Something feels off about Canadian public policy. Governments at every level seem perpetually busy announcing new agencies, launching new programs and carving out new tax measures. They are drawn to the new and visible, while the core of their responsibilities \u2014 the services people currently depend on \u2014 quietly deteriorates. There\u2019s a name for this: \u201cpolicy adventurism.\u201d It\u2019s a distraction we can no longer afford.<\/p>\n
Toronto City Council recently voted<\/a> 21-3 to launch a pilot project establishing four city-operated grocery stores. The goal is to make food more affordable for residents struggling to make ends meet. Food insecurity in Toronto is real and Canada is the food inflation capital<\/a> of the G7.<\/p>\n But consider the proposal. This is a municipal government that cannot reliably fill potholes, has presided over a transit system in chronic dysfunction, and has seen housing affordability collapse on its watch. Now it intends to enter the grocery business. As food economist Sylvain Charlebois notes<\/a>, modern food distribution is \u201cincredibly complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n Because grocery retail operates on notoriously thin margins, the Daily Bread Food Bank finds<\/a> that even if the city eliminated those margins entirely, the maximum theoretical saving to households would be around $40 to $73 a month. The underlying drivers of food pricing would remain completely untouched, while taxpayers would be left subsidizing a permanent municipal loss leader.<\/p>\n The grocery pilot reflects a broader governing reflex: when confronted with complex, systemic failures, governments are often tempted to launch new initiatives rather than fix the machinery they already have. At the federal level, this dynamic has driven a steady expansion of new agencies.<\/p>\n Ottawa created the Canada Infrastructure Bank<\/a> in 2017 to catalyze private investment in public infrastructure. It spent years failing to move money out the door. Rather than reckon with that reality, the Carney government doubled down. It added the Major Projects Office, Build Canada Homes and a Defence Investment Agency.<\/p>\n As Shannon Proudfoot recently wrote<\/a>, this is a workaround rather than a public service overhaul. And it mistakes the rhetoric of urgency for the reality of delivery. Starting up a new agency generates a press release. It does not generate the structural regulatory reform or procurement capacity that determines whether things get built.<\/p>\n The recent Ontario budget<\/a> shows similar adventurism. It includes a new $4 billion Protect Ontario Account Investment Fund \u2014 on top of the recently established Building Ontario Fund, with funding now at $8 billion<\/a> \u2014 to leverage private capital to grow certain sectors. Missing from this conversation is why pension funds and private capital are choosing to invest abroad rather than at home in the first place.<\/p>\n As governments expand into dubious new areas, existing responsibilities get shortchanged. A March 2026 Auditor General report<\/a> found that Ottawa identified over 153,000 potentially non-compliant international students but had funding to investigate only 2,000 cases a year. The ArriveCan application<\/a> \u2014 a simple digital tool for border management \u2014 ballooned to an estimated $59.5 million with costs the Auditor General described as impossible to determine due to poor record-keeping.<\/p>\n Millions of Canadians do not have a family doctor<\/a>, and they now wait a median of 28.6 weeks<\/a> for medically necessary treatment \u2014 triple the wait in 1993. Student math scores<\/a> have been falling for over two decades. Violent crime has surged<\/a>. And serious concerns<\/a> remain about the quality of Canada\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n