May: Leadership Signals – Take it as permission to simplify

2025/11/12 Leave a comment

Her weekly posts are required reading. This week’s except that I liked:

…Small things can be transformative, says Allen Sutherland, president of the Institute on Governance. Such as: the steady signals Carney and Sabia send about not letting process or the “web of rules” get in the way. Streamline. Simplify.

“If there is some transformation in the public service day to day — where public servants act with more commitment to implementation and less focus on simply being rule followers — then I’d say that’s very transformative.”

In short, leadership signals can drive change and behaviour across the public service.

For Michael Wernick, who once sat in Sabia’s chair as clerk, the budget falls short on real transformation. It has aspirational reforms, but none of the legislative fixes, structural pruning, or deep investment in public-service capacity needed.

For Sahir Khan, the budget is like a solid mid-term grade. But “the final mark will depend entirely on execution — and that burden falls squarely on the public service,” says Khan, vice president at OttawaU’s Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy.

One senior bureaucrat summed it up: Carney’s approach isn’t about transforming the institution or rethinking its principles. It’s pragmatic: the public service is being reshaped by being told to deliver on priorities.

“That’s the Carney transformation. You don’t waste time on a grand plan. You set aspirational goals and tell them to get it done.”

Another added: “The government isn’t focused on institutional theory but on practical, delivery-focused fixes. Carney isn’t interested in changing the public service to be different — he’s interested in it changing to deliver something he wants done differently. The focus is on results.”

This approach of skipping grand plans is concentrating attention and decision-making in the PMO and PCO on departments tied to top priorities. Some bureaucrats worry that political staff will jump in to fill gaps if public servants can’t move fast enough. That would blur accountability. It also raises questions about whether departments not directly tied to top priorities are getting enough attention.

Source: May: Leadership Signals – Take it as permission to simplify

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Canadian government employees’ productivity dropped 4 percent below private sector workers in last decade: Study

2025/11/05 Leave a comment

Worrisome, timing perfect in context of expected public service cuts. Really find the observation in the CSPS study on various program reviews is asking the right question:

“Technological developments during the past 80 years, if not the past 30 years, should have reduced the labour requirement. Computers, digital automation, and internet communications have made direct services easier to provide to Canadians. Forms and databases automate many tasks with higher accuracy, e.g. security checks, benefit applications, tax returns. Yet, the same number of Canadians is served by each public servant after decades of efficiency measures in spending restraint. Why is this? An un-nuanced early result appears to be that programs are more complex, as is the work to deliver them, even while the inflation-adjusted value delivered to each Canadian has not changed much in the last fifty years. However, some of this complexity may be unnecessary.”

The productivity of Canadian public sector workers declined over the last decade at a loss of 0.3 percent annually, while private sector employees’ productivity grew by 0.5 percent per year on average, according to a new research paper published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI).

The study also found that if the productivity of government workers (federal and provincial) matched that of the private sector, Canada’s GDP in 2024 would have been $32 billion more or 1.5 percent higher.

“Essentially what we’re seeing through the data is that the size of government is growing, but a variety of different measures that you look at, for its overall performance and outputs and efficiency, [they’ve] been going down over time,” said Stephen Tapp, the author of the MLI study—“The Growing Government Gap”—and chief economist at the Centre for the Study of Living Standards. “So [public sector productivity is] obviously lagging behind and dragging [GDP] down.”

Tapp found that public sector worker productivity went from being slightly higher on average than private sector counterparts in 2015, then dropped 4 percentage points lower by 2024.

Despite this marked dip in productivity, government workers still earn an average of 27 percent more per hour worked than Canadians in the private sector. The MLI study mirrors a recent Fraser Institute study, which showed government employees in Canada make an average of 4.8 percent more, as well as receive more generous pensions and retire two years earlier on average….

Tapp found that for 88 percent of government subsectors, job growth outpaced the private sector; the same was true in eight of 10 provinces, and 78 percent of federal government organizations. He believes the Carney government’s reported plan to cut 15 percent across all government departments may be the wrong approach because some outlier government departments actually have a higher productivity rate….

Source: Canadian government employees’ productivity dropped 4 percent below private sector workers in last decade: Study

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May: The Day of [Budget] Sacrifice

2025/11/03 Leave a comment

Good piece:

….The budget, he [Daniel Quan-Watson] says, also marks a sharp philosophical turn. For a decade, the public service operated on a “do everything” instinct – fix every injustice, chase every big ambition, launch every initiative.
 
That era is over.
 
“It’s not that yesterday’s priorities don’t matter,” he says. “It’s that some things matter even more today. You ask, ‘Where are the injustices?’ You get one – maybe six, but it isn’t 22.”
 
“We’re not going for stars now – we’re going for low-orbit satellites. And if you catch one, you’ll be lucky.”
 
This is the moment to lead. As Anil Arora, Canada’s former chief statistician puts it, the public service needs doers, not more talkers.
 
“For too long, leadership has been about coming up with ideas, putting them out there and walking away. That won’t cut it anymore. The country doesn’t just need policy – it needs people who can implement and deliver. This is real. This is our moment. Step up when the country needs you.”

The warning signs of decline. All this comes against a backdrop of a public service – while still among the world’s best – is showing cracks. Jocelyne Bourgon is a former clerk. She is one of the architects of the 1995 program review and has advised governments around the world. She’s taken a hard look at how Canada’s public service stacks up globally. Her conclusion: it’s slipping.

The warning signs are there. Morale is down. Fewer public servants feel valued. Citizens report declining satisfaction with government services – from health care and passports to Phoenix pay, digital procurement, and CRA call centres. Canada’s e-government ranking tells the same story: we were third in the world in 2010. Now we’re 47th.
 
Bourgon (above) calls this an inflection point – a moment to act before the decline deepens. And with the Carney government signalling major downsizing and operational shifts in the budget, the public service is about to face that challenge head-on.

Source: The Day of Sacrifice

This CSPS is a very good reference document. Have highlighted the lessons learned but a must read for those interested in governance and program reviews. Found the tech observation particularly of interest:

Lessons from Past Spending Reviews

  • Lesson 1: Review impacts are not well tracked or understood.
  • Lesson 2: Spending reviews have not presented detailed analysis of the service-level impacts to Canadians.
  • Lesson 3: It is generally difficult to determine the impact of spending reviews on services to different populations in Canada.
  • Lesson 4: Program reductions tend to be undone over time.
  • Lesson 5: Spending reviews affect the federal workforce through job losses, expected productivity gains, uncertainty around change, and other morale-related considerations.
  • Lesson 6: Several second-order observations from this review have implications for how future spending restraint may be carried out.

These observations are not directly related to the mechanics of reviews, but could constrain fiscal or other policy in a way that changes the shape or importance of spending reviews. The following observations fall into this category.

  • Lesson 7: Canada is unlikely to further increase free trade in the same dramatic manner as with the 1991 launch of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
  • Lesson 8: Raising consumption taxes (i.e. HST) remains a broad-based option for increasing revenue.
  • Lesson 9: Canada’s public service uses roughly the same labour mix to run its programs as it has since 1946.

Technological developments during the past 80 years, if not the past 30 years, should have reduced the labour requirement. Computers, digital automation, and internet communications have made direct services easier to provide to Canadians. Forms and databases automate many tasks with higher accuracy, e.g. security checks, benefit applications, tax returns. Yet, the same number of Canadians is served by each public servant after decades of efficiency measures in spending restraint. Why is this? An un-nuanced early result appears to be that programs are more complex, as is the work to deliver them, even while the inflation-adjusted value delivered to each Canadian has not changed much in the last fifty years. However, some of this complexity may be unnecessary.

  • Lesson 10: Federal operations have legislative or policy barriers that reduce the full benefit of technological advances and maintain or increase complexity.

Source: CSPS: Canada’s Federal Spending Reviews – Lessons

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Lang: Ottawa’s bureaucracy has too many managers who are busy managing their own bloat

2025/11/01 Leave a comment

One of the interesting nuggets in this analysis is that the growth appears highest among ADMs as the overall growth since 2015 has been relatively stable, ranging from 2.9 to 3.0 percent of all public servants:

…Seventy years ago, British historian C. Northcote Parkinson coined “Parkinson’s Law,” which helps explain this staggering growth of the public service and its executive class. Observing the expansion of the British Colonial Office, which occurred alongside the decline of the British Empire, Parkinson pointed out that the ranks of the public service tend to grow regardless of the volume of work to be done. He attributed this to two claims: “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals” and “Officials make work for each other,” in other words, there is a natural tendency to multiply subordinates to sustain the rise of officials, which in turn creates demand for more and more officials. As Parkinson put it, “Far more people have taken far longer to produce the same result. No one has been idle. All have done their best.” 

Ottawa’s bureaucracy is well aware of the problem, even if it hasn’t done much to fix it. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, recent attempts at work-force reduction have targeted term and casual employees, while the share of permanent positions, such as those occupied by executives, has reached a decade high. 

A report by the Public Service Management Advisory Committee could have been lifted directly from Parkinson’s playbook: “New [executive] jobs at all levels are created, in many cases without a significant change in the organization’s mandate.” The result is “dilution and duplication” leading to “unnecessary layers of decision-making and unclear accountabilities. It slows down productivity and creates workplace conflicts.” Former clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick has raised concerns that Ottawa’s “pyramid of executives” are slowing decision making and impeding communication.

Businesspeople will recognize the pathology. When companies multiply vice-presidents, decisions slow, accountability blurs and egos multiply faster than outcomes. But in the private sector, profit and loss eventually impose discipline. In government, the taxpayer funds the experiment until someone yells “enough is enough.” …

Source: Ottawa’s bureaucracy has too many managers who are busy managing their own bloat

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Lavoie: Should Carney, the businessman, really run Canada like a business?

2025/10/30 1 Comment

One of the better explanations of the difference between business and government:

…Business has one objective that trumps all others: maximizing profit and shareholder return. Shareholders care little if their product serves no noble purpose, nor is the welfare of their workers necessarily a priority. Consumers care little if a company goes bankrupt because of poor decisions – they simply buy elsewhere. And the bad decisions that eventually sink a company may have already generated fortunes for CEOs and shareholders, who often depart before the collapse. 

The government’s goal is providing the institutional framework that allows current and future constituents to enjoy a good quality of life. This means tackling complex, interconnected issues such as poverty, public health, the environment, justice, security and the functioning of markets – not optimizing a single metric. The trade-offs between various government objectives and between current and future generations require careful analysis, consultation, collaboration and compromise.

Governments must be more risk-averse than businesses. Failing to provide Old Age Security, the Canada Pension Plan, public security or law enforcement – or leaving a crushing burden to future generations – would have far more dire societal consequences than a company bankruptcy. Government cannot act without societal acceptance or outside accepted cultural norms, both of which change slowly. This means it will never be as nimble as a business. And that’s a good thing….

Source: Should Carney, the businessman, really run Canada like a business?

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Cuts will impact women and racialized public servants disproportionately, new analysis says

2025/10/21 Leave a comment

Likely but excessive growth in public service had to be curbed. Uses a departmental frame rather than an age frame. Annual EE reports will indicate extent of change:

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s coming cuts to the federal public service are expected to disproportionately impact female, Indigenous, racialized and disabled workers, according to a new analysis.

The analysis, published by the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on Oct. 20, estimated that 59 per cent of the employees whose jobs will be cut will be women, 5.5 per cent will be Indigenous people, 26 per cent will likely be racialized and 8.3 per cent will have a disability.

The analysis found that this outsized impact on these groups would largely be due to the fact that the departments and agencies facing the deepest reductions have some of the most diverse workforces in the federal government. And the organizations expected to see smaller cuts have less diverse employees.

“Depending on how the cuts play out, we can expect wider employment gaps, wider pay gaps and the erosion of access to critical employment benefits,” economists David Macdonald and Katherine Scott wrote in the analysis.

Early in July, Carney’s government announced a spending review asking most departments and agencies to cut 15 per cent of their operational budgets over three years.

The total job losses across the federal government from the spending review could amount to around 57,000 job losses, according to a previous analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

As Carney has promised to boost spending on defence and beefing up with border with the United States, the Department of National Defence (DND), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the RCMP will only see a cut of 2 per cent cut to their operational budgets over those three years. The analysis characterized these organizations as  “equity laggards.”x

Forty-three per cent of the civilian arm of DND are women and CBSA is staffed by around 47 per cent women.

In contrast, the workforce of Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) is around 67 per cent women. Macdonald and Scott estimate around 3,915 women could lose their jobs at that department in the coming spending review.

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), the Department of Justice and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) are all around 70 per cent women, and could see estimated 918, 604 and 935 women lose their jobs respectively.

In the federal public sector, Scott said women often don’t have to settle for lower paying jobs and are “not questioned if they’re leaving the office at five o’clock to pick up the kids from childcare.”

“You see massive wage gaps in the private sector,” Scott said.

When it comes to Indigenous workers, Scott and Macdonald estimated that around 5.5 per cent of jobs lost will be those of Indigenous workers, outpacing their current share in the public service at 5.3 per cent.

ISC (with a 27 per cent Indigenous workforce), Crown-Indigenous Relations (18 per cent Indigenous) and Correctional Service Canada (11 per cent Indigenous) will lose the most Indigenous jobs, according to Macdonald and Scott. These organizations could see an estimated 359, 84 and 318 Indigenous workers losing their jobs respectively.

Racialized workers make up 31 per cent of ESDC’s workforce and 41 per cent of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, two departments expected to see high job loss as the spending review launches.

Source: Cuts will impact women and racialized public servants disproportionately, new analysis says

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Boisvert: La moronisation des États-Unis

2025/09/03 Leave a comment

Sadly accurate:

« Nous aurons une annonce en septembre tel que promis, a-t-il dit dans une séance publique du cabinet Trump. Nous avons découvert que des interventions, certaines interventions causent clairement presque certainement l’autisme. »

Ce n’est pas une mince déclaration. L’autisme fait l’objet de recherches depuis des dizaines d’années. Les causes, disent les chercheurs, sont multiples. Génétiques, environnementales…

Et voilà qu’en cinq mois, des « recherches » commandées par Kennedy seraient parvenues à une percée spectaculaire.

On sait que Kennedy a déjà comparé la vaccination des enfants aux expériences menées par les nazis. On l’a vu souvent prétendre faussement que l’autisme est causé par les vaccins. On peut donc parier que les « interventions » dont il parle, et qui causent « clairement presque certainement » l’autisme, seront… les vaccins.

Le « chercheur » à l’origine de la théorie des vaccins causant l’autisme, le médecin britannique Andrew Wakefield, a été radié de son ordre professionnel. Hélas, son « étude » frauduleuse a été publiée dans The Lancet, et continue à circuler chez les antivax.

La preuve a depuis été faite et refaite qu’il n’y a aucun lien entre la vaccination et l’autisme.

Quand RFK était une simple célébrité, il causait déjà beaucoup de tort en répandant des faussetés scientifiques, de la pseudoscience et des théories du complot.

Mais maintenant, le président a nommé ce « sceptique » des vaccins, pour ne pas dire cet antivax, à la tête de la Santé. Le Sénat a confirmé sa nomination. Ce ne sont plus des opinions, qu’il émet. Ce sont des décisions.

Et parmi celles-ci, il y a le congédiement mercredi de la Dre Susan Monarez, qui venait tout juste d’être confirmée dans ses fonctions de directrice de la Santé publique, à la tête des Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Le motif ? « Insubordination ». La Dre Monarez avait simplement rappelé à RFK que les nouvelles directives sur la vaccination ne correspondaient pas aux données scientifiques. Le secrétaire a en effet décidé qu’il n’y aurait de vaccination contre la COVID-19 que pour les personnes âgées. Basé sur quoi ? Ses propres avis. Car en juin, Kennedy a foutu à la porte tous les membres du comité de consultation sur la vaccination.

De fait, les CDC ont perdu « des milliers » d’employés et la moitié de leur budget. Certains de leurs meilleurs experts en matière de maladies contagieuses sont partis.

Les États-Unis ont aussi coupé les ponts avec l’Organisation mondiale de la santé. Annulé des contrats de recherche à hauteur de 500 millions sur la technologie de l’ARN messager. En plus de comprimer massivement les budgets de recherche et les fonds universitaires. Ce n’est pas pour rien que 75 % des chercheurs américains (sondage de Nature) disent vouloir trouver du boulot à l’étranger.

Ça ne change rien pour l’instant. Mais la capacité du pays à faire face à une épidémie, une pandémie, une crise sanitaire est sérieusement affectée. Comme les États-Unis ont été un leader mondial en la matière, cela touche le monde entier. Sans parler des risques de contagion idéologique et de contagion tout court.

Ça ne change rien pour l’instant, mais il y aura des morts.

Le démantèlement de la Santé publique américaine s’ajoute à toutes les attaques frontales contre la science. Et jusqu’à la collecte de données.

La destruction volontaire de deux satellites parfaitement fonctionnels qui mesurent le taux de CO2 dans l’atmosphère s’inscrit dans le même superbe projet de rendre aux États-Unis sa grandeur par l’accroissement de l’ignorance.

Quand il a écrit The Assault on Reason (La raison assiégée), en 2007, Al Gore se plaignait de la dégradation du débat public, dominé par des émotions aux dépens des faits. Il n’avait pas imaginé qu’un jour, un président congédierait la patronne du bureau des statistiques du travail parce qu’il n’aimait pas ses données.

Même les plus grands pourfendeurs républicains du « gros gouvernement » n’ont pas voulu éradiquer les données ou nommer volontairement des super-incompétents dans des postes clés.

Le plus consternant est évidemment l’aplaventrisme du Congrès. Le sénateur républicain Bill Cassidy a déclaré jeudi qu’il veut maintenant « superviser » les CDC, vu le bordel actuel.

Ce même sénateur, un médecin, avait fait semblant d’hésiter à confirmer la nomination de RFK à la santé, vu ses déclarations sur les vaccins. Il a longuement expliqué à quel point les vaccins sauvent des vies. Mais à la fin, bien entendu, il a voté pour sa confirmation. Si une personne aurait dû savoir ce qui se tramait, c’est bien lui. Et pourtant, il a ouvert toutes grandes les portes du labo aux idéologues de RFK pour qu’ils le saccagent.

Ce n’est même plus au nom d’une volonté de « réforme » des institutions scientifiques que tout cela est entrepris. Les CDC comme les universités comme tout le gouvernement méritent des réformes et des ménages périodiques, bien entendu.

Ce à quoi on assiste, c’est carrément la destruction de ces institutions qui ont été des références d’excellence en sciences de la santé, en sciences naturelles, en économie, etc.

On a déjà prétendu que John F. Kennedy s’était entouré des meilleurs. « The Best and the Brightest. »

Aujourd’hui, c’est à la moronisation de ce grand pays qu’on assiste.

Source: La moronisation des États-Unis

“We will have an announcement in September as promised,” he said in a public session of the Trump cabinet. We have discovered that interventions, certain interventions clearly almost certainly cause autism. ”

This is not a small statement. Autism has been the subject of research for decades. The causes, the researchers say, are multiple. Genetic, environmental…

And now in five months, “research” commissioned by Kennedy would have reached a spectacular breakthrough.

It is known that Kennedy has already compared the vaccination of children to the experiments conducted by the Nazis. We have often seen him falsely claim that autism is caused by vaccines. We can therefore bet that the “interventions” he is talking about, and which “clearly almost certainly” cause autism, will be… vaccines.

The “researcher” behind the theory of autism-causing vaccines, British physician Andrew Wakefield, has been removed from his professional order. Alas, his fraudulent “study” was published in The Lancet, and continues to circulate among anti-vax.

Proof has since been made and redone that there is no link between vaccination and autism.

When RFK was a simple celebrity, he was already causing a lot of harm by spreading scientific falsehoods, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

But now, the president has named this “skeptic” of vaccines, not to say this anti-vax, at the head of Health. The Senate confirmed his appointment. These are no longer opinions, which he expresses. These are decisions.

And among these is the dismissal on Wednesday of Dr. Susan Monarez, who had just been confirmed as Director of Public Health, at the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The reason? “Insubordination”. Dr. Monarez had simply reminded RFK that the new vaccination guidelines did not correspond to the scientific data. The secretary has indeed decided that there would only be vaccination against COVID-19 for the elderly. Based on what? His own opinions. Because in June, Kennedy kicked out all the members of the vaccination consultation committee.

In fact, the CDC has lost “thousands” of employees and half of their budget. Some of their best infectious disease experts are gone.

The United States has also cut ties with the World Health Organization. Cancelled 500 million research contracts on messenger RNA technology. In addition to massively compressing research budgets and university funds. It is not for nothing that 75% of American researchers (Nature survey) say they want to find a job abroad.

It doesn’t change anything for now. But the country’s ability to deal with an epidemic, a pandemic, a health crisis is seriously affected. As the United States has been a world leader in this area, it affects the whole world. Not to mention the risks of ideological contagion and contagion altogether.

It doesn’t change anything for now, but there will be deaths.

The dismantling of American Public Health is in addition to all the frontal attacks against science. And up to data collection.

The voluntary destruction of two perfectly functional satellites that measure the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is part of the same superb project to restore the greatness to the United States by increasing ignorance.

When he wrote The Assault on Reason, in 2007, Al Gore complained of the degradation of public debate, dominated by emotions at the expense of facts. He had not imagined that one day a president would fire the boss of the labor statistics office because he did not like her data.

Even the biggest Republican slitters of the “big government” did not want to eradicate the data or voluntarily appoint super-incompetents in key positions.

The most appalling thing is obviously the aplaventrism of the Congress. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said Thursday that he now wants to “supervise” the CDC, given the current mess.

This same senator, a doctor, had pretended to be hesitant to confirm the appointment of RFK to health, given his statements on vaccines. He explained at length how vaccines save lives. But in the end, of course, he voted for his confirmation. If a person should have known what was brewing, it was him. And yet, he opened the doors of the laboratory wide to RFK ideologists so that they could vandalish him.

It is no longer even in the name of a desire to “reform” scientific institutions that all this is undertaken. The CDC as well as the universities as the whole government deserve reforms and periodic households, of course.

What we are witnessing is the destruction of these institutions that have been references of excellence in health sciences, natural sciences, economics, etc.

It has already been claimed that John F. Kennedy had surrounded himself with the best. “The Best and the Brightest. ”

Today, we are witnessing the moronization of this great country.

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May: The Functionary on PBO expenditure review recommendations

2025/08/30 Leave a comment

Good discussion of the PBO recommendations:

…WHY IT MATTERS
It’s about measurement and accountability

It introduces a methodology to track personnel spending using more frequent pay data. It separates projections for civilian and non-civilian staffing (military/RCMP included). It distinguishes head counts (actual people) from FTEs (work equivalent). This is critical because past cuts reduced head counts while FTEs actually rose.

It’s a baseline for expenditure review. It sets clear starting points for measuring cuts, which didn’t exist before. It allows tracking of whether the public service is truly shrinking under the expenditure review. It provides capacity for twice-yearly updates so parliamentarians can monitor progress.

It’s an operating split vs. a capital budget split. The government plans to balance the operating budget while splitting expenditures into operating and capital budgets.It creates an incentive to shift operating expenses into capital (childcare transfers, immigration programs, infrastructure) to make balancing easier. Without clear definitions, departments may label operating expenses as “productivity investments” and put them under capital.

There are risks for public-service managers. Operating budgets face greater restraint since balancing that budget is Carney’s fiscal anchor. There is uncertainty over what counts as operating vs. capital. There’s a need to deliver the same services with fewer resources. Previous cuts show departments often hire more permanent staff to maintain service despite headcount reductions.

POST-GIROUX
Whoever takes over, it will be temporary

Giroux’s term ends Sept. 2, five days after departments’ Aug. 28 deadline for proposed 15-per-cent spending reductions that will shape the next federal budget in October. He leaves with another 20 or so reports in the pipeline for his successor.

I wrote in July about the unknowns surrounding Giroux’s fate and the huge impacthe’s had on the office. At the time, the Privy Council Office said it was committed to appointing a “highly qualified individual” and noted the Parliament of Canada Actallows for an interim appointment in the event of a vacancy.

This week, it offered no timeline other than in to say “due course.” It didn’t say whether the position will be filled before the budget.

The only option now is a temporary appointment until the House and Senate return. A formal appointment requires approval from both chambers. Some suggest the government would prefer an interim watchdog rather than have its moves scrutinized by someone with Giroux’s experience and track record.

Source: The Functionary

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Globe editorial: Ottawa’s AI push must translate into savings [translation]

2025/08/21 Leave a comment

Other areas ripe for AI use are the overhead functions of HR and Finance:

…That is a good thing. Translators are no strangers to machines; they’ve been using computer tools for decades. But they have often warned that the programs are imperfect and nowhere near good enough to replace them. “At times, a ChatGPT translation will make sense,” Joachim Lépine, co-founder of LION Translation Academy in Sherbrooke, Que. wrote in a LinkedIn post this month. But “’sometimes useful’ is not good enough for high-stakes situations. Only humans have professional judgment. Period.”

However, new generative AI tools are rapidly improving in quality and are good enough to competently handle routine translations of mundane texts such as policy documents, press releases or memos. The more the programs learn from the language fed into them, the better they should become – although more critical documents such as laws and court rulings should continue to be handled by humans.

A centrepiece of the bureau’s rethink is its AI project, a program called PSPC Translate, which draws from the government’s data and language storehouse. It could serve as a bellwether for further government efficiencies and savings using AI. True success would be if the initiative translated into real savings and allowed government to slash the size of the bureau. 

Source: Ottawa’s AI push must translate into savings

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McLaughlin: This DOGE Won’t Hunt: A Canada-U.S. Comparison

2025/08/08 Leave a comment

Good analysis and recommendations on how to curb government expenditures:

“DOGE is not for Canada. Here’s why:

  • First, a DOGE-style, top-down process can only exist in presidential forms of government like America’s not parliamentary forms of government like Canada’s. Despite his ‘First Buddy’ status at the time, even the limited cabinet-style meetings Trump held with Elon Musk in the room degenerated into tense public disputes between Musk and cabinet secretaries.⁸ It must have been worse behind the scenes with shoving altercations being reported.⁹ Prime ministers strive to avoid that spectacle at all costs. It is the surest way to lose authority both with the public and within the government and caucus. [How many British prime ministers were there exactly in 2022?] DOGE would be a skin graft that would and should be be rejected by our system of governance. 
  • Second, DOGE was rushed and forced. It did not take into account vital missions or mandates of governing agencies. Witness the subsequent rehires to ensure key health or safety activities continued. It tried to squeeze in too much in too short a timeframe. Chaos resulted.
  • Third, DOGE evaded the law. DOGE-inspired lawsuits have made the process and results anything but orderly or complete. Judges have stayed some decisions requiring complete rehires of staff while others have proceeded. The result is a legal quagmire of confusion.
  • Fourth, it was talent-agnostic. It took little to no account, as far as can be seen, in retaining top-tier talent. It was ‘billboard budgeting’, announcing big across-the-board cuts in both funding and personnel without thinking through expertise or performance. Probationary hires, for example, were the first to go because they were the least protected by civil service rules and could account for early ‘wins’. But real skepticism exists as to whether it actually produced results.¹⁰
  • Fifth, it was run by a big personality and a bunch of tech nerds with no actual government experience and with no realistic, definable goals. At first, Musk said it would cut $2 trillion from the $7 trillion federal budget. Then, it became $1 trillion. Finally, he said DOGE would save $150 billion. In truth, the biggest cuts Elon made were to his own ambitions. Here’s what they say they have saved (as of time of this post). As you can see, the definition of “savings” is an elastic mouthful:

What Should Canada’s Approach Be Instead?

Here’s my list:

  1. Don’t try to do it all at once. Do it over time. A judicious application of time-limited hiring freezes for some public service classifications and employee attrition will get the headcount down. 
  2. Apply across-the-board cuts to get some results early, show seriousness, and secure political buy-in internally and externally that this is fair and not aimed at any one constituency. But don’t rely on these alone.
  3. Get out of actual program areas by making real choices about what is the role of the federal government in certain areas. Shrink government’s cost by shrinking government’s footprint.
  4. Resist starting up new boutique initiatives for headlines and stakeholders. They cost money and require more public servants.
  5. Combine public service reductions with deliberate productivity enhancements through AI and digital technologies.
  6. Conduct a root-and-branch customer service delivery assessment of programs to find efficiencies now. Ask these two questions: 1. What is the unit cost of delivering a particular service? 2. How many people, across how many departments, touch a service delivery or operational decision by the government?
  7. Bear in mind that new, different skill sets are needed in the public service and some hiring must still occur to enhance its overall performance.
  8. Set measurable goals for success that are both financial (balancing the operational budget, a stated government priority), and non-financial (better citizen service delivery results, improved labour productivity, etc).
  9. Create a process to do this that can be sustained between and over budget cycles, so it leads to a permanent reduction in the public service headcount. 
  10. Finally, hold ministers and deputy ministers accountable – politically for the former and financially for the latter – for results. That should get their attention!

Here endeth the lesson!“

Source: This DOGE Won’t Hunt: A Canada-U.S. Comparison

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