Risk & Business Magazine Cain Insurance Spring 2016 | Page 26

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way
Political Expectations

BY: GARY BELDING, BELDING BUSINESS FINANCING SOLUTIONS

A

t both the provincial and federal level, the current government
continues to blame the past government for financial blunders
and troubles, including the lingering deficit. Politicians believe they
are not to blame and are Teflon-coated, nothing ever sticks.
Canadians have huge expectations and insert demands on our
political leaders. These expectations can be partially attributed
to those politicians who promise anything and everything during
election time, only to break promises soon after being elected. The
reason for the broken promises is inevitably insufficient resources;
what a surprise.
Politicians need to operate within their budget and stop reckless
spending such as announcing million-dollar projects for political
gain. This recklessness is followed by massive waste with ongoing
studies, internal reviews, changing department names, creating new
departments, physical moves, delays, indecisions, and parachuting
in party loyalists.
Political leaders have always ignored the experience and talent
of their own public servants. Why all the external reviews when
the best input is available from within their own organization?
Experienced employees are completely ignored. Governments
engage consultants and spend millions of dollars to review the
operations in search of savings. The real savings would be found by
not hiring the consultants in the first place.
Voters expect political leaders to lead. The foremost quality and
key ingredient of any leader is to be a good listener, to actually
listen—not necessarily acting on every idea, but giving it the
attention it deserves. Another important character trait of a leader
is to be decisive and clear in all communication, not waffling under
pressure.

overnight. Compare the deficit on a smaller scale to a family
setting a budget and servicing their debt. You need a game
plan, one that includes stopping the hemorrhaging. Formulate
a plan and work the plan. When tackling the deficit, a timeline
and measurements are critical. Our federal and provincial
governments have always proposed a balanced budget, but
while continually altering the timeline further in the future,
and therefore while increasing the deficit. If faced with a
growing deficit, Canadians will have expectations and want
results. If government increases the deficit, what results do
they have to show for it?
There are seldom new ideas that surface from newly elected
governments, rather recycled ideas. They might change things
around a bit and then call it something different, but the result
is the same old, same old. It is a game of follow-the-leader
from past hosts.
In New Brunswick and across the country, many voters don’t
vote in favour of a political party; they vote in order to remove
the current party out of office. New governments rise to power
merely out of default. One-term governments may now be
a trend. The end result is voters telling the government at
election time to get out of the way so that they can change
tracks with someone else. As Canadians, we should not be
surprised with this recurring outcome. Albert Einstein said
the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and
over again, expecting different results.

“I don’t know where I am going but I am on my way.”
- Author and Historian, Carl Sandberg.

Our political leaders cannot solve all the problems all at once. The
huge deficit did not happen overnight and will not be resolved

Gary Belding has worked in both the public and private sectors for
over 40 years and understands the world of financing. Gary has the
experience, knowledge, and ability to navigate through the financial
landscape, and now operates his own business, Belding Business
Financing Solutions. - www.beldingsolutions.com

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SPRING 2016