I created this site in 2020 as a place to share ideas and perspectives shaped by a long career in public policy, strategic planning, communications, association management, government, and politics.
When I launched it, I did not fully appreciate how constraining to self-expression it could be to work within Ottawa’s mainstream policy and institutional ecosystem.
Writing carefully, moderating tone and always colouring within the lines may be necessary, even appropriate, but over time it is also limiting. That is why this site did not become the safe place for unvarnished expression I had hoped it would be.
As I write this, I’m in a different place, I’ve left full-time association management and have moved to a different stage of my professional life: One where I can choose, who I work with, what projects I lend my time to and the causes I advocate for.
And with that, I’m reclaiming my own voice — the ability to write and think freely, without the need for perpetual moderation and compromise. This site now reflects that intention more clearly.
I still expect to post the occasional quick take on breaking news, but the emphasis will remain on more considered opinion and longer-form analysis, written honestly and in my own voice.
While the news cycle will shape some of what appears here, my focus will increasingly be on a smaller number of issues of particular concern to me: governance and leadership, mental health and wellbeing in institutional settings, public policy and democratic practice, and the human consequences of how we design and manage our institutions.
And from time to time, I may still share thoughts on a book or two that have little — or nothing at all — to do with public policy.
This site is, at its core, a place to think out loud — freely, honestly, and for me, in a reclaimed voice.
If you’re interested in subscribing, please use the form below.
I look forward to the conversation!
Victor Hedman, Tampa Bay Lightning, Mental Health Champs
Organizations issue statements. Logos are changed. We tell people, often with the best of intentions, that it’s “ok not to be ok.” And that’s good, because words do matter.
We teach our children that early: Angry words hurt; caring words heal. But we don’t teach them everything about words. We don’t warn them about the ones we use like a coat of paint over the cracks in our lives.
“It’s ok not to be ok” has become one of those phrases. Necessary. Comforting. But it leaves the heavy lifting to the person that is suffering. Because the real test isn’t whether we say it. It’s whether we act on it when it costs us something.
Hedman wasn’t a depth player. He’s the captain. A Conn Smythe winner. The kind of player whose absence changes the odds, and in the series against the Montreal Canadiens it did.
And still, he left – with his organization and his team’s blessing — to take care of himself, after months of trying to work around something that wasn’t going away. His organization didn’t just tell him it was ok; they gave him the time and space to get better – on his terms.
My workplace wasn’t the hockey rink, but I’ve been there. The slow accumulation. The quiet accommodations you make with yourself. The belief that if you just push a little harder, past the next big deadline, you’ll be able to pause. Except you keep going. Until you can’t.
For a long time, I didn’t have the language for that. Like many people, I managed it privately and avoided naming it at all. It wasn’t until later in my career, when the bottom fell out from under me that I acknowledged my chronic mental health struggles.
That’s when I learned the importance of real, unquestioning, support. The kind that helps shake the self-stigma that keeps too many people suffering in silence and alone.
In the workplace, that kind of space is rare. Because most organizations still operate on a different principle: it’s ok not to be ok—right up until it affects performance.
Hedman and the Tampa Bay Lightning crossed that line. His mental health didn’t just exist in the background — it took him out of the lineup.
The team put a cone of silence over his situation and gave him time. And, when he spoke publicly after the series, his team said that he had done the right thing.
In his comments to the press, Hedman thanked a therapist who “has no clue what hockey is”, someone who focused on him as a person, not as a player. There’s a lesson in that: If the only version of you that matters is the workplace one, you will eventually run out of yourself.
We still struggle with that truth. Behind the good words and social media celebrations of mental health, the truth is that we celebrate resilience. We reward endurance. We quietly penalize absence. And then we wonder why people wait too long.
Hedman didn’t. He made a decision that protected his long-term ability to lead, even at the cost of short-term outcomes. And his organization did what most say they would, and few do: they gave him space.
If Mental Health Awareness Month is going to mean anything, it has to mean this: Not just telling people it’s ok not to be ok. But building teams, institutions and most important, cultures, that can act on what that requires.
Because the real test isn’t whether we say the right things in January or May. It’s whether we can afford to mean them in every single day of the year.
Ottawa’s fiscal update may mark moment federal ambitions overtake the federation’s guardrails
Coming one year into the Carney government’s mandate, last week’s fiscal and economic update did more than clarify the country’s finances. It showed how Ottawa now intends to use federal spending to pursue a far more expansive national vision — one that will test the institutional foundations of the federation itself.
Maple Leaf flag marks a rally of huge crowds in Montreal in support of Canadian unity on Oct. 27, 1995 | Photo by Gordon Beck
This is not new. Ottawa has long used its spending power to shape national policy, from the creation of universal health care under St. Laurent, Pearson and Trudeau to Martin and Harper’s national infrastructure programs.
What is different today is not the tool, but how far and how quickly it is being pushed.
What the Carney government’s fiscal update makes clear is that this trajectory is now being accelerated and integrated into a broader governing approach. Ottawa is no longer simply responding to crises or cushioning economic shocks. It is acting with the explicit objective of reorienting the Canadian economy.
Industrial policy, energy strategy, housing, food security, major infrastructure and skills training are presented not as discrete initiatives, but as elements of a coordinated national project — one that increasingly extends into areas of provincial jurisdiction.
The clearest illustration is housing. Under the Housing Accelerator Fund, Ottawa has tied funding to changes in local planning rules — pushing municipalities to increase density, accelerate approvals and revise zoning practices. Federal spending is now being used to shape land-use decisions — one of the most granular expressions of provincial and municipal authority.
Today this national ambition extends from the macroeconomic to the local. Federal action now spans global supply chains and community-level programs, positioning Ottawa not only as a backstop, but as a planner, defining priorities and shaping how they are implemented on the ground.
None of this has occurred through formal constitutional change. Instead, it reflects a sustained and largely unchallenged use of the federal spending power to alter the practical balance of the federation.
There was a time when this would have triggered a forceful reaction, particularly in Quebec. As recently as the 1995 referendum, federal use of the spending power and its encroachment into provincial jurisdictions were central issues. In the years that followed, political efforts were made to place guardrails around that power, most notably through the 1999 Social Union Framework Agreement.
That reflex has since weakened, and not by accident.
Repeated crises have helped entrench a different political dynamic. Beginning with the 2008 recession, Ottawa positioned itself as the government of last resort, deploying large-scale infrastructure spending to sustain economic activity. That pattern deepened during the pandemic and has continued in the face of growing geopolitical uncertainty. Over time, this has created a powerful expectation: when conditions deteriorate, it is the federal government that steps in.
For provincial governments, including Quebec, this has clear advantages. Federal spending flows into areas of provincial responsibility without requiring provinces to bear the full fiscal or political burden. Ottawa becomes the focal point of intervention, while political costs are diffused.
The federal spending power has long operated within an implicit bargain: when federal priorities align with those of Quebec, cooperation follows. When they do not, the federation’s guardrails — most notably the ability to opt out with compensation – were meant to preserve provincial autonomy.
In recent years, Quebec has shown increasing reluctance to assert that distinction. The expansion of federal action is no longer consistently tested against the question of alignment; it is often accepted as a matter of course.
That shift raises a more fundamental question. Does it reflect a deeper convergence — a Quebec more comfortable within an increasingly assertive Canadian state? Or does it point to something more transactional: a political calculus in which the immediate benefits of federal spending and the ability to offload both fiscal pressure and political accountability, have begun to outweigh the longer-term imperative of preserving autonomy?
The answer matters, because it will shape how Quebec responds as the federal government pushes further.
As the province moves toward a fall election, the Carney government’s ambitions may inject new momentum into debates over Quebec’s future and force its political class to confront a question it has, in practice, deferred: whether to accommodate or to resist.
