Elizabeth May: Top Level Of Public Service ‘Contaminated’ From Harper Years

Whoa there. While she is right to flag that the transition may be hard for some senior public servants, all understand their public service role is to serve the government of the day. Those that are uncomfortable doing so will likely retire or be moved to a less important position.

And inertia, common to all bureaucracies, is different from resistance:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is calling for all the top senior public servants to be removed from their current jobs because, she says, they are tainted from the Harper years and resisting change.

“It’s awkward as a person in politics, you don’t want to single out public servants,” May said. “But it can’t escape note that the deputy minister for trade negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the deputy minister at Environment Canada was Harper’s lead negotiator at Copenhagen blocking climate action…

“The deputy ministers advising [Public Safety Minister] Ralph Goodale were okay with C-51, so was the deputy minister at the department of justice,” May added.

It’s not about the public service being partisan, May told reporters Wednesday during a press conference highlighting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s six months in office.

“But it’s clear that the top level of the public service is contaminated by their role in the last 10 years.”

“In my opinion, right now, there is a level of resistance against change,” May said, pointing to examples of a press release and advice from bureaucrats at the department of international trade and the Canada Revenue Agency. “There is, to put it mildly, inertia in the system.”

The Green Party leader said she isn’t accusing public servants of being Harper cheerleaders or secret Conservatives but rather she is suggesting there is a problem afoot because the deputy ministers still in place are at ease with the decisions they made during the last government.

“I’m not accusing the civil service of wishing they had Stephen Harper back. They are non-partisan. But after 10 years, it takes a while to make the shift,” she said.

“It’s not really possible to imagine that there is no loyalty to the action that you’ve personally undertaken as a senior civil servant,” May added. “There is pride in accomplishments. Logically, they were doing the right thing ‘cause their job as civil servants is to follow what they are instructed to do by the political side of government.”

Source: Elizabeth May: Top Level Of Public Service ‘Contaminated’ From Harper Years