It was, Anne Golden explained at length over breakfast earlier this week, a question of rethinking our strategy for economic growth. A new report from the Conference Board of Canada, of which she's president, showed Canada becoming a bit player on the global economic stage - not just the least powerful of the G-8 nations, but weaker than three other countries as well. So rather than continuing to tinker while other economies powered past ours, we needed to rethink our entire method of economic development - bolstering infrastructure, undertaking tax and regulatory reform, knocking down trade barriers, implementing better training programs, investing in research and development, moving beyond Kyoto rhetoric toward real sustainable development policies, and so on.

The next day, having evidently done the editorial board circuit, the Conference Board cracked the front page of the country's biggest newspaper - not just with one story, but with two. This must have initially been cause for considerable celebration among Ms. Golden and her colleagues - that is, until they looked at what the Toronto Star had actually gotten out of their study.

Under the headline "Flu pandemic 'catastrophic' for Canada: Study predicts mass deaths, economic crisis," the Star breathlessly reported on the think-tank's comments about a coming bird flu "catastrophe." A second, less torqued up story noted the Conference Board's call for Canadians to work past the age of 65. And that was it.

Out of the entire 200-plus page report, all but a few pages were ignored. Nothing about our declining performance compared to our competitors when it comes to the economy, health, innovation or social factors. Nothing about the array of complex reforms the Conference Board had put forward. Just a narrow focus on one sensationalist angle, and a single policy proposal so simplistic that it could be understood from reading the headline.

It's probably not fair to single out the Star, even if its decision to blow out of proportion a passing bird flu reference was a little bizarre. But its coverage was symptomatic of a broader phenomenon. For anyone tempted to come up with nuanced solutions to complex policy problems in this country, the lesson is simple: Nobody cares.

That the media tends to give productivity and other dry policy topics short shrift outside the business pages is forgivable. Its job is to sell copy. What's less forgivable is that those charged with running the country do likewise.

It's a product of our political culture that there is little incentive for governments to engage in serious long-term planning. Governments rarely look beyond the next election. Few ministers spend enough time in portfolios to undertake major structural change; when they do get ambitious (as, say, John Manley arguably once did in Industry), their reforms are just as likely to be put on the backburner by their successors. And election campaigns inevitably focus on hot-button concerns - not how many jobs will be created down the road.

Earlier this week, a year after Paul Martin claimed to have "fixed health care for a generation," the Fraser Institute popped up to point out that wait lists hadn't shortened much yet. Well, of course not - the notion that the country's biggest social program could be "fixed" in a 12-month span is absurd. But that's the degree to which we've all been conditioned to expect short-term results.

And so anything that's not easily digestible, isn't already making headlines and doesn't have an immediate, short-term impact is pushed well down the priority list. Why talk about boring R&D funding when there's a scandal to be mongered or gas prices to wring hands about? Why worry about urban centres' crumbling infrastructure, even if it's a major disincentive to investment, when another government would be in place to reap spending's economic reward?

Granted, the problem is exacerbated in the current political climate, when a minority parliament has the government with a shorter lifespan than usual and the opposition looking for quick hits. But for more than a decade, the federal Liberals had every opportunity to plan for the future - and as the Conference Board's report shows, they made little of it.

Asked at the end of our breakfast meeting about how governments can possibly be motivated to shift toward more nuanced long-term planning, Conference Board economist Glen Hodgson acknowledged that it's "the 64,000-dollar question." Based on the way the think-tank's study has been received, we're no closer to getting an answer.