Fair enough but would have thought higher priorities, particularly given overall representation number of Black public servants compared to other visible minority groups:
….In October 2022, the federal government called for a Federal Court judge to dismiss the uncertified class action seeking $2.5 billion in compensation, arguing workers should pursue other avenues for redress, including filing complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Amnesty Canada applied to the court to intervene last summer, with the organization’s counsel noting in a cross-examination a few months later that its participation would be “limited to making legal arguments regarding the defendant’s obligations under international law.”
“Canada’s duty to uphold federal workers’ rights goes beyond the Charter and domestic employment equity legislation,” Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, said in a news release about the decision. “As we will stress to the court, Canada also has clear obligations under international law to promote equity, counter racism and provide an effective remedy when people are subjected to systemic discrimination.”
The court decision stated that the government was the only opponent to the motion, “largely on the basis that the proposed submissions are substantive in nature and not relevant to the procedural issues raised in the certification motion and motion to strike, and on the basis that, in any event, these issues are not governed by international law.”
In a news release, the Black Class Action Secretariat said it welcomed the court’s decision to allow Amnesty International Canada’s intervention in the lawsuit despite the government’s efforts to “vehemently oppose it.”
“This pivotal ruling underscores the necessity of incorporating international human rights perspectives in the fight against systemic discrimination within the federal public service,” a BCAS statement read. “This intervention highlights the national and international importance of our cause and the urgent need to address these injustices.”
The certification hearing is expected to take place after May 3, but BCAS said it called on the government to consent to the certification of the class action instead of “forcing workers to relive decades of trauma.”
“This step is crucial in moving forward toward a fair and just resolution for the affected Black workers,” its statement read. “We urge the government to commit to meaningful actions that address and rectify the discrimination within the public service, thereby restoring trust and integrity in Canada’s federal public service.”
Valid critique and yes, the need to be more pragmatic and I would argue, concrete:
….Michael Wernick, a former Clerk of the Privy Council, said that while the document was a “decent consultation ‘what we heard’ report,” it left him asking “what now?”
“It’s oddly lacking a point of view or position or a stance on anything. It kind of just sends the ball back to the Clerk and the Secretary of the Treasury Board and says we really should have policy on acceptable use of social media, but there’s no advice on what that policy should look like,” Wernick said.
“It identifies a problem with the incursions of political staff, but there’s no advice on what to do about it. So it kind of left me hanging.”
The report’s authors said the document is “intended to serve as a prologue to a broader dialogue on values and ethics in the public service, and we begin by sharing what we have heard, frankly and without filters.”
Pierre-Alain Bujold, spokesperson for the Privy Council Office, said the Clerk is taking time to reflect on the report’s observations and recommendations and consider the best options for next steps. He said the report will inform the “next phase,” including how to broaden the discussion on values and ethics.
When Hannaford created the group of senior officials tasked with discussing values and ethics within the public service, he said he expected to see a “milestone report” by the end of the year.
Wernick said he agrees with the report’s call for more engagement, adding that he’d like to see the next round “drill deeper and be more pragmatic.” He added that it will be interesting to see if Parliament shows interest in the report and if the House of Commons committee on government operations invites the Clerk to speak about it.
“This looks like a picture of how the public service sees itself,” he said. “I don’t know exactly who they talked to but it sounds like they talked to a lot of those who were involved in diversity, equity issues. The report is a bit light on things that voters and taxpayers would probably be more interested in like money, productivity, excellence.”
Daniel Quan-Watson, a deputy minister for just under 15 years before his retirement last year, said he supports the report’s recommendation for conversations to be furthered “institution-wide” within federal government departments.
“We need to keep talking about this because things are evolving quickly and in different ways and because people have a lot of questions,” Quan-Watson said, adding that conversations will differ substantially from organization to organization. “I think that this goes a long way to making sure that they do that.”
Quan-Watson said it would have been “deeply problematic” for a tool on all values and ethics in the public service to have been developed or for any major changes to be made to the Values and Ethics Code over a few months.
“That would miss 90 per cent of the public service, I’m not sure that those changes are ones that would be that effective,” Quan-Watson said, adding that he hopes public servants feel free to raise their questions and concerns to managers and senior leadership. “I think the sensible thing to say is listen, here are the areas that we looked at, we’re getting consistent themes in this, so let’s go see what the broader public service has to say about it.”
“That takes time. It makes it stronger and it makes it incredibly more valuable when it’s done.”
….“The obvious question from a citizen taxpayer point of view is, ‘We have 40 per cent more people in government, am I getting 40 per cent faster service?’ I don’t think most people feel that value for money,” said Aaron Wudrick, director of domestic policy with the independent non-partisan Macdonald-Laurier Institute think tank in Ottawa.
“It seems to me you either want to retain that expertise outside or inside government and yet they seem to be spending more in both areas.”
He added: “There are obviously choices this government has to make” with higher interest rates and after years of deficits. “They’ve started to make some signals they will have a bit of fiscal retrenchment. We haven’t seen that play out in terms of hard numbers. I think the budget will be a big signal as to whether they’ll actually change direction or continue on this path.”
Donald Savoie, Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance at the University of Moncton, said he was troubled by the fact that overall employment in the National Capital Region of Ottawa-Gatineau has continued to creep up as a share of total PSC-tracked employment, to 47.6 per cent. It was less than 30 per cent four decades ago, and is closer to 20 per cent now in the capital regions of other countries, including the United States, Britain, France and Australia.
“I think that’s something Canadians should be concerned about because the points of service and program delivery happen at the community, regional and provincial level,” he said. With the dwindled share of federal employment outside Ottawa “it’s not a surprise the quality of service delivery will go down.”…
The federal government will work to prevent artificial intelligence from discriminating against people applying for jobs in federal government departments, says Treasury Board President Anita Anand.
In a wide-ranging year-end interview with CBC News, Anand acknowledged concerns about the use of AI tools in hiring.
“There is no question that at all times, a person’s privacy needs to be respected in accordance with privacy laws, and that our hiring practices must be non-discriminatory and must be embedded with a sense of equality,” Anand said when asked about the government’s use of AI in its hiring process.
“Certainly, as a racialized woman, I feel this very deeply … We need to ensure that any use of AI in the workplace … has to be compliant with existing law and has to be able to stand the moral test of being non-discriminatory….
As always, the general diagnostique is easier than concrete implementation, a common failing of these high level commentaries:
The non-partisan Public Service of Canada is an essential national institution, responsible for delivering government services to Canadians and providing policy advice to the government. It has played an outsized role in helping build this country.
But these days it seems to be constantly under the spotlight in the media and in Parliament, as a steady stream of intelligence leaks, contracting fiascos, procurement bottlenecks, workplace harassment incidents and service delivery snafus grab public attention.
This drip-drip of shortcomings is not good for public trust in a vital national institution, nor is it good for morale among public servants themselves.
We can do better. A high-performing public service is what taxpayers deserve and the country needs, and no one wants this more than today’s public servants. They are as troubled by these shortcomings as anyone else. But they are equally aware that they work in an institution burdened with serious impediments to nimble decision-making, innovative ideas, clarity on priorities and meaningful accountability. Indeed, responding to recent problems with yet more rules and regulations rather than solutions would only exacerbate things. So, what can be done?
What is needed is not a years-long Royal Commission but rather a common-sense approach to fixing how government operates. Here are six key problem areas, solutions to which would yield a more engaged public service and improve services to Canadians.
• The starting point is realizing that government has become too complex to manage effectively. Today, the federal government is composed of 22 regular departments and more than 80 departmental agencies and corporations. This is in addition to 34 Crown corporations, the RCMP and the military.
No private sector firm, no matter how large, would ever set up such a byzantine organizational structure and expect to operate efficiently. The proliferation of entities makes alignment and cohesion of programs across government difficult, creates overlap and duplication, and increases administrative overhead costs.
• Second, and related, the public service is too large to operate effectively. Today it numbers almost 360,000 employees — an increase of 95,000, or 36 per cent, over the last decade. But why?
The Canadian population has expanded by 14 per cent over the same period and the Canadian economy grew just shy of 20 per cent, suggesting public sector productivity has deteriorated. A smaller public service, with less duplication of functions and leaner management structures, would be more efficient and less costly.
• Third, oversight is too diffuse to be effective. Responsibility for oversight spans the Treasury Board, the Privy Council Office, the Public Service Commission, the Auditor General, departmental audit and evaluation committees, and a host of parliamentary agents as well as Parliament itself.
These oversight bodies attempt to enforce a bewildering morass of rules, regulations and red tape that stifle healthy risk-taking but perversely create incentives to work around the rules, as we have seen recently in procurement. Fewer and clearer rules, and clarity about who is responsible for oversight, makes a lot of operational sense.
• Fourth, accountability is too opaque. No organization functions well with fuzzy accountabilities. Clear accountability is not just about who is responsible when things go wrong, but also about who is responsible for making sure they go right.
The accountability problem is exacerbated today by the increasing involvement of political staff in both controlling advice to ministers and implementing policy decisions. Restoring clarity on the respective roles of PMO, political staff and public servants is essential to a responsible, accountable and high-functioning public service.
• Fifth, scant attention is paid to measuring or managing public sector productivity. Rather, governments typically report on inputs and activities, not outcomes and results. The broken procurement system is a logical place to start a focus on productivity and results, after the horror shows of the Phoenix pay system, innumerable military procurement failures and the incomparable contracting fiasco around the CBSA ArriveCAN app.
Another productivity destroyer is long lists of policy priorities set out in mandate letters, with public servants expected to deliver on all of them. Yet the sheer number and lack of prioritization means lots of activity but few priorities actually delivered.
• The sixth is a hesitant management culture. The public service needs to rethink the required skills for working effectively in a 21st-century, data-driven and uber-connected economy and society. Like the private sector, government should be bulking up on data scientists, AI experts, IT specialists and project managers rather than relying on consultants.
High-performing organizations deal promptly with ineffective managers, because they hurt productivity and morale, and with bad apples who undermine the credibility and culture of institutions. More proactive management would yield better service delivery to the public and better morale and engagement by public servants.
Thoughtful people inside and outside government have been writing about these concerns for some time. Now is the time to do something, and that will take leadership and courage. The best way to deal with these issues is not to talk endlessly about them, but to act, to take the tough decisions that will make the public service a more productive organization, geared for success in the 21st century.
It’s only common sense.
Kevin Lynch was the Clerk of the Privy Council and is former Vice Chair of BMO. Jim Mitchell is an Adjunct Professor at Carleton University and a former Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet in the Privy Council Office.
Wernick: The pay-as-you-go proposal on cutting federal spending not as simple as advocates say
Michael continues to provide interesting commentary based up his experience in government:
There are two interpretations of what pay-go legislation could mean in Canada. One is that the proponents know it is just for show – a form of fiscal virtue signalling – and they have no intention of applying it with any rigour. The future would be full of exemptions, waivers and extensions. It makes the base happy and looks like decisiveness. But it isn’t serious.
The other possibility is that it is serious and would at regular intervals create a hot mess for future governments and for future fiscal choices. It isn’t going to deliver more effective government to let an algorithm stack the deck, distort the options, create unnecessary and artificial crises, and stealthily erode those parts of government that don’t have political and media champions.
So, which is it – empty virtue signalling or a hot mess of fiscal distortion? We can do better, either way.
Any political party that wants to take real action on restraining spending should do it in a serious way: Let Canadians know before the election what it considers cuttable and what it considers a priority. Once in office set up a deliberative process. The 1990s program review would be my starting point for designing the next one.
What is essential and what is discretionary in government spending is a political judgment informed by ideologies and values – a judgment that must be responsive over time to new facts and realities.
There are many better ways for democratically elected politicians to approach spending restraint and to achieve it. Pay-go legislation isn’t a good one and should be discarded before the platforms for the next election are written – after which it will be difficult to turn back.
Buruma: Geert Wilders may have shock value, but he harbours an ‘outsider’ rage we’ve seen before
Of note:
Mr. Wilders may not be a fascist, but his obsession with sovereignty, national belonging, and cultural and religious purity has a long lineage among outsiders. Ultra-nationalists often emerge from the periphery – Napoleon from Corsica, Joseph Stalin from Georgia, Hitler from Austria. Those who long to be insiders frequently become implacable enemies of people who are farther away from the centre than they are.
Kurl: Pierre Poilievre needs to choose his words much more carefully
Yes, the risks are there:
The last six weeks have brought out the worst in us. Bomb threats and shootings at Jewish schools. Calls for doxxing, censure and harassment of students and faculty who sympathize with Palestinians and ceasefire calls. In Toronto alone, police are reporting 17 incidents of Islamophobic or anti-Palestinian hate crimes since Oct. 7 (compared to just one in the same period in 2022). Antisemitic hate crimes numbered 38 (last year it was 13 in the same period) and now comprise half of all hate crimes reported to Toronto police since Oct. 7.
At such a fraught time, leadership from Poilievre would see his words about these highly sensitive issues focused on appealing to Canadians’ better natures, not further driving them into suspicion and division.
But will the opposition leader and his strategists do this? We are not so far removed from the failed Conservative campaign of 2015, notorious for its “barbaric cultural practices” tip line. The director of that disastrous campaign is reportedly tipped to direct the upcoming one.
Poilievre and the Conservatives for now, anyway, have the support of a plurality of Canadians. They need to start acting like it means something to them.
Shachi Kurl is President of the Angus Reid Institute, a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.
May: Chief information officer Catherine Luelo resigns from job revamping federal tech
Doesn’t bode well:
Private sector executives, unfamiliar with the culture and complexity of operations, have historically had rough time making the adjustment, said Michael Wernick, a former clerk of the privy council and now the Jarislowsky chair of public sector management at the University of Ottawa.
He said the government has never resolved how technology should be managed. Is it a single service with common standards, interoperability and cybersecurity? Or is it a loose federation of 300 departments and agencies where deputy heads and managers have autonomy? It now operates with both philosophies, depending on the agency.
With the Conservatives leading the polls, it is worth speculating what changes a Conservative government might bring to immigration, citizenship, multiculturalism, and employment equity policies, and the degree to which Tories would be constrained in their policy and program ambitions. Despite talking about change and “common sense,” they will still be constrained by provincial responsibilities and interests, the needs and lobbying of the business community, and an overall limitation of not wanting to appear to be anti-immigration.
Constraints
One fundamental political constraint is that elections are won and lost in ridings with large numbers of visible minorities and immigrants, like in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, and other urban areas as shown in Figure 1. Arguably, the Conservatives learned this lesson in the 2015 election, where citizenship revocation provisions and the Barbaric Cultural Practices Act signalled to many new Canadians they were not welcome.
The demographic of immigrants and minorities across Canadian electoral ridings. Graph courtesy of Andrew Griffith
Given that immigration is a shared jurisdiction with the provinces, any move to restrict the numbers of permanent residents, temporary workers, and foreign students will likely be met with provincial opposition. All provinces—save Quebec—largely buy into the “more is merrier” demographic arguments. Provincial governments and education institutions rely on large numbers of international students to fund higher education, and thus have already signalled concerns with the current government’s trial balloon about capping students from abroad.
Stakeholder pressures are a further constraint. Business groups, large and small, want a larger population to address labour market needs, and that includes international students for low-value-added service jobs. A larger population also means more consumers. Immigration lawyers and consultants, both in Canada and abroad, benefit from more clients. Settlement and refugee groups can continue to press for increased resources even if evaluations question their effectiveness with respect to economic immigrants. Most academics focus on barriers to immigrants and visible minorities rather than questioning their assumptions. Lobby groups like the Century Initiative and others continue to push the narrative that a larger population is needed to address an aging population, a narrative that is supported by all these stakeholders, and federal and provincial governments (except for Quebec).
Few of these stakeholders seriously address the impact of immigration on housing availability and affordability, health care, and infrastructure, despite all the recent attention to the links between housing and immigration. Most stakeholders are either in denial, claim that ramping up housing can be done quickly as many recent op-eds indicate, or argue that raising these issues is inherently xenophobic if not racist.
Global trends that also could shape a possible Conservative government include increased refugee and economic migrant flows, greater global competition for the same highly skilled talent pool and, over time, expanded use of AI and automation as a growing component of the labour market.
Immigration
Given these constraints and the fear of being labelled xenophobic, Conservatives have focused more on service delivery failures than questioning immigration levels, whether it’s permanent resident targets or the rapid increase in uncapped temporary workers and international students. Poilievre has stated that the Conservative focus will be on the “needs of private-sector employers, the degree to which charities plan to support refugees, and the desire for family reunification,” suggesting greater priority on economic and family immigration categories, as was largely the case for the Harper government. The Conservatives’ recent policy convention was largely silent on immigration. They are engaging in considerable outreach to visible minority and immigrant communities, adopting the approach of former Conservative minister Jason Kenney, “the minister for curry in a hurry.”
That being said, it is likely that a Conservative government would likely freeze or decrease slightly the number of permanent residents rather than continuing with the planned increases (the Liberal government recently indicated that it is not “ruling out changes to its ambitious immigration targets.)”
Figure two highlights the growth in permanent and temporary residents since 2015. The extent of public debate on the impact of immigration on housing provides latitude for a freeze at 2023 levels, or a small decrease given that immigrants and non-immigrants alike are affected. Graph courtesy of Andrew Griffith
It is less clear whether a Conservative government would have the courage to impose caps on temporary workers given pressure from employers, including small businesses. However, the previous Conservative government did have the political courage to impose restrictions following considerable abuse of the temporary work program, ironically exposed by the Liberals and NDP. Similarly, imposing caps on international students would run into strong resistance from provincial governments given their dependence on students from abroad to support higher education. Even placing caps on public colleges that subcontract to private colleges—which are more for low-skilled employment than education—would be challenging given employer interest in lower-wage employees. They may, however, reverse the Liberal government’s elimination of working-hour caps for foreign students.
Whether a Conservative government would go beyond the usual federal-provincial-territorial process and provide financial support for foreign credential recognition, or be more ambitious and transfer immigrant selection of public sector regulated professions (e.g., health care) to the provinces is unclear. However, given that regulatory bodies are provincial and, for health care, provinces set the budgets, they may explore this option.
While the simplification and streamlining of over 100 immigration pathways is long overdue, given the complexity for applicants to navigate the system, and for governments to manage and automate it, such longer-term “fixing the plumbing” initiatives are less politically rewarding than addressing various stakeholder pressures.
Given the increased number of asylum claimants, a Conservative government would be likely to restore requirements for claimants to have sufficient funds and an intent to leave, and may consider reimposing a visa requirement on Mexican nationals.
Citizenship is arguably the end point of the immigration journey as it represents full integration into society with all the political rights and responsibilities that entails. This assumption is being challenged by a combination of Canadian economic opportunities being relatively less attractive for source countries such as China and India, along with greater mobility of highly educated and skilled immigrants. As a result, the naturalization rate is declining as shown in figure three.
Figure three depicting naturalization rates between 1996 and 2021. Graph courtesy of Andrew Griffith
The previous Conservative government was more active on citizenship than other recent governments. In 2009, it released a new citizenship study guide, Discover Canada, with a greater focus on history, values and the military. It also required a higher passing score on the citizenship test—up to 75 per cent compared to 60 per cent—and different versions were circulated to reduce cheating. Language requirements were administered more strongly, and adult fees were increased from $100 to $530. A first generation cut-off for transmission of citizenship was implemented as part of addressing “lost Canadians” due to earlier Citizenship Act gaps. C-24 amended the Citizenship Act to increase residency requirements from three to four years, increased testing and language assessment to 18-64 years from 18-54 years, and a revocation provision for citizens convicted of treason or terror.
It is unclear the degree to which the Conservatives will consider citizenship a priority in relation to other immigration-related issues. From an administrative perspective, changing residency requirements again would simply complicate program management, make it harder to reduce processing times, and would not provide any substantive benefit. Re-opening citizenship revocation would simply draw attention to the risks that countries would offload their responsibilities, as the example of former U.K. citizen and Canadian citizen by descent Jack Letts illustrates.
Given that the Liberal government to date has not issued a revised citizenship guide, the Conservatives would likely stick with Discover Canada, issued in 2009. Similar, the existing citizenship test and pass rates, and proof of meeting language requirements would not need to be changed. As the Liberal government never implemented 2019 and 2021 campaign commitments to eliminate citizenship fees, one should not expect any change from the fee increase of 2014.
The Conservatives may wish to revisit the issue of birth tourism. In 2012, they pushed hard, but ultimately the small numbers known at the time and provincial opposition to operational and cost considerations made them drop their proposal. Since then, however, health-care data indicated pre-pandemic numbers of birth tourists to be around 2,000, although these dropped dramatically during the pandemic given visa and travel restrictions.
In contrast to immigration and citizenship, a Conservative government would face fewer constraints with respect to multiculturalism and employment equity. Their public criticism of wokeism, their policy resolutions stressing merit over “personal immutable characteristics“, their criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion training, and their criticism of Liberal government judicial, Governor in Council, and Senate appointments all point to a likely shift in substance and tone.
It is highly likely that resources would be cut sharply under a Conservative government given their overall approach to government expenditures, their general approach to limit government intervention and their scepticism regarding critical race theory, systemic racism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion training. There would likely also be a return to a more general integration focus between and among all groups. They would, of course, be unlikely to curb any of the recognition months or days, given the importance to communities (and their political outreach).
A Conservative government might reduce the amount and quality of data available regarding visible minority, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities represented in public service, and other government appointments.
The Liberal government expanded public service data to include disaggregated data by sub-group, allowing for more detailed understanding and analysis of differences within each of the employment equity groups since 2017, along with data on LGBTQ+ people. Previous government reports only covered the overall categories of women, visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples and persons with disabilities. It is uncertain whether these reports under a future Conservative government would revert back to only reporting on overall group representation, hirings, promotions and separations. Given that this concerns public service management, it may well decide to continue current practice or the more sceptical elements may press for change.
On the other hand, political appointments—judges, Governor-in-Council, Senate—are another matter. Appointment processes are likely to be revised given concerns that the processes introduced by the Liberal government unduly favoured candidates more on the centre-left than centre-right. Figure 4 highlights the increased representation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples in political appointments.
Figure four highlights the increased representation of women, visible minorities and Indigenous Peoples in political appointments. Graph courtesy of Andrew Griffith
Similarly, at the end of the last Conservative government, Governor-in-Council appointments to commissions, boards, Crown corporations, agencies, and tribunals were 34.2 per cent women, 6.1 per cent visible minorities, and 2.9 per cent Indigenous. Under the Liberal government, the number of women increased to 51.4 per cent, visible minorities to 11.6 per cent, and 4.2 per cent Indigenous by January 2023.
Senate appointments present a more nuanced picture. Conservative appointment of visible minorities was at 15.8 per cent, representing a conscious effort to address under-represented groups, but women, at 31.6 per cent of appointments, and Indigenous Peoples at 1.8 per cent, were significantly under-represented. The Liberal introduction of a formally independent and non-partisan advisory board resulted in a sharp increase in diversity: 58.8 per cent women, 20.6 per cent visible minorities, and 16.2 per cent Indigenous Peoples.
Along with these process changes, the Liberal government expanded annual reporting to include visible minorities, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, and judicial appointment reporting also included LGBTQ and ethnic/cultural groups. Should a Conservative government decide to stop these annual breakdowns, it will be harder to track any shifts in representation.
The current review of the Employment Equity Act, launched in 2021, has not yet resulted in any public report on consultations and recommendations from the Task Force. Given limited parliamentary time and higher priorities during the current mandate, it is unlikely that any revisions to the Act will be approved. However, should any legislation come to pass, it is likely that a future Conservative government might wish to revisit some of the provisions.
Concluding observations
To date, two overarching themes have driven Conservative discourse: Canada is broken, and the need to “remove the gatekeepers.” The Yeates report confirms that the immigration department is broken, reflecting long neglect of organization weaknesses, a lack of client focus, and, I would argue, an excessive multiplicity of programs that make it harder for clients to navigate, and more difficult for IRCC to manage.
One of the ironies of assessing likely Conservative policies is immigration, citizenship, and related areas all pertain to government being “gatekeepers.” It’s easier to shrink the gate for some policies and programs than others (e.g., government political appointments). Others, such as reducing levels of permanent and temporary residents, are much more challenging given the strength of provincial, business, and other stakeholders opposition. The degree to which a Conservative government is prepared to expend political capital will obviously reflect whether or not it has a majority in Parliament.
The sharp decrease in public support for immigration, given the impact on housing, health care, and infrastructure, likely provides greater flexibility for any future Conservative government. While there is greater flexibility with respect to multiculturalism and employment equity, a Conservative government could also be ambitious with needed immigration reforms for permanent and temporary immigration.
While some have argued that immigration and related issues have become a third rail in Canadian politics, this need not be the case. The concerns being raised are regarding the impact of large and increasing numbers of permanent and temporary migration on housing, health care, and infrastructure, not the racial, religious or ethnic composition of immigrants. These issues affect immigrants and non-immigrants alike and focus on commonalities, not differences.
Calling for DMs to be replaced may feel good but is unrealistic, and she clearly has little understanding about how government and the public service work and that change, albeit too slow for some, occurs within a bureaucratic context.
As for the call for action, I also tend to be somewhat cynical as it appears to be adding yet another reporting requirement and it is too early to assess whether it has moved the needle beyond process:
In the months following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and the global protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism that lasted the summer of that year, every corporation and government agency vowed to improve the economic lot of Black people by introducing watered-down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. Naturally, I was skeptical, considering my own experiences in the public service with anti-Black racism. I knew that nothing but transformative change led by Black and Indigenous people would suffice. As I wrote in this paper in February 2021, the Privy Council Office clerk’s effort was “a diversity and inclusion endeavour, dressed up as anti-racism. Devoid of an accountability framework, it makes no tangible effort to interrogate the systems that perpetuate racism.”
Two-and-a-half years later, the anti-Black racism measures the Liberals introduced for the public service are as good as six feet under. In the 2021 mandate letter to then-Treasury Board president Mona Fortier, the prime minister directed her to establish “a mental health fund for Black public servants and supporting career advancement, training, sponsorship and educational opportunities.” A year later, Black public servants involved in the fund blew the whistle on the racism they experienced while working on an anti-racism measure. As the Canadian Press reported last December, “The Federal Black Employee Caucus [FBEC] sent a letter to the Treasury Board’s chief human resources officer this month saying the workers supported efforts to address racism within the public service, only to be ‘continuously faced with the crushing weight of it.’”
I feel for those who worked so hard to make these initiatives happen. Countless hours and emotional labour have been added to the workload of many racialized employees for free, only for them to experience more racism. The CBC reported on the treatment of Black employees as outlined in FBEC’s letter to the Treasury Board Secretariat: “The email alleges that senior Treasury Board Secretariat officials created a toxic workplace culture. When the Federal Employee Black Caucus members pushed back, the email states, they were met with micro-aggressions and ‘character assassinations.’”
And those experiences bear out in evidence provided by the auditor general.
On Oct. 19, Auditor General Karen Hogan tabled the semi-annual report on performance audits of the public service—and government writ large—to the House of Commons in a series of nine parts. Report 5 looked at Inclusion in the Workplace of Racialized Employees, and it is not kind. It determined that “Canada’s efforts to combat racism and discrimination in major departments and agencies are falling short,” as reported by the Canadian Press. The AG selected a sample of six organizations“responsible in whole or in part for providing safety, the administration of justice, or policing services in Canada. Together, they employ about 21 per cent of workers in the federal core public administration.” Note that 20 per cent of the public service is racialized.
Let’s look at the highlights from the report:
Racialized employees reported rates of discrimination at least 30 per cent higher than non‑racialized respondents;
The organizations all established DEI plans to correct the conditions of disadvantage experienced by racialized employees, but failed to develop and institute accountability measures (I called this: “A system without accountability is a corrupt one, and in this system there is no justice”);
They failed to collect or use data to assess progress on their plans, and failed to create, assess and implement key performance indicators; and
No specific initiatives in action plans to address concerns and complaints related to barriers to raising instances of racism.
So basically, the public service wasted everyone’s time with this theatrical performance of DEI icing on a white cake, as I said they would. But it’s no surprise considering that we’re led by a performative government.
Furthermore, if the public service has discriminated against you, the institutions set up to “help” you only double down on that discrimination. As the Canadian Press reported in March, “The Treasury Board Secretariat found last week that the Canadian Human Rights Commission [CHRC], whose mandate is to protect the core principle of equal opportunity, discriminated against Black and racialized employees.”
Remember the Black Class Action lawsuit? The Trudeau government is still trying to ignore the problem by refusing to negotiate while attempting to get the case dismissed. In response to the CHRC discriminating against Black employees, the Class Action Secretariat said, “It also raises concerns about the CHRC’s capacity to offer justice to the broader experiences of Black workers across the entirety of the federal public service who share similar stories and experiences for over 50 years.”
This is how racism is systemic, systematic, and institutional. I have written about how racism within institutions carries over into public policy. Remember the three words: “the dirty 30.”
There is no reason to trust these corrupt systems that are intended to keep Black and racialized employees in subservient positions to white, male, heterosexual power. Deputy ministers have shown us, through action, that they are unserious “leaders” who are comfortable with overseeing abusive, toxic environments that increase the burden of performance on their employees, according to race. Seems discriminatory in itself.
Those who do not follow the directives from mandate letters and budget direction are committing insubordination, and are undermining political decisions. They should be removed from their positions. Deputy ministers are only supposed to oversee the implementation of policy; they are unelected administrators, not representatives elected by the people. Therefore, their decisions cannot supersede those political directives. Do we really want deputy ministers quietly subverting democracy just because they don’t like particular groups of people?
Given the state of the world these days, the recent announcement by Clerk of the Privy Council John Hannaford creating a “task team” of deputy ministers on the values and ethics of public service may seem frivolous.
But we believe the clerk’s initiative is significant with the potential to influence the quality of our democracy for a generation.
Canada’s public service is an important national institution, one of the key pillars of our parliamentary democracy. As we watch the erosion of democratic institutions elsewhere, the condition of our federal public service, and the quality of its democratic vocation, should concern all of us.
The clerk’s initiative recognizes that recent events show the federal public service faces some major performance challenges that call for a new effort of renewal. To make wise choices for renewal, you must know who you are, what a public service is for, and what it should be. Without this conscious awareness, a public service can easily fall short of its distinct standards of professionalism and service
The clerk’s initiative recognizes that recent events show the federal public service faces some major performance challenges that call for a new effort of renewal. To make wise choices for renewal, you must know who you are, what a public service is for, and what it should be. Without this conscious awareness, a public service can easily fall short of its distinct standards of professionalism and service.
Hannaford’s announcement comes exactly 30 years after the creation of a celebrated task force on public service and ethics under the leadership of John Tait, the former federal deputy minister of justice. The “Tait Report” set the agenda for public service values and ethics for a generation.
But times change. Every decade brings its own issues which challenge a public service to rediscover its distinctive identity as a “compass” (the clerk’s word) to guide direction for the future. He has asked the new task team to lead a “broad conversation” on how to bring the public service’s values and ethics “to life within a dynamic and increasingly complex environment.”
We think there are three conditions for the team’s success.
First, the “conversations” with public servants and others must take the form of what the Tait Report called “honest dialogue” about problems like these, among other things:
Performance: the federal public service has recently lost its reputation for providing timely, citizen-centred service to Canadians;
Trust: the civil service no longer enjoys the automatic trust and legitimacy that is essential to our democracy;
Boundaries: the public service has not yet acquired or sought the tools for drawing a line between the values and accountability of elected and non-elected officials, as recommended by the Gomery Report and others;
Accountability: public service leaders do not appear to take accountability for their own shortcomings, including the enormous expansion of the public service over the last decade and declining efficiency, and;
Technology: the civil service has notoriously mismanaged implementation of digital technology, and has not yet brought public service values seriously to bear on public servants’ use of social media and artificial intelligence.
These are the kinds of real problems the task team’s “conversations” with public servants and others should openly confront if its work is to have legitimacy.
Second, this dialogue should not be rushed. Nothing will be accomplished by simply repeating the public service’s stated core values. To recover their motivating power and urgency, public service values must reemerge from honest dialogue, modelled by the task team itself, about the problems at hand.
Third, the “conversation” must go beyond the public service to include parliamentarians. This is the unfinished business from the Tait Report. Tait recommended a dialogue about public service values should engage ministers and MPs, leading to a new “moral contract between the public service, government and Parliament of Canada.” The state of the federal public service is not just a concern for the government of the day. The quality and honesty of its advice and its ability to deliver programs and service efficiently and effectively are important to us all.
The current federal political context makes this kind of dialogue—about the kind of public service we need to support our parliamentary democracy—more urgent than ever. Now is the time. And the Clerk of the Privy Council has just set the table.
Ralph Heintzman and Catherine MacQuarrie are former senior public servants, and both served as head of the federal government’s Office of Public Service Values and Ethics.
In September, Clerk of the Privy Council John Hannaford announced the creation of a five-member task force of deputy ministers to lead a “broad conversation” on the values and ethics of the federal public service. A “milestone” report is expected by year’s end.
Upon hearing of this initiative, I could not help but think of the famous line by Capt. Renault in the classic film Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects!”
I have no doubt about the clerk’s good intentions. That the public service is in serious need of thorough examination and renewal is beyond debate. What is in question is how a committee of busy senior bureaucratic “insiders,” working off the side of their desks, and with a very tight deadline in the latter months of the government’s mandate, can possibly address the many and substantial issues that require serious review.
As others have argued in these pages, including former clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch, the issues are many, from service delivery to recruitment and renewal; from institutional timidity to the public service-political relationship; from the degradation of ministerial responsibility to the weakening of departmental autonomy as a source of policy advice and innovation versus the all-powerful Prime Minister’s Office.
It is hardly surprising that, in the face of these formidable challenges, the clerk’s announcement was greeted with puzzlement by some observers. How and why did public servants’ “values and ethics” become the central issue? Why does the clerk believe that a strictly “in-house” study is the answer? A “conversation” with public servants does not scream action.
Whatever the rationale, this review is a far cry from the kind of root-and-branch overhaul that critics have been demanding for some time.
The federal public service has historically been the subject of royal commissions, which have injected the kind of fresh thinking that only an outside perspective can bring. The last such commission — the Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability — was established more than 40 years ago (1976) and reported in 1979. Known as the Lambert Commission, after its chair, TD bank executive Allan Lambert, this commission came about as a result of fears of a breakdown in financial management and accountability.
Prof. Donald Savoie, the dean of Canadian public administration, and others have acknowledged that nothing less than a Royal Commission on the Future of the Public Service, independent of senior public service managers, is required if there is to be genuine change. An independent and wide-ranging examination of the federal public service is long overdue.
Such a commission must be led by an outsider and so provide for sweeping inquiries into key public service reform issues that cannot be done by those within the system.
It is true that initiating a royal commission comes with its own risks. Such commissions can be expensive as well as unpredictable, sometimes delving into matters beyond their mandate, and so put their efforts in danger of being shelved and ignored by unreceptive governments.
A royal commission, of course, cannot be initiated by the clerk of the Privy Council. Only the prime minister can make that happen.
It took a shot across the bow by then-auditor general of Canada J.J. Macdonell to kickstart the Lambert Commission when he warned that “Parliament — and indeed the government — has lost or is close to losing effective control of the public purse.” Crisis can be the spur of creative thinking and innovation, but only if decision-makers are willing to concede that the crisis is real.
To do so, however, requires bold thinking and decision-making at the political level, as well as a willingness to take a “beau risque.” To expect that from any government in the twilight of its mandate may be too much to ask. But that does not make the need any less urgent.
Ottawa resident Michael Kaczorowski is a retired senior policy adviser with the federal government.
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