Industry Minister Christian Paradis may not have known it, but his short-lived decision to review the recent $4.5-billion sale of 6,000 Nortel Networks Corp. patents to determine if the sale must be approved under the Investment Canada Act is a timely reminder about the nature of government.

Anyone expecting the newly won Conservative majority in the House of Commons to lead to predictable and consistent government decision-making should take heed.

Departments make decisions independent of each other. Rules are interpreted differently from office to office. And, most importantly, decisions can be made for unknown or inexplicable reasons.

Take the announcement in early July that Paradis had asked his officials to look into the sale of the Nortel patents to a consortium led by Apple Inc. and Research in Motion Ltd. to determine if a “net benefit to Canada” test should be applied under the Investment Canada Act.

Within two weeks, Paradis announced no test would be necessary and the sale could go ahead.

No other outcome would have been possible. Ottawa had been indifferent when American-based Avaya Inc. bought Nortel’s valuable enterprise division in 2009.

At that time, the government had said approval under the Investment Canada Act for the Avaya deal was not required because the book value of the assets was below the legal threshold for review at $312 million.

But the Nortel patents’ book value was zero, in accordance to standard practice in the high-tech sector. This is because the value of patents is hard to determine until they are sold or licensed.

In the end, Paradis acknowledged the patents’ asset book value was below the threshold. And the minister looked a little silly.

What was Paradis thinking? In the absence of an official explanation, we can only speculate. Perhaps the minister was trying to appease those Canadians who believe national treasures are being squandered.

Or the new minister may simply have been putting his mark on Industry Canada until someone explained to him that was a dumb idea. (Paradis had replaced Tony Clement as industry minister in the post-election cabinet shuffle.)

There are other inconsistencies. Why did the Harper government dive into the controversy over the sale of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan and then stay as far away as possible from the now-defunct proposed takeover of TMX Group Inc. by the London Stock Exchange Group PLC?

Why would the federal government refuse to fund Edmonton’s bid for Expo 2017 for fear of offending Eastern voters while it was not at all shy about pumping $50 million into the Muskoka riding of Clement for dubious G8 infrastructure projects?

In all our speculation and analysis of government policy and frameworks, it is easy to forget we are governed by subjective human beings.

But, in fairness, the current government did not invent the non sequitur.

The Chrétien government, for example, had rushed to cancel an order for 48 EH-101 military helicopters in 1994 and paid $500 million in penalties, only to buy basically the same helicopter for search-and-rescue work three years later.

As long as voters and the media have short memories, there will be inconsistency, uncertainty and even erratic decisions in Ottawa, regardless of who is in power. This is why government actions and policies should never be assumed.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page has found yet another way to be a pain in the ruling party’s side. He is setting up a database to track the spending of every federal government department every three months. Members of Parliament will be able to follow federal expenditures in real time instead of waiting 20 months for public accounts reports.

The Harper government had created the office of parliamentary budget officer, along with several other watchdog positions, after taking office in 2006. The overwhelming majority of these watchdogs have turned out to be civil-service careerists with more bark then bite. Page has been a notable exception. IE