Kevin Paquette: The courage to occasionally do nothing
A mature society does not demand a government response to every risk and source of outrage.
In Quebec, nearly every social problem now seems to follow the same trajectory.
There is another tragedy that occurs, and news reports spark more public outrage. Soon after, advocacy groups demand intervention, and opposition parties call on the government to act. In response, the minister responsible says the government is open to legislating. Then comes a bill, regulation, or government action plan, presented as definitive proof that the government has heard the public and is taking action.
In our political culture, intervening has become synonymous with governing.
By contrast, a politician who refuses to intervene quickly risks being accused of indifference, or even lacking leadership.
Yet one question remains: must the government really intervene?
The action bias
Behavioural psychologists use the term ‘action bias’ to describe our tendency to prefer visible intervention over inaction, even when there is no evidence that intervening will produce better results.
A well-known study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology examined how football goalkeepers behave during penalties. After analysing hundreds of penalties, researchers found that goalkeepers almost always dived to the left or right. This happened even though they would often have had a better chance of stopping the ball by remaining in the middle of the net.
Why?
Because a keeper who dives appears to have tried, and a goalkeeper who remains still and concedes a goal risks looking passive, despite it being the more statistically rational decision. The researchers described this phenomenon as the ‘action bias’, denoting when action is the expected norm. In this case, inaction becomes psychologically and socially more costly, even when it may be the better choice.
Politicians find themselves in a similar position.
When an issue dominates media coverage, announcing nothing becomes politically riskier than announcing something imperfect. Criticism comes quickly and fiercely, and an ineffective law can always be defended as an attempt to solve the problem. By contrast, the absence of a law can easily be portrayed as a refusal to act.
Beyond cynicism, this phenomenon also reflects the incentives inherent in political life. Politicians personally and immediately bear the political cost of inaction, and the costs of a bad public policy are dispersed among thousands of citizens and businesses. Often, these effects are felt over a period of time that extends beyond a politician’s career.
American political scientist R. Kent Weaver demonstrated that elected officials are often motivated more by the desire to avoid blame than by the possibility of receiving credit for good public policy. In a context where voters tend to be more sensitive to losses, failures, and negative events than to diffuse benefits, politicians primarily seek to avoid being accused of having failed to intervene.
In other words, it is politically safer to do something than to explain why the government will do nothing.
Quebec’s energy drink law
Energy drinks are not essential to the healthy development of teenagers. Their consumption can present genuine risks, particularly when they are combined with certain stimulant medicines.
The tragic death of a 15-year-old boy following an interaction between an energy drink and his medication has to be treated with seriousness and compassion. Understandably, his story prompted his family to mobilise and helped make many Quebecers aware of a risk that had previously been little understood.
But it is precisely in emotionally charged cases that we must be able to distinguish compassion from the need for government action.
On 5 June 2026, less than a week before the end of the National Assembly’s parliamentary session, the Quebec government introduced Bill 9. Among other provisions, the bill prohibited the sale or distribution of energy drinks to anyone under 16. It also created penal offences, granted inspection and investigative powers to Santé Québec, and imposed various obligations on retailers.
A single day of special consultations was held on 9 June. On 11 June, less than a week after it was introduced, the bill was passed and received Royal Assent the same day through an expedited legislative process.
In less than a week, a new category of consumer products was made subject to government prohibition.
The near-unanimity of the vote was also significant, for in this context, opposing the bill no longer meant merely questioning the effectiveness of a regulatory measure. Both the proponents of the legislation and much of the media framed opposition to it as opposition to the protection of children.
Therefore, before the debate had truly begun, it closed almost immediately.
Yet these products were already subject to strict federal regulations. Health Canada limits the total caffeine content of an energy drink to 180 milligrams per serving, and manufacturers must also display warnings concerning the product’s high caffeine content. In addition, the maximum number of servings that should be consumed must be displayed, as well as the groups for whom the product is not recommended.
The government could have improved the information provided to parents, and done more to raise awareness among doctors and pharmacists about possible interactions with certain medicines. It could have intervened in schools or placed greater responsibility on manufacturers and retailers.
Some of these measures might have proved insufficient, but in the end, a prohibition may even have been justified. Nonetheless, the speed of the legislative process begs the familiar question: does every troubling situation automatically require a new law?
The central issue is whether every risky or undesirable behaviour warrants government intervention.
Regulation by accumulation
Let us be honest and state that a government measure is rarely completely absurd when examined in isolation.
Rather, the problem emerges when these interventions accumulate.
A single requirement rarely creates an unbearable burden, but that is not the case with dozens and eventually hundreds of other obligations.
The true cost of regulation always lies in the combined effects of different measures.
This is how the Quebec government finds itself in a profoundly paradoxical position. It continually adopts new rules, only to periodically launch regulatory relief plans aimed at reducing the burden created by its previous decisions.
The contradiction is almost a caricature. On 11 June, at the very moment when the National Assembly adopted the new energy-drink law, it also passed Bill 11, a piece of legislation specifically intended to reduce the regulatory and administrative burden.
We regulate with one hand and attempt to deregulate with the other.
The problem is that new regulations produce an immediate political benefit. Repealing them several years later is far more difficult. Any attempt to relax the rules can then be portrayed as a backward step.
Every government intervention is not excessive by default, but we must recognise that public action can also fail. It can shift a problem elsewhere, create unintended consequences, or impose costs greater than the benefits it was meant to produce.
A mature society
Quebecers have a particular relationship with the state.
The Quiet Revolution transformed the provincial government into a powerful instrument of national emancipation. One can reasonably argue that the Quebec state enabled French-speaking Quebecers to regain control over their economy, their institutions, and their collective destiny.
Unfortunately, over the decades, the state has become more of a reflex than an instrument.
By replacing the parish priest with a government ministry, we liberated ourselves from an institution that sought to regulate nearly every aspect of social life, yet retained the need for a higher authority to define what is desirable, what is acceptable, and what must be prohibited.
A nation cannot rest on the state alone, and a vibrant society also depends on its families, businesses, associations, local communities, and individual responsibility. These social institutions are the primary places where behaviours, values, and social norms should be shared and passed down.
If the state automatically takes responsibility for every problem, it weakens society’s capacity to govern itself.
A mature society should not demand a public-policy response to every risk or every source of outrage.
The state still has fundamental responsibilities like maintaining public order, punishing criminal conduct, and intervening when one person’s actions cause serious harm to others.
But recognising the legitimacy of the state requires both recognising its limits, and that the role of politics is not to eliminate every risk from human existence.
True political courage
We constantly ask politicians to have the courage to act.
At some point, we must also recognise the courage required not to intervene.
This includes the courage to acknowledge that an event is tragic without pretending that a new law could necessarily have prevented it, the courage to admit that no government can eliminate every risk, and the courage to remind parents, citizens, businesses, and civil-society institutions of their own responsibilities.
Governing means making choices, and reserving the power of the state for situations in which it is genuinely necessary.
Kevin Paquette is a consultant at Crestview Strategy. He was a political advisor to Quebec's Minister of Public Security and president of the Coalition Avenir Québec's youth wing. He also worked in the Conservative Party of Canada's war room during the 2019 federal election campaign.
For more from Without Diminishment and its contributors, follow along on X, YouTube, and Instagram.
Without Diminishment is a project of the Without Diminishment Foundation, a registered non-profit in British Columbia. If you value the unique perspective we bring to Canada’s cultural landscape, consider supporting our work with a generous donation.
Excellent point; explains a lot about peoples' expectations and government response.
All the responses can become additive, and reinforce unreasonable expectations of government. We see this everyday.