Canadian Studies profs hold conference on how to stay critical without Harper around

2016/10/03 Leave a comment

While Twitter commentary has been biting, my take is that it is refreshing to have a group acknowledge its implicit (and sometimes explicit) biases.

A similar reflection others (e.g., public servants, the media) might also be warranted, although my sense is the media is becoming more critical as the government’s time in office becomes longer, with the related decisions (or non-decisions):

Canadian Studies professors slammed Stephen Harper’s Conservative government so much that they’re literally holding a conference in Ottawa to discuss how to keep their critical edge now that he’s gone.

“The loss of the Harper government for Canadian academics is not unlike the loss of George W. Bush for American comedians,” the description of the conference’s theme says.

“The question in this moment of optimism (which may well have passed by the time this conference comes around) is…What do we do now?”

Called “After the Deluge: Reframing/Sustaining Critique in Post-Harper Canada,” the conference will take place at Carleton University on Oct. 28 and 29.

The conference’s theme notes Canadian Studies professors have “long prided themselves on a robust critique of the Canadian State,” and outlines how the Conservative government under Harper antagonized scholars.

 It singles out the elimination of the long form census and budget cuts to Library and Archives Canada as examples of “attacks” on research infrastructure.

“The Harper government also hit the world of Canadian Studies at its doorstep by cancelling the Understanding Canada program in 2012,” it says.

The theme also questions whether Canadian Studies in general has become too “premised on oppositional critique of the state,” and whether that’s really the best approach for their research.

“Are generative, collaborative, appreciative, and assets-based approaches to Canadian Studies a failure of critical vigilance, or a long-overdue paradigm shift?” the conference’s theme ponders.

Peter Thompson, an associate professor at Carleton who’s helping organize the conference, said the event will be less blunt than the theme implies.

“The idea is not just bashing the Harper era,” he said. “It’s about to what extent is there a change, and looking at that with clear eyes. We’re not assuming that there’s a change in government so things are automatically better.”

Thompson — who was very careful to keep the discussion apolitical — did acknowledge that with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau overturning some of the Conservative government’s most controversial policies, there is the potential for contemporary research to become too soft.

“I don’t want to assume what people are going to say at the conference,” he said. “But yeah … it’s about making sure that critique, and that the sharpness of the critique, is still there even though things have changed.”

Papers presented at the conference will touch on areas such as national security, national symbols, and cultural policy, Thompson said.

The conference is organized as part of the Canadian Studies Network, and will also host the network’s annual general meeting.

Source: Canadian Studies profs hold conference on how to stay critical without Harper around | National Post

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Shared Services likely to become ‘money pit,’ says Canada’s former chief statistician who quit two weeks ago

2016/09/27 Leave a comment

In his words:

Canada’s former chief statistician, who publicly quit his job two weeks ago on principle to the cheers of hundreds of Statistics Canada employees, says Shared Services Canada is doomed to fail.

“There’s a really good chance Shared Services Canada will turn into a money pit,” Mr. Smith told The Hill Times after he resigned publicly as Canada’s chief statistician on Sept. 16.

Mr. Smith stepped down after fighting unsuccessfully to free Statistics Canada from Shared Services’ government IT department, which Mr. Smith said jeopardizes the number-crunching agency’s independence and integrity. As well, he said the model the government created for the government-wide IT management is doomed to fail.

…As a result of his departure, he told The Hill Times that he’s been iced-out of the deputy minister community, one he said he had never really been “in,” and, so far, said his claims have been dismissed by the government.

Mr. Smith said he thinks it’s a wrong-headed move to transfer Statistics Canada’s informatics infrastructure to Shared Services, but believes it’s the senior ranks of the bureaucracy that is pushing “extremely strongly,” in favour of the Shared Services model.

“This idea came out of the bureaucracy, the most senior bureaucracy is very committed to it, they don’t want to walk away from it. [The] Privy Council Office, Treasury Board Secretariat, and more people in the most senior ranks are strongly committed to this,” said Mr. Smith, adding that they were the ones to sell it to the current government as worth continuing.

“I think the government wants to believe it,” he said.

The $2-billion department, Shared Services, was created in 2011 by the previous Conservative government to consolidate and modernize the Government of Canada’s IT networks and personnel by 2020, a deadline it’s now uncertain about meeting, given extensive delays and potential greater costs than initially thought. Its three key tasks are to amalgamate all government email systems, merge data centres, and consolidate IT networks.

….Mr. Smith said, in principle, the job of the national statistics office is centered around information and technology, and “everything we do, from drawing samples, to collecting via the internet, to processing survey data and disseminating survey data, it absolutely requires informatics to run efficiently, and well and properly. … When the government created Shared Services Canada it took our away our authority to acquire informatics infrastructure, hardware, the servers, and the file servers we needed to do our job, and they gave that authority to SSC.”

Mr. Smith said even though he had the budget to purchase the informatics systems he wanted, the decision-making power had been taken away from him.

“Therefore they can stop me from disseminating data, from producing data, simply by withholding or failing to provide the informatics infrastructure—the computing power—to do it. And it doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day, if they do it out of malicious intent or whether they do it out of incompetence; the result is the same,” said Mr. Smith.

He said there was an “unacceptable level of risk” in its data centre infrastructure, which the two departments disagreed on where the actual drives would be located and who would have access. He said there was an inability for Shared Services to deliver the additional capacity required to move ahead with Statistics Canada’s plans to enhance its website to be more user-friendly. And he said there was, at the time he left, a “lineup” of policy departments at Statistics Canada’s door asking for new data as a result of the Liberal government’s emphasis in evidence-based decision-making.

“More money got spent, the results aren’t there, and this is simply because the decisions are outside the control of Statistics Canada now,” said Mr. Smith.

He added that although this was the state of affairs when he resigned, he’s optimistic that because of his outspoken critiques, “every effort will be made to make sure my predictions don’t come true.”

In response to the allegations last week, senior officials from Shared Services and the Treasury Board Secretariat held a technical briefing where Shared Services Canada chief Ron Parker dismissed Mr. Smith’s concerns.

Mr. Parker said that he and Mr. Smith last met at an April meeting and there were “no technical or operational issues” raised. Mr. Smith said this is utterly false.

“I was appalled … for him to contend that there was no issues is absolutely absurd,” Mr. Smith said, adding that he recalls at that meeting raising a “litany of concerns.”

Mr. Smith said he thinks the government shouldn’t go further down the enterprise-wide IT path until a business plan and accountability model have been established between Shared Services and all partner departments. He said the government should be skeptical about its ability to deliver on such a massive transformation, pointing to the Phoenix pay system debacle that’s disrupted or affected the pay for 82,000 public servants. The Phoenix pay system has cost the government more than $50-million to fix, and the $398-million Email Transformation Initiative to move all government email addresses to one your.email@canada.ca system is on hold and 18 months past when it was supposed to be fully implemented.

The complaints from Statistics Canada are not the first from a department who is unsatisfied with Shared Services work. A number of departments are unhappy about the service they’ve received and some other departments that deal with sensitive data have explored ways to opt out of the system. So far, Mr. Parker says the plans do not include any departments opting out of the agreement.

Despite this, Mr. Parker declared the benefits of the enterprise approach remain clear, and “the partners are part of that model and therefore there’s nothing, nothing in the plan that envisions opting-out.”

….The decision to resign came after months of trying to bring attention to his concerns, said Mr. Smith, who has been raising issues since before the current government was elected and after, in meetings with the minister responsible for Statistics Canada, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains (Mississauga-Malton, Ont.), and Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick.

He thought the government’s promise to enhance his agency’s independence would bring sea change to fix his problems with Shared Services. When it didn’t and the issues with Shared Services Canada began to dominate conversations with employees who were saying it affected their ability to do their job, he decided he needed to make it clear he was prepared to resign. After that didn’t move the needle, he submitted his resignation letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) on Aug. 3, enough time he thought for them to implement an independent appointment process for his successor. That didn’t happen and instead the government appointed Anil Arora, who was working as an assistant deputy minister at Health Canada.

“When I penned that letter I thought that the odds were overwhelmingly against it having any impact other than me winding up resigned, and my interpretation of the situation was correct,” said Mr. Smith, who didn’t hear anything from anyone in government from the point of submitting his resignation until Sept. 15, when letters came from both Mr. Wernick and Mr. Trudeau, accepting his resignation.

After the way government has handled his resignation, he thinks Canadians should be skeptical about their commitments to Statistics Canada.

While he doesn’t see himself as a whistleblower, since resigning he said he’s received a lot of encouragement from employees at the agency, who have sent him emails supporting his move and thanking him for standing up. He’s received support from the national statistics council, from provincial and territorial counterparts, and international support.

“Everybody sees the issue, and they’re all living the consequences,” Mr. Smith said.

Source: Shared Services likely to become ‘money pit,’ says Canada’s former chief statistician who quit two weeks ago – The Hill Times – The Hill Times

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Statistics Canada eyes the end of the short-form census

2016/09/27 Leave a comment

Other countries do this and makes sense, both from cost and accuracy perspectives. But complex transition:

The mandatory long-form census returned this year, a decade after it was last seen.

If things go as planned, a decade from now the short-form census won’t be seen again.

Statistics Canada is working on a plan for the 2026 census that would eliminate the mandatory short-form census that goes to every household and instead use existing government databases to conduct a virtual count of the population.

The plan would save taxpayers millions of dollars and provide the same information used by governments to plan roads, hospitals, schools and other public services.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act paint a detailed picture of what officials hope to have in place by 2026: a digital register of every Canadian that could be updated every five years, if not annually, and a smaller long-form questionnaire.

“This approach to replace the short-form questionnaire will require a complete redesign of the long-form questionnaire,” reads the April report provided to former chief statistician Wayne Smith.

The agency said in a statement that it hasn’t yet determined its approach for the 2021 census, but made no direct reference to the 2026 count. The statement said the agency “conducts ongoing research activities to determine the most efficient way of collecting census information.”

Source: Statistics Canada eyes the end of the short-form census – Macleans.ca

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Liberal replacement for Conservatives’ Office of Religious Freedoms costs four times as much | National Post

2016/09/22 Leave a comment

Irresponsible headline: the proper comparison would be with respect to the budget for the previous human rights division plus the Office of Religious Freedoms, which I suspect would show little to no change.

Comparing a basket of apples with one apple:

The overall budget for the Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion, which replaces the Conservative-era Office of Religious Freedoms, could exceed $18 million, according to foreign minister Stéphane Dion.

The office budget was stated at “up to $15 million” in a June press release from Global Affairs Canada. But that’s just the programming budget, according to the response — there’s anther $3.04 million allotted annually to operations and salaries.

That compares to $4.25 million and $720,386, respectively, under the Office of Religious Freedoms.

Since its creation four months ago, the office has been “working to identify programming opportunities,” Dion said in response to a Conservative question on the order paper.

The office is engaging with organizations that already received funding under the previous administration, Dion confirmed, but also “new stakeholders” looking at a broader range of issues including “peaceful pluralism, inclusion, diversity and democracy.”

 Those themes are divided into three divisions, with 36 full-time employees in total: human rights and indigenous affairs; inclusion and religious freedom; and democracy.

Only five people worked for the Office of Religious Freedoms, Dion said.

To focus on indigenous rights abroad could force the government to walk a tightrope, since some Canadian mining operations have been opposed by local populations in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Still, Dion told Postmedia in May he thought “the overwhelming majority of the mining industry of Canada will welcome this focus … they will be willing to work with this office, I’m sure.”

The buck doesn’t stop there for human rights promotion, with Dion explaining that heads of Canada’s diplomatic missions are now “empowered” to speak out about issues in their day-to-day responsibilities, and to media.

“Human rights promotion, including freedom of religious or belief, is now entrenched in our heads of missions’ core objectives and priorities and will be included in their annual performance commitments,” he said.

Source: Liberal replacement for Conservatives’ Office of Religious Freedoms costs four times as much | National Post

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No excuse for Ottawa’s bungled technology: Barrie McKenna

2016/09/20 Leave a comment

One of the rare commentaries that connects the dots between Shared Services Canada, the Phoenix pay system, and the inability of government to manage complex IT projects (admittedly, some of the most complex around).

It does beg the question, as posed by Donald Savoie in his book, What Is Government Good At?: A Canadian Answer.

One also has to ask the question, in all the decks, analyses, MCs and TB submissions, were the risks clearly stated and assessed? Did the public servants provide ‘fearless advice’ or not?

Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal that tens of thousands of federal government workers are going unpaid because of the botched roll out of a new pay system.

Most civil servants are overpaid and underworked anyway, right?

Many Canadians may feel similarly untroubled that government data centres are frequently crashing, downing websites and leaving key agencies, such as Statistics Canada, unable to get timely economic information to financial markets.

But it does matter. Canada isn’t some tin-pot country that can’t pay its workers, run a computer or produce timely data. It’s a G7 country, a modern, advanced economy that should be a model of good governance.

There is a disturbing back story to these embarrassing headlines.

Turn back the clock to 2010. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was eager to demonstrate it could wring billions of dollars in savings out of a fat government bureaucracy it neither liked nor trusted.

Two of the signature initiatives that emerged from this effort was the centralized Phoenix pay system and the birth of Shared Services Canada, a $1.9-billion super agency that would consolidate all of the government technology systems.

And for years afterward it would point to these efforts to bolster its reputation as a sound manager of the machinery of government.

Both have been unmitigated disasters.

The fallout from these moves continues to reverberate through the government. Not only have the promised savings never materialized, but Ottawa is now spending tens of millions more to fix the problems.

On Friday, Statscan’s chief statistician, Wayne Smith, abruptly resigned, complaining that the agency’s independence has been compromised by “disruptive, ineffective, slow and unaffordable” technology supplied by Shared Services Canada.

Mr. Smith’s frustrations boiled over July 8 when the agency’s main website was down for nearly eight hours due to a power switch failure, snarling the release of June’s jobs numbers, one of the country’s most important economic indicators. Statscan staff resorted to snapping the document on a smartphone and faxing pages to data users at financial institutions and media outlets.

Statscan’s website routinely goes down on busy data-release days.

The problems at Shared Services, which consolidated the information technology of 43 departments, go way beyond Statscan. The federal Auditor-General concluded in a report this year that Shared Services’ operations are so dogged by hidden costs, delays, security problems and poor accounting that potential savings remain “largely unknown.”

The Liberals quietly boosted Shared Services’ budget by $384-million over two years in its March budget, in part to keep creaky old computer systems from crashing. Critics worry that much more will be needed to fully modernize systems.

In late July, smoke inside a federal data centre in Ottawa forced the temporary shutdown of government e-mail and some websites.

Meanwhile, Ottawa says the estimated bill to fix IBM’s Phoenix pay system has reached $45-million to $50-million, and could climb higher. The government has promised to cover any out-of-pocket expenses of workers who couldn’t pay bills or were forced to borrow money when they weren’t paid.

Just like Shared Services, Phoenix was supposed to save the government money – $70-million a year – by consolidating a myriad of pay systems spanning 300,000 workers in more than 100 departments. Most of the first-year savings have now been wiped out.

A big part of the problem can be traced to a decision by the Conservatives to create a new payroll-processing centre in Miramichi, N.B. Roughly 500 – mostly inexperienced – new hires, would replace more than 2,000 payroll staff from across the country.

Ottawa has since been forced to add pay specialists in Gatineau, Que., and at temporary offices in Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto and Sherbrooke, Que. – all to help fix the problem of workers getting paid too much, not enough or not at all.

Efficiency was never the main reason for choosing Miramichi. Putting the payroll centre in the city was political compensation for the closing of the long-gun registry, which had been located there.

The Conservatives fed the country a narrative about making government leaner and more efficient.

They delivered something quite different.

Source: No excuse for Ottawa’s bungled technology – The Globe and Mail

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Chief statistician resigns over government’s failure to ‘protect the independence’ of StatsCan

2016/09/19 Leave a comment

So both the Harper and Trudeau governments have lost a chief statistician on points of principle:

Canada’s chief statistician has resigned in protest over what he says is the federal governments’ failure to protect Statistics Canada’s independence.

Wayne Smith says the government’s decision to create Shared Services Canada and centralize all information technology services across government has compromised Statistics Canada’s ability to fulfil its mandate.

“I have made the best effort I can to have this situation remediated, but to no effect,” Smith said in a note to the National Statistical Council, which advises him. “I cannot lend my support to government initiatives that will purport to protect the independence of Statistics Canada when, in fact, that independence has never been more compromised,”

“I do not wish to preside over the decline of what is still, but cannot remain in these circumstances, a world-leading statistical office.”

Shared Services was created by the previous government to centralize and standardize information technology across the federal government in a bid to save money. It has struggled to meet expectations with several agencies, including the RCMP and the Canadian Forces, which have complained of data centre crashes, red tape, bad customer service and unpaid bills.

Smith said he had issued a warning that ever since Statistics Canada began relying on Shared Services for its IT, the research department had begun losing control of the information it collects from Canadians through operations such as the long-form census.

In the note, Smith argued that Shared Services holds “an effective veto over many of Statistics Canada’s decisions concerning the collection, processing, storage, analysis and dissemination of official statistics through denial or constructive denial of essential services.”

“Statistics Canada is increasingly hobbled in the delivery of its programs through disruptive, ineffective, slow and unaffordable supply of physical informatics services by Shared Services Canada,” he added.

Failure to convince government

Smith wrote in a separate note to staff that he tried to convince the Liberal government to correct the situation.

“I have not succeeded,” he wrote.

“I believe it is the professional duty of a national statistician to resign if the independence of the national statistical office — as envisioned in documents endorsed by Canada such as the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and the OECD Recommendation on Good Statistical Practice — is compromised.”

 ‘I think we do need to re-examine this whole approach to trying to centralize government services and cut costs.’– Erin Weir, NDP MP

In a statement issued by her office, Public Services Minister Judy Foote said the government “is committed to effective, efficient and secure service delivery to Canadians through modernizing government operations.”

Source: Chief statistician resigns over government’s failure to ‘protect the independence’ of StatsCan – Politics – CBC News

More detailed article with commentary by Kathryn May and quotes by former Chief Statistician Ivan Fellegi: Chief statistician butted heads with federal government over Shared Services Canada — and lost

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Canadians open to quotas to boost indigenous representation in government

2016/09/10 Leave a comment

Interesting and significant. Of note that opposition is highest in the two provinces with the largest percentage of Indigenous people, Saskatchewan and Manitoba:

The majority of Canadians are open to designating seats for the country’s indigenous people to boost their representation in Parliament and on the Supreme Court.

A recent survey by Environics Institute and the Institute on Governance found that two-thirds of Canadians are open to improving the representation of indigenous people in federal institutions.

They are divided, however, when it comes to how that representation would be achieved.

When asked about hypothetically designating a specific number of seats for indigenous representatives in the House of Commons, Senate or Supreme Court, one-third backed the idea; one-third opposed, and one-third said it “depends” on how it was done or were unsure.

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance (IOG) , said the nearly 30 per cent who said they could support quotas depending on how they are handled suggests an “openness” among Canadians and a significant shift in attitude.

 “We don’t have comparative data but I … think these numbers represent an evolution in public opinion and in the minds of many Canadians. I would bet that we wouldn’t have had those responses five years ago and that attitudes have evolved that far.”

She also said Canadians seem to recognize that we can’t fix the country’s relationship with indigenous peoples “with good intentions (only) — they have to be in the positions driving it.”

Scott Serson, a former deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, said the survey suggested Canadians are more open today than when a group of seven organizations conducted a major survey of non-aboriginal Canadians in 2014.

That survey was conducted by Environics as a baseline to track changing public attitudes towards reconciliation. It found Canadians increasingly recognize the historic and current challenges indigenous people face, with many indicating support for reconciliation and finding solutions.

“We have always said that First Nations must be at every table where decisions are being made that affect us, including the cabinet table, the boardroom table, the Supreme Court of Canada and beyond,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde.

“I am encouraged that many Canadians have confidence in the ability of First Nations leaders, and support the need for us to be fully involved in setting the path forward as partners.”

Emmett Macfarlane, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo, called Canadians’ openness to increased indigenous representation in government a “turning point” in attitudes.

He said the intense media attention around the Truth and Reconciliation Report into the residential school system, coupled with the Idle No More movement and the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, have all helped increase Canadians’ knowledge and understanding.

“This is an important development that puts them at the top of mind for non-indigenous people. It’s a bit of a surprise because it’s a departure from historical norms where non-indigenous Canadians have not given a lot of thought to indigenous Canadians.

…According to the survey, 46 per cent of Canadians support more indigenous representation while 16 per cent are opposed. Nearly 30 per cent responded with “depends” how it was done and nine per cent had no opinion.

The level of support, however, divided along East-West lines.

Support to expanding representation was strongest in Eastern and Central Canada, especially in Quebec where 56 per cent said they supported the idea. Opposition was most evident Manitoba and Saskatchewan where 26 per cent were opposed.

The survey asked Canadians who opposed expanding indigenous representation to give reasons for their objections. The most common reason, given by 35 per cent of them, was that all Canadians are equal and no group should be given preferential treatment.

About 10 per cent said indigenous peoples are adequately represented; nine per cent said they were over-represented; nine per cent said they were irresponsible and might abuse the system, and that representation should be based on qualifications not background.

About 28 per cent offered no specific reasons for their objections.

Source: Canadians open to quotas to boost indigenous representation in government | Ottawa Citizen

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Canadians lack faith in upper ranks of public service: survey

2016/09/08 Leave a comment

Interesting and worrisome for the public service:

The findings of a survey, conducted by Environics Institute and the Institute on Governance, into how Canadians view accountability and oversight in government underscore a troubling level of mistrust among Canadians in their government, both elected officials and public servants.

Canadians put more faith in front-line public servants delivering services — as long as they have the resources and authority to do the right thing — than they do for MPs and senior bureaucrats.

The majority have at least some trust in front-line workers and MPs, but views of senior public servants are almost equally divided between some trust and little or no trust.

At the same time, Canadians overall perceptions about government and its effectiveness — even among its harshest critics who believe government is broken — improved significantly since a similar survey in 2014, which some attribute to the “Trudeau Effect.”

 The two surveys into Canadians’ views into how we are governed were conducted 18 months apart.  One survey was conducted during the final stretch of the Conservatives’ near decade in power, and the second was conducted during the early months of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.

The latest study was conducted online in February with 2,000 Canadians over the age of 18.

In that survey, only six per cent of those surveyed expressed a lot of trust in senior public servants compared with 18 per cent who reported trusting front-line federal workers.

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance, said Canadians’ growing trust appears to rest with the prime minister, not government institutions such as the public service.

That, she argued, poses a big challenge for the public service.

Expectations of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government are running high, but it’s the public service that has to deliver on their promises. She said the bureaucracy’s bungling of its new pay system and foul-ups installing a new email system raise questions about management.

“It’s Trudeau they trust, not the public service,” she said. “Now the question: Is the public service up to the challenge?

“A public service mired in trying to think through how to manage a new pay system and consolidate email systems is not a good match for the aspirations of an activist government and a Canadian populace who seem to have elected this government with a blank cheque.”

Canadians in the survey pointed to the public service and the Senate as two federal institutions that need changes. Those surveyed said the Senate needs a bigger overhaul than the public service and they ranked Senate fixes as a top priority.

About 56 per cent of those surveyed said the Senate needs major changes and 23 per cent said minor reforms. For the public service, 33 per cent said it needs major change and 47 per cent thought minor changes were needed.

In all cases, support for major changes is strongest among two groups:

  • Those who also said they feel the government is broken; or

  • Those who said they had faced bad service or an unpleasant experience dealing with government over the past year.

Source: Canadians lack faith in upper ranks of public service: survey | Ottawa Citizen

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ICYMI: Pollsters starting to see uptick in government work

2016/09/01 Leave a comment

Back to “committing sociology:”

The Trudeau government is reinvesting in public opinion research after it was virtually abandoned in the final years of the last Conservative government, though spending remains far below historical averages, according to veteran pollster Frank Graves.

“They’ve committed to doing more and more work…but it’s certainly nowhere near the levels it was historically both with the early stages of the Conservative government, certainly the Liberal government before that, and the Mulroney government before that,” he told The Hill Times.

Mr. Graves, founder and president of Ekos Research, said in an interview that the federal government has contracted more public opinion research work from his company since the election last fall. He linked this to the Liberals’ push to what they see as a return to evidence-based decision-making.

It pales in comparison, however, to what was seen in even the early stages of the Conservative government, he said.

The Harper government spent $31.2 million polling Canadians in the 2006-07 fiscal year before cutting back to $4.9-million in 2013-14, The Hill Times reported.

This stretch of scarce funding represented a “very unusual period,” Mr. Graves said, with the government conducting “virtually no research” of any significance during this span.

A 2003 auditor general’s report clocks in federal spending on public opinion research in 2002-03, under a previous Liberal government, at $23.7 million and $26.2 million the year before.

Mr. Graves partly attributed lagging “rust” in the bureaucratic channels in preventing the Liberals from revving up polling efforts back to previous levels.

“[It’s] going to take awhile for the bureaucracy to catch up and for the resource envelope [to expand] to do this in levels which would be more commensurate with the need and demand and express priority provided to this approach,” Mr. Graves said, noting that civil servants would also need to catch up with technological advancements in the field.

When reached, the Treasury Board Secretariat said it did not have up-to-date figures on spending on public opinion research or consultations specifically.

….Pollsters optimistic after lean decade

Stephen Kiar, CEO and founder of Ottawa-based public opinion and market research firm Phoenix SPI, said his company has also started to see an increase in public opinion research work in the last month or so.

After the election, the Liberals proceeded “cautiously and deliberately,” as new ministers learned their departments, relevant issues, mandates, and staff, among other considerations, he said.

As a result, Phoenix didn’t see any increase in work before the government’s fiscal year ended on March 31, though things picked up afterwards, Mr. Kiar said, as departments began putting together their research plans for the coming year, and seeking the necessary approvals.

“It appears that many departments have finished that planning process and are starting to engage research firms like ours for their projects,” he explained.

Mr. Kiar said it’s too early to compare spending to the previous Conservative government, which he argued “savaged” the public opinion research budget, while dramatically increasing the media monitoring budget.

Under the Trudeau Liberals, mandate letters to cabinet ministers noted a need for Canadians to see the government’s “willingness to listen” and for the government’s work to “be informed by performance measurement, evidence, and feedback from Canadians.”

Mr. Graves framed the period under the Conservatives that saw a “real paucity” of public opinion research as an “anomaly,” and partly blamed the scarcity of polling on what he saw as the government’s indifferent, sometimes “hostile” approach to empirical research.

Critics accused the Harper government of gutting funding for research and muzzling federal scientists. The Conservatives axed the mandatory long-form census in 2011, drawing strong criticism from a wide range of groups worried about the consequences the decision would have on the reliability on the vital data gleaned from the sweeping survey of Canadians.

The Liberals reinstated the long-form census as mandatory shortly after assuming office last November.

Kara Mitchelmore, CEO of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, an industry advocacy group, says numbers on polling activity for 2016 won’t be known until the end of the year, though she cited the re-establishment of the mandatory long-form census as leading to an increase in work.

“I can say anecdotally that with the re-instalment of the long form census, which MRIA strongly supports, there is an obvious noticeable increase in data collection roles,” she said in an emailed statement, noting that this will “trickle down” into more analyst roles, which is “great news” for the industry.

Mr. Graves said he expects funding for polling to eventually be restored to previous heights, though predicted it would only reach a quarter of the historic average this year.

That’s still “a lot better” than what we saw in the late stages of the previous government, he noted.

Source: The Hill Times

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Stephen Harper leaves divisive legacy at home as he eyes global business – The Globe and Mail

2016/08/29 Leave a comment

Good comments on new Canadian voters:

They can blame him [Harper] for other things, too. His scorched earth election strategy drove suburban immigrant voters out of the Conservative coalition, leaving the party weakened in the all-important ridings of Greater Toronto and Greater Vancouver. The niqab debate. Barbaric cultural practices. Worst of all, according to senior Conservatives, the law to strip dual citizens who commit certain crimes of their citizenship. That one killed them at the door in the 905.

Whoever Mr. Harper was trying to win over with these toxic policies during the 2015 election campaign, the price he paid in immigrant votes and the votes of those who welcome immigrants was high. The new leader will have a long row to hoe to win them back.

Source: Stephen Harper leaves divisive legacy at home as he eyes global business – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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