his cartoons. "Al's Small Flightless Birds", "Al's Exotic Animal Parts."
"Doug" on the other hand, was usually someone sinister and with not demonstrably normal mental health. Sign stuck in a lawn outside a house with just a pair of eyes glowering from the corner of a darkened picture window: "Beware of Doug."
Thanks for taking the risk to speak openly and honestly about the incentive (if not the actual motivation) of forces outside of government to delay, impede and in frustrate-to-inaction, military procurement in Canada.
The companion piece for another author is the symbiotic relationship between civil servants and their extra-governmental supports. This context does explain multiple governments failure over multiple decades to procure jets. It also explains the over-zealous prosecution of those who break with the cabal and actually procure.
Call it the Norman conundrum where we prosecute those who achieve results and then buy their silence, solely to shield the cabal.
Has The Line published a policy on AI assisted articles? I have no doubt that this post reflects the views of its (human) author, but it reads as AI written.
In short, we won't take stuff written by AIs, and we spell out the circumstances we will use AI. There is some grey area with stuff where AIs assist. I'm not sure anyone's figured that out yet.
In my experience, Panagram is directionally helpful, but not really definitive. I had an AI write an entire piece in my tone as a Panagram test. It said 100% AI written, so, good. I then made three or four manual changes. It then said 60% human written. I made one additional manual change. It then said 25% human written. So I see value in the tool, with large caveats.
The Liberals have realized that talking about building things is a far more cost effective means of corruption than actually building things. All the money spent can go to PMC Liberal voters, clients and crooks. Building things involves payments to foreigners, small business owners, and blue collars, few of whom vote Liberal.
This is all the proof I need that the US "existential threat" and "war" are fake. If there was truth to any of this, even our bloated corrupt government would get its ass in gear in a substantive way.
Nobody with a brain is afraid of invasion. But it could be an existential threat to our government: if the Libs keep wrecking the economy and the Americans get tough with trade but make a generous offer to any province that peels off, sometime could go.
And as soon as one province goes, the country would disintegrate.
Regarding “publish the rules” as one way the government could shrink the habitat, sometimes I don’t believe our government starts off with any knowledge on what the rules are they should be publishing.
It’s much safer spending defence money letting consultants take educated guesses at what those rules might be. Then from a battery of hits and misses something publishable might emerge. If a sizeable chunk of that defence money disappears into the habitat hole without producing an actual deliverable, we can still show our NATO partners we’re doing our bit percentage-wise.
I appreciated this column. It rings true to me.
The defence equipment requirements for Canada are too heterogeneous and few in number for published rules to make sense. The actual process should be deciding on a strategy and then getting public spirited officers to run the procurement of each thing needed for the strategy without tying their hands.
Unfortunately, both strategy and public spirited officers are lacking.
I’m not disagreeing, but by “publish rules” what I mean are signed-off specification documents for what is supposed to be procured. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that the original specifications military consultants are given are a lot closer to blank sheets of paper than they are to an actionable set of requirements. What I got from the article is that an entire industry is flourishing with the sole purpose of trying to guess what the military needs.
And I think of the shoddy treatment of recently retired Vice Admiral Norman as a cautionary tale warning off any would-be public spirited officers. Norman eventually did receive an all-party apology from the House of Commons, but who would want to go through what he was subjected to.
I get angry every time I think about what they did to Vice Admiral Norman.
Perfect explanation of the ecosystem that develops in an unserious country. I am reminded of a quote by Frank Sabotka in The Wire:
"We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now all we do is put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
The unproductive economy relies on governments that keep the status quo. And right there we have one of the reasons the Liberals keep winning.
I don't care if AI was involved but, for the record, it doesn't signal AI to me. The article is well written, relevant, frank, based on engagement/skin-in-the-game experience. BZ
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Interesting piece. I appreciate the honesty in playing the game.
Some people love the process but dread the end game. Making decisions means taking action and ultimately responsibility. We are living with Trudeau’s legacy. He increased the amount paid to consultants and enlarged the public service. Chasing data and insight to avoid action is an action. His predecessors demonstrated the risks of taking action and he gleefully enjoyed criticizing them. Hindsight is always 20/20. Action is risky so instead he pursued perfect knowledge at a cost that Canadians will pay for generations to come.
One of the elephants in the room (excellent overview BTW - and it doesn’t matter if AI is involved as long as the content makes sense to me) is the incentive for burrocrats and politicians to deliberately keep things vague and uncertain to ensure they get lucrative consulting, advisory, or finders fees (apologies for the Oxford comma -trying to prove I’m not AI) when they retire or form a small consulting operation as a side gig.
Excellent insight into one sector of the Canadian economy. Any ecosystem closely tied to the public purse, that exists to siphon off funds better spent elsewhere, should be exposed and eliminated. That being said, there are plenty of examples of this kind of unnecessary expenditure in the private sector as well. Let's start with real estate transactions.....
One of the smartest pieces Ive read lately. Its so basic and telling reading it gave me a sinking feeling. You know the one. Publish the rules! But wait, first the 3 ministires and the new agency involved in procurement have to decide what the real goals are as in craft the rules that will lead to bids that produce great equipment and support economic development where possible and feasible. There are far too many people involved and a terrible inertia has set in.
This process must be entirely de-politicized.
The key to better procurement will be to remove industrial benefits as a consideration. If the best companies win, the industrial benefits will follow organically. Of course, the Feds will never pass up the opportunity to buy votes east of the Ottawa River.
Enjoyed the piece. AI assisted or otherwise.
Since this is a defence procurement article I feel two military descriptions apply: snafu and fubar.
Count on it.
Has this been ever truer than the past decade of talk but not walk. If Canadian bureaucracy was an ocean it would be called the Arctic. How can anyone step-up or innovate in a climate of promises that emanate from the tomorrow-land of Ottawa. The response is always that “it’s not that easy, it’s complicated”. The only complication is the timidity of the decision makers who are not measured on productivity, but rather on longevity. Grow some balls and make the executive decisions that you are paid for or take the package and get out. The public is fed-up with the immovable ice that surrounds government, perpetually clogging up progress that is blindingly needed.
Indeed. I love reading the honesty. Most industries work like this to some extent (including my own), but defence is its own special and much bigger thing, obviously.
By the way:
Quote: 'Al Vigier is the founder and CEO of Caseway, a Vancouver-based AI company. He served seven years in the Canadian Army.'
Now, is it a.i. Vigier or AL Vigier? Do you run an a.i. company or an AL Company? Perhaps both?
Couldn't resist - it's just one of the vagaries of today's fonts where AI (Artificial Intelligence) looks exactly like Al (as in Albert, Alan, etc.).
In this all too serious world, where Canada needs to ramp up our own defence so we can help our allies provide a deterrence to and/or eventually more actively participate in WWIII, during which artificial intelligence will no doubt play at least a passive, and at worst an active, part in it, the nagging eye-ell typography equivalence problem can yield a bit of dark humour. At least for me.
Anyway, Thank you for your service, AL. Canadians don't say that enough!
As an Al I find this whole Al thing quite frustrating. Why oh why could it not be Ai? Anyway I’ve reverted to Paul Simon’s lyrics, Betty, or anyone else, when you call me, call me Al.
"Now, is it a.i. Vigier or AL Vigier? Do you run an a.i. company or an AL Company? Perhaps both?"
LOL
"Al" was one of Gary Larson's "go-to" names for proprietors of businesses involved in his cartoons. "Al's Small Flightless Birds", "Al's Exotic Animal Parts."
"Doug" on the other hand, was usually someone sinister and with not demonstrably normal mental health. Sign stuck in a lawn outside a house with just a pair of eyes glowering from the corner of a darkened picture window: "Beware of Doug."
Larson was in my top five all time - so good.
Tops overall is and always will be Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes.
Also criminally underrated (and mostly unknown here in Canada) was Footrot Flats (New Zealand).
Wow. Talk about off topic!
Sorry, Line Editors & AL Vigier!
Thanks for taking the risk to speak openly and honestly about the incentive (if not the actual motivation) of forces outside of government to delay, impede and in frustrate-to-inaction, military procurement in Canada.
The companion piece for another author is the symbiotic relationship between civil servants and their extra-governmental supports. This context does explain multiple governments failure over multiple decades to procure jets. It also explains the over-zealous prosecution of those who break with the cabal and actually procure.
Call it the Norman conundrum where we prosecute those who achieve results and then buy their silence, solely to shield the cabal.
Applies to so many industries!!! 😅
Has The Line published a policy on AI assisted articles? I have no doubt that this post reflects the views of its (human) author, but it reads as AI written.
Policy is here:https://www.readtheline.ca/about
In short, we won't take stuff written by AIs, and we spell out the circumstances we will use AI. There is some grey area with stuff where AIs assist. I'm not sure anyone's figured that out yet.
I kind of feel terrible that this is my first comment after five years of reading the Line. Next time I'll comment on the content!
Accusations of AI use (especially for grey area scenarios) threaten to become slop themselves and derail productive discussion in the comment section.
Pangram says 100% AI for this piece, but no idea how definitive that is.
It showed as AI assisted, not written, for us.
In my experience, Panagram is directionally helpful, but not really definitive. I had an AI write an entire piece in my tone as a Panagram test. It said 100% AI written, so, good. I then made three or four manual changes. It then said 60% human written. I made one additional manual change. It then said 25% human written. So I see value in the tool, with large caveats.