Unexpected consequences are the curse of politics

IT IS the curse of complicated modern government and the threat of single-issue politics.

It is a challenge for politicians and bureaucrats trying to meet policy goals without doing more damage than good.

The curse? It is the unexpected impact of policy change, the unintentional side effect, the hard-to-explain downside to what was supposed to be an upside policy.

Like the balloon in laboratory air pressure experiments, pressure in one place produces a bulge elsewhere.

Consider some policy examples:

In the early 1980s, a growing farm debt problem led the government to offer farmers a chance through the Farm Credit Corporation to consolidate debts into a more manageable package. Farm lobbyists applauded. Some farmers were saved.

Read Also

Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

The unexpected result? Banks saw an opportunity to dump questionable farm clients, encouraged them to take advantage of the FCC offer, loaded the government lender with hundreds of millions of dollars of questionable debt and almost drove the FCC out of business.

In the early 1990s, Ottawa began a policy of increased cost recovery on a variety of services, from food inspection to marine, health, product registration and customs.

Many fiscal conservatives applauded it in principle. Those who benefit should pay.

It is almost certain that no one in the Treasury Board thought ahead to the combined effect all these new charges would have on a vulnerable sector like agriculture. The farm lobby still is trying to get the message through that it exceeds $100 million off farm bottom lines.

When the Crow Benefit subsidy was abolished in 1995, the government saw it as shock therapy to force prairie diversification from export grain to local feeding or processing.

But who could have imagined that a victim would be the Canadian Grain Commission, thrown into a funding crisis because export grain was its income source and export volumes have dropped?

Farmers with lower-valued grain because of the lost Crow Benefit soon will find themselves paying a quality assurance fee when they deliver to country elevators because the CGC needs the revenue.

When the federal government decided the telephone monopoly should be subjected to competition, the result was lower long-distance rates. Now, the cost is becoming clear. Local rates will go up and rural telephone service is underfunded because the monopoly companies once invested some of their profits in higher-cost rural services.

Federal regulators now are considering a tax on each telephone bill to make up the gap. Who would have imagined?

Last year, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief announced that all federal policy would be viewed through a “rural lens” to determine its impact on rural Canada. The announcement was met with yawns or guffaws.

But this week when Agriculture Canada’s rural secretariat is grilled at a Parliament Hill committee hearing about what it does, they could justify their existence by assuring MPs they are diligent in considering the unintended rural “what ifs” of any new policy plan.

Too often, it has not been calculated.