Easy Answers for Wicked Problems

Several years ago, researchers and public administrators in the United Kingdom came up with a new term for problems of surpassing difficulty. These “wicked” problems were deemed to be so because the solutions were often worse in the short-term than the problem itself. In addition to costing money or straining the capacity of government, the solutions to these problems would likely be unpopular or controversial. Wicked indeed.

The most frequent strategy adopted by governments in the face of these wicked problems were coping mechanisms, an attempt to delay the inevitable or to tread water in the hope that a solution that was affordable, non-controversial and easy to implement would miraculously appear. There was little interest in pursuing lasting solutions, especially if these solutions required hard work and sacrifice, so the problems become even more intractable, even more wicked.

New Brunswick is facing its own share of “wicked” problems, some of our own making. Although there are many issue areas that fall into this category, from the ageing of our society to the high levels of illiteracy in our workforce, the provincial deficit and debt are currently in the public spotlight.

As a Province, we are being told that we are on the brink of fiscal doom, if not already falling into the abyss. Rather than stiffening our resolve to deal with the problems at the root of our fiscal imbalance, this attitude of panic is encouraging further recklessness – provoking half-thought-out solutions to poorly understood problems. The end result pushes us further from the prudence and discipline that our current situation requires.

The recent round of public meetings and meetings with stakeholders is a good example of a process that encourages a belief in easy answers or, as a cynic might put it, “deficit elimination without tears.” As Finance Minister Blaine Higgs lamented, there were few requests for reduce government services and many demands to maintain, if not increase, spending. There were plenty of easy answers offered, from reducing the number of MLAs to instituting health care user fees to eliminating bilingual services, which would do little to solve our fiscal situation while fraying our social fabric.

Even the calls to hike the HST or to put tolls on our highways fall into the “easy answer” category. Both items have had a thorough public debate, whether it was the 1999 Provincial Election (highway tolls) or the more recent Select Committee on Taxation, which concluded that increasing the HST would have a disproportionate impact on lower income New Brunswickers.

There is no question that increasing the HST would provide significant additional revenues to the Provincial Government. Even then, it would only reduce the current deficit by a third. The main reason I classify this as an “easy answer” is that many of those who advocate this tax increase consider it as their first and only solution. Instead, hiking the HST should only be considered as our last resort, a solution to be applied only when all other ways to rectify our budgetary deficiency have been exhausted.

As for highway tolls, I would argue that, when this idea is raised, most New Brunswickers believe that the burden of this new revenue would fall disproportionately on commercial traffic. Further, it is assumed there would be little or no impact on the price of goods which are shipped by truck.

Increasing the HST or instituting highway tolls are easy answers to the Provincial Government’s revenue problems. However, they are unlikely to provide any long-term solution and would likely end as a disappointment for those who are urging these “easy answers” on Government.

If we are willing to face the facts about our situation, rather than succumbing to deficit hysteria, there are solutions to this wicked problem. Instead of adding to the tax burden as the action of first resort, the Government must first put its own house in order.

Expenditure control appears to be the main problem for the Government of New Brunswick. For example, rather than being castigated for going $22 million over budget in the past two years, the Regional Development Corporation (RDC) was praised by MLAs when the Corporation appeared before the Legislative Committee this past week. Talk about setting a bad example for other government organizations.

In addition to stronger spending controls, the operations of Government need a complete overhaul. In too many cases, government departments are being asked to cope with inadequate technology or outdated business procedures. The lack of efficient processes allows too much to slip between the cracks, whether it is an uncollected debt or a lost opportunity for revenue. Most of all, these outdated processes are having a negative impact on service, the main way that we assess value for our tax dollars.

Rather than grasping at easy answers, Government needs to understand that difficult problems sometimes require difficult solutions.

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Originally published in the Telegraph-Jopurnal