As we warned last week, the Trudeau Administration’s decision to drop the “Green Recovery” from the 2020 Canadian Throne Speech didn’t mean they were thinking differently, just talking differently. And sure enough, on Oct. 1, eight days after the Throne Speech regurgitated that same evening as a national address on COVID-19, the PM along with former and in her own mind apparently still Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna, now nominally the Infrastructure Minister, and also the chair of the new Canada Infrastructure Bank laid out a $10-billion program for growth, greenery, jobs, greenery, growth and greenery. The good news is it’s probably just all talk. The bad news is that empty verbiage plus incompetence would be the good news.

It’s not the first time that watching governments in action one is reduced to hoping they will get so tangled up in their own red tape they will never do anything except waste money on internal matters. For instance the Canada Infrastructure Bank itself, which was created amid much hoopla in 2017 and since has, well, done nothing except waste money on internal matters. But what if it actually manages to attempt what it's meant to attempt?

The subject attracted remarkably little interest. The Globe & Mail seems to have covered New Democrat leader Jagmeet Singh’s reaction to the CIB plan instead of the actual plan, which indicates a striking degree of desperation for interesting copy. If you’re curious, Singh said the CIB should spend more money which is not very surprising. But he does have a point in that the Bank was set up three years ago with $35 billion in seed money but, as with Trudeau’s pledge to plant two billion trees, the seeds still seem to be sitting in a warehouse somewhere. (Also, in the last election Singh like Andrew Scheer said the CIB should be abolished; apparently Singh wants to shake all the money out first.)

Other news outlets brushed it off entirely, possibly because once a government is running a projected $343 billion deficit a mere $10 billion isn’t worth getting out of bed for. But the story remains interesting because of certain characteristic features.

For instance according to Trudeau, the plan will create 60,000 jobs in infrastructure and clean technology. And of course everything will be splendid as it always is with such programs: “With smart targeted investments, we can get people back on the job and grow the economy while building a safe, sustainable future for everyone.” Everyone, mind you. Not just a lot of people. Every single person. Maybe just in Canada. Hard to tell. Also we can grow the economy while keeping everyone safe, from COVID and presumably everything else, so no tradeoffs here. Including on the environment because it will be sustainable too.

Ms. McKenna, leaving no cliché unturned, also tied the plan to coronavirus, attracting capital from around the world and, yes, clean energy and infrastructure. But she did not explain why, if these investments are such great ideas and Canada is such a great place to invest in them, it will be necessary to hand all these world-class entrepreneurs huge sums of money from people who would, one assumes, be willing customers if not instead compelled investors with no share certificates.

Not to be outdone, the Bank’s chair contributed this cloudy gem: “Today’s plan was carefully designed step by step by the Canada Infrastructure Bank. This plan is the result of meaningful, serious analysis of current and future problems. This plan is the real deal. We have a lot of work ahead of us in order to bring this plan to life … We know the quality of the plan rests on its execution.”

Sorry to seem obtuse. But if it’s the result of careful step-by-step design based on meaningful, serious meaningfulness then what’s all the work ahead of us to develop a step-by-step design? And how much, exactly, can bureaucrats and politicians know about technology, manufacturing, changing tastes and needs? Some 30 years ago governments renounced the picking of winners and losers in order, we later discovered, to focus on the latter. And here we go again. Apparently these guys are so magic that, McKenna said, “There are real opportunities” to “take one taxpayer dollar and, as Michael Sabia has said, turn that into double or triple that so we can build even more good infrastructure for Canadians.” Bringing to mind the line from Shanghai Knights: “What in our history together makes you think I’m capable of something like that?”

Thus another revealing feature of this plan-like object is that no amount of embarrassing failure seems to dent our rulers’ sublime confidence in their own excellence. As John Ivison recently observed in the National Post, a number of very straightforward free-money COVID plans including the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program failed even to hand out much money (perhaps $1 billion of the budgeted $3 billion), let alone restore prosperity by doing so, and is now set to expire with no replacement in place. Likewise the Large Employer Financing Facility was set up in May and only in late September announced its first successful somewhat ungenerous climate-disclosure-requiring handout, $200 million to a casino company. Are these the green and red jobs of the future? Ivison also notes that the Business Credit Availability program was a dud and corporate income tax deferrals are about to end with ominous consequences. Yet instead of sweeping up these current messes, the PM and his associates are dreaming big green dreams about the future.

Big big dreams. CTV added that “Prior to the announcement, government officials told The Canadian Press that the plan is part of the promise made by the government in the throne speech last week to create one million jobs and meet the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.” But if $10 billion creates 60,000 jobs, and we stress the “if”, then it costs $166,666.66 per job. So to create a million jobs is going to require $166.7 billion (yes, we rounded it off). On top of the existing $343 billion deficit? Per year? Or are you just burbling sweet nothings at us?

As noted at the outset, if we’re lucky the CIB will just sit around paying its VPs, consultants and other lucky people six-figure salaries to devise ornate step-by-step smarter-than-the-market world-class high-tech clean-energy brilliant ideas and praise themselves without restraint. If we’re unlucky, it will attempt to implement its plans and we’ll get a Green Recovery that is neither but does manage to be highly expensive.