How productive is the public service? We’ll never know | Denley

2026/01/09 Leave a comment

Some things easier to measure than others but productivity in service delivery, HR, finance and property management should be doable and are needed:

…One need be only moderately cynical to identify the reason for rejecting productivity measurement. There’s a big clue in the task force’s report. The advisory group states, “Without reliable data, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of government services or identify areas for improvement.”

That might seem like a problem to concerned taxpayers, but for those in government, it’s an ideal situation.

The problem with assessing performance is a political downside. If you set a goal and don’t meet it, that’s a visible failure. Better to keep it vague and talk only about the volume of money spent. Easier, too. It saves all the thinking about how to actually accomplish things, as opposed to just promising them.

What little reporting the federal government does on its own effectiveness illustrates the pitfalls of telling people how you are doing. A recent report by the Treasury Board showed that government departments that deliver high-volume services fell woefully short of expectations in 2024-25.

It’s pretty obvious that effective digital service delivery is critical to productivity and expanding output per worker, but in 2024-25, only 52 per cent of those high-volume departments met digital service standards, down from 55 per cent the year before. The target is 80 per cent, in itself a pretty modest number.

The Treasury Board report says the 80 per cent target “reflects Canadians’ expectations of simple, secure and efficient delivery of services and benefits.” If so, those expectations would be dramatically less than the ones we have of Amazon.

The underlying problem can be seen in the percentage of government business applications “assessed as healthy.” That number was only 38 per cent in 2024-25 and the target is a mere 40 per cent. Not exactly a recipe for efficient and effective service delivery.

Let’s put all of this in a broader context. In Canada, the federal, provincial and municipal governments combined employ more than 20 per cent of the population, and their spending equals 40 per cent of gross domestic product.

If those governments don’t use money productively, they are a drag on the whole economy, wasting people and money that could be more effectively deployed in the private sector.

Instead of spending so much time on the issue of where public servants work, the Carney government should focus on the far more important problem of what they do and whether it’s done effectively. The public service is too big, expensive and important to be run by guesswork.

Source: How productive is the public service? We’ll never know | Opinion

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Government rejects call to measure productivity across public service

2025/12/18 2 Comments

Sigh… While some areas intrinsically hard to measure such as policy processes and communications, operational areas are more straightforward such as application and benefit processing, HR, finance and accommodation. Good quotes from Wernick:

The federal government is rejecting a call from a working group to measure productivity across Canada’s public sector, arguing that doing so would not “readily align” with its priorities.

A working group tasked with measuring productivity in the federal public service recommends in a recent report that Statistics Canada explore, test and report publicly on the development of a productivity measurement program for the public sector.

The group says accurate and transparent measurement of public service productivity is “essential to improving outcomes” and that without reliable data, it’s “difficult to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of government services or identify areas for improvement.”

…Former clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick says he’s disappointed the government rejected the call to put more effort into measurement, noting it could be included in departments’ annual results reports. 

“It would have been a relatively easy give for them to say they’ll keep working and try to do better,” Wernick said. “It surprised me.”

He said government transformation and efficiency is one of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government’s “signature themes.”

“They should be receptive to it,” Wernick said.

He said there’s “nothing surprising” in the recommendations but questioned whether anything more concrete will be decided in the months to come.

“There’s a lot of specifics missing,” he said.

Source: Government rejects call to measure productivity across public service

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ICYMI: A Future Government Blueprint or Return to Yesteryear? [Lynch & Mitchell]

2025/12/17 Leave a comment

Good critique by David McLaughlin. As usual, most of these types of articles are strong in the diagnostique but weak on the how:

This might hold the bitter truth of whether our relentlessly mediocre system of governance will ever be changed. The authors note the importance of leadership in actually changing anything. Their first recommendation for implementing renewal is for the PM “to release a public statement (via a Speech from the Throne) committing the government to a major program of reform and renewal”. The reality is that unless the PM and Clerk of the Privy Council, Cabinet Secretary, and Head of the Public Service invest serious political capital in such an initiative, big necessary change will not occur. 

The authors plant their flag firmly in the terrain of big change, now. “Incrementalism is Not the Answer”, they write in their final chapter heading. “Business-as-usual is not a viable strategy for success in a world of rampant change”. No disagreement here. But good stewardship is grounded in guardian institutions with a guardian mindset. Incrementalism is a feature, not a bug, of such a system and culture. This is what governance reformers are up against as much as anything else. Incrementalism may be the only means to regime change on offer. 

If so, then this governance blueprint, or any other, requires a second layer of engineering and technical schematics as to how to get there. Credit to Lynch and Mitchell for erecting the scaffolding.

Here’s how the book’s two dozen recommendations stack up:

  • Restore Cabinet Government – 4 recommendations
    • make Cabinet the central place for collective decision-making
    • reduce the size of Cabinet by at least a third
    • return authority and accountability to ministers
    • reintroduce an operations committee to manage key files and keep government on track
  • Reverse the Centralization of Power in the PMO – 5 recommendations
    • counter the creeping ‘presidentialization’ of our Westminster system of government
    • restore the proper role and accountability between public servants and political staff
    • empower parliamentary committee with more independence, staff, and resources and fewer committees with broad mandates
    • right-size government with less spending, fewer agencies, fewer small departments, and simpler governmental organization. 
    • create an appropriate rules and accountability regime for political staff
  • Modernize Core Government Institutions – 11 recommendations
    • modernize and strengthen the public service for tomorrow
    • downsize federal employment by about 17 percent to unwind excessive growth
    • re-mandate the Treasury Board and the Public Service Commission 
    • Establish forward-looking, sophisticated planning and risk management capacity in the public service
    • rebuild a cutlure of purpose, pride, and accomplishment for results in the public service
    • simplify, reduce, and refocus government oversight mechanisms 
    • transform the RCMP into a modern national police force
    • resource, rebuild, and re-equip the Canadian Armed Forces
    • set out focused, longer-term priorities for foreign policy with the resources and capacity to execute
    • establish clear protocols for the distribution and use of intelligence
    • Focus on improving productivity, both in the private and public sectors
  • Implement the Reforms – 4 recommendations
    • release a public statement by the PM committing the government to a major program of reform and renewal
    • create a National Productivity Commission
    • Create a PM’s Advisory Council on the Public Service
    • Create an expert panel on public sector productivity

Source: A Future Government Blueprint or Return to Yesteryear?

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MacDougall: The government of the future doesn’t need these departments | Opinion

2025/12/06 Leave a comment

Raises some valid questions but as we know, cuts to programs are hard to sell. The current expenditure review is not asking these fundamental questions; hopefully next year’s budget will be more ambitious in terms of asking these difficult questions and even more difficult decisions:

…But perhaps the prime minister should have a think about the proper role of government, because the direction of travel in the advanced western economies is for shrinking working-age populations and ballooning spending. Unless we act now, countries like Canada could soon be in a position where a harsh rationalization of government function is necessary.

Reframing the challenge: What does a federal government *need* to do (versus what might be *nice* for it to do)? Moreover, what if governments can’t maintain current borrowing levels, and central banks can’t serially print money and/or buy up private debt in an attempt to smother the markets’ booms and busts? What bits of government activity would we choose to keep in that more financially restrictive world? If humans have a ‘hierarchy of needs’ – as advanced by psychologist Abraham Maslow – what would our core needs be from a slimmed-down government?

Maslow famously articulated five human needs and ordered them into a pyramid. The base layer is physiological needs: food, water, warmth and sleep. Without these things, humans can’t thrive. This suggests the government should help to ensure a safe and secure supply of food, water, energy, and housing. Add to that the defence of the realm and the administration of justice, and the base layers of the pyramid are covered. And then we’d need the ability to collect the tax needed to fund it.

And this relatively narrow collection of tasks is just about what the federal government looked like in the pre-WW2, pre-Baby Boom era. There were a dozen or so ministries and a small civil service to deliver the work. A lot of the government that’s come since is the governmental equivalent of Maslow’s latter stages, i.e. geared toward societal self-expression. A lot of it could go without compromising the provision of core needs.

For example, the government of yesteryear didn’t have any regional economic development agencies. Nor did it have the CBC, Canadian Heritage, Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Commercial Corporation, or the Business Development Bank of Canada. All of this spending isn’t foundational. These bodies provide some value, but on a tighter budget, it is more Disney+ subscription than home heating bill.

Other bits of the expanded post-war state are essential. A society without a system of social support programs is a heartless one. We don’t want a return to the workhouse. The health system also needs to be there for people who need it. That said, we must acknowledge that social supports and health care systems designed decades ago face fresh challenges in an aging society in which people also live substantially longer. A country with nearly eight workers to every retiree (as Canada had in 1966) can afford to make different choices than one that will have a three-to-one ratio by 2030. Maslow’s government would benefit from a system of compulsory health insurance, as is done in Switzerland.

Ultimately, what would mitigate the need for a bare-minimum, Maslow-style government is the return of a vigorous civil society. Much of what families, friends, community groups and congregations used to provide is now delivered by the government. The atomization of society has left voids that governments have felt obliged to fill. And even if we now belatedly reclaim some of that territory, the bill for government will still have to go down….

Source: The government of the future doesn’t need these departments | Opinion

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Laroche: Should high-level managers bear the brunt of public service cuts? [on government transformation]

2025/12/02 Leave a comment

By former deputy minister Yasmine Laroche. Former deputies are always more “radical” when they retire and are no longer subject to bureaucratic and political restraints:

…But creating parallel organizations without fixing the underlying system? That’s not transformation, that’s a work-around. Now, no-one asked for my advice, but if they had, here’s some of what I would propose:

  • Dramatically reduce the number of departments and deputy ministers.
  • Flatten the executive hierarchy to three levels (director → director general → assistant deputy minister).
  • Eliminate any position with the title, “associate.”
  • Institute three-year contracts for executives, to reduce unnecessary churn and to hold people to account for delivery, not just intentions.
  • Eliminate “performance pay” – it has nothing to do with performance; it is a way to top up salaries or reward DM favourites. 

At the same time, take a hard look at compensation. Some positions and job categories are seriously underpaid compared to similar positions outside the public service, while others are overpaid.

But these are just one person’s ideas. What I would love to see is the government, through the clerk of the Privy Council, invite retired public servants — deeply experienced, battle-tested, with no vested interest — to return as advisers at a symbolic rate, like the “$1-a-day” men (yes, sadly, they were all men) of the post-war era, to design real, lasting reform.

By nature, I’m not a cynical person. I believe in the public service. I believe it can evolve. It can become leaner, more effective, more accountable and more mission-driven. But only if we call for change that goes beyond cuts in headcount.

We need change that reimagines and rebuilds structures because you are absolutely right: this isn’t just about today’s budget, it’s about whether the public service is built to meet 21st-century challenges.

Source: Should high-level managers bear the brunt of public service cuts?

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Immigrants from China struggling to obtain security clearances for government jobs, senator says

2025/12/01 2 Comments

Of note and not surprising (Senator Woo tends to underestimate risks of foreign interference):

A senator told a parliamentary committee that he’s hearing of immigrants from China, with marginal connections to the ruling Chinese Communist Party or other government bodies, who are finding it difficult to obtain security clearances for Canadian public-sector jobs.

Senator Yuen Pau Woo raised the matter during a meeting of the Senate committee on foreign affairs and international trade Thursday, where he asked officials from the Department of Global Affairs to address it.

“I’ve encountered more and more cases of individuals looking to do government jobs, maybe work for a senator, or an MP, having their security clearances rejected or not responded to at all,” Mr. Woo said.

On the face of it, Mr. Woo said, it seems this is happening because the applicants “come from the People’s Republic of China and have the most tangential links to the CCP or some government organ,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, which has ruled China for 76 years….

Source: Immigrants from China struggling to obtain security clearances for government jobs, senator says

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A Model Evaluation Framework for Industrial Policy in Canada 

2025/11/26 1 Comment

Most of the recommendations apply more broadly than industrial policy:

The author recommends that governments:

  1. Show leadership from senior decision-makers, with an explicit commitment at the highest possible level to evaluate industrial policy, backed by sufficient resources.
  2. Incentivize industrial policy evaluation by elevating its status in budget and funding decisions.
  3. Create a dedicated, centralized industrial policy evaluation unit, resourced over and above the budgets of existing departmental/ministerial evaluation units.
  4. Spell out clear guidelines for evaluation of industrial policy through mechanisms such as a Cabinet Directive, and mandate the publication of all evaluations.
  5. Develop an industrial policy evaluation schedule that is synchronized with key funding decisions, such as budget cycles.
  6. Devise a system of fast-track evaluations for industrial policy decisions to provide sufficient insights to inform evidence-based decision-making;
  7. Develop a general logic model template to help frame industrial policy evaluations and translate outcomes and impacts into measurable performance indicators.
  8. Adopt a consistent approach to industrial policy evaluation reporting and dissemination to allow for comparison across policies, including tax expenditures.
  9. Invest in advanced digital technologies, such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, to improve the design of industrial policies and lower the cost of evaluations.

The renewed interest in Canadian industrial policy should be accompanied by a renewed focus on sound evaluation practices. Governments need to break the cycle of disinterest in evaluation, given the scale of industrial policies and the risks involved. Robust evaluation practices are critical to the successful use of industrial policy to address Canada’s most pressing challenges.

Douglas Nevison is an economist and a former senior public servant at Environment and Climate Change Canada, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Privy Council Office and the Department of Finance Canada. Throughout his career, he has been a strong advocate for policy and program evaluation and evidence-informed decision-making.

Source: A Model Evaluation Framework for Industrial Policy in Canada

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Reich: Sinister Pragmatism

2025/11/24 Leave a comment

Well worth reading. Parallels to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and the supine nature of the German business community:

If you’re a multibillionaire, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. Control over a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets would enable you to effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of you and other plutocrats, and discouraging any attempt to – for example – tax away your wealth. 

You also have Donald Trump to contend with. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the US presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits. 

So perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post defended the razing of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump his giant ballroom – without disclosing that the Jeff Bezos-owned Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom’s funding. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s defense department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors, but failed to mention Amazon’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticised Washington DC’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington DC market. 

These breaches are inexcusable. 

It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, founder of software firm Oracle and the second-richest person in the world. Ellison is a longtime Trump donor who also, according to court records, participated in a phone call to discuss how his 2020 election defeat could be contested. 

In June 2025, Ellison and Oracle were cosponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington. At the time, Larry and his son David, founder of Skydance Media, were waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve their $8bn merger with Paramount Global, owner of CBS News. 

In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship 60 Minutes resigned, citing concerns over the network’s ability to maintain its editorial independence, and revealing pressure by Paramount to tamp down stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake. 

In July, Paramount paid $16m to settle Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against CBS and cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Three weeks after the settlement was announced, Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, chairman of the FCC, approved the Ellisons’ deal, making David chief executive of the new media giant Paramount Skydance and giving him control of CBS News. 

It is impossible to know the full extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by the media-owning billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited. 

But what we do know is that billionaire media owners like Musk, Bezos, Ellison and Murdoch are businessmen first and foremost. Their highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. They know Trump can wreak havoc on their businesses by imposing unfriendly FCC rulings, enforcing labor laws against them or denying them lucrative government contracts. 

And in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, with a thin-skinned president who is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function. 

Source: Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back

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Savoie: If Canada wants to recapture the national ambition of the 1960s, it must seriously cut the bloat

2025/11/19 Leave a comment

Agree on need to focus on programs and whether or not they are making a significant difference in terms of concrete outcomes. Requires a government willing to expend political capital:

A more promising approach is to take a look at programs that have passed their best-before dates and scrutinize the growing number of departments and agencies. For one, Ottawa should be asking if we still need seven regional agencies. The federal government should try harder to stay in its lane and deal with its core responsibilities, such as national defence. It should also ask provinces to look after their constitutional responsibilities, thus avoiding costly duplications. 

Another place for cuts would be the Canada School of Public Service, which spends $94-million annually and, beyond its responsibility for second-language training, would be hard-pressed to show it has contributed to better management. France did away with its École Nationale d’Administration in 2021 and Britain shut down its National School of Government in 2012. The United States, meanwhile, has long rejected efforts to establish a Public Service Academy. 

There are many other government agencies that should be reviewed, particularly given Ottawa’s difficult fiscal situation. Parliament should also ask if it needs nine officers, when other Commonwealth parliaments make do with less; Australia, for example, has only four. Dealing with these questions would let the whale swim like it did in the 1960s. 

As is often the case, Ottawa has a well-honed capacity to define a new approach and new policies. Where it fails is in the implementation. The test will be not in announcing new projects, but in how Ottawa will declutter the machinery of government and empower those on the front line trying to make the approach work.

Source: If Canada wants to recapture the national ambition of the 1960s, it must seriously cut the bloat

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Canada needs a smaller, more capable, more affordable public service | MacDougall

2025/11/13 Leave a comment

Agree on potential to improve service and that public sector unions would be better off focussing on how it can and should be used to improve service to the public as well as reduce administrative costs in such areas as finance, HR and others:

…Now, I happen to think the promise of AI is vastly oversold. But it is also the kind of technology that should be able to empower public servants to deliver public services more effectively. It should help a smaller federal workforce deliver exactly the same level of service, if not better. Given the country is staring at red ink and increased debt service charges as far as the eye can see, a little trimming of the federal workforce, like taxes for the general population, is the price we pay for civil society.

Imagine if — just once — a federal public sector union put their hand up and acknowledged some need for cuts and/or reform? Imagine if the public service unions had the humility to acknowledge imperfection and their extremely privileged position vis-à-vis the vast majority of Canadians with lower salaries and cubic zirconium-plated pensions (if they have any pension savings at all)? Imagine if a public service union were a part of the solution instead of part of the problem? The country doesn’t need any more blocks on reform. It needs a smaller, more capable, more affordable public service.

Which isn’t to denigrate the role of unions. I’m sure Mark Carney’s blind trusts are full of investments in the kinds of companies that have chipped away all manner of worker protections to increase investor profits, as are many of our pension funds. I wouldn’t want to be an Uber driver or an Amazon fulfillment centre worker any more than you do, even if I benefit from their services. That hypocrisy is a prime example of why the people who most need union representation are not those in the public sector. What’s more, if recalcitrant public sector unions are the only remaining examples of union stewardship, their function will engender more anger than sympathy amongst the general population.

More to the point, the modernization of the public service can only happen effectively if the unions and government work together. Again, what the public service unions need to realize and accept is that this government might be the last one that approaches the task with a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.

Source: Canada needs a smaller, more capable, more affordable public service | Opinion

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