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.
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.
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.
Not surprising that Facebook is doing this kind of analysis. Does not appear to work for Canadian political leanings when I checked my profile (no “Canadian politics” tab):
You may think you are discreet about your political views. But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site.
And now, it is easy to find out how Facebook has categorized you — as very liberal or very conservative, or somewhere in between.
Try this (it works best on your desktop computer):
That will bring you to a page with your ad preferences. Under the “Interests” header, click the “Lifestyle and Culture” tab.
Then look for a box titled “US Politics.” In parentheses, it will describe how Facebook has categorized you, such as liberal, moderate or conservative.
(If the “US Politics” box does not show up, click the “See more” button under the grid of boxes.)
Facebook makes a deduction about your political views based on the pages that you like — or on your political preference, if you stated one, on your profile page. If you like the page for Hillary Clinton, Facebook might categorize you as a liberal.
Even if you do not like any candidates’ pages, if most of the people who like the same pages that you do — such as Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — identify as liberal, then Facebook might classify you as one, too.
Facebook has long been collecting information on its users, but it recently revamped the ad preferences page, making it easier to view.
The information is valuable. Advertisers, including many political campaigns, pay Facebook to show their ads to specific demographic groups. The labels Facebook assigns to its users help campaigns more precisely target a particular audience.
For instance, Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign has paid for its ads to be shown to those who Facebook has labeled politically moderate.
Campaigns can also use the groupings to show different messages to different supporters. They may want to show an ad to their hard-core supporters, for example, that is unlike an ad targeted at people just tuning in to the election.
It is not clear how aggressively Facebook is gathering political information on users outside the United States. The social network has 1.7 billion active users, including about 204 million in the United States.
Political outlook is just one of the attributes Facebook compiles on its users. Many of the others are directly commercial: whether you like television comedy shows, video games or Nascar.
To learn more about how political campaigns are targeting voters on social media, The New York Times is collecting Facebook ads from our readers with a project called AdTrack. You can take part by visiting nytimes.comand searching for “Send us the political ads.”
A reminder that despite the restoration of the Census, there still remain significant gaps in the collection, methodologies and dissemination of statistical data by the government:
In a recent article in the Toronto Star, Paul Wells lays out what he sees as Prime Minister Trudeau’s game plan for slowing Canada’s brain drain and making science pay. “Over the next year,” he writes, “the Trudeau government will seek to reinforce or shore up Canada’s advantage in three emerging fields: quantum tech, artificial intelligence and big data and analytics.”
As he should. If that’s the plan, it’s a good one. Canada’s future prosperity depends on our ability to innovate and retain the best talent in those three fields.
What we call “big data analytics” works by finding previously unknown patterns in the huge blocks of data that very large organizations — governments, for example — grow around themselves constantly, like coral. Finding those patterns can point the way to new efficiencies, new ways to fight crime and disease, new trends in business. But as with any complex system, what you get depends on what you put in. If the inputs aren’t accurate, the results won’t be, either. So before we embrace the “big data revolution”, we may want to look first at the worsening quality of the data our federal government produces, and that businesses, activists and social planners use.
Take something as basic as divorce. Statistics Canada first started reported marriage rates in 1921, divorce rates in 1972; it stopped collecting both data streams in 2011, citing “cost” concerns.
Marriage and divorce rates are exactly the kinds of data streams consumers of big data want collected, because they affect so many things: government policies, job markets, the service sector, housing starts — you name it. Having abandoned the field now for five years, StatsCan’s data volume on marital status isn’t nearly as useful as it might have been.
Take wildlife conservation. Recently an Ontario provincial backbencher proposed a private members bill to allow for unlimited hunting of cormorants. The bill’s proponent says the species is experiencing a population explosion. And we don’t know if he’s right or wrong — because the feds stopped collecting that data in 2011.
Canada used to publish statistical reports that were every bit as good as the Americans’ — in some cases, better. Then we stopped.
Here’s another big data blind spot: gasoline imports. After having reported data on gasoline imports regularly since 1973, StatsCan has been suppressing the numbers since 2013 due to what it calls “privacy” concerns. In the last reporting year, 2012, a staggering amount of imported gasoline came into the country — almost 4 billion litres.
Now, if you were thinking of expanding your oil refinery, or wanted to know more about how dependent this country is on foreign fuel, this would be pretty precious data — the kind you’d probably pay for. But the data aren’t reliable — any more than the StatsCan data on gasoline demand by province, which we use to work out whether carbon taxes are actually reducing demand for gasoline. It’s bad data; it has been for years. You’d think someone in the higher echelons of the federal or provincial governments would get annoyed.
Combing through StatsCan’s archive of reports can be a bewildering experience, even for experts. Its online database, CANSIM, is easy enough to use. It’s the reports themselves that sometimes fail you.
Say you want to understand trends in Ontario’s demand for natural gas. You’d start by looking at CANSIM table 129-0003, which shows an increase in sales of natural gas in 2007 over 2006 of 85 per cent. “Ah,” you think to yourself, “that must be because of the conversion of coal-burning plants to gas.” But no, that change occurred years later. Ask StatsCan and they’ll tell you that they changed their methodology that year — but didn’t bother re-stating the previous years’ numbers under the same methodology. Individually, the numbers are accurate — but the trend stops making sense.
StatsCan changed its methodology again this year; it now warns researchers to take care when comparing current and historical data. That’s an improvement over changing the methodology without telling anyone but it isn’t very helpful for understanding long-term trends.
And this isn’t just StatsCan’s problem. The National Energy Board published an excellent report showing where Canada’s crude ends up in the United States. Industry analysts use the numbers to understand the reasons why light and heavy crude are selling for what they’re selling for south of the border.
The NEB stopped reporting the data after September 2015. Ask why, and this is the response you get: “The Board has decided to discontinue publication of this data while we re-evaluate our statistical products.” That, of course, was a year ago.
An appeal by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Canadians living abroad for donations to the Liberal party has struck a sour note with disenfranchised long-term expats.
The cash solicitation on Trudeau’s Facebook page calls on Canadians living abroad to be part of “Canada’s most open and progressive movement,” and says under a picture of the prime minister that “your donations help fuel our party.”
Various comments reflect the displeasure of those unable to vote in federal elections because of a law — only enforced by the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper — that strips voting rights from those who have lived outside Canada for more than five years.
“Asking for my donation after removing my right to vote is just offensive,” wrote Ian Doig, who lives in Houston.
Another commenter, Angus McGillicuddy, offered a similar sentiment.
“Not going to waste my money until our constitutionally guaranteed right to vote is restored,” McGillicuddy said.
The disenfranchising of an estimated 1.4 million long-term expats has been a running legal battle since Canadians abroad found they could not vote in the 2011 election. While the rules were first enacted in 1993, they had not been enforced until then.
Two Canadians living in the U.S. went to court to argue the relevant parts of the Canada Elections Act were unconstitutional.
In May 2014, an Ontario Superior Court justice ruled in their favour. However, the Harper government appealed on the grounds that it would be unfair to resident Canadians to allow those abroad to elect lawmakers. Ontario’s top court sided with the government. The Supreme Court of Canada is slated to hear the expats’ appeal of that decision in February.
“Canadians living abroad should be able to vote with more than their pocketbooks,” Gillian Frank, one of those who launched the constitutional challenge, told The Canadian Press.
The voting issue became a flashpoint for many expat Canadians during last year’s election that propelled Trudeau to office. He has since indicated a willingness to review the ban, and a spokesman has said the government believes “more Canadians should have the right to vote, not the opposite.”
However, nothing has changed and the Supreme Court case remains pending.
“You have some gall asking for expats’ money when you’ve done nothing to restore our vote, despite promises during the election by your members that you would rectify the situation,” Kate Tsoukalas wrote in a post.
Anecdote over evidence by the Liberal Government. One of the weaknesses of the previous Conservative government was their lack of effective and consistent engagement on the grounds for policy and program changes, with few exceptions.
This change was announced at Davos and never really well explained or advocated.
This does not excuse the current government for its disregarding some of the evidence but is a reminder of the need to consult and engage broadly to build public understanding and support for significant policy and program changes:
The Liberal government reversed a policy to raise the eligibility age for Old Age Security to 67 in spite of arguments from bureaucrats that the move would be bucking a trend among developed countries.
Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and the United States are among the countries that plan to raise their equivalent pension ages to 67 or higher.
That is the global context outlined for the new government in an internal policy paper, marked secret, that was prepared in September during last year’s election and makes reference to political promises related to seniors and pensions.
The Liberal Party’s campaign included a pledge to scrap the Conservative government’s plan to raise the OAS eligibility age to 67 from 65 by 2029. The new government delivered on this promise with its first budget, in March.
The public servants noted that reversing such a reform would be unusual. “Among the 34 OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] member countries, 23 have announced increases or have already increased the age of eligibility for public pensions,” states the policy paper, which was released via the Access to Information Act.
It said that “no country has reversed its decision or lowered the age of eligibility.”
The paper was produced by the seniors and pension policy secretariat of Employment and Social Development Canada. It was presented to the deputy minister of the department.
In the wake of the 2016 census, researchers say they’re increasingly worried about limited data on a key segment of Canada’s booming senior population.
For the latest census distributed in May, Statistics Canada allowed administrators of nursing and retirement homes to complete a short-form census on behalf of residents. The agency also omitted the long-form census for all “collective dwellings,” which include hospitals, work camps and correctional institutions.
The move has irked some seniors and sparked calls from researchers for Statistics Canada to revise the 2021 census delivery as new models of senior living crop up.
“It’s something I’m concerned about with the aging of our population,” said Doug Norris, chief demographer at Environics Analytics and a census expert. “The data on our elderly population needs more attention than it’s gotten.”
Last year marked the first time that Canada had more people aged 65 and over – 16.1 per cent, or 5.8 million Canadians – than those 14 and under.
Without long-form results, Mr. Norris said researchers will lack crucial data about seniors’ income, ethnicity and education, among other findings. The data would be able to pinpoint demographic trends that have health implications, and shape myriad social policies, including seniors’ housing.
“Depending on the research and topic, it could be very important to include that group [of seniors], especially if you were doing anything health-related,” said Mr. Norris, who spent nearly 30 years at Statscan.
In the 2011 census, 378,000 people were counted in nursing and retirement homes classified as collective dwellings. This year, as in 2011, the short-form census – which captures age, gender, marital status and languages spoken – was distributed only to administrators of such homes.
Many questions on the long-form census, such as employment information, would not apply to seniors in nursing and retirement homes, said Geoff Bowlby, Statscan’s director-general of collection and regional services.
David McLaughlin’s concerns on regional representation, where the comparative lack of diversity among Atlantic judges comes up against overall objectives for a more diverse Supreme Court):
The requirement that the Atlantic provinces have a guaranteed Supreme Court seat is a clear matter of convention, custom, practice, and tradition. How do we know? Because it has been the case since Canada existed. It is not an explicit legal obligation. A convention, with higher legal consequence, is not a custom, which may simply be a long-standing practice or tradition. A convention is not sacrosanct. Political actors can change it. That is how societies evolve.
Under the failed 1992 Charlottetown accord, the federal government would have been required to name judges from lists submitted by provinces and territories. This was a contemporary recognition of what might be termed the “regionalization” requirement of Supreme Court representation. It hewed closely to the original precepts of Confederation. The accord also called for formal consultation by provinces and territories with aboriginal peoples in the preparation of such lists.
Mr. Trudeau’s process inserts a more explicit “diversification” requirement for Supreme Court representation. The court should mirror Canadian society more visibly and directly as it pronounces on law that affects people.
This is all to the good. Except when it is not. This new process contemplates a clear tradeoff between historic convention and contemporary correctness. Since this convention is well known and established, there is no question that Mr. Trudeau is being deliberate, if not exactly forthright, about his intentions.
Justice Cromwell has not yet been replaced. Another judge from Atlantic Canada may yet be named. But this is no longer guaranteed. And that should exercise residents and governments in those four provinces.
And Konrad Yakabuski notes, I think correctly, that diversity is likely not to include much ideological or philosophical diversity (although I would not characterize it in the dark tones he does – really, seeing discrimination “lurking in every crevice of society”):
Canadians are lucky that, in Jody Wilson-Raybould, Mr. Trudeau has the most qualified Justice Minister in recent memory. As an aboriginal and former adviser to the B.C. Treaty Commission overseeing treaty negotiations between First Nations and the Crown, she is sensitive to the balancing act involved in governing and not prone to political pandering. She can be counted on to recommend judges of the highest calibre, regardless of their origins.
Just don’t expect Mr. Trudeau’s definition of diversity on the bench to include ideological or philosophical variety. The process he has put in place pretty much ensures the selection of liberal judges. Three of the advisory body’s seven members are Liberal appointees. Even if you might expect former Progressive Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell to argue for ideological diversity on the court, it’s an argument she’s likely to lose.
To be sure, the Liberal government has an interest in appointing judges that will uphold its laws, including its controversial legislation on assisted dying. But Mr. Trudeau has a greater political interest in naming judges that tick off his diversity boxes.
And with a majority of his advisory body’s members chosen directly by the legal profession – with the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Judicial Council, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the Canadian Council of Law Deans each getting to pick a member – the short list of potential top court judges Mr. Trudeau receives will reflect a liberal activist bent that sees discrimination lurking in every crevice of society.
Two separate commentaries on the new Supreme Court process and the diversity aspects, starting with Emmett Mcfarlane:
Moreover, statements that the committee will canvass across Canada to fill the new appointment has been met with criticism that the government is doing away with the convention of regionally-based appointments. The upcoming vacancy is historically Atlantic Canada’s seat on the Court. There is speculation that one reason the government would look to other parts of Canada for the next appointment is the desire to appoint an Indigenous or visible minority candidate to the bench. Not appointing someone from Atlantic Canada would not conflict with anything in the constitutional text, but it would be contrary to convention. While the courts tend not to enforce conventions, the government invites significant controversy if it chooses to abandon one here.
The regional issue aside, the lack of diversity on the Court is also a serious problem, at least from the perspective of the institution’s legitimacy. Lack of representativeness in a key governing institution like the Court runs contrary to the stated objectives of the Trudeau government (because it’s 2016, after all). Since the Court’s creation in 1875, every justice has been white. The language of the committee’s mandate is no doubt intended to rectify that. Whether it will, and whether the new process will succeed in bringing greater transparency to appointments and to the Court itself, remain to be seen.
While the advisory panel has the mandate to consult widely (including with the Chief Justice of the Court, provincial representatives, and MPs and senators from all parties) it must go further in filling in what is missing – namely the lack of aboriginal and visible minority representation in the court while also achieving full gender parity on the bench.
Mr. Trudeau emphasized that the court must reflect our diverse society to bring different and valuable perspectives to the decision-making process. That is indeed what should be part of an appointment process based on merit. To achieve that, the advisory committee must perform extensive outreach activities, going into every part of our legal institutions to seek out the most competent and meritorious of such representatives of the missing diversity on the court.
Expectations of transparency and openness have been raised high by this new appointment process, but so has the expectations of a more diverse court. Because it is 2016.
Canada used to publish statistical reports that were every bit as good as the Americans’ — in some cases, better. Then we stopped.
Multicultural Meanderings 