The more that people actually keep the supposedly canonical thing up to date with reality, the more it actually becomes canonical.

For example, a kanban board of tasks on a project.

A canonical thing needs to be default-convergent.

Close enough to reality that the incremental action people take on it brings it closer to modeling reality.

But a supposedly canonical thing that doesn't represent reality is default-divergent.

No one will want to clean it up (each incremental bit of improvement doesn't make a dent; it's still not representative of the underlying reality).

So as time goes on, and reality continues evolving, it moves further and further away from the supposedly canonical representation.

Now you have an "official" thing that doesn't actually represent reality… confusing!

At a certain point you just have to call bankruptcy.