Public Service Disaggregated Data for Visible Minorities and Indigenous peoples, Citizenship status

2021/03/01 Leave a comment

Over the past few months, I have been analyzing the various datasets breaking down public service employment and employee survey data by the individual visible minority and Indigenous groups.

The three articles, What new disaggregated data tells us about federal public service diversity (Policy Options, October 2020), What the Public Service Employee Survey breakdowns of visible minority and other groups tell us about diversity and inclusion (The Hill Times, November 2020) and Diversity and Inclusion: Public Service Hirings, Promotions and Separations (The Hill Times, March 2021) allow for a more comprehensive view of visible minority and Indigenous groups in the federal public service. Moreover, recent Public Service Commission studies analyzing recruitment of employment equity groups add an important element to discussions on public service staffing and recruitment practices.

Much of the debate and discussions have understandably focussed on Blacks in the public service. Yet public service data indicates that their situation is not unique in terms of representation, hirings and promotions and the employee satisfaction, with many commonalities with the other groups. A more granular analysis within each occupational group (i.e., comparing representation at each level by occupational group, as some departments are conducting, may very well provide such evidence).

Key findings are:

  • Overall EE analysis shows considerable variation among the different visible minority and Indigenous groups
  • Visible minorities
    • Correlation between lower educational attainment and representation for most groups save Chinese
    • Overall under-representation common to most groups
    • Blacks, West Asian/Arab small over-representation
    • EX: All groups under-represented save Japanese with Filipino, Latin American and Blacks having the largest gaps
    • Hirings: Hirings of visible minorities have increased for all groups in most occupational groups save for technical and administrative support. Hirings at the EX level have increase for Black, Chinese, South Asian/East Indian and West Asian/Arab, with other groups showing no increase.
    • Promotions: While promotions have increased marginally for virtually all groups at the agregate level, promotions by occupational category provide a mixed picture, with most groups and most occupational categories experiencing a marginal decline in promotions.
  • Indigenous peoples
    • First Nations under-represented, Métis and Inuit over-represented
    • Hirings: While hirings at the EX level have increased slightly, this is less the case for the other occupational categories. Hirings of Métis have increased the most in the operational category, hirings of First Nations the most in the technical category, while hirings of Inuit the most at the EX level.
    • Promotions: A marginal decline across all Indigenous groups and occupational
  • Harassment/Discrimination experiences vary
    • Harassment: Japanese report the most as do First Nations and Métis, Chinese and Filipino least satisfied with resolution as is the case with Métis
    • Discrimination; Blacks report the most, but all groups encounter discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic origin or colour. Black, Japanese and Latin American least satisfied with resolution. All Indigenous groups report having been discriminated against, mainly based on race or ethnic origin, with Métis also least satisfied with resolution

The recent PSC Audit of Employment Equity Representation in Recruitment provides some interesting data and analysis of the staffing process and how the different employment equity groups, and visible minority largest sub-groups, fare at each of the five stages in the staffing process: job application, automated screening, organizational screening, assessment and appointment (FY 2016-17 data).

The most significant stages were organizational screening and assessment where most filtering took place as shown in the table below:

The next table breaks down visible minorities by the largest groups:

As noted in the audit, Blacks have the largest decrease in representation at all stages save for appointment, with a non-negligible being screened out by automatic screening. Chinese are screened out more by organizational screening whereas West Asian and South Asian are more likely to be screened in as the assessment stage.

The audit provides the following explanation for visible minority groups. Overall, visible minority women have higher success rates than visible minority men at the organizational screening and assessment stages. Visible minorities screened out at the organizational screening stage due to citizenship status (Canadian citizens are given preference over non-citizens) and experience qualifications. Those with public service work experience were more likely to be screened in at this stage but overall “experienced less success than their counterparts regardless of whether or not they had federal public service experience.”

At the assessment stage, visible minorities were less successful when written tests were used, particularly the case for Black candidates.

A separate PSC report addresses the Citizenship of applicants and external appointments. While Canadian citizens have a hiring preference, the share of non-citizen applicants has risen from 9.4 percent in 2015-16 to 14.5 percent in 2018-19, with the share of hires has increased to 2.5 percent from 1.5 percent over the same period

Non-citizen visible minority applicants account for 22.9 percent of all visible minority applicants, for non-visible minorities, the share is only 12.1 percent.

The table below contrasts applicants and appointments by citizenship status for the past four years. For Canadian citizens, the percentage of applicants and appointments are comparable, for Permanent Residents and others, appointments are significantly greater than applicants suggesting that citizenship may be less of a barrier than commonly believed.

Visible minority Canadian citizens represented 17.2 percent of all applicants and 19.5 percent of all hires (2018-19).

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Federal documents show sharp decline of Canada’s pandemic warning system, and debate over who was to blame

2021/02/26 2 Comments

Looks like decision was mainly at the bureaucratic, not political level:

Newly released government documents paint a stark picture of how quickly Canada’s pandemic early warning system fell into decline before COVID-19 hit.

E-mails between staff at the Prime Minister’s Office show how alerts issued by the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, or GPHIN, dropped precipitously from 2009 to 2019, when key parts of the operation were curtailed.

The numbers confirm internal Public Health Agency data obtained by The Globe and Mail last summer, which showed how Canada’s internationally renowned pandemic early warning system was effectively shuttered less than a year before COVID-19 began spreading.

GPHIN was created in the 1990s to provide Canada and its allies with the earliest possible warnings of outbreak threats, so that governments could move quickly and decisively. A Globe investigation last year detailed how GPHIN played an integral role in detecting and helping the international community respond to past outbreaks such as SARS, H1N1 and MERS.

The e-mails between PMO staff are part of a release of thousands of federal documents that are being disclosed in response to a production order for COVID-19 records that was approved by the House of Commons in October over objections from the Liberal government.

In those e-mails, PMO advisers are responding to The Globe’s GPHIN investigation, which reported that the pandemic early warning system had issued more than 1,500 alerts on potential outbreak threats between 2009 and 2019. The probe found that GPHIN suddenly fell silent on May 24, 2019, less than eight months before COVID-19 started to become a world crisis.

The investigation detailed how shifting priorities within Public Health led to GPHIN’s resources being moved to other areas. With no apparent pandemic threats on the horizon, analysts were reassigned to study domestic issues, such as the effect of vaping and the spread of syphilis in Canada. When GPHIN’s alert system went silent last year, its surveillance of international outbreaks was also significantly curtailed.

According to an e-mail between PMO staff on Oct. 8, GPHIN issued 1,598 alerts between 2009 and 2019, including 877 in 2009, the year of the H1N1 outbreak. These alerts spanned a wide range of threats – from Zika to Ebola, yellow fever and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever – and most never evolved into a crisis, though GPHIN would have kept close tabs on each situation as needed.

But the numbers began to decline sharply. After issuing 198 alerts in 2013, when an outbreak of H7N9 bird flu emerged, GPHIN’s alerts dropped in half the following year and soon declined further. By 2018, GPHIN issued just 21 alerts, a drop of 97 per cent from 2009 levels.

The e-mails suggest that as staff inside the PMO deliberated on how to respond to The Globe’s investigation, they appeared concerned about whether the Liberal government could be blamed for financial cuts to the operation, or whether the decisions that shifted GPHIN’s focus and resources inside the department rested solely with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

“PHAC may have reprioritized its efforts, but it is an Agency that gets to decide, to an extent, their own priorities – those would be internal, bureaucratic decisions, not political ones,” Elise Wagner, a senior special assistant in the PMO wrote to a colleague. “Our government did not cut funding for the global early warning system.”

The shuffling of resources within the department had a significant effect, though. GPHIN’s role was not only to detect the first signs of an outbreak, but to provide continuing, rapid intelligence of an evolving situation, so that Ottawa could quickly bolster stockpiles of personal protective equipment and ensure hospitals and long-term care homes were ready if needed.

The goal was to inject urgency into government decisions, including when to implement physical distancing, mask wearing and stricter border measures. However, scientists inside PHAC told The Globe that they struggled to get important messages up the chain of command.

Members of the Canadian intelligence community have since raised concerns about the curtailing of GPHIN, given its role in informing the government’s risk assessments on COVID-19. Through January, February and into March of 2020, Ottawa rated the outbreak a low threat to the Canadian public, even as evidence emerged about how deadly the virus was and how easily it was spreading, and despite other countries implementing unprecedented measures.

Faced with criticism over the government’s early response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wasn’t sure what role added intelligence could have played in Ottawa’s decisions, but said he regrets not acting sooner to bolster stockpiles of personal protective equipment. However, informing such decisions is exactly what GPHIN was created to do.

The federal documents show GPHIN first picked up on the outbreak on Dec. 31, 2019, after news of a strange pneumonia in China made international headlines and a New York based disease-tracker called ProMed issued an alert to doctors and hospitals around the world. Scientists now believe COVID-19 had likely been spreading several weeks by that point, and that China did not fully disclose the problem.

Epidemiologists say the speed at which governments can implement containment measures has a major effect on the spread of a virus and its death toll, even if only by a few days or a week.

The problems surrounding GPHIN are now the subject of two federal probes; the Auditor-General of Canada has launched an investigation while the Minister of Health has ordered an independent federal review. The results of both are expected sometime this spring.

Source: Federal documents show sharp decline of Canada’s pandemic warning system, and debate over who was to blame

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Delacourt: ‘The nudge unit’: Ottawa’s behavioural-science team investigates how Canadians feel about vaccines, public health and who to trust

2021/02/23 Leave a comment

Innovative and appropriate:

Vaccines are one miracle of science in this pandemic. But another scientific experiment has also produced surprisingly speedy and widespread results over the past year. It happened in the realm of behaviour science — and ordinary citizens were the laboratory subjects. 

One year ago, few people would have believed that science would come up with a vaccine, ready for mass immunization around the world, by the start of 2021. 

But who would have also predicted that citizens could be persuaded to turn their lives upside down, wear masks and isolate themselves from their families and friends for months on end? 

“I know we’re asking a lot,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in early April, when no one knew just how much COVID-19 would force Canadians into behaviour change on a grand scale. “A lot” is an understatement: not since wartime has the government had to request this much of the citizenry for so long. 

Yet while the government’s medical scientists have been front and centre on the public stage almost every day since last March, the behavioural scientists have mostly been operating under the radar. If you know where to look, though, evidence of the behaviour-nudging team keeps peeking out under all those public proclamations from Canada’s COVID-19 crisis managers. 

When Trudeau and the premiers use their podiums to calm fears or tell hard truths about the pandemic, for example, their words don’t just come from hunch or political instincts. Reams of behavioural data is being collected by government throughout the pandemic, on everything from people’s general emotions about COVID-19 to their willingness to get vaccinated. 

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, spoke earlier this month about the problem of vaccine hesitancy in this country and what the government knows about it. It was one of the few times that public officials have made direct reference to the behaviour-studying unit inside government. 

“Some of the studies are actually carried out by the Privy Council Office, where there is a behavioural insight team,” Tam said. “We do know that the intention for Canadians to get the vaccine is actually quite high and I think has improved since we started the vaccine campaign itself.” 

Tam went on to explain how people’s views on vaccines are shaped by where they get their information. Since you are reading this story in a mainstream news medium, you might be interested to know that you’re more likely to feel positive about getting immunized. Consumers of traditional information sources tend to have more trust in vaccines and what the government is saying about them. Conversely, if you’re the kind of person who gets your news from social media, you’re likely more wary of vaccines. 

So the government is doing some fine-tuning of its communication channels, Tam explained at this Feb. 5 briefing. “We know that we have to work with the internet and social media companies and that has been happening with Facebook, Google, YouTube and others,” she said. 

That behavioural-insight team Tam mentioned is actually called the “impact and innovation unit” of government, which was set up within the PCO in 2017, meant for more low-key work than it has been doing, now that the pandemic suddenly created an urgent need for its insights into how citizens behave.

Headed up by veteran public servant Rodney Ghali, this group has kept its eye on the huge social-science experiment of the COVID-19 crisis. (Ontario too has a behavioural insights unit, which has been working closely with the federal government over the course of the pandemic.) 

In normal times, this federal team would have been researching questions such as what would motivate people to invest more in RRSPs or cut down on food waste. 

Its members prefer to remain low-profile — a couple of them talked to me for this article, but on condition that they would not be named or quoted.

Results of the team’s research are quite public, though — anyone can check them out on their web page, along with reports of some communication campaigns they’ve tested on the population and what the ads were supposed to achieve. The most visible ad — one Canadians may remember — is one that depicted COVID-19 as a green cloud, spreading noxiously over the buttons in an elevator. 

The behaviour being studied by the government has shifted as the pandemic has dragged on, naturally. In the beginning, the research focused a lot on compliance with public health measures, what it would take to get people to wear masks, and so on. 

Nowadays, the main concern is with vaccines and whether enough people will take them to achieve herd immunity. Medical science handles the immunity part of that equation — behavioural scientists have to build the herd. For that to happen, the government has to know where and how to administer the nudging. 

“Nudge” is the operative word. Britain blazed the trail for the use of behavioural insights in government back in 2010 when it set up a team inside the cabinet office nicknamed ‘the nudge unit.” The name comes from the hugely influential book “Nudge” by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which laid out how people could be influenced to make better choices in their lives. 

Sunstein is now the chair of an advisory group for the World Health Organization, set up specifically to use behavioural insights in COVID-19 management. And that leads us right back to Canada, which has taken the WHO’s tool for tapping behavioural insights in the pandemic and put it to comprehensive use in this country for nearly a year now. According to officials inside the behaviour unit, Canada has made the most comprehensive use of the WHO tool, creating a chronicle of behavioural ups and downs throughout the COVID-19 crisis. 

Since last April, a static group of about 2,000 Canadians — chosen randomly but in proportion to statistical, demographic considerations — have been taking part in a rolling series of surveys, plumbing their attitudes and behaviour on all things pandemic-related. The process is called “COVID-19 snapshot monitoring,” which has been shortened to COSMO.

In the early months, the COSMO respondents were a dreary lot, reporting that they believed things would get worse before they got better. But they were keen on vaccines — keener than they are now, in fact. Last April, more than 70 per cent of respondents were interested in a vaccine if it was either safe or effective. By the end of 2020, that enthusiasm had dropped to the low and mid-sixties. 

Herd immunity is generally accepted to be around 70 per cent, so governments — with the help of the behaviour scientists — need to get those numbers up again. 

The COSMO group has also been asked regularly about which people they trust to provide information — perhaps one of the more important pieces of insight sought by government in this pandemic. If you’re going to nudge the population in one direction or another, after all, it’s crucial to know who should do the nudging. 

Repeated waves of data on this issue show that public health officials rank high on the trusted list, whereas politicians and the news media rank lower. This would explain why Tam and her provincial colleagues have become household names over the past year (the provincial public-health chiefs have actually been rated slightly higher for trust than their federal counterparts). 

On top of vaccine hesitancy, the biggest concern right now for the behaviour monitors is simple COVID-19 fatigue. For almost a year now, governments have been asking, imploring, begging and arguing for citizens to keep large areas of their lives on hold. The same tools that worked last April, when Trudeau was “asking a lot,” may not keep working over the long term. 

In December, the COSMO participants started being asked about pandemic fatigue. Here’s what the behaviour unit learned: “Adherence to key protective behaviours remains reportedly high, and many participants are not getting tired of having to wash their hands frequently, physical distancing or wearing a mask. However, most participants (80 per cent) indicate they are getting tired or somewhat tired of having to avoid gathering with loved ones.”

It’s probably safe to assume that the weariness has only grown since then, but the results of more recent surveys haven’t yet gone online. 

Whenever the pandemic is over, most Canadians may be too busy getting back to their normal lives to reflect on the massive social-science experiment that has taken place over the planet this past year. But that radical change in people’s lives is the other great scientific achievement of COVID-19, one that may have given government important clues on how to modify citizens’ behaviour for other big global issues — such as climate change, for instance. 

“The behaviour and choices made by each and every one of us matter a great deal,” Tam said in a briefing earlier this year, which is why a small behavioural-science unit inside government suddenly became a big deal in 2020. 

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/02/21/the-nudge-unit-ottawas-behavioural-science-team-investigates-how-canadians-feel-about-vaccines-public-health-and-who-to-trust.html

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Provinces are working with outdated vaccine tracking systems, hindering national data

2021/02/23 Leave a comment

Canada’s patchwork system at its worst:

As Canada prepares for a massive increase in vaccine doses from abroad, some provinces and territories are using outdated technology to record their vaccination data and not fully participating in a system Ottawa created to manage infectious disease outbreaks.

The results of a Globe and Mail survey sent to every province and territory found a patchwork of systems for recording vaccine information that will be crucial in monitoring supply, adverse reactions and population immunity across the country, and for booking appointments. Some provinces reported that they had not enabled core pieces of the technology, called Panorama, that the federal government designed for campaigns like this one.

The SARS epidemic of 2003 highlighted the fact that Canada lacked a modern public-health database to manage all the information related to outbreaks of infectious diseases. Ottawa funded the creation of Panorama for all provinces and territories to use. The platform is actually a suite of technologies and databases for vaccine and infectious disease tracking. But more than a decade of delays and the increasing cost of participation led some provinces to opt out of some parts, revert to their previous systems, or adopt other technology platforms.

The end result is 13 different vaccine-tracking systems, many of which do not communicate with each other or Ottawa.

Shannon MacDonald, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta faculty of nursing and a researcher with the Canadian Immunization Research Network, said the situation gives the federal government an incomplete picture of the national vaccine program.

“We can’t look at immunization coverage nationally,” Prof. MacDonald said. Some provinces and territories, she added, will struggle even to track their own programs.

Panorama has been in use for several years to track immunizations. The federal government obtained new technology in January to address some of the gaps, and that platform came online on Feb. 2.

Every province that responded to The Globe confirmed it has yet to plug in to the new system.

Representatives of some provinces said health officials still use paper or basic Excel spreadsheets to track vaccines and vaccinations.

The Globe survey found that Quebec, British Columbia, Yukon and Saskatchewan use Panorama, or some version of it, for various aspects of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Ontario and Manitoba have their own systems. Other provinces did not respond or did not indicate what technology they use.

In light of COVID-19, Ontario hired the accounting company Deloitte Canada to develop a new system. COVaxON, once it comes online, will manage “scheduling, client management, recording administered doses, site inventory management, receipt of vaccination” in a platform that is easy to use, Ministry of Health spokesman David Jensen wrote in response to the Globe survey.

Since December, Canada has received just over a million doses of two types of COVID-19 vaccines. In the next six weeks, four million are scheduled to arrive, and tens of millions more before the end of summer.

The shelf life and storage requirements of each vaccine must be closely monitored. Dale Hunter, a spokesperson for Saskatchewan’s Health Ministry, said the state of the province’s vaccine cold storage is “reported and tracked manually,” meaning the data are sent to the ministry via e-mail or fax. Panorama can be used to manage inventory, but several provinces and territories, including Saskatchewan, said they had not enabled that feature.

The Northwest Territories is using Excel spreadsheets and “specially trained logisticians” to ensure that “no dose is wasted,” Health Ministry spokesperson Andrea Nilson said.

Panorama includes a feature that allows health authorities to scan the barcodes on pallets and doses to keep track of the vaccines and who needs a second dose of which one. None of the provinces or territories that responded to the survey said they had enabled that feature, meaning health authorities enter the data manually.

In Ontario, government employees enter lot numbers into COVaxON when vaccine shipments arrive. Nurses and doctors who administer the vaccines can select the identifying serial numbers on their computers from a drop-down list. This helps clinics track doses both used and unused. Quebec does something similar, Health Ministry spokesperson Robert Maranda wrote.

Mr. Jensen wrote that Ontario’s system could be more efficient if the federal government provided lot numbers in advance.

Many provincial and territorial health systems are accessible on only a limited number of hospital and clinic computers, raising the question of whether they could be used more widely, such as in pop-up clinics or pharmacies.

The Globe asked provinces how they would deal with data entry for vaccinations in makeshift clinics or pharmacies. Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec said their systems are designed to be accessible in all clinics and pharmacies. Saskatchewan reported that only public health facilities and some First Nations communities have access to Panorama. Data from pharmacies will be entered manually.

Prof. MacDonald said most provinces and territories have “good enough” systems to manage the vaccination programs. But she said that if any continue recording data with pen and paper, “we’re in a lot of trouble.”

There’s also the question of how provinces and territories will book vaccination appointments.

Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan are finalizing their booking systems. The Northwest Territories is leaving that issue to health authorities and hospitals. Booking systems for Quebec and Ontario are online.

Health authorities will need to monitor for adverse reactions and the possibility that some people who received the vaccine still contract COVID-19 – which could indicate a defective batch, a more potent variant, or that the patient is among the few for whom the vaccine is not effective.

Quebec’s system is designed to identify defective batches based on reports of adverse reactions and to notify those who received doses. Ontario is tracking adverse reactions with a system that has not been integrated into COVaxON. Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories have not activated Panorama’s adverse-reaction module, and submit their reports manually.

The Public Health Agency of Canada is the main body responsible for monitoring adverse reactions. However, some provinces told The Globe they report to Ottawa on that manually or infrequently.

As the vaccinations continue, provinces will want to know what proportion of their population is immune at any given time. A 2016 study found the majority of provinces and territories lacked the ability to do a complete analysis of a mass vaccination campaign.

New Brunswick spokesman Shawn Berry said the province’s technology can “obtain near real-time immunization data for COVID-19 vaccinations.” Quebec said its system allows good population surveillance for infectious disease outbreaks, which includes vaccination data. While many provinces and territories that responded did not provide much detail, most told The Globe that, even if they can analyze their data, they do not automatically share the results with the federal government.

Most provinces and territories provided complete answers to the Globe survey, but British Columbia spokesman Devon Smith wrote that “confidentiality and safety” issues prevented the province from answering. Manitoba spokesman Brian Smiley said the province was unable to respond to most questions. Newfoundland and Labrador spokesperson Erin Shea indicated the province was still struggling with a recent outbreak of COVID-19 cases and could not fulfill the request. Nunavut, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island did not send responses.

Prof. MacDonald said the COVID-19 crisis should inspire provinces to modernize their health infrastructure. “God forbid it takes a pandemic for us to get moving on this,” she said. “But let’s make hay.”

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-provinces-working-with-outdated-vaccine-tracking-systems/

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What Canada can learn from Australia’s COVID response

2021/02/12 2 Comments

While an Australian strict travel restrictions much harder to do in Canada given our long land border with the USA and the high level of economic integration, it is striking that Canadian governments have been unable and late in responding to COVID-19, with the results we are familiar with:

This temporary Saskatchewan expat is loving Melbourne this summer, for the reason many of the locals aren’t. It’s cool – not cool as in hip, but low-20s temperature cool. Great for running and biking and walking. Not so great for the beach or dining on restaurant patios and decks.

Those patios and decks are nonetheless open and full (maximum density of one person per two square metres), spilling out onto busy streets full of shoppers. The Australian economy is now projected to grow by 3.2 per cent in 2021, a major turnaround from last July’s estimate of minus 4.1 per cent for this year. Whence this miracle?

Maybe pandemic control has something to do with it. Here, “pandemic control” is not an oxymoron. Australia isn’t an orderly, fastidious society like Japan or hospitable to healthy doses of authoritarian rule like Singapore. It is a raucous democracy with its politics evenly divided between conservative and progressive camps. Last November saw a big anti-lockdown demonstration in Melbourne convened to protest the measures that drove the case count down to zero.

You cannot attribute Australia’s success to logistical genius or Delphic foresight. There were some legendary missteps. The Ruby Princess cruise ship debacle that disgorged a boatload of infected passengers onto the streets of Sydney a year ago. The slapstick hotel quarantine theatre in Melbourne that created the second wave of cases last June. The multi-million-dollar inquiry never did get to the bottom of exactly how, and by whom, quarantine security was contracted out to a company with no experience and ill-trained staff. The State of Victoria cabinet secretary, a cabinet minister,  and a secretary (deputy minister) lost their jobs, while others were shunted aside.

But as of Feb. 5, Australia has had 35 COVID deaths-per-million since the beginning of the pandemic. By comparison, Canada has had 543.

So, what accounts for the difference? Some is luck and circumstance. Australia is an island off the world’s heavily beaten paths. But at the beginning, its numbers were similar to Canada’s. As of March 31, 2020, Australia had 4,763 cumulative cases and Canada had 8,612 (about 20 per cent more per capita). By early February 2021, Canada had 19 times as many cumulative cases per capita.

Early in the pandemic, no one knew with certainty how contagious or lethal it was and which measures were essential to containing it. Different jurisdictions tried different policies and practices. The results of the global experiment are in. What can we learn from Australia?

First, testing is important but is powerless without good policy. Over the past year, there were periods where Australia’s testing rate was about double Canada’s, but since last summer overall rates have converged and at times Canada’s rate has exceeded Australia’s. Testing tells you what you’re dealing with. It doesn’t tell you how to deal with it.

Second, both external and internal travel restrictions are effective. Australian states – over the objections of the national government – are quick to close their borders to each other as well as the outside world. Since last September, the highest daily count of new cases nationally has been 44. Yet even after five months of stable, low numbers, people still had to quarantine for 14 days to go to Western Australia (rescinded as of Feb. 5, 2021).

On Jan. 31, a single case popped up in Perth, in Western Australia: a guard working in the hotel quarantine program. His flatmates tested negative, as have others of his reported contacts. Yet Victoria has closed its border to most populated areas of Western Australia and will fine people up to the equivalent of $4,900 if they enter without a permit.

Third, people are more likely to follow rules if you enforce them. Victoria levied the equivalent of about $29.5 million in fines last year. People were upset. Many resulted from minor infractions and/or confusion about what was permitted. Most weren’t paid and all but the most brazen violators can get the fine rescinded if they go to court and promise to behave. But the government took the heat to make a point. Pandemic control measures carry the force of law. Four hundred people were arrested at the November anti-lockdown rally.

Fourth, decisions are swift and decisive. Australia doesn’t wait for a prolonged spike in numbers. As soon as there is a small outbreak – a single case in Perth, a few cases in the Northern Beaches area of  Sydney – the system springs into action. The hot zones are mapped. Activities are suspended. Contact tracing and testing intensify. Perth and the surrounding region are locked down for an initial five-day period – the vaunted circuit-breaker approach that gives the testing-and-tracing system time to nip the contagion in the bud before the numbers get out of hand.

But the most important lesson is that Australia learned and applied the lessons. It gave up on selective restrictions when the modelling and the epidemiology suggested they couldn’t keep numbers stable and low.

The world knew from the beginning that travel was a major risk factor. Australia took that knowledge to heart. Leaders took a whole-of-pandemic perspective, reasoning that in the case of Victoria, which had most of the country’s cases for months, a severe 112-day lockdown would be less damaging to health and the economy than attempts to finesse the risks with more selective policies. The state premiers became pandemic hawks, determined to do whatever it took to avoid greater and more prolonged misery.

I don’t know how closely Australian officials have observed Canada’s pandemic performance. I suspect they would use it as an object lesson in what not to do. There is, of course, no pan-Canadian strategy – that is part of the problem – but too many provinces have catered to special-interest group pleading, played to their political bases, left bars open, made mask-wearing optional, did little enforcement and responded belatedly to emerging threats. They gave the virus a huge headstart before they chased it in earnest.

Policy and practice have to be grounded in an understanding of the citizenry. Fascinating new research reported in The Lancet shows that countries with “loose” cultures of adherence to social norms (like Canada, the U.S., most of Europe) have had infection rates five times higher, and death rates nine times higher, than those with “tight” cultures (such as Singapore, China and South Korea). Australia and New Zealand are in the loose culture camp, but they have succeeded nonetheless. They did not bank on voluntary, universal adherence to sensible guidelines. They did not make suggestions or request adherence. They raised the stakes, communicated unambiguously, came down hard and showed force where force was needed.

For once, the resolve appears to have achieved consensus among governments of different political stripes. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a social democrat, as are three Australian premiers. The other three state premiers are conservatives, as is Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Despite their political differences, they’ve all sung largely from the same pandemic-control hymn book.

Now that more virulent mutations are on the scene. Canada needs to steepen its learning curve. The material is not difficult to master. The lessons are clear. The learning from failure has gone on too long. If Canada wants to succeed, emulate success.

Australia’s strategy is worth a close look not because the country is a paragon of hyper-efficiency and extraordinary governance, but because it is not. You don’t have to be perfect to do well. You simply have to say what you mean; mean what you say; pay attention to the science; and accept that while you may be vilified in some quarters for overreach, you invite catastrophe if you underestimate the strength and agility of the virus.

Source: What Canada can learn from Australia’s COVID response

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If Trudeau Really Wants to “Bring Canadians Along” On Big Issues, He Must Improve the Consultation Process

2021/02/09 Leave a comment

More on narratives. Not sure how realistic this is in the context of an adversial and partisan environment along with time pressures. Changing how people feel normally takes longer than one government mandate but agree on need to address perceptions and feelings as well as facts:

In an interview with The Toronto Star last week, the prime minister expressed regret that in its first term his government didn’t always do enough “to bring Canadians along” on big initiatives. Ideally, it would be “involving Canadians as active, engaged citizens on the work we’re doing,” he said.

As a team with expertise in public engagement, we thought we’d weigh in.

The Liberals’ current agenda includes some ambitious social-change initiatives, such as Reconciliation, systemic racism, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), and fighting climate change. To defeat the pandemic, they must mobilize the entire country.

All would benefit from better citizen engagement but what, exactly, does that mean? Trudeau is on the right track when he says that “to bring people along” it is not enough that they know what’s going on, they also need to feel it. We think that his government could build on this insight to make public consultations much more effective and meaningful for Canadians.

Engagement Should Challenge How We Think and Feel

One way that governments try to bring people along on initiatives is by “informing” them. Providing the right facts and information can raise awareness on issues such as Reconciliation or racism, which is helpful.

But knowing that, say, racism exists and is wrong is not enough to end it. As Trudeau suggests, attitudes like these are also anchored in our values and emotions – in how we “feel” about others. Facts and information are rarely enough to change or eliminate negative feelings.

Real change requires adjustments at an emotional as well as an intellectual level and engagement can help. The key lies in something we call public narratives.

A public narrative is a theme or motif that people use to give order and meaning to a complex set of facts, values, emotions, and more. Basically, narratives give us a viewpoint or mental map of a situation.

For example, our traditional views on treating illness are shaped by a narrative in which death is the primordial enemy and anything that postpones it is a victory. Causing death when life can be preserved is a terrible wrong.

Narratives like this are deeply embedded in our culture. We internalize them early in life and they become part of our shared identity and worldview.

But these narratives can and do evolve. Many people have watched their loved ones suffer or lose their faculties before dying. The experience can be heart wrenching and those who go through it often come out changed. The public narrative around treating illness no longer fits their experience, and they want to see it changed.

Public Consultations Tend to Divide Where they Should Unite

The lesson for governments is that successful social change often requires narrative building. As circumstances change, so do people’s experiences. Society evolves and, eventually, public narratives are called into question and need a reset, say, on treating illness, protecting the environment, or responding to systemic racism.

Let’s note, however, that turning our attention to the role of values and emotions in engagement doesn’t mean that facts no longer matter. The challenge is to find a narrative that aligns complex emotions AND informs people – to arrive at a viewpoint that resonates with Canadians’ emotions and is truthful and accurate:

Unfortunately, traditional public consultations weren’t designed for this kind of deliberation. Far from reconciling competing facts, values and emotions, they tend to pit them against one another, without doing the hard work of aligning them.

Take the Department of Justice’s consultations on MAiD. Canadians were invited to fill out a questionnaire, which allowed officials to tally up how many people feel one way vs. another. The Department also held a series of roundtables, where select experts and stakeholders were invited to discuss their views on MAiD.

Processes like this are more likely to divide than to unite people. Advocates at the table may be polite about their differences (or not), but narrative building is not part of their agenda. In their view, their job is to make the case for their views, while defending them against criticism, much like lawyers in a court case. Processes like this tend to sharpen and deepen the differences.

By comparison, narrative building discourages competition and instead promotes collaboration by setting different “rules of engagement.” In our approach, participants must agree to:

  1. Recognize the legitimacy of one another’s lived experience.
  2. Focus the dialogue on how the narrative in question can be adjusted to align people’s emotions and understanding in new and better ways.
  3. Be guided by a facilitator who will ensure the rules are respected.

These rules commit people to listening empathetically to the experiences of others and working together to find innovative ways to reconcile tensions through a better narrative. In short, they put people’s emotional intelligence to work, along with knowledge and facts.  Done well, this should lead to a win/win.

Ministers and Parliamentary Committees Should Lead Public Dialogues

Finally, regarding Trudeau’s goal of ensuring his government “brings people along,” we think ministers and/or parliamentary committees could and should do more to engage the public directly on narrative building in areas such as systemic racism, climate change, and MAiD.

This would be a departure from the usual “communications approach,” where a minister or leader uses speeches and other tools to deliver a fully formed narrative. In our approach, politicians are as much facilitators as a decision-makers. They present ideas to the public, but they also engage the public in a dialogue about them and adjust and adapt the narrative as the dialogue progresses.

The goal is to have government draw on the public’s experiences to build the narrative, while showing real give and take in its interactions with Canadians. This assures the public of a meaningful role in the process, which, in turn, builds legitimacy around the narrative. In Trudeau’s language, it “brings them along” and makes them “feel” that they are part of the change.

Unfortunately, most of the government’s public consultations barely scratch the surface of this kind of engagement. If Trudeau really wants to bring Canadians along, why not start by hauling engagement over to the other side of this competitive/collaborative divide?

Dr. Don Lenihan is Senior Associate at the Institute on Governance and an internationally recognized expert on public engagement, governance, and policy development. For more, visit his website at: www.middlegroundengagement.com

Andrew Balfour is Managing Partner at Rubicon Strategy in Ottawa.

Source: If Trudeau Really Wants to “Bring Canadians Along” On Big Issues, He Must Improve the Consultation Process

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When Liberalism Grows Up

2021/02/03 Leave a comment

An interesting read, a bit similar in tone and approach to Adam Gopnik’s A Thousand Small Sanities in its praise of incrementalism and pragmatic approach:

The end of the history of music, at least in the Western classical tradition, can be dated to the warm, rainy evening in August of 1952 in Woodstock, New York, when a pianist first performed John Cage’s “4’33″”, a work consisting solely of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. Cage’s composition was perhaps the natural conclusion of a cultural evolution that began in medieval abbeys and Renaissance courts, thrived in German churches and Italian opera houses, and flourished under Dvorak, Mahler, and Shostakovich.

Despite the uproar over “4’33″”, music did not die. Less than two years later, in July of 1954, Bill Haley and His Comets enjoyed rock and roll’s first major commercial success with “Rock Around the Clock.” Over the next seven decades, popular music exploded, evolved, and globalized: bebop, folk, bossa nova, blues rock, soul, country, glam, reggae, prog rock, disco, punk, metal, new wave, grunge, hip-hop, reggaeton, EDM, K-Pop, mumble rap. Classical music stayed popular, but further innovation in that genre was relegated to the ivory tower, subsidized performing arts centers, and the occasional film score.

Liberalism may be at a similar point today. A combination of social compacts, globalization, demographics, and technology have made evident some of liberalism’s limitations. But we could just as likely see not a reversion to a pre-liberal past, but an explosion of new diverse, experimental, chaotic, and rebellious liberal political traditions.

Liberalism may be at a similar point today. A combination of social compacts, globalization, demographics, and technology have made evident some of liberalism’s limitations. But we could just as likely see not a reversion to a pre-liberal past, but an explosion of new diverse, experimental, chaotic, and rebellious liberal political traditions.

Just as Bob Dylan, the Beatles, or Bob Marley would have sounded jarring to Bach or Brahms, future liberalism may appear almost unrecognizable to today’s observer.And yet, just as the functions and forms of classical music are foundational and familiar to any contemporary performer of popular music (there would be no Beyoncé without Beethoven, no Chance the Rapper without Tchaikovsky), liberalism could well remain the basis of all future politics. Contemporary life almost anywhere in the world is so pervasively imbued with liberalism that it will be impossible to fully escape its gravitational force.

Francis Fukuyama, in his essay “Liberalism and Its Discontents,” mourns the global “wave of discontent” with liberal democracy, a system of governance that ensures checks and balances by combining accountability with the rule of law. He says that liberalism, by ensuring human dignity through tolerance, equal rights, and individual choice, “tends toward a kind of universalism.” He laments the threats now faced by liberalism from within and without—from authoritarian regimes, the economic forces of neoliberalism run amok, and the cultural hollowness created by stoic individualism.

This account of liberalism and its present-day challenges may be zeitgeist-appropriate, but it is not entirely satisfying. One problem is that liberalism, without sufficient context, is frustratingly nebulous. As historian Adam Tooze notes, liberalism “means and has meant many different things:” After all, “John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, John Rawls and Margaret Thatcher are all reasonably identified as liberals.”

In fact, depending on your vantage point, two very distinct strains of liberalism either briefly converged or split apart around the time of the French Revolution. There was the bourgeois liberalism of Hanseatic burghers, London coffeehouses, Scottish moral philosophers, and landed American colonists. Then there was proletarian liberalism, which recognized structural inequities and believed that politics was about righting social and economic wrongs in favor of the systemically disadvantaged. Both conceptions arose within the Third Estate; both required rebellion against the ancien régime of the European aristocracy. But they diverged to become the forerunners of the Western political traditions of the right (conservatism, libertarianism, Austrian economics, Christian democracy) and left (progressivism, socialism, Keynesianism, social democracy). In this sense, all modern democratic politics in advanced industrial societies has been a contest between two liberal traditions.

Additionally, liberalism, contrary to Fukuyama’s somewhat Whiggish account of its progress, stumbled from crisis to crisis for much of its history. Despite the 18th-century revolutions, the 19th century was in some ways decidedly illiberal, featuring a reactionary political elite in Europe, chattel slavery in the United States, and global wars of nationalism and colonialism. The first half of the 20th century forced the more liberal powers to contend with fascism and manifestations of competing imperialisms, including colonial competition, domestic oppression, and ideological compromises. In the second half of the century, liberals had to contend against Soviet communism, often prioritizing ends over means. The people of Algeria, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, and South Africa may be forgiven for their lack of nostalgia for the post-World War II liberal international order. Fukuyama’s contention that postwar Europeans “saw the folly of organizing politics around an exclusive and aggressive understanding of nation” does not fully acknowledge Europe’s rigidity when it came to immigration, decolonization, and multiculturalism.

None of this means that liberalism should be jettisoned on grounds of hypocrisy, as its critics frequently conclude; but the case for liberalism is far stronger if made on concrete and material rather than moral grounds. It remains the case that liberalism, not any other ideology, created the conditions for the absence of large-scale conflict and the growth of unprecedented (albeit unevenly distributed) global prosperity over the past three decades.

There are also inconsistencies in Fukuyama’s portrayal of the universality of liberalism. As he observes, liberal individualism has always been at odds with the social proclivities of human beings, especially in “non-Western societies,” where “kin, caste, or ethnic ties are still facts of life.” Yet he subsequently argues that “liberalism properly understood is perfectly compatible with communitarian impulses and has been the basis for the flourishing of deep and diverse forms of civil society.”

There are also inconsistencies in Fukuyama’s portrayal of the universality of liberalism. As he observes, liberal individualism has always been at odds with the social proclivities of human beings, especially in “non-Western societies,” where “kin, caste, or ethnic ties are still facts of life.”

So, is liberalism then universal, or isn’t it? Is it compatible with identity politics—and, if so, to what extent? Those questions remain unresolved; and, being unresolved, they lie at the heart of many of liberalism’s problems today.

For liberalism, the equivalent of John Cage’s “4’33″” composition may have been the evening in August of 2008 when the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics served as an announcement of China’s global ambitions. On the same day, Russian forces entered Georgia. In the same month, Lehman Brothers laid off 1,500 employees, a precursor to its crash and the global financial crisis. In that year, the Chinese navy deployed to the Gulf of Aden in its first modern operations outside its claimed territorial waters. These developments, though obscured by Barack Obama’s historic election victory that November, heralded an end to Western liberal primacy.

Still, liberalism has not come crashing down in the years since. Liberal aspirations—human dignity, individualism, equal rights—remain achievable, desirable, and inherently unobjectionable. What the events of the last twelve years have done is to expose liberalism’s inherent weaknesses. Human beings are not just logical but emotional creatures. Free markets attain miraculous economic growth but undermine equality of opportunity. Access to abundant information does not guarantee enlightenment. Individuals exercising free choice may choose to be tribal. Elected officials exploit these conditions.

The way to perfect these imperfections is not simply to reaffirm liberalism’s moral superiority. It is to tinker continuously with liberalism, exploring the potentially infinite variations upon its themes.

Source: https://www.orfonline.org/research/when-liberalism-grows-up/

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‘It’s long overdue’: unions, FBEC weigh in on top leadership’s push for greater diversity, inclusion in federal public service

2021/02/02 Leave a comment

Some reactions (including mine):

Liberal MP Greg Fergus says he thinks the government’s launch of new priorities to increase diversity and inclusion within the federal bureaucracy ‘will make a better, stronger public service—one that reflects the richness of Canada’s diversity at all levels, and that will make more resilient policy choices and provide better options that will reach all Canadians.’

Union leaders and a Federal Black Employee Caucus representative say the steps are “long overdue,” following Privy Council Clerk Ian Shugart’s recent “call to action” to senior bureaucrats to diversify the leadership ranks in the federal public service, and Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos’ recent announcement to increase diversity and inclusion within the larger bureaucracy and address glaring gaps in staffing of Indigenous, Black and other racialized employees. 

But both Mr. Shugart’s call to “encourage and support the voices that have been long marginalized in our organizations” as well as Mr. Duclos’ recognition that “too many public servants continue to face obstacles” and it’s “time to close the gaps and eliminate the barriers that remain,” preceded an internal audit conducted by the Public Service Commission showing three equity groups—Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and members of visible minorities—aren’t proportionally represented in public service hiring processes.

On Jan. 26, Mr. Duclos and Liberal MP Greg Fergus (Hull-Aylmer, Que.), parliamentary secretary to the president of the Treasury Board, announced a number of key initiatives surrounding diversity and inclusion in the public service, including a focus on disaggregated data, increasing the diversity of the bureaucracy’s senior leadership, a review of the Employment Equity Act as well as possible amendments to the Public Service Employment Act.

“As I’ve said before, I’m committed to achieving this ambitious change, and I know that co-developing our policies and programs with our partners will lead to more innovation, more experimentation, and new way to address the challenges ahead,” said Mr. Duclos in a press release. “In time, we will build a public service that is the true reflection of our pluralism and diversity.”

In an interview with The Hill Times, Mr. Fergus said that the release of these new priorities “have been in the works for a while” and that it’s “great to see it come to fruition.”

“I think this will make a better, stronger public service—one that reflects the richness of Canada’s diversity at all levels, and that will make more resilient policy choices and provide better options that will reach all Canadians,” said the Liberal MP.

“I think the overall aim is bang on, and the way to do that of course is through disaggregated data—you can’t change what you don’t measure—and we want to make sure that you have the right people in place, there will be more mentorship and sponsorship of people with talent throughout the system and making sure that they’re able to accede to leadership roles, there will be a centre for diversity within the public service to continue working on that,” said Mr. Fergus.

“I think Canadians truly appreciate how much the machinery of government is important for collective action—for our health, for income support, for making sure that people are getting what they need,” said Mr. Fergus.

‘These issues aren’t anything new for us’ 

“I think it’s great, I think it’s long overdue,” said Atong Ater, member of the Federal Black Employee Caucus’ (FBEC) core team when asked about the government’s Jan. 26 announcement.

“These issues aren’t anything new for us, working in this area for a couple of years,” said Ms. Ater. “But it’s a good first step—I think the action comes afterwards, but as an instructive or signaling piece from a central agency, I think it’s a good piece of work.”

Focusing on disaggregated data is a major priority for FBEC.

“What we’re seeing, particularly with these releases and announcements, is that the data reinforces what we’ve been hearing anecdotally from our members, and that’s why data has been so important to our work, particularly in this era of big data and how data is used to drive policy decisions,” she said. “It’s of the utmost importance, and we applaud the direction that the federal government is taking, that they’re taking this seriously, and also sharing the information.”

Atong Ater, member of the Federal Black Employee Caucus’ (FBEC) core team. Ms. Ater said ‘data reinforces what we’ve been hearing anecdotally from our members, and that’s why data has been so important to our work.’ Photograph courtesy of Atong Ater

The annual Public Service Employee Survey was conducted from Nov. 30, 2020 through to Jan. 29, 2021, and measures employees’ opinions about engagements, leadership, workforce, workplace well-being, compensation, diversity and inclusion, as well as the impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Results of the survey are expected later this year.

Clerk of the Privy Council issues ‘call to action’ 

Mr. Shugart, Canada’s top civil servant, issued a call to action on anti-racism, equity and inclusion in the federal public service on Jan. 22.

“The past several months have precipitated deep reflection on the unjust treatment of Black people, other racialized groups, and Indigenous peoples in our society,” wrote Mr. Shugart. “As public servants come forward and courageously share their lived experiences, the urgency of removing systemic racism from our institutions and from our culture becomes more evident.”

In his note, Mr. Shugart called on leaders within the public service to appoint Indigenous employees and Black and other racialized employees to and within the government’s executive group, sponsor high-potential employees within these groups to prepare them for leadership roles, support the participation of these employees in leadership development programs, and recruit highly-qualified candidates from across all regions in Canada.

“This call to action represents specific and meaningful actions. My expectation is that progress will be measured and lessons shared. While senior leaders are accountable, this set of actions demands our collective responsibility—at all levels—and a recognition that the existing equity work underway must continue,” wrote Mr. Shugart.

‘Much work remains to be done’ 

On Jan. 28, the Public Service Commission released an audit report that reviewed the representation of employment equity groups throughout five stages of the recruitment process: job application, automated screening, organizational screening, assessment, and appointment, and found that Black candidates experienced a greater drop in representation than members of other visible minority groups both at the organizational screening stage as well as at the assessment stage.

The report also found that the representation rate of persons with disabilities decreased at the assessment and appointment stages, that the representation rate of visible minority groups declined at the organizational screening and assessment stages, and that Indigenous candidates’ representation rate decreased at the assessment stage.

“While progress has been achieved in making the federal public service more representative, much work remains to be done. This audit is a call to action. All Canadians applying to public service jobs should have an equal opportunity to highlight their unique talents,” according to a joint statement from PSC president Patrick Borbey and commissioners Fiona Spencer and Daniel Tucker.

The events of the last two weeks follows the release late last year of a proposed class-action lawsuit by 12 former and current Black federal public servants alleging that Black employees have been systematically excluded from advancement and subjected to discrimination within the government for decades.

Staffing one of the most common issues raised by PSAC members, according to union president  

Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) president Chris Aylward told The Hill Times that his union welcomes the review—and that staffing is one of the most common issues raised by PSAC’s members.

“An overhaul of the federal government staffing system is long overdue to address the systemic barriers that impact our members, especially our members from equity groups,” said Mr. Aylward.

“We hear countless stories from our members who experience racism, sexism, ableism and discrimination during the hiring process, and the recourse mechanisms that are in place are truly insufficient. They are without any enforcement, they are without any teeth.”

But Mr. Aylward said any legislative changes to the Employment Act can’t be made without meaningful consultation with PSAC and with other bargaining agents.

“A lot of it is stemming from several years ago when the Public Service Commission basically delegated the authority to individual departments and managers, and now it’s simply viewed that managers can hire whoever they want,” said Mr. Aylward. “So we think it’s the right step forward, it’s long overdue, these issues are long-standing within the public service.”

Mr. Aylward told The Hill Times that he and other bargaining agent representatives met with the Treasury Board and with the PSC on Jan. 28, where he said he hoped that this was the beginning of an inclusive, consultative, and collaborative approach to staffing issues.

Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) National Capital Region director Waheed Khan echoed Mr. Aylward’s comments.

“Things need to change, this is long, long overdue, and [the government needs] to take action,” said Mr. Khan. “This is not the first time we’re getting excited, I’m still very hopeful that this will lead to some real changes, but I always have to be cautious.”

Mr. Khan said he had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Shugart early in January ahead of his call to action.

“It seems that senior government leaders always want to put their own stamp on things, they want to start a new initiative, and they forget about anything else that has happened in the past,” said Mr. Khan. “Because in government, everything takes time, so by the time you gain momentum and start getting things done, you have new people who want to start new things, so I pointed out to Mr. Shugart: you need to own the work that has been done.”

‘They’ve already moved the bar a fair amount’

Andrew Griffith, a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Environics Institute keeps a close eye on public service data, and said the ongoing commitments made by the Treasury Board in that area is “a really good thing.”

“I think quite frankly that they’ve already moved the bar a fair amount by actually reporting data broken down by each visible minority group,” said Mr. Griffith. “There’s obviously more that can be done there—it’s always a good idea to have better data—but sometimes you do get to the problem where you have too much data and you wonder whether we have the capacity to analyze it, but better to have too much than not enough.”

Mr. Griffith said he didn’t believe the government is just virtue-signalling on these renewed commitments to greater diversity and inclusion, and that the events of the last week have been consistent with the government’s overall commitment—however it’s implemented—to greater diversity and inclusion in all institutions.

Source: https://hilltimes.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a90bfb63c26a30f02131a677b&id=59998b8fc3&e=685e94e554

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Vaccines For Data: Israel’s Pfizer Deal Drives Quick Rollout — And Privacy Worries

2021/02/02 Leave a comment

A key factor behind Israel’s success in vaccination:

How has tiny Israel beat out bigger countries on COVID-19 vaccinations, securing a steady stream of vials and inoculating a larger share of its citizenry than any other nation?

Israel paid a premium, locked in an early supply of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and struck a unique deal: vaccines for data.

The nation of some 9 million promised Pfizer a swift vaccine rollout, along with data from Israel’s centralized trove of medical statistics to study “whether herd immunity is achieved after reaching a certain percentage of vaccination coverage in Israel,” according to their agreement.

“We said to Pfizer … that the moment they give us the vaccine, we’ll be able to vaccinate at the speed they’ve never heard of,” Israel’s health minister Yuli Edelstein tells NPR.

Israel’s small size and technologically advanced public health system offer an attractive model for Pfizer to demonstrate the impact of the vaccine on an entire population. Pfizer has not signed a similar agreement with any other country, company spokesperson Jerica Pitts says.

The vaccines-for-data trade-off has sparked impassioned debate in Israel among data privacy experts, biotech researchers and the country’s own medical ethics board, weighing the potential benefits of mining the population for vaccine insights against the potential abuse of millions of personal medical records.

“We need to understand that [Israel’s agreement with Pfizer] is going to be one of the, I would say, widest medical experiments on humans at the 21st century,” says the Israel Democracy Institute’s Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a data privacy advocate and a leading voice questioning the Pfizer data deal.

Some Israeli commentators have accused Shwartz Altshuler of seeking to spoil a successful national campaign that the government has branded with the hashtag “VacciNation.” She and many other Israeli experts tend to concur that quick access to the vaccine is Israel’s most important priority.

Israel is already reporting promising initial results of the vaccination campaign. The Health Ministry said Thursday that out of a group of 715,425 Israelis fully vaccinated, only 317 — 0.04% — got infected with the virus at least one week after their second shot, and 16 were hospitalized with serious symptoms.

Israeli HMOs have reported a decrease in infection rates among those vaccinated with one shot of the Pfizer vaccine, and a drop in the country’s serious COVID-19 infections for older age categories a couple of weeks after Israel started its national vaccination drive.

“I think that it’s really very special that Israel’s been recognized by Pfizer as a country that the whole world can learn from,” says Diane Levin-Zamir, director of health education at Israel’s largest HMO, Clalit Health Services. “There’s good research coming out and we’re being very transparent about the data.”

Vaccines and politics

Most Israelis are celebrating their record-setting vaccination drive. “To be the first place in the world, it’s a good feeling,” says Yoni Boigenman, an Israeli getting a first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at Jerusalem’s main sports stadium, which has been converted into a hive of needles and nurses 14 hours every day.

Close to a third of the population has received at least one shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and about 17% received both shots, far beyond any other country. Israel aims to be the first to vaccinate most of its citizenry against COVID-19 before elections are held March 23.

The vaccine drive is central to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection campaign. The first Israeli to receive a shot, Netanyahu mounted his syringe in a glass box, the needle angled upward like a rocket ship, with a plaque riffing off the words of U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong: “One small shot for a man, a giant step for everyone’s health.”

Israel has waved away human rights groups’ assertions that the country is obliged to provide vaccines to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip; Israel says the Palestinian Authority holds that responsibility.

Still, Israel has decided to send 5,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinian medical workers in the West Bank, with an initial shipment this week, Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s office tells NPR. Palestinian officials signed late deals with vaccine manufacturers and still await shipments to begin vaccinating the public.

Some Israeli medical experts warn that widespread immunity cannot be achieved so long as millions of Palestinians are not vaccinated. Palestinian officials say they do not expect to vaccinate the majority of their population until at least the end of the year.

“It’s a gold mine”

Nearly every Israeli citizen and resident belongs to one of four public HMOs, a health care system rooted in the national trade union of Israel’s early years. Every Israeli’s full medical history – from physician visits to hospitalizations – is accessible to any health provider at the click of a mouse, a repository of digital records going back 30 years.

“It’s a gold mine,” says Ziv Ofek, who helped launch Israel’s public health database, which he asserts is unparalleled by any other country.

Unrelated to the Pfizer study in Israel, Ofek’s medical data company, MDClone, is helping assemble a separate Israeli coronavirus patient database, with privacy protections. Israeli researchers are already tapping it for insights, such as findings that suggest a higher likelihood of dying from COVID-19 among those with fatty liver disease.

The data offers potential for vaccine research, too.

“Is there any progression of other diseases? … Does it impact your hypertension?” Ofek says. “All you need to do is just to be able to load the fact that you’ve been vaccinated, and then you can run new studies.”

Privacy concerns

The Israeli Health Ministry initially kept the terms of the Pfizer agreement confidential, but on Jan. 17 published part of the English-language contract, dated Jan. 6, to reassure the public about data use. Instead, the fine print has raised further questions.

Israel’s medical data experts want to know exactly what Israel is giving Pfizer, and whether the data being studied amounts to a clinical trial without the express consent of the millions of Israelis rushing to get vaccinated.

In interviews, Israeli officials insist they are only giving Pfizer anonymous statistics already provided to the public, such as the number of weekly cases and hospitalizations.

Pfizer said in a statement that it “will not receive any identifiable individual health information. The [Israeli Ministry of Health] will only share aggregated epidemiological data.”

But the contract says Israel will give Pfizer unspecified “subgroup analyses and vaccine effectiveness analyses, as agreed by the Parties,” leaving open the possibility that more personalized categories of data could be delivered.

“Can you have a real research based on … statistical numbers? This is not research,” Ofek says. Israeli health officials “claim they don’t give patient-level data, only statistics. There’s a big question whether it’s the whole truth, part of the truth or no truth at all.”

Privacy and medical data experts say buckets of data scrubbed of patients’ personal details can still be traced back to identify people if the sample is small enough, revealing sensitive medical details such as who is HIV-positive. If Israel transfers such private data to Pfizer, there are concerns it could get hacked and disseminated by third parties.

“Your insurance company will know all your medical history. Your employer will know it. The political campaigner who would like to convince you to vote for someone would know everything about your medical history, not to say about people who would like to marry your children,” warns Shwartz Altshuler, describing what she calls a small concern.

The contract also allows Pfizer or Israel to “provide input, make factual corrections” and delay publication of their studies of the vaccine’s effectiveness, which some Israeli medical data and privacy experts say could allow either party – each with vested commercial and political interests in the vaccine’s success – to hide or delay publication of failures. A Pfizer spokesperson did not respond to NPR’s query on this matter.

The head of Israel’s medical ethics review board, Dr. Eitan Friedman, says the review board has requested further clarification on the agreement. The government has not officially responded to the board’s request to review the agreement, he says.

If Pfizer and Israel are studying response to the vaccine by subgroups of Israelis’ demographic profiles and medical conditions, it should qualify as a clinical study requiring his board’s approval, says Friedman.

“There needs to be total transparency. No one party can override the real data. We need to know the truth,” he says.

The data study and fast vaccine rollout have fed some suspicions. Skepticism among the vaccine is prevalent among Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel.

“I heard so many rumors about this. Some say … they want to see the experience on the people here, if it’s a good vaccine or not. That’s why I’m a little confused about it,” says Nuha Sharif, a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem who nevertheless came to the Jerusalem sports arena to get her shot.

She has Israeli health insurance and received the vaccination for free, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who are still waiting for vaccine manufacturers to deliver vials to the Palestinian territories.

Some Israelis getting shots at the arena say they are not worried about their data.

“If it can help the world to get out of it, I don’t care,” Noam Ben Dror says. “I don’t think it’s a big secret, my personal data.”

Source: Vaccines For Data: Israel’s Pfizer Deal Drives Quick Rollout — And Privacy Worries

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The federal government has a toxic workplace problem. Julie Payette is the tip of the iceberg

2021/01/30 Leave a comment

A bit overblown given the selection of departments, CBSA and CSC enforcement departments. A broader look at departments would indicate a range of workplaces, some better than others.

For example, 19 percent of CBSA employees reported harassment compared to 14 percent for the total public service, satisfaction with resolution, 28 percent CBSA, 35 percent public service.

For CSC, 26 percent compared to the same 14 percent, satisfaction with resolution, 30 percent compared to the same 35 percent.

For contrast, take IRCC; 11 percent, lower than the government-wide 14 percent, satisfaction with resolution, 35 percent, same as the government-wide average.

Analysing 2017-19 staffing data (hirings, promotions, separations) and it is showing a modest improvement compared to the PSC audit. Hope to get this analysis out shortly:

The federal Liberal government has a deepening workplace problem.

Despite all the promises, targets, legislation and regulations, and all the good intentions to bring equity, harmony and respect into the federal public service, things seem to have gotten worse, not better.

For years, news stories have documented harassment or “toxic” workplaces in the unlikeliest spaces, be it in the RCMP, the military or now at one of the top public offices in the country — the governor general’s.

An independent review has described a “reign of terror” at Rideau Hall under Julie Payette and her friend and top aide, Assunta Di Lorenzo.

Its conclusions were powerful enough to lead Payette and Di Lorenzo to resign last week.

And it was maddening to read, in black and white.

The report, rife with redactions to protect the confidentiality of workers who suffered their wrath, was full of adjectives to describe a nightmare work environment: “hostile,” “negative,” “poisoned.”

Employees described “walking on eggshells” and reported “yelling, screaming, aggressive conduct, demeaning comments and public humiliations.”

But by blacking out details of specific incidents, it missed an opportunity to do everyone in the public service — and beyond — a public service. It needed to “show, not tell” exactly what cannot be tolerated in a modern workplace.

Because clearly, people still don’t get it.

Other federal workplaces are undergoing a similar crisis.

Mark O’Neill, the president of the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum, is currently on leave, and a review of complaints of workplace harassment is reportedly complete.

The Canadian Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg issued an apology and replaced its top executive after an independent review of complaints of systemic racism, homophobia and workplace issues.

The federal auditor general in 2019 criticized two other sprawling federal departments for failing to maintain respectful workplaces.

Investigations found the Canada Border Services Agency and Correctional Services Canada knew they had problems in the workplace, “yet neither organization had developed a comprehensive strategy to address them.”

“Employees feared reprisal if they made complaints of harassment, discrimination, or workplace violence against fellow employees or supervisors. They also had serious or significant concerns about a lack of civility and respect in their workplaces,” the auditor general found.

It was only on Thursday — the day after the Payette report was released — that the parliamentary public accounts committee examined that 2019 audit.

“A lot of the culture we’re seeing coming out at the governor general’s is embedded in almost every aspect of the public sector,” said NDP MP Matthew Green, “and a good snapshot of that is in CBSA and CSC.”

In the past, Ottawa has tried to effect change, usually through legislation.

In 2015, Justin Trudeau campaigned on a pledge to “take action to ensure that Parliament and federal institutions — including the public service, the RCMP and the Canadian Armed Forces — are workplaces free from harassment and sexual violence.”

His government passed legislation in 2018 to address harassment and violence in Bill C-65. New regulations under that law finally took effect this month.

The new law emphasizes employer accountability to prevent workplace harassment and violence. It defines harassment and violence, and expands the definition to include — as the Defence Department has informed its employees — “a full spectrum of unacceptable behaviours, ranging from teasing and bullying to sexual harassment and physical violence.”

On Thursday, by sheer coincidence, the federal Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety flagged three online training courses for all federal managers and employees on the new workplace regulations.

Too late for Rideau Hall.

The federal government has also set itself equity in employment goals using federal laws like the Employment Equity Act, yet it has failed to diversify the ranks of federal employees and managers.

An audit by the Public Service Commission published Thursday showed visible minorities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities are still not making it past the recruitment and hiring process.

Only women showed an increase in representation through hiring for the federal public service between 2016 and 2017.

The audit tracked more than 15,000 applications across 30 federal departments and agencies.

Disabled people saw the biggest drop, while among visible minority groups, Black Canadians fared worst.

It is likely the federal government wanted to get ahead of the dim picture painted by the Public Service Commission’s audit.

On Tuesday, it floated the notion of bringing in even more legislative changes to make the public service more diverse, this time through “possible amendments” to the Public Service Employment Act.

But the sad reality is, despite existing laws, even when women, visible minorities, Indigenous people and people with disabilities do succeed in getting their feet in the door, their work environments can be oppressive.

A lawsuit filed by a group of Black public service employees in December says they face systemic discrimination, racism and employee exclusion.

So far, some 400 Black public servants, current and former, have joined the effort to have a court certify the claim as a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government on behalf of 45,000 Black public servants.

Jennifer Phillips, who retired on Dec. 30 after 30 years at the Canada Revenue Agency, is one of the founding plaintiffs.

Based in Toronto, she first started working in CRA’s client services department and got only one promotion in all those years, to collections. She worked with the union to help other employees through the hiring and promotion process, and says she witnessed Black employees passed over, including herself, for jobs, while she saw others face demeaning comments. 

“I’ve seen it happen to others. It exists, but I’m one to brush things off,” she said.

It was after George Floyd’s death last spring, and a tone-deaf response by the department, that Phillips decided to mobilize with another founding plaintiff to organize the lawsuit and seek real change.

When she read about the report into Payette and Di Lorenzo’s treatment of their workers, Phillips said it all sounded very familiar, and she felt for the employees.

The prime minister, she says, owes them “a huge apology.”

“Could you imagine the mental health trauma to these individuals, of having to live it day after day, some of them keeping it to themselves before they start talking about it?”

Finally talking about toxic workplace environments is a relief, she said. “It’s like a weight off your shoulder. But you’re now second-guessing yourself — ‘Why did I take so long? Why did I let it happen?’”

Phillips said Trudeau should follow the example of U.S. President Joe Biden who, on his first day in office, said he would fire any staff member he finds showing disrespect to others. “Have a talk to all your leaders and let them know this type of behaviour is unacceptable and it will not be condoned.”

But Matthew Green, the New Democrats’ government operations critic, said the time for talk is over.

“Trudeau is big on branding and very, very short on delivery,” he said in an interview. “Time and time again, we see policies that on their face look progressive, but as soon as we scratch the surface it’s clear that they’re not actually resulting in outcomes.” 

He said if the Trudeau government “followed through on just a fraction of the promises they made to improve equity and workplace culture, we’d be a lot further along. Time and time again, reports are showing us that the culture remains, and there is zero accountability,” for what Green says is “ongoing workplace harassment and violence that’s being widely reported on.”

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/01/28/ottawa-has-a-toxic-workplace-problem-julie-payette-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg.html

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