Trudeau tasks top bureaucrat to help reform patronage appointments

2016/02/13 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to see what system is developed and, after a number of years, whether the quality and diversity of appointments improves.

Just another aspect to implementing the “commitment to transparent, merit-based appointments, to help ensure gender parity and that Indigenous Canadians and minority groups are better reflected in positions of leadership:”

Michael Wernick, recently installed as the new Clerk of the Privy Council and the Prime Minister’s most senior adviser from the public service, has been given an important assignment by the man who appointed him: to advise on how to make a wide range of cabinet appointments – including that of his own future replacement – subject to more scrutiny.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail in his Langevin Block office, the career bureaucrat and head of the public service said the hundreds of political appointments at Crown corporations, tribunals and other agencies are “gifts” handed out by cabinet that should be subject to a more thorough hiring process.

That will mean opening up political appointments, including part-time positions, to more applicants, using more rigorous head-hunting, and setting clearer selection criteria. The goal is to increase accountability, ensure better representation and recruit higher quality talent for appointments to Canada’s public institutions, a reform of mainly patronage jobs that would be in line with the Liberal plan for merit-based appointments to the Senate.

“[Mr. Trudeau] wants to work his way around the appointment powers of the prime minister and put some process, some rigour, some inclusion and some transparency in front of those appointments before he makes them. I completely support that as a matter of good governance,” Mr. Wernick said. “You will see in the coming weeks a more rigorous process around Governor-in-Council appointments, like all of the 1,500 appointments or so that are the gift of cabinet to give.”

…Without any new process in place for appointments, Mr. Trudeau has already made some patronage appointments for senior positions, including new ambassadors and, in the Privy Council Office, Matthew Mendelsohn to head a new unit called “results and delivery.” Mr. Mendelsohn is an academic with the Mowat Centre in Toronto and former Ontario government deputy minister who last year worked on the Trudeau campaign.

Ironically, experts such as Donald Savoie, professor of public administration at Université de Moncton and Canada’s authority on the centralization of government, suggests the appointment of a Liberal campaign worker to a key position in PCO further centralizes power when Mr. Trudeau says he wants the opposite. But Dr. Savoie adds that bringing more transparency to appointments, starting with that of the clerk, would help diffuse PMO power. Transparency could come through a committee that recommends a public list of possible clerks to the Prime Minister who makes the final selection.

….Mr. Wernick has identified two priorities as Clerk. One is delivering the Liberal government’s agenda, and the second is increasing the capabilities of a public service whose employees are passionate and engaged but also frustrated. Without the latter priority, the first will be more difficult.

“We need to get better at being agile and responsive while still providing that sober advice on implementation. We have too many layers and too much middle management. We have too much process. We have people who take refuge in rules and process, and what we want is people to be guided by their values and competencies,” he said. “We have very strong foundations but we’re a bit of a fixer-upper… I’m quite optimistic we can get there.”

Source: Trudeau tasks top bureaucrat to help reform patronage appointments – The Globe and Mail

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Liberal government has yet to fill 200 vacant federal posts — on top of 22 empty Senate spots

2016/02/13 Leave a comment

Another area which will test the Government’s commitment in diversity and inclusion:

In addition to the 22 vacancies in the Senate, the Liberal government has yet to fill more than 200 positions that are open on federal boards, commissions and tribunals.

Three months after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet were sworn in, there has been little progress making appointments to the bodies whose duties include adjudicating immigration cases, monitoring the regulation of nuclear energy or setting rules for the broadcasting industry.

Some of these positions are considered patronage posts, often doled out to party supporters, but many are important to keeping the government and its affiliates running smoothly.

The Immigration and Refugee Board, for example, rules on legal challenges of decisions made on applications for asylum or immigration. For people seeking to stay in Canada, a timely hearing is crucial. The board has 25 vacancies, including 14 in the Toronto regional office, with another member’s term expiring at the end of the month.

There are 11 vacancies at the Parole Board of Canada, which rules on the release of incarcerated offenders.

Appointees to these jobs must be named by order of the cabinet, usually on the advice of an appointments co-ordinator in the Prime Minister’s Office, with input from cabinet ministers. Mary Ng, who previously worked at Queen’s Park, is in charge of appointments in Trudeau’s PMO.

The task of filling patronage posts may have been delayed while the PMO worked to appoint chiefs of staff, directors of communication and other exempt staff members to work in ministerial offices.

Privy Council records show 132 positions listed as vacant on 57 federal bodies, and an analysis has found another 78 people on boards, commissions and tribunals whose terms of appointment have concluded, requiring re-appointment or replacement.

The list does not include the judicial appointments that government, through the Department of Justice, is required to make regularly. So far, cabinet has not named a single judge.

Filing these jobs can be a tricky business, especially for new governments that may have railed against the previous government’s perceived excesses of patronage. Indeed, the Conservative government drew fire for a series of patronage appointments made in June, not long before the beginning of the federal election campaign, and was further criticized for re-appointing people whose terms hadn’t ended.

Source: Liberal government has yet to fill 200 vacant federal posts — on top of 22 empty Senate spots

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Are we watching the death throes of American (and in other countries) liberal democracy? – Ian Buruma

2016/02/12 Leave a comment

Buruma on the disturbing trends in the US and elsewhere:

What is steadily falling away is not democracy, but the restraints that de Tocqueville thought were essential to make liberal politics work. More and more, populist leaders regard their election by the majority of voters as a licence to crush all political and cultural dissent.

De Tocqueville’s nightmare is not yet the reality in the United States, but it is close to what we see in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and perhaps Poland. Even Israel, which, despite its many obvious problems, has always had a robust democracy, is moving in this direction, with government ministers demanding proof of “state loyalty” from writers, artists and journalists.

It is hard to see how traditional elites are going to regain any authority. And yet I think de Tocqueville was right. Without editors, there can be no serious journalism. Without parties led by experienced politicians, the borders between show business and politics will disappear. Without limits placed on the appetites and prejudices of the majority, intolerance will rule.

This is not a question of nostalgia or snobbery. Nor is it a plea to trust anyone with a plausible air of authority. Anger at the elites is not always unjust. Globalization, immigration and cosmopolitanism have served the interests of a highly educated minority, but sometimes at the expense of less privileged people.

And yet, the problem identified by de Tocqueville in the 1830s is more relevant now than ever. Liberal democracy cannot be reduced to a popularity contest. Constraints on majority rule are necessary to protect the rights of minorities, be they ethnic, religious or intellectual. When that protection disappears, we will all end up losing the freedoms that democracy was supposed to defend.

Source: Are we watching the death throes of American liberal democracy? – The Globe and Mail

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ICYMI: So how are those ‘sunny ways’ working out so far? Flumian

2016/02/12 Leave a comment

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance and one of my former deputies, on the new government’s steps to dates and some of the deeper challenges.

Hard to argue with her formulation of one of her broader questions:

As it contemplates new engagement strategies, the government confronts a broader question — how governance needs to evolve in the digital age, when ubiquitous information and the instantaneous ability to collect it have challenged the position of many traditional intermediaries, governments included. Governments have already ventured into the twitterverse, with mixed results.

But for the most part it has yet to confront a host of issues. For example, what are the benefits and risks of massive “virtual” engagement in policy making? What are the best techniques? What happens to so-called ‘message control’? What frameworks might guide interaction between the public service, citizens and the media?

The governance challenges of the digital age don’t stop there. In an age of near-frictionless connectivity, why do citizens have to deal with multiple government silos to address various aspects of the same issue — whether it’s a disability, a business start-up, or becoming a senior? And given the ever-expanding applications for data, why do governments continue to sit on vast stores of information they can’t begin to fully use in the name of “confidentiality”?

Here again, the government is off to an encouraging start. In his (no longer secret!) mandate letters to ministers, the prime minister charged several of his colleagues with working toward single-window service. The government also has committed to a policy of open data by default. Some traditionalists have cautioned that it may come to regret such a commitment, but among other considerations, it’s far from clear that a generation accustomed to the digital sharing of information is invested in the information-hoarding ethic of an earlier age.

So how are those ‘sunny ways’ working out so far?

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2016 census drops income and benefits over faulty data given data to come from CRA

2016/02/10 2 Comments

Good change and use of existing and more accurate data:

When Canadians receive their census questionnaires this May, they’ll no longer be asked to report their income and benefits — something Statistics Canada says produced subpar data.

“To substantially reduce the burden on Canadians, and improve the quality of income data compared to previous censuses, Statistics Canada will use income and benefits data from the Canada Revenue Agency for all census respondents to replace questions previously asked on the 2011 National Household Survey questionnaire,” a recently-published order-in-council explained.

Aside from the return of the mandatory component of the long-form census, which Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains announced the day after being sworn in last November, the 2016 Census of Population will essentially mirror the 2011 National Household Survey.

“There are no new questions on the short or long form. To ensure comparability over time, with the exception of two changes, questions asked by the Census of Population will remain the same as they were in 2011,” a Statistics Canada agency spokesperson told iPolitics.

“First, the question on religion will not be included as the census program has asked this question only every 10 years since 1871. Second, in order to reduce the time required and make it easier for Canadians to respond, income questions will be replaced with more precise tax and benefit data that have been available to Statistics Canada since 1985.”

The latter change is welcomed by Philip Cross, formerly the chief economic analyst at the agency.

When asked about it, Cross referred to a paper he wrote with Munir Sheikh — the head of Statistics Canada who resigned in the wake of the Harper government’s decision end the long-form census in 2010.

That paper, published by the University of Calgary school of public policy last March, attempted to assess the extent of the middle class plight dominating the Canadian political discourse.

And one problem it highlighted was the “disquieting” difference between what people reported as income when surveyed, as in the census, and the tax data reported by the Canada Revenue Agency.

In a nutshell, Canadians were underestimating their income.

“One reason households routinely underestimate their income in surveys is they respond as if only wages and salaries are income, ignoring the growing importance of supplementary benefits such as employer contributions to pensions or health care that are included in taxable benefits,” Cross and Sheikh wrote.

Supplementary income, they added, had risen to over 13 per cent of all labour income.

“Most of these benefits accrue to middle-income earners, something that should be taken account of when examining how their real income has fared in survey data. As well, surveys exclude irregular sources of income, such as bonuses or stock options,” they wrote.

“Income tax data are less timely but more complete.”

Will miss the religion question but it has always been on a 10-year cycle.

You needn’t talk money anymore

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Women remain a distinct minority in House: Nancy Peckford

2016/02/09 Leave a comment

Nancy Peckford of Equal Voice on the challenges of gender parity, particularly with respect to committee chairs (we will have the full analysis of committee leadership diversity once all have chairs and vice-chairs have been selected the week of February 15 – currently only half have done so but enough to demonstrate the trend highlighted below):

This said, the excitement about a gender-balanced federal Cabinet has worn off some as we come to terms with the fact that women remain a distinct minority in the House. Many have expressed their dismay at the fact that there are so few women on the 28 House and joint House/Senate committees in Parliament. Some have questioned the government’s commitment to leveraging the talents of the women.

Clearly, few have done the math. While it may seems egregious, the reality is that with women comprising just 26 per cent of the House of Commons, parity on committees is nearly impossible. There are only 88 women in the House (versus 250 men). 50 of those belong to the Liberal caucus—more than half of whom are serving as Cabinet ministers or parliamentary secretaries, thereby precluding their capacity to sit on committees. The remaining Liberal women MPs are fewer than the current number of committees established. The opposition caucuses have, among them, just 38 women MPs and a limited number of seats on each committee. Ensuring there are more women serving as committee members can only happen if there are far more women elected to the House. It’s an obvious point but one that seems lost on many commentators.

This is why Equal Voice is so keen to encourage and equip thousands of more women to seek election—at all levels of government. And it’s precisely why we are preparing to do this work soon. It may seem premature, but the reality is that we will need hundreds of more women across parties to position, to seek, and secure federal nominations in the coming years if we are to achieve anything close to parity in the House of Commons, not just Cabinet. Only the NDP broke 40 per cent female candidates in the past election. As we celebrate an historic 100 years since (some) women in Canada attained the right to vote, achieving equal numbers of women and men on the ballot within the decade should be the ultimate goal.

Source: Women remain a distinct minority in House | hilltimes.com

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New system to release census data faces uncertain future over delays

2016/02/09 Leave a comment

An admirable effort to make the Census easier to sort through runs into technical problems:

An $18-million project to make it easier to sort through reams of data from the coming census has been beset by delays and uncertainty that the three-year project will be done on time.

Called the “new dissemination model,” the project is designed to make it easier for visitors to the Statistics Canada website to organize, read and play with the data statistical agency collects, be it census or jobs data, or anything else the agency measures.

The end idea is to create a more interactive experience online instead of pages of static data tables, and also to simplify and standardize how information is presented.

It was all supposed to be ready in time for February 2017 when Statistics Canada releases its findings from this year’s census.

Statistics Canada and Shared Services Canada, the government’s central information-technology department that is building the new system, said the project has been delayed, but couldn’t say by how long or if it could still be completed on time.

Shared Services Canada said it has faced “a number of challenges” hosting the new system in its data centres that it is trying to address.

Internal government documents show there was a “final go/no-go” test on the system in December 2015. Statistics Canada hasn’t made a decision on the project following the test, the details of which neither agency would disclose, and is “currently analyzing the impact of the delay” to see what the next step will be.

The project is a microcosm of the problems auditor general Michael Ferguson raised last Tuesday in a critical review of Shared Services Canada. That audit found, among other things, that Shared Services Canada didn’t always communicate well with the departments and agencies it serves, leaving some of them in the dark about projects, and confusion over who was responsible for what.

As this will likely be more for general users, expect that I will continue to use the Beyond 2020 specialized software rather than this tool once (or if) it becomes available. My only wish is for Beyond 2020 to have a Mac version rather than having to run Windows.

I have been invited to a Stats Canada usability testing session this week which will give me a better sense of the planned approach.

Source: New system to release census data faces uncertain future over delays

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Open government push requires ‘cultural shift’ in public service, federal documents warn

2016/02/05 Leave a comment

Sound analysis of the challenge:

The Liberals’ promise to pry open government requires nothing less than “cultural change” within the public service, warn documents obtained by the Star.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison was told in November that there are significant hurdles to the Liberals’ campaign pledge to reform access to information laws, make government information open by default, and more effectively communicate with the public.

Documents prepared for Brison describe a federal culture of “limited disclosure, insular policy making,” which takes into account the “federal view only.”

To implement the Liberals’ ambitious democratic reform agenda, that culture will need to shift to one of “proactive release, engagement and connectivity, (and) broad leadership on open government.”

It’s not clear exactly how the government intends to change the culture of some 257,000 employees in the core public service. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already made clear he wants to end the era of the federal government deciding and acting on issues unilaterally, putting an emphasis on meeting with provincial premiers and, on Friday, the mayors of Canada’s largest cities.

“The government holds a largely untapped wealth of mostly unclassified information of interest to Canadians,” read the documents, obtained under access to information laws. “This information is not sufficiently leveraged to fuel the digital economy, spur innovation, and give Canadian business a competitive edge.”

Trudeau made openness and accountability a key plank in his party’s election platform. The idea is to make government information “open by default,” unlike the current system where citizens need to resort to access to information requests that can take months or even years to process.

But releasing more information about government operations, the documents warn, carries with it the risk of public relations headaches for the new government.

In an interview Tuesday, Brison acknowledged that risk.

“(But) you can’t expect Canadians to trust us if we can’t trust them,” Brison said.

“The other thing to keep in mind is we will make better decisions when we engage Canadians in the decision-making process. The old days where governments would be covetous and secretive (with) information to try and make a decision because government thought they were smarter than citizens, are over.”

When it comes to changing the public services culture, Brison suggested the Liberals need to lead by example – and the leadership starts with the prime minister.

“(Trudeau) is absolutely committed to this throughout government,” Brison said.

“For most Canadians, the transparency bus has left the station. You try to explain to a millennial why a lot of this information isn’t rendered public, and you lose them.”

But it’s not just the culture of secrecy and risk aversion preventing information from getting to Canadians. The documents note Canada’s dated privacy and access to information acts are falling out of sync with technological development.

The Access to Information Act, for instance, has not been substantially changed since the early 1980s when most government business was conducted on paper.

Source: Open government push requires ‘cultural shift’ in public service, federal documents warn | Toronto Star

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Ottawa falling short in assessing gender impact of policy decisions

2016/02/04 Leave a comment

Provides material for reflection given Minister Hajdu’s mandate letter commitment:

Work with the Privy Council Office to ensure that a gender-based analysis is applied to proposals before they arrive at Cabinet for decision-making.

Ideally, of course, this would be expanded to a broader widespread diversity lens, as I have argued in my deck, Multiculturalism – Implementing Diversity and Inclusion (example slide below):

Multiculturalism - Implementing Diversity and Inclusion.001

Two decades after pledging to assess the gender impact of federal government policies, Ottawa is still falling short in its efforts, meaning that obstacles to both men and women still stand, auditor general Michael Ferguson says.

In an audit report released Tuesday, Ferguson reported some progress on the file but cautioned that Ottawa’s commitment to assess the gender impact of its policy decisions was still haphazard.

“We observed that gender-based analysis is still not fully deployed across the federal government 20 years after the government committed to applying this type of analysis to its policy decisions,” Ferguson said.

He noted that while Status of Women Canada, Treasury Board and Privy Council Office have made progress in this area, the gender analyses done by departments and agencies were “not always complete, nor of consistent quality.”

“This means gender considerations, including obstacles to the full participation of diverse groups of men and women, are not always considered in government decisions,” he said.

New Democrat MP David Christopherson said the audit findings are evidence the federal government is not taking the issue seriously.

“Imagine, 20 years later and there (are) still six departments that don’t even have a framework for recording the information, let alone doing something about it. We’re a long, long way from where we need to be,” he told reporters.

At a 1995 United Nations conference on women, Ottawa committed to analyze the “gender-specific” impacts on women and men before making decisions on policies, legislation and programs across government.

Those considerations should include assessing the differences between men and women, which could include age, education, language, geography, culture and income.

Such analysis is meant to flag whether an initiative could have unintended impacts, or perhaps treats men and women differently.

Ferguson’s audit team examined 16 initiatives undertaken by four departments: Employment and Social Development; Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development; Industry Canada; and Natural Resources.

The audit found that the departments performed gender-based analyses for all initiatives but did not always complete them. For example, in one case, analysis of a funding program for skills training did not flag the under-representation of women in the information, communications and technology field.

In another case, the review of an apprentice loan program did not examine barriers to access training and trades for women, visible minorities and immigrant women, the audit found.

Ferguson’s report flagged a number of systemic barriers to gender-based analysis, starting with the fact that such assessments are not mandatory. As well, he noted the tight deadlines for developing policy initiatives and limited ability of some departments and agencies for doing this work.

And the report found that Status of Women Canada was unable to track whether gender-based analysis was being considered in the decision-making across government.

Ferguson’s report urges the Privy Council Office, Status of Women and Treasury Board to “take concrete actions to identify and address barriers that prevent systematic conduct of rigorous gender-based analysis.”

Still, the audit report did find progress in implementing gender-based analysis compared to 2009, the last time the auditor general’s office reviewed the issue.

Patricia Hajdu, the minister of status of women, said she agreed with the audit findings that while progress had been made, “more needs to be done.”

“Our government has been clear about its commitment to consider the gender impacts of our decisions. We will use the auditor general’s report as a renewed call for action within the federal government,” she said Tuesday.

Still, Hajdu said that the government is not considering make gender-based analysis mandatory.

Source: Ottawa falling short in assessing gender impact of policy decisions | Toronto Star

OAG Full Report

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The curious career of the ‘taxpayer’ in Canadian public life: Delacourt

2016/02/04 5 Comments

Good piece by Susan Delacourt on the use of the word ‘taxpayers’ vs ‘citizens’ (I prefer the latter):

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not fond of the word ‘taxpayers’ as a synonym for Canadian citizens.

“Unless you say ‘service-receivers’ at the same time as you say ‘taxpayers,’ you’re only giving half the equation,” Trudeau said in an interview with me last week. “The idea of ‘citizen’ involves both benefits and responsibilities, and I like that a bit better.”

I can’t say I’d be unhappy to see a little less casual use of that word ‘taxpayer’ in politics. Bob Rae, the former interim Liberal leader, would occasionally ‘correct’ reporters in scrums when they asked how some policy would affect taxpayers. “You mean citizens,” Rae would say.

The idea of citizenship as a two-way relationship with government seems to have fallen out of fashion in recent decades. Whether it can be revived is an interesting question.

Seeing citizenship as a send-and-receive equation, for instance, also gives us another way to look at Trudeau’s conversations with 10 Canadians on CBC TV the other night.

While all the attention was on what Trudeau had learned from the questioners, I kept wondering how much the questioners themselves were learning about government. Did they come away with their views changed on what we require of political leadership?

CBC did a good job of choosing people with tough questions; not one of them was able to walk away from the Trudeau encounter with easy answers. The prime minister has taken a bit of flak in some quarters for offering too little in the way of comfort or solutions, but that’s an occupational hazard in modern politics. If the answers were easy or quick, wouldn’t someone have offered some by now?

One thing is certain — none of those people came to the Prime Minister’s Office simply asking for their “taxpayers’” money back.

There are all kinds of good reasons to keep reminding politicians that the money they’re spending is public money — a better term, it seems, than “taxpayers’ money”. And the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has served as a useful check on reckless spending over the years.

But taxing and spending are not the sum total of running a country, despite how that rather limited view has been hammered into popular political culture over the years. If they were, those ten citizens who met Trudeau the other night could have been sent away with a nice cheque as a parting gift.

Susan Delacourt takes us on an etymological tour of the word “taxpayer”

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