Five ways to renew the public service

2014/08/23 Leave a comment

Good piece by David McLaughlin on what needs to be fixed:

Here’s a five-point checklist for the new Clerk:

First, stop the churn in deputy minister turnover. Fewer and fewer deputies stay in their respective departments for more than a couple of years now. Environment Canada is on its fifth deputy minister in eight years. This erodes corporate memory and expertise at the top, severs the link between responsibility and accountability in a department, and makes deputy ministers more amenable to short-term priorities and thinking.

Second, build back the research capacity for independent, evidence-based decision-making. Access to good, reliable data and information is at the core of sound policy and decisions. Governments are the ultimate knowledge-based institutions. So, why do we insist they operate without it?

Third, think out loud with smart, committed Canadians. Fear of failure is endemic to large bureaucracies, but fear of facing others in case one is challenged over politics is a recipe for idea ossification and policy stasis.

Fourth, build up the Canada School of Government from a management incubator to an idea accelerator. Use it to engage bright and controversial thinkers to challenge and test the public service’s own thinking.

Fifth, heed the maxim I once heard from a Clerk: It is unavoidable that governments get caught up in the short-term, but it is unforgivable that they ignore the long-term. Only governments have the mandate and capacity to think about what the future might bring. Seize that role and share what was learned with us all.

Think of it this way: Good policy is good politics.

Five ways to renew the public service – The Globe and Mail.

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Backlogged social security panel stops tracking results of appeals

2014/08/23 Leave a comment

All too symptomatic of the Government’s tendency to provide less and less information on its performance. See earlier Tribunal can deny in-person appeals in disability benefits cases.

If you can’t (or don’t) measure it, you can’t manage it, to use the cliché:

The tribunal did not immediately respond to queries about why it stopped tracking appeal results. Under the old regime, appeal decisions were published online and the so-called review tribunal made the statistics public in its annual report.

Allison Schmidt, a Regina-based disability claims advocate and consultant, said she “smells a rat” in the government’s recent failure to track how many appeals are allowed or dismissed by the tribunal.

She adds she suspects the Conservatives don’t want the public to know how many appeals are being denied.“Surely the tribunal must know the results of their work,” Schmidt said in an interview.

“It is ludicrous to assume that a quasi-judicial administrative government agency would not know the results of the appeals they conduct. All they have to do is count them; the decisions are all on file. What about transparency?”

Backlogged social security panel stops tracking results of appeals.

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Smith: Supreme Court must address citizenship oath | Ottawa Citizen

2014/08/23 Leave a comment

Not everything needs to be decided by the Courts, given that requiring the current wording of the Oath, while objectionable to some, is not as fundamental breach of rights as in other cases where the Courts have ruled against the Government.

Better to have this addressed by the political process as almost happened in the past:

Aspiring citizens do not get these freedoms if they contractually promise allegiance to the Crown. Freedom of speech and the Crown’s legal authority already exist, regardless of the oath.

When I became a lawyer over a decade ago, I chose not to swear the regal oath. The choice I made did not hurt Canada, because the words had not made Canada any better.

Nor did it make me any less committed to Canada. It simply expressed, through quiet protest, my political opinion that hereditary British rule is morally wrong in today’s Canada, a view that millions of Canadians share.

The forced regal words were not justifiable for Ontario police officers, lawyers, school children or school board members, or federal public servants. They are not justifiable for citizenship applicants either.

The Supreme Court must step in, respect the evidence and declare the words optional for any citizenship applicant who does not want to express them based on personal democratic opinions.

Smith: Supreme Court must address citizenship oath | Ottawa Citizen.

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Tungohan, Cleto and de Leon: Leave the nannies alone

2014/08/23 Leave a comment

More commentary on live-in caregivers and the Government’s signalling intent to change the program given concerns that it is being used as a backdoor for family reunification (see Live-in caregivers may be next target of immigration reform, Don’t throw the nanny out with the bathwater – Omidvar, Filipino Canadians fear end of immigrant dreams for nannies):

That Minister Alexander is considering revoking their automatic right to permanent residency is very troubling. It would be unethical not only because of the contributions these caregivers have already made to Canadian society, but also because he is going against decades of expressed wishes from the Canadian public.

We should not forget that in the late 1970s, Canadian families fought alongside live-in caregivers for the right to permanent residency. Canadian families recognized that migrant domestic workers provide care work that they sorely need. And if migrant domestic workers are good enough to work, they felt, they are good enough to stay.

This is still true today. The absence of a national childcare and eldercare policy means Canadian families have little recourse but to use the live-in caregiver program to meet their needs. Middle-class families are placed in a crippling financial situation and are increasingly turning to the LCP for help. And our study shows that 68% of live-in caregivers continue to do care work three to five years after exiting the program. This figure drops to 45% after five to 10 years.

These numbers may show that some of our respondents are unable to get jobs outside of care work despite having education, training and work experience in other fields. This presents an opportunity for the Canadian government to think more critically about how to maximize the diverse, valuable skills that live-in caregivers have.Live-in caregivers are currently prohibited from taking educational upgrading and training courses while under the LCP.

To maximize their skills and expertise, they should immediately be granted affordable access to accredited programs such as early childhood education, personal support work and health-care aide training. This way, caregivers would have improved job security and would give Canadian families access to a bigger pool of trained health-care professionals.

Tungohan, Cleto and de Leon: Leave the nannies alone

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What the Jihadists Who Bought Islam For Dummies on Amazon Tell Us About Radicalisation | Mehdi Hasan

2014/08/23 Leave a comment

More on radicalization in the UK (but applicable more universally). I also recommend the film Four Lions:

Sarwar and Ahmed, both of whom pleaded guilty to terrorism offences last month, purchased Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. You could not ask for better evidence to bolster the argument that the 1,400-year-old Islamic faith has little to do with the modern jihadist movement. The swivel-eyed young men who take sadistic pleasure in bombings and beheadings may try to justify their violence with recourse to religious rhetoric – think the killers of Lee Rigby screaming “Allahu Akbar” at their trial; think of Islamic State beheading the photojournalist James Foley as part of its “holy war” – but religious fervour isnt what motivates most of them.

In 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5s behavioural science unit, was leaked to the Guardian. It revealed that, “far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The analysts concluded that “a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation”, the newspaper said.

For more evidence, read the books of the forensic psychiatrist and former CIA officer Marc Sageman; the political scientist Robert Pape; the international relations scholar Rik Coolsaet; the Islamism expert Olivier Roy; the anthropologist Scott Atran. They have all studied the lives and backgrounds of hundreds of gun-toting, bomb-throwing jihadists and they all agree that Islam isn’t to blame for the behaviour of such men and, yes, they usually are men.

Instead they point to other drivers of radicalisation: moral outrage, disaffection, peer pressure, the search for a new identity, for a sense of belonging and purpose. As Atran pointed out in testimony to the US Senate in March 2010: “. . . what inspires the most lethal terrorists in the world today is not so much the Quran or religious teachings as a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends, and through friends, eternal respect and remembrance in the wider world”. He described wannabe jihadists as “bored, under­employed, overqualified and underwhelmed” young men for whom “jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer . . . thrilling, glorious and cool”.

Or, as Chris Morris, the writer and director of the 2010 black comedy Four Lions – which satirised the ignorance, incompetence and sheer banality of British Muslim jihadists – once put it: “Terrorism is about ideology, but it’s also about berks.”[idiots]

What the Jihadists Who Bought Islam For Dummies on Amazon Tell Us About Radicalisation | Mehdi Hasan.

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Editorial: Wayne Wouters’ public service yet to be defined | Ottawa Citizen

2014/08/22 Leave a comment

Citizen’s editorial on what they perceive as Wayne Wouters’ mixed legacy:

It’s somewhat fitting that outgoing Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters’ first appearance before a House of Commons committee back in 2009 centred around the federal government’s use of public money and manpower for what many argued were partisan purposes. The specific issue then was the Conservatives’ controversial $34-million advertising campaign, web site makeover and signage to pump its economic action plan Wouters said the campaign broke no federal rules, to the head-shaking disbelief of opposition MPs, and it played into a bigger theme present throughout Wouters’ tenure. That is, where do you draw the line between politics and public service, how should the line be enforced, and how do you forge an effective working relationship that respects it?

Unfortunately, the line remains ill-defined to this day, and Wouters himself often strode close enough to it to raise hackles.

… Where Wouters did find obvious success was in getting both bureaucrats and politicians to buy in to his Destination 2020 plan to transform the public service into a lean, outgoing, healthy, relevant and tech-savvy force. It’s an ambitious document, and although it contains some very broad language and goals — some of which will ultimately be hard to really quantify — it could also wind up furnishing Wouters with an impressive legacy. Public Service reform has a long been a topic of discussion in the capital, and its ultimate failure has left a host of skeptics in its wake (not to mention a lot of sick, tired and demoralized bureaucrats).

That promise and legacy are now in the hands of incoming Privy Council Clerk Janice Charette. Here’s hoping she finds success in her new role.

Editorial: Wayne Wouters’ public service yet to be defined | Ottawa Citizen.

And a good profile on him and the difficult times he faced, also in The Citizen:

Wouters’s biggest challenge was stickhandling the public service with a Conservative government that made little secret of its mistrust of a bureaucracy that had worked so long for previous Liberal governments. Some argue he didn’t stand up enough for the public service and let it become too politicized, but others say he made the best of working with a difficult prime minister and a meddling Prime Minister’s Office.

“The lack of trust between politicians, public servants and Canadians is an underlying issue he faced that was exacerbated by personality and temperament and I think Wayne has done as good a job as anyone on this trust issue,” said Maryantonett Flumian, who worked closely with Wouters in several portfolios and now heads the Ottawa-based Institute on Governance.

“The clerk and prime minister are two very different personalities and he found a way of working together.”

Some say Wouters stepped into the job at a difficult time, as the public service faced the pressure of spending reviews, steady cuts and an unprecedented exodus of executive and managerial talent as baby boomers retired in record numbers.

“He made it work for sure between PCO and PMO and that is an important accomplishment,” said David Zussman, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Management at the University of Ottawa.

“Being interlocuter between the prime minister and public service is difficult and needs a good relationship. The fact he stayed as long as he did is a tribute to his skills and the fact that he understood where the prime minister is coming from and did his best to implement what the government wants to do.”

Wayne Wouters: Retiring clerk sparked controversy and compliments

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A Conversation with Benjamin Zephaniah on Britishness

2014/08/22 Leave a comment

Sadia Habib’s interview with British writer, poet and professor with some interesting thoughts on identity, multiculturalism and the role of government, starting with on teaching Britishness:

I don’t like the idea. You can teach things about Britain, and that should be just a general part of education, but to teach British-ness… Now some people say a great symbol of Britishness is the Queen. I don’t. I think a great symbol of Britishness is all the people who have fought against monarchy… the Levellers… the people who fought for freedom… the suffragettes. That’s the tradition that fascinates me. I don’t say to the other people that your one is less important, if that is what you want to do, then let me do my one as well. So what version of Britishness are you teaching?

If you are going to teach it, you have to pick a version of Britishness.If you are the government, and you are telling people how to teach it in schools, you are going to teach one that suits the status quo. As part of your Britishness, are you going to teach about the British people that went to Amritsar and massacred innocent people? I guess most likely not. Are you going to romanticise that? Are your going to teach the real details of slavery? I know you may mention it, but as part of Britishness, as part of where we got where we got today?

Liverpool is part of Britain. Why are certain roads in Liverpool named after slave-drivers or slave-masters? Why have we got banks in this country that were started off during the slave trade and are a part of the great British establishment? Are you going to teach that? I think not. In their version of Britishness, they are probably going to teach that great comedy comes out of Liverpool, and there are banks, maybe on now and then they get it wrong, but on the whole they are alright as they will give you a mortgage eventually! They are going to teach a very sanitized version of the British institutions. So I don’t think you can teach Britishness. And all this stuff where foreigners are expected to swear allegiance to the Queen and all, I think it is bullshit! Sorry for using such words!

Some people are against state multiculturalism. I am as well, oddly enough, because the kind of multiculturalism I am talking about happens organically. I look at my band of musicians: I’ve got an Indian girl on percussion, I’ve got a Chinese guy in guitar, Jamaican, an African, and two English people. I just went out and looked for the best talent. That’s what I got. I remember the first time I met the Chinese guy, and I said to him play a lead piece for me, and he played the guitar, and it sounded kind of Chinese-y. And it was a lead. I said: “God! That’s really good!” One of the other people said: “Oh no, you are getting the tones wrong.” And I said “No, he’s getting them right. That’s working.” That’s what makes our music interesting. That’s what makes our culture interesting. That’s what makes our food interesting. So the kind of multiculturalism I am interested in is the one that happens organically, happens naturally.

A Conversation with Benjamin Zephaniah on Britishness The Sociological Imagination.

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Canada deports people to wars, repressive regimes | Toronto Star

2014/08/22 Leave a comment

Does appear to be some policy incoherence in deporting people to countries with a deportation moratorium:

“The prevailing human rights situation is so grave in some of these countries, the very real possibility that deportees would be at risk would be a very high one,” said Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, after viewing the statistics.

“There are countries on this list where there is widespread insecurity and armed conflict. We’ve got Somalia on the list and Syria,” Neve said. “There are other countries on this list where there are deeply entrenched patterns of widespread repression. Eritrea would be a good example. And there are countries where people who have been outside the country and are being sent back are viewed with suspicion, like North Korea.”

Neve says Amnesty International has nothing against deportations in general and points out that international law allows deportations of refugee claimants if they’ve had a fair hearing and can safely return to their country. But some of the countries people are being deported to give reason to worry.

“The government reserves the right to carry out deportations if a person has a criminal record,” said Neve. “That doesn’t mean that those deportations are in conformity with international law because there are some human rights protections that are absolute.

”Protection from torture, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution are all examples of uninfringeable human rights, Neve said.

“If you’re going to be gunned down by a death squad or if you’re going to be abducted by a secret police unit and disappear into a prison system without ever going through any kind of legal process — international law includes the protection against being deported to face that risk,” he said.

Canada deports people to wars, repressive regimes | Toronto Star.

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Stephen Pollard: Appeasing the mob? That ain’t kosher

2014/08/22 Leave a comment

Pollard has a point:

In response to those protesters outside Sainsbury’s Holborn branch calling for a boycott of its Israeli goods, the manager ordered his staff to clear the shop of all its kosher goods. Clearly the manager is not the brightest spark in the firmament, since kosher produce — which is the only food observant Jews are allowed to eat — is not the same as Israeli produce which is simply food produced in Israel. The kosher produce in the shop was apparently made in the UK and Poland, and had never been near Israel.

It’s easy to imagine what went through the manager’s mind: “Israelis, Jews – heh, they’re all the same. Let’s just get rid of this stuff pronto and keep the protesters happy.” According to the witness whose Facebook posting of the empty shelves revealed the story, a staff member then defended the move, saying: “We support Free Gaza.”

…. Some hapless Sainsbury’s spokesperson issued a statement saying that the company was “an absolutely non-political organisation,” and went on: “It was an isolated decision made in a very challenging situation.”

Challenging. What a wonderful word that is, designed as a catch-all to excuse all sorts of inexcusable acts. So – given how challenging things are in Iraq at the moment – presumably Sainsbury’s will be removing all halal goods from its shelves because Islamic State is slaughtering Yazidis. No? You mean Sainsbury’s does not believe all British Muslims should be punished for the actions of a foreign body with which they have no connection?

Mistakes happen. But the way they are dealt with is usually more indicative of the way an organisation is run. And Sainsbury’s is refusing even to investigate the incident.

Stephen Pollard: Appeasing the mob? That ain’t kosher

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Canadian religious freedom ambassador Andrew Bennett says religious freedom violated in China

2014/08/22 Leave a comment

Not easy for this Government, as all governments, to balance economic interests with human rights concerns.

For the Conservative government, particularly challenging given their support, now muted, to Tibetans, their legitimate focus on issues relating to religious freedom and their overall anti-Communist regime framework:

“In China, unlike other parts of the world, religious freedom is being violated almost solely as a result of government restrictions.”​

“And that’s certainly a concern and an issue that we seek to raise with the Chinese,” Bennett told host Evan Solomon on Wednesday.

Under Canada’s long-standing “one China” policy, the Canadian government takes no position with regard to specific autonomy claims. But with religious freedom now a central tenet of Canada’s foreign policy, Bennett said it will take a stance when governments choose to discriminate on the basis of religion.

“In China right now, were seeing increasing state persecution of a variety of religious communities and this has been escalating over the last year or more.”

“For example, the case of China’s officials prohibiting Uighur Muslims from fasting during Ramadan. You know, this is completely unacceptable,” Bennett said.

“Now were seeing reports that the Chinese government wants to nationalize Christianity.”

Having Bennett do some early messaging will likely be followed by more discrete raising of the issues during the PM trip.

Interests are simply too serious to allow for “huff and puff” diplomacy.

Canadian ambassador Andrew Bennett says religious freedom violated in China – Politics – CBC News.

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