People keep asking how we wake others up to what is happening. I believe that we cannot, because some people will defend the system destroying them until its consequences become too painful to ignore.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a paid subscriber to Tom’s Substack—although hardly at a level likely to compromise the independence of the Marazzo media empire.
More seriously, I admire much of what Tom has observed, written and acted upon. His decision to inject himself into the Freedom Convoy, and the organizational and negotiating work he undertook between the truckers and various levels of government, demonstrated something more valuable than commentary from the safety of the sidelines. He entered the arena.
That history influences how I read this essay.
Tom is correct that many people cannot be awakened merely by presenting them with more evidence. Some are not suffering from a shortage of information. They are defending an identity, a political tribe, a social position and an understanding of themselves that would be threatened by admitting they were wrong.
There are indeed none so blind as those who will not see.
But I believe Tom’s argument brings us to an even more dangerous question:
What happens after they finally open their eyes?
That is the hinge.
The awakening of a population is not necessarily the beginning of recovery. It may be the moment of greatest danger.
A society experiencing collapse does not awaken calmly, with a pencil, a spreadsheet and a willingness to reconsider first principles. People awaken frightened, angry, humiliated and desperate for an explanation. They want to know what happened, who caused it and who can restore order.
At that point, competing groups rush forward with answers.
Some may genuinely want to restore freedom, accountability and competent government. Others will want to use the crisis to acquire power, settle grievances, punish enemies or replace one centralized system with another under new management.
All will claim to represent renewal.
Not all will be telling the truth.
The people who offer the most comforting path out of crisis may achieve the outcome they want, but that does not mean they will produce the best outcome for the civilization.
A successful political movement understands that most people do not want to be told:
“You were blind. You were foolish. You helped create this disaster.”
It will instead tell them:
“You were deceived. Your suffering is real. None of this is your fault. We know who betrayed you, and we know how to restore what was taken.”
That message allows people to change direction without surrendering their dignity.
But it also creates an opportunity for manipulation.
A path out of humiliation is not necessarily a path toward truth.
Germany in the 1930s remains one of the clearest case studies.
The Treaty of Versailles was not the sole cause of Germany’s collapse, but its punitive terms, reparations and national humiliation created a reservoir of resentment. That grievance was compounded by political instability, hyperinflation, unemployment, the Great Depression, social division and the declining credibility of the Weimar government.
The suffering was real.
The humiliation was real.
The institutional failure was real.
But none of those conditions dictated what Germany had to become.
They created a competition over how the crisis would be explained.
Communists offered class revolution.
Democrats attempted to preserve parliamentary government.
Traditional conservatives offered order and national stability.
The Nazis offered something more emotionally complete: restoration without confession, unity without pluralism, strength without restraint and blame without self-examination.
They took legitimate grievances and attached them to false explanations, conspiracies and scapegoats. They promised to restore national dignity while demanding steadily greater concentrations of power.
German society had awakened to the failure of the existing order.
But awakening did not produce wisdom.
It produced political availability.
The Nazis did not merely tell people that the system had failed. They told them why it had failed, who was responsible and what powers would have to be surrendered to correct it.
Conservative elites then made the fatal mistake of believing they could invite Hitler into government, harness his popularity and control him.
They thought they were using the movement.
The movement was using them.
Once power had been acquired, emergency conditions justified emergency measures. Opposition became obstruction. Criticism became disloyalty. Political enemies became enemies of the nation. Institutions that were supposed to restrain government were captured, bypassed or eliminated.
The promise was national restoration.
The outcome was dictatorship, war and ruin.
That progression gives us a model for the road to serfdom:
First, deterioration is normalized.
The population is told that decline is temporary, unavoidable or imaginary.
Second, warnings are marginalized.
Those who identify the problem are mocked, censored or described as dangerous.
Third, personal pain breaks through denial.
People finally recognize that something is seriously wrong.
Fourth, competing groups fight to explain the crisis.
This is the hinge. Whoever defines the cause gains enormous influence over the remedy.
Fifth, fear creates a demand for decisive action.
The population becomes willing to exchange freedom for promises of stability, justice or revenge.
Sixth, temporary powers become permanent.
The rescuers discover that surrendering power is considerably less attractive than acquiring it.
Finally, the population learns that replacing one ruling class with another is not the same as restoring liberty.
This is why our work of explaining economics, government and institutional power so that a fifth-grader can understand the basics is not an exercise in simplification for its own sake.
People need a framework before the crisis arrives.
When someone promises salvation, they must know enough to ask:
Who receives the additional power?
What limits are placed upon it?
Who independently reviews its use?
How can the public remove those exercising it?
What happens to people who disagree?
Does the remedy disperse authority or concentrate it?
Does it restore individual agency or create dependence?
Are identifiable groups being blamed for problems produced by institutions and policies?
What mechanism returns society to normal once the emergency has passed?
A frightened population without such a framework is vulnerable to the first movement that offers certainty, absolution and an enemy.
Tom is right that we cannot spend our lives trying to awaken people who are determined to remain asleep. We should document, prepare, educate and support those willing to listen.
But we must also prepare for the moment when the sleepers awaken.
It will not be enough to say that we warned them.
It will not be enough to offer a path that preserves their dignity.
We must be prepared to offer an explanation grounded in truth, a recovery that restores freedom and a political model that prevents the rescuers from becoming the next rulers.
Otherwise, all our warnings may be for nothing.
The bread lines may eventually awaken the population, but hunger will not teach people what caused the shortages. Fear will not teach them which leader deserves trust. Anger will not show them which institutions should be rebuilt and which should be dismantled.
Those questions must be considered before the crisis, not improvised in its midst.
The central question is therefore no longer simply:
How do we wake people up?
It is:
When they awaken, who will explain what happened, where will they be led, and what safeguards will prevent their legitimate desire for rescue from becoming the instrument of their next captivity?
Tom has correctly identified the approaching awakening.
Just wondering Bryan, if you have had the opportunity to read Hidden Hand by Clive Hamilton ? It was a book that contributed to waking me up to a world of how the united front works re Beijing and its tentacles like a glioblastoma that has captured this country at the highest levels . My genesis book for this journey we are on away from the majority hive minds , was When McKinsey Comes To Town - it explained how we got here , at least for me. It seem difficult to find people that actually read ...
Your references to Hidden Hand*and When McKinsey Comes to Town sent me much further than I expected—not merely into the two books, but into the parliamentary record surrounding McKinsey, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the larger governing structure now taking shape in Canada.
The journey changed my understanding of your original comment.
At first, I saw the books as describing two distinct forms of influence.
Hidden Hand examines how the Chinese Communist Party identifies and cultivates centres of influence within Western politics, business, universities, media and cultural institutions. Its most useful insight is that influence does not always require direct instructions or obvious coercion. It can operate through access, prestige, commercial dependence and intermediaries who may sincerely believe that the resulting judgment is their own.
When McKinsey Comes to Town examines something different: the growing authority of a global consulting firm operating outside ordinary democratic accountability.
Both now open on my desk.
The opening U.S. Steel case supplied the internal mechanism. Management brought in McKinsey to design a programme of transformation and efficiency. According to the authors and the employee and investor accounts they cite, measurable short-term savings were pursued while experienced workers, maintenance capacity and operational knowledge were weakened. McKinsey and U.S. Steel disputed some of those allegations, including the extent of the consultants’ formal decision-making authority. But the structural problem remained: management could say it had relied upon world-class advice, while the advisers could say that management retained the final authority.
The people exercising influence did not bear the consequences.
The people bearing the consequences had little influence.
That led me to the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
The idea of an infrastructure bank appeared in the Liberal Party’s 2015 platform before McKinsey’s documented involvement, so it would be inaccurate to say that McKinsey invented it.
But the subsequent sequence is revealing.
Dominic Barton, while serving as McKinsey’s global managing director, chaired the federal Advisory Council on Economic Growth. Michael Sabia and Mark Wiseman were members of the council. McKinsey supplied the council with pro bono research and secretariat support. The firm later received paid contracts to help the newly established Bank develop investment criteria, governance and risk-management systems. A later contract was single-sourced partly because McKinsey already possessed knowledge of the institution through its previous work.
That does not establish corruption or conspiracy.
It demonstrates path dependence.
The consultant’s greatest competitive advantage becomes its knowledge of the institution it helped establish.
But following the trail further produced a more important realization:
McKinsey is not the whole system.
It is one node within a wider network moving among global finance, institutional investment, consulting, advisory bodies, Crown corporations, policy organizations, diplomacy and government administration.
Mark Wiseman is analytically important precisely because he did not work for McKinsey. His career passed through institutional investment and asset management, while the parliamentary record places him with Barton and Sabia in discussions concerning the acceleration of the CIB. The disagreement over whether that was merely an informal conversation or a more organized McKinsey-related session appears in the committee record and its Conservative supplementary opinion. The distinction matters, but so does the intersection itself.
The proper unit of analysis is therefore not one consulting company.
It is a trans-institutional managerial network whose members may not operate under common instructions but nevertheless share relationships, professional language and broad assumptions about national development.
Those assumptions appear to include:
economic scale;
large pools of institutional capital;
major infrastructure;
public-private investment;
stronger administrative coordination;
and government acting as the organizer and catalyst of national transformation.
None of those ideas is inherently illegitimate.
In fact, some may represent a necessary correction to a Canadian state that had become very good at procedure and increasingly incapable of completing large projects.
That became clearer when I examined the Building Canada Act and the Major Projects Office.
My first reaction was that the Act removed projects from normal parliamentary and departmental scrutiny. A closer reading changed my assessment.
The Act centralizes the process, but it also requires public notice, a project registry, publication of studies and departmental recommendations, explanations when advice is rejected, annual independent reviews and continuing parliamentary review. It does not simply abolish technical expertise. It changes the division of responsibility: Cabinet determines that a project is in the national interest, the experts help determine the conditions, and one office coordinates the process.
That may be an improvement.
Under the previous fragmented system, governments could support a project rhetorically while allowing it to die through delay. No one had to say no, and no one could easily be held responsible.
The new model requires the government to own the political decision.
The unresolved issue is not whether every component of this machinery is objectionable.
It is where the machinery is intended to take the country.
Michael Sabia’s later appointment as Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet advances the question considerably. The government’s own announcement said that, with Sabia at the helm, the public service would advance nation-building projects and “catalyze enormous private investment.” That is not merely a neutral administrative appointment. It places a person associated with several earlier stages of this policy ecosystem at the centre of the machinery responsible for coordinating the federal public service.
Mark Wiseman was then appointed ambassador to the United States and described by the Prime Minister as a core member of the negotiating team during a crucial transformation of the bilateral relationship. Janice Charette was separately appointed chief trade negotiator, creating a division between formal trade negotiation and the broader diplomatic, investment and institutional relationship in Washington.
The political machinery has also been strengthened. Floor crossings and subsequent by-election victories produced a Liberal working majority, reducing the government’s dependence upon opposition support for ordinary legislation. Recent Senate changes removed the previous non-partisanship criterion and emphasized experience in strategic industries, regulation, finance and parliamentary affairs so that the upper chamber could help advance what the government itself calls “ambitious new legislation.”
Again, no single step proves a concealed command structure.
Each appointment, statute or political decision can be defended independently.
But viewed together, the pieces suggest something larger than conventional Liberal Party politics.
They suggest the construction of a strategic state capable of:
defining national priorities;
mobilizing institutional capital;
accelerating large projects;
coordinating the public service;
managing the Canada–United States relationship;
and securing the parliamentary votes required to legislate. ...continued below in Part 2
Tom asks why people refuse to awaken until the consequences become personal—until, metaphorically, the bread lines begin.
My investigation raises a further question:
What if the governing struggle does not begin when the public awakens? What if the machinery intended to manage that awakening has already been constructed?
The hinge is the moment when deterioration becomes undeniable and people become receptive to new explanations and remedies.
A government that understands the hinge would not necessarily need to create the crisis.
It would need to ensure that, when the crisis arrives, its preferred response is already staffed, financed, legislatively supported and administratively operational.
Its opponents may have objections.
The government will have an operating system.
That does not mean the intended direction is necessarily malign.
Carney and those around him may genuinely believe that Canada requires a stronger strategic state to survive economic coercion, geopolitical instability, infrastructure failure and the limitations of short-term partisan government.
They may be right.
I find myself admiring much of the strategy.
The Major Projects Office may be better machinery. A coordinated public service may be essential. Political stability may be required for projects that extend far beyond one electoral term.
But admiration for the strategy does not resolve the democratic question.
Canadians are being shown the individual parts:
an infrastructure bank;
a major-projects process;
a Clerk appointment;
an ambassadorial appointment;
a trade-negotiating structure;
a parliamentary majority;
Senate reform;
and a series of nation-building initiatives.
What they have not been given is the integrated explanation of what these parts are intended to build together.
The government has described the urgency.
It has described the projects.
It has described the economic objectives.
It has not adequately described the constitutional bargain.
Perhaps the complete design remains unfinished.
Perhaps stating it openly would fracture the coalition supporting it.
Perhaps Canadians would reject parts of it.
Or perhaps those directing the transition believe the destination is too important to risk by submitting the entire plan to ordinary partisan debate.
That is now the question your two books have led me to:
If the vision is coherent enough to align financiers, consultants, public administrators, diplomats and politicians around a national project, why has that same coherent vision not been presented to the Canadian people?
The danger is no longer simply foreign influence or excessive consulting authority.
It is that the same policy ecosystem may define the problem, design the institution, manage the response, measure the results, explain the failure and then offer itself as the architect of the replacement.
Your references did more than help explain how we arrived here.
They exposed the question of who will manage what comes next.
I have developed the resulting analysis into an essay called The Hinge Was Built in Advance.
Its conclusion is no longer that the machinery must be resisted merely because it is centralized.
It is this:
*The machinery may be intelligent.
*It may be necessary.
*It may even be an improvement.
Now show Canadians the blueprint, explain the destination and ask for their informed consent.
Bryan, a more complete response would take years of reading what has happened ;I appreciate you taking the time to respond with these details . I'm more simple with my mind scaffolding because I only became interested in the larger view when one size fits all came out as safe and effective on repeat for those five years - when a bully is there ,I can see that trait . Also worked in the medical system for almost 18 years and left in the 80's because I saw how it became the money making machine- was a valuable experience from my understanding. I read Dr Toby Roger's analysis of When McKinsey Comes to Town - he is one of the few who could sell his empathy and make $$$$$ , if that was a valued trait ,in my opinion. After reading the book , I saw how the medical industry makes its money for both sides of the coin by using the governance that is steeped in blind trusts , screens and NDA s that are "within the law " saying nothing about ethics as we all know by now.
On another related note but always a thread , if you read any of the Stoics , works -I finding grounding at this late stage of life: The Last Honest Man - Rutilius Rufus - it is very much like holding a mirror up today to what happens when people go against a regime that is corrupt and the consequences .
What struck me most about your reply wasn't McKinsey or even the medical system. It was your description of your own "mind scaffolding."
That may be the most honest phrase in this entire discussion.
We all begin somewhere. None of us starts with a complete framework. Mine certainly didn't. I've been sketching, building, renovating, demolishing and rebuilding since 1979. :)
Like you, there was a moment when lived experience no longer aligned with the official explanation. That didn't instantly produce answers, but it did produce better questions.
Ironically, the deeper I followed those questions, the less interested I became in proving conspiracy or bad intent. The investigation kept moving upward—from individuals, to institutions, and finally to the evolution of the state itself.
That was not where I expected to end up.
Your distinction between legality and ethics also resonates. Institutions can operate entirely within the law while still raising profound questions about accountability, legitimacy and public consent. Political economy has always wrestled with that tension.
Your reference to Rufus in Lives of the Stoics immediately caught my attention—not because it promises another contemporary critique, but because it appears to ask the timeless question: How should an individual conduct himself when public institutions drift away from the virtues they were meant to embody?
That may ultimately be the more important question.
Systems rise and fall.
Governments come and go.
Character remains the one institution each of us governs ourselves.
Thank you for adding another thread to the tapestry.
Guess we all have little lives of many seasons with connecting threads Bryan. When I read work from people like Tom , who didn't lose their core values and paid dearly , my threads seem to find them and I have nothing but respect . Tom has been very helpful with both my husband and I with getting more prepared in the case of an emergency situation - another adventure in an older brain that keeps getting stuck in grooves. Wonder how many know about his book (s?) . I think people living in a city require a lot of information about these possible events .
Linelle, I think your reference to Rutilius Rufus may prove to be the most important recommendation of all.
Over the past week I've found myself immersed in institutions—governments, finance, consulting firms, legislation and the evolution of the state. Necessary work, I believe, but your comment reminded me that long before philosophers asked how to govern societies, they first asked how to govern themselves.
There is a fascinating pattern that runs through the history of Western thought.
Aristotle wrote Nicomachean Ethics before Politics. Before discussing constitutions and governments, he first explored the character required of those who would live within them.
Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments seventeen years before The Wealth of Nations. We remember him as the father of economics, yet he began by asking how sympathy, conscience and moral judgment shape human behaviour before turning to markets and commerce.
Marcus Aurelius left us Meditations, not as a manual for ruling an empire, but as a private exercise in ruling himself.
And now you point me toward Publius Rutilius Rufus.
What makes Rufus so compelling is that he was not merely a Stoic philosopher. He became the victim of the very corruption he had tried to expose. Wrongly accused of the crimes he prosecuted in others, he discovered that institutions can preserve the appearance of justice while abandoning justice itself.
That may be one of history's enduring lessons.
When institutions falter, character becomes even more important.
The more I reflect on our conversation, the more I realize that my inquiry has followed the opposite path. I began with economics, moved into institutions, then political economy, and finally found myself asking constitutional questions. Your recommendation reminds me that the great thinkers often travelled in the opposite direction. They began with ethics, because they understood that no constitution, market or government can be better than the character of the people who inhabit it.
Perhaps that is the thread connecting all of this.
Tom encourages people to prepare.
You remind us that preparation is not merely storing supplies or understanding institutions. It is also cultivating the judgment, integrity and self-discipline to remain steady when institutions are under strain.
Systems matter.
Governments matter.
But perhaps the oldest wisdom is still the most profound:
Before we ask how a nation should be governed, we must first ask how we should govern ourselves.
Thanks Tom. A sobering reminder that for a significant part of the population unless they personally suffer the consequences of government repression, overreach, they will hold fast to the illusion of the good government. Even if they are in the boxcar they may not yet question authority.
Well spelled out, at your usual standard of excellence. And the story from Poland is a warning to us all in comfortable, cozy, Carney's Canada where 60% (according the polls this past week) believe the economy is firing on all cylinders. So the talking points of politicians at a press conference, or the news anchors, is more persuasive than the shared experience of friends and family of the belt-tightening times we're living in.
What a gift you Gentle Men are. Both truth tellers from very different perspectives- but, in the end, the same conclusions about humanity. A honour to know you both.
The Hinge: What Happens After People Wake Up?
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a paid subscriber to Tom’s Substack—although hardly at a level likely to compromise the independence of the Marazzo media empire.
More seriously, I admire much of what Tom has observed, written and acted upon. His decision to inject himself into the Freedom Convoy, and the organizational and negotiating work he undertook between the truckers and various levels of government, demonstrated something more valuable than commentary from the safety of the sidelines. He entered the arena.
That history influences how I read this essay.
Tom is correct that many people cannot be awakened merely by presenting them with more evidence. Some are not suffering from a shortage of information. They are defending an identity, a political tribe, a social position and an understanding of themselves that would be threatened by admitting they were wrong.
There are indeed none so blind as those who will not see.
But I believe Tom’s argument brings us to an even more dangerous question:
What happens after they finally open their eyes?
That is the hinge.
The awakening of a population is not necessarily the beginning of recovery. It may be the moment of greatest danger.
A society experiencing collapse does not awaken calmly, with a pencil, a spreadsheet and a willingness to reconsider first principles. People awaken frightened, angry, humiliated and desperate for an explanation. They want to know what happened, who caused it and who can restore order.
At that point, competing groups rush forward with answers.
Some may genuinely want to restore freedom, accountability and competent government. Others will want to use the crisis to acquire power, settle grievances, punish enemies or replace one centralized system with another under new management.
All will claim to represent renewal.
Not all will be telling the truth.
The people who offer the most comforting path out of crisis may achieve the outcome they want, but that does not mean they will produce the best outcome for the civilization.
A successful political movement understands that most people do not want to be told:
“You were blind. You were foolish. You helped create this disaster.”
It will instead tell them:
“You were deceived. Your suffering is real. None of this is your fault. We know who betrayed you, and we know how to restore what was taken.”
That message allows people to change direction without surrendering their dignity.
But it also creates an opportunity for manipulation.
A path out of humiliation is not necessarily a path toward truth.
Germany in the 1930s remains one of the clearest case studies.
The Treaty of Versailles was not the sole cause of Germany’s collapse, but its punitive terms, reparations and national humiliation created a reservoir of resentment. That grievance was compounded by political instability, hyperinflation, unemployment, the Great Depression, social division and the declining credibility of the Weimar government.
The suffering was real.
The humiliation was real.
The institutional failure was real.
But none of those conditions dictated what Germany had to become.
They created a competition over how the crisis would be explained.
Communists offered class revolution.
Democrats attempted to preserve parliamentary government.
Traditional conservatives offered order and national stability.
The Nazis offered something more emotionally complete: restoration without confession, unity without pluralism, strength without restraint and blame without self-examination.
They took legitimate grievances and attached them to false explanations, conspiracies and scapegoats. They promised to restore national dignity while demanding steadily greater concentrations of power.
German society had awakened to the failure of the existing order.
But awakening did not produce wisdom.
It produced political availability.
The Nazis did not merely tell people that the system had failed. They told them why it had failed, who was responsible and what powers would have to be surrendered to correct it.
Conservative elites then made the fatal mistake of believing they could invite Hitler into government, harness his popularity and control him.
They thought they were using the movement.
The movement was using them.
Once power had been acquired, emergency conditions justified emergency measures. Opposition became obstruction. Criticism became disloyalty. Political enemies became enemies of the nation. Institutions that were supposed to restrain government were captured, bypassed or eliminated.
The promise was national restoration.
The outcome was dictatorship, war and ruin.
That progression gives us a model for the road to serfdom:
First, deterioration is normalized.
The population is told that decline is temporary, unavoidable or imaginary.
Second, warnings are marginalized.
Those who identify the problem are mocked, censored or described as dangerous.
Third, personal pain breaks through denial.
People finally recognize that something is seriously wrong.
Fourth, competing groups fight to explain the crisis.
This is the hinge. Whoever defines the cause gains enormous influence over the remedy.
Fifth, fear creates a demand for decisive action.
The population becomes willing to exchange freedom for promises of stability, justice or revenge.
Sixth, temporary powers become permanent.
The rescuers discover that surrendering power is considerably less attractive than acquiring it.
Finally, the population learns that replacing one ruling class with another is not the same as restoring liberty.
This is why our work of explaining economics, government and institutional power so that a fifth-grader can understand the basics is not an exercise in simplification for its own sake.
People need a framework before the crisis arrives.
When someone promises salvation, they must know enough to ask:
Who receives the additional power?
What limits are placed upon it?
Who independently reviews its use?
How can the public remove those exercising it?
What happens to people who disagree?
Does the remedy disperse authority or concentrate it?
Does it restore individual agency or create dependence?
Are identifiable groups being blamed for problems produced by institutions and policies?
What mechanism returns society to normal once the emergency has passed?
A frightened population without such a framework is vulnerable to the first movement that offers certainty, absolution and an enemy.
Tom is right that we cannot spend our lives trying to awaken people who are determined to remain asleep. We should document, prepare, educate and support those willing to listen.
But we must also prepare for the moment when the sleepers awaken.
It will not be enough to say that we warned them.
It will not be enough to offer a path that preserves their dignity.
We must be prepared to offer an explanation grounded in truth, a recovery that restores freedom and a political model that prevents the rescuers from becoming the next rulers.
Otherwise, all our warnings may be for nothing.
The bread lines may eventually awaken the population, but hunger will not teach people what caused the shortages. Fear will not teach them which leader deserves trust. Anger will not show them which institutions should be rebuilt and which should be dismantled.
Those questions must be considered before the crisis, not improvised in its midst.
The central question is therefore no longer simply:
How do we wake people up?
It is:
When they awaken, who will explain what happened, where will they be led, and what safeguards will prevent their legitimate desire for rescue from becoming the instrument of their next captivity?
Tom has correctly identified the approaching awakening.
We now need to prepare for the hinge.
Just wondering Bryan, if you have had the opportunity to read Hidden Hand by Clive Hamilton ? It was a book that contributed to waking me up to a world of how the united front works re Beijing and its tentacles like a glioblastoma that has captured this country at the highest levels . My genesis book for this journey we are on away from the majority hive minds , was When McKinsey Comes To Town - it explained how we got here , at least for me. It seem difficult to find people that actually read ...
Part 1
Linelle, I owe you a more complete response.
Your references to Hidden Hand*and When McKinsey Comes to Town sent me much further than I expected—not merely into the two books, but into the parliamentary record surrounding McKinsey, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the larger governing structure now taking shape in Canada.
The journey changed my understanding of your original comment.
At first, I saw the books as describing two distinct forms of influence.
Hidden Hand examines how the Chinese Communist Party identifies and cultivates centres of influence within Western politics, business, universities, media and cultural institutions. Its most useful insight is that influence does not always require direct instructions or obvious coercion. It can operate through access, prestige, commercial dependence and intermediaries who may sincerely believe that the resulting judgment is their own.
When McKinsey Comes to Town examines something different: the growing authority of a global consulting firm operating outside ordinary democratic accountability.
Both now open on my desk.
The opening U.S. Steel case supplied the internal mechanism. Management brought in McKinsey to design a programme of transformation and efficiency. According to the authors and the employee and investor accounts they cite, measurable short-term savings were pursued while experienced workers, maintenance capacity and operational knowledge were weakened. McKinsey and U.S. Steel disputed some of those allegations, including the extent of the consultants’ formal decision-making authority. But the structural problem remained: management could say it had relied upon world-class advice, while the advisers could say that management retained the final authority.
The people exercising influence did not bear the consequences.
The people bearing the consequences had little influence.
That led me to the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
The idea of an infrastructure bank appeared in the Liberal Party’s 2015 platform before McKinsey’s documented involvement, so it would be inaccurate to say that McKinsey invented it.
But the subsequent sequence is revealing.
Dominic Barton, while serving as McKinsey’s global managing director, chaired the federal Advisory Council on Economic Growth. Michael Sabia and Mark Wiseman were members of the council. McKinsey supplied the council with pro bono research and secretariat support. The firm later received paid contracts to help the newly established Bank develop investment criteria, governance and risk-management systems. A later contract was single-sourced partly because McKinsey already possessed knowledge of the institution through its previous work.
That does not establish corruption or conspiracy.
It demonstrates path dependence.
The consultant’s greatest competitive advantage becomes its knowledge of the institution it helped establish.
But following the trail further produced a more important realization:
McKinsey is not the whole system.
It is one node within a wider network moving among global finance, institutional investment, consulting, advisory bodies, Crown corporations, policy organizations, diplomacy and government administration.
Mark Wiseman is analytically important precisely because he did not work for McKinsey. His career passed through institutional investment and asset management, while the parliamentary record places him with Barton and Sabia in discussions concerning the acceleration of the CIB. The disagreement over whether that was merely an informal conversation or a more organized McKinsey-related session appears in the committee record and its Conservative supplementary opinion. The distinction matters, but so does the intersection itself.
The proper unit of analysis is therefore not one consulting company.
It is a trans-institutional managerial network whose members may not operate under common instructions but nevertheless share relationships, professional language and broad assumptions about national development.
Those assumptions appear to include:
economic scale;
large pools of institutional capital;
major infrastructure;
public-private investment;
stronger administrative coordination;
and government acting as the organizer and catalyst of national transformation.
None of those ideas is inherently illegitimate.
In fact, some may represent a necessary correction to a Canadian state that had become very good at procedure and increasingly incapable of completing large projects.
That became clearer when I examined the Building Canada Act and the Major Projects Office.
My first reaction was that the Act removed projects from normal parliamentary and departmental scrutiny. A closer reading changed my assessment.
The Act centralizes the process, but it also requires public notice, a project registry, publication of studies and departmental recommendations, explanations when advice is rejected, annual independent reviews and continuing parliamentary review. It does not simply abolish technical expertise. It changes the division of responsibility: Cabinet determines that a project is in the national interest, the experts help determine the conditions, and one office coordinates the process.
That may be an improvement.
Under the previous fragmented system, governments could support a project rhetorically while allowing it to die through delay. No one had to say no, and no one could easily be held responsible.
The new model requires the government to own the political decision.
The unresolved issue is not whether every component of this machinery is objectionable.
It is where the machinery is intended to take the country.
Michael Sabia’s later appointment as Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet advances the question considerably. The government’s own announcement said that, with Sabia at the helm, the public service would advance nation-building projects and “catalyze enormous private investment.” That is not merely a neutral administrative appointment. It places a person associated with several earlier stages of this policy ecosystem at the centre of the machinery responsible for coordinating the federal public service.
Mark Wiseman was then appointed ambassador to the United States and described by the Prime Minister as a core member of the negotiating team during a crucial transformation of the bilateral relationship. Janice Charette was separately appointed chief trade negotiator, creating a division between formal trade negotiation and the broader diplomatic, investment and institutional relationship in Washington.
The political machinery has also been strengthened. Floor crossings and subsequent by-election victories produced a Liberal working majority, reducing the government’s dependence upon opposition support for ordinary legislation. Recent Senate changes removed the previous non-partisanship criterion and emphasized experience in strategic industries, regulation, finance and parliamentary affairs so that the upper chamber could help advance what the government itself calls “ambitious new legislation.”
Again, no single step proves a concealed command structure.
Each appointment, statute or political decision can be defended independently.
But viewed together, the pieces suggest something larger than conventional Liberal Party politics.
They suggest the construction of a strategic state capable of:
defining national priorities;
mobilizing institutional capital;
accelerating large projects;
coordinating the public service;
managing the Canada–United States relationship;
and securing the parliamentary votes required to legislate. ...continued below in Part 2
Part 2
That brings the discussion back to Tom’s essay.
Tom asks why people refuse to awaken until the consequences become personal—until, metaphorically, the bread lines begin.
My investigation raises a further question:
What if the governing struggle does not begin when the public awakens? What if the machinery intended to manage that awakening has already been constructed?
The hinge is the moment when deterioration becomes undeniable and people become receptive to new explanations and remedies.
A government that understands the hinge would not necessarily need to create the crisis.
It would need to ensure that, when the crisis arrives, its preferred response is already staffed, financed, legislatively supported and administratively operational.
Its opponents may have objections.
The government will have an operating system.
That does not mean the intended direction is necessarily malign.
Carney and those around him may genuinely believe that Canada requires a stronger strategic state to survive economic coercion, geopolitical instability, infrastructure failure and the limitations of short-term partisan government.
They may be right.
I find myself admiring much of the strategy.
The Major Projects Office may be better machinery. A coordinated public service may be essential. Political stability may be required for projects that extend far beyond one electoral term.
But admiration for the strategy does not resolve the democratic question.
Canadians are being shown the individual parts:
an infrastructure bank;
a major-projects process;
a Clerk appointment;
an ambassadorial appointment;
a trade-negotiating structure;
a parliamentary majority;
Senate reform;
and a series of nation-building initiatives.
What they have not been given is the integrated explanation of what these parts are intended to build together.
The government has described the urgency.
It has described the projects.
It has described the economic objectives.
It has not adequately described the constitutional bargain.
Perhaps the complete design remains unfinished.
Perhaps stating it openly would fracture the coalition supporting it.
Perhaps Canadians would reject parts of it.
Or perhaps those directing the transition believe the destination is too important to risk by submitting the entire plan to ordinary partisan debate.
That is now the question your two books have led me to:
If the vision is coherent enough to align financiers, consultants, public administrators, diplomats and politicians around a national project, why has that same coherent vision not been presented to the Canadian people?
The danger is no longer simply foreign influence or excessive consulting authority.
It is that the same policy ecosystem may define the problem, design the institution, manage the response, measure the results, explain the failure and then offer itself as the architect of the replacement.
Your references did more than help explain how we arrived here.
They exposed the question of who will manage what comes next.
I have developed the resulting analysis into an essay called The Hinge Was Built in Advance.
Its conclusion is no longer that the machinery must be resisted merely because it is centralized.
It is this:
*The machinery may be intelligent.
*It may be necessary.
*It may even be an improvement.
Now show Canadians the blueprint, explain the destination and ask for their informed consent.
That is the democratic step still missing.
Bryan, a more complete response would take years of reading what has happened ;I appreciate you taking the time to respond with these details . I'm more simple with my mind scaffolding because I only became interested in the larger view when one size fits all came out as safe and effective on repeat for those five years - when a bully is there ,I can see that trait . Also worked in the medical system for almost 18 years and left in the 80's because I saw how it became the money making machine- was a valuable experience from my understanding. I read Dr Toby Roger's analysis of When McKinsey Comes to Town - he is one of the few who could sell his empathy and make $$$$$ , if that was a valued trait ,in my opinion. After reading the book , I saw how the medical industry makes its money for both sides of the coin by using the governance that is steeped in blind trusts , screens and NDA s that are "within the law " saying nothing about ethics as we all know by now.
On another related note but always a thread , if you read any of the Stoics , works -I finding grounding at this late stage of life: The Last Honest Man - Rutilius Rufus - it is very much like holding a mirror up today to what happens when people go against a regime that is corrupt and the consequences .
Linelle, thank you.
What struck me most about your reply wasn't McKinsey or even the medical system. It was your description of your own "mind scaffolding."
That may be the most honest phrase in this entire discussion.
We all begin somewhere. None of us starts with a complete framework. Mine certainly didn't. I've been sketching, building, renovating, demolishing and rebuilding since 1979. :)
Like you, there was a moment when lived experience no longer aligned with the official explanation. That didn't instantly produce answers, but it did produce better questions.
Ironically, the deeper I followed those questions, the less interested I became in proving conspiracy or bad intent. The investigation kept moving upward—from individuals, to institutions, and finally to the evolution of the state itself.
That was not where I expected to end up.
Your distinction between legality and ethics also resonates. Institutions can operate entirely within the law while still raising profound questions about accountability, legitimacy and public consent. Political economy has always wrestled with that tension.
Your reference to Rufus in Lives of the Stoics immediately caught my attention—not because it promises another contemporary critique, but because it appears to ask the timeless question: How should an individual conduct himself when public institutions drift away from the virtues they were meant to embody?
That may ultimately be the more important question.
Systems rise and fall.
Governments come and go.
Character remains the one institution each of us governs ourselves.
Thank you for adding another thread to the tapestry.
Guess we all have little lives of many seasons with connecting threads Bryan. When I read work from people like Tom , who didn't lose their core values and paid dearly , my threads seem to find them and I have nothing but respect . Tom has been very helpful with both my husband and I with getting more prepared in the case of an emergency situation - another adventure in an older brain that keeps getting stuck in grooves. Wonder how many know about his book (s?) . I think people living in a city require a lot of information about these possible events .
Linelle, I think your reference to Rutilius Rufus may prove to be the most important recommendation of all.
Over the past week I've found myself immersed in institutions—governments, finance, consulting firms, legislation and the evolution of the state. Necessary work, I believe, but your comment reminded me that long before philosophers asked how to govern societies, they first asked how to govern themselves.
There is a fascinating pattern that runs through the history of Western thought.
Aristotle wrote Nicomachean Ethics before Politics. Before discussing constitutions and governments, he first explored the character required of those who would live within them.
Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments seventeen years before The Wealth of Nations. We remember him as the father of economics, yet he began by asking how sympathy, conscience and moral judgment shape human behaviour before turning to markets and commerce.
Marcus Aurelius left us Meditations, not as a manual for ruling an empire, but as a private exercise in ruling himself.
And now you point me toward Publius Rutilius Rufus.
What makes Rufus so compelling is that he was not merely a Stoic philosopher. He became the victim of the very corruption he had tried to expose. Wrongly accused of the crimes he prosecuted in others, he discovered that institutions can preserve the appearance of justice while abandoning justice itself.
That may be one of history's enduring lessons.
When institutions falter, character becomes even more important.
The more I reflect on our conversation, the more I realize that my inquiry has followed the opposite path. I began with economics, moved into institutions, then political economy, and finally found myself asking constitutional questions. Your recommendation reminds me that the great thinkers often travelled in the opposite direction. They began with ethics, because they understood that no constitution, market or government can be better than the character of the people who inhabit it.
Perhaps that is the thread connecting all of this.
Tom encourages people to prepare.
You remind us that preparation is not merely storing supplies or understanding institutions. It is also cultivating the judgment, integrity and self-discipline to remain steady when institutions are under strain.
Systems matter.
Governments matter.
But perhaps the oldest wisdom is still the most profound:
Before we ask how a nation should be governed, we must first ask how we should govern ourselves.
Thank you for reminding me of that.
Thanks Tom. A sobering reminder that for a significant part of the population unless they personally suffer the consequences of government repression, overreach, they will hold fast to the illusion of the good government. Even if they are in the boxcar they may not yet question authority.
Well spelled out, at your usual standard of excellence. And the story from Poland is a warning to us all in comfortable, cozy, Carney's Canada where 60% (according the polls this past week) believe the economy is firing on all cylinders. So the talking points of politicians at a press conference, or the news anchors, is more persuasive than the shared experience of friends and family of the belt-tightening times we're living in.
What a gift you Gentle Men are. Both truth tellers from very different perspectives- but, in the end, the same conclusions about humanity. A honour to know you both.