The Canadian policy style has been described as one of overpromising and underdelivering, where heightened expectations are often met by underwhelming outcomes. Here, we examine the evidentiary style of Canadian policy-making which undergirds and reflects this policy style, particularly the nature of the policy advisory system that contributes to this pattern of policy-making. We do so by assessing how the different components of the advice system, which include academics, consultants, and policy professionals within the public service, are structured and relate to each other within the overall dynamics of information management and policy formulation in the governments of Canada. Using examples from recent efforts to revitalize Canadian government, the paper argues that the federal government in particular shows a pattern of the predominance of non-innovative academic “super-users,” distributed policy shops, and process-oriented analysts and consultants who combine with attributes of federalism and partisan budgetary politics to drive a distinctively fragmented and procedurally-oriented federal policy-making process. In these processes, evidence is often secondary to political posturing and short-term electioneering in program creation and execution, contributing greatly to the national policy style set out above.

中文翻译：

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只言不行：加拿大政策风格中证据文化薄弱


加拿大的政策风格被描述为一种承诺过多、兑现不足的政策风格，这种政策往往会带来令人失望的结果，从而满足更高的期望。在这里，我们研究了加拿大决策的证据风格，它巩固并反映了这种政策风格，特别是有助于这种政策制定模式的政策咨询体系的性质。我们通过评估咨询系统的不同组成部分（包括公共服务领域的学者、顾问和政策专业人员）如何在加拿大政府信息管理和政策制定的整体动态中构建和相互关联来实现这一目标。本文以最近振兴加拿大政府的努力为例，认为联邦政府尤其表现出一种非创新学术“超级用户”、分布式政策商店以及以流程为导向的分析师和顾问占主导地位的模式。联邦制和党派预算政治的属性推动了明显分散且以程序为导向的联邦决策过程。在这些过程中，在计划的制定和执行中，证据往往次于政治姿态和短期竞选活动，这对上述国家政策风格做出了巨大贡献。