New executives anxiously await Liberal marching orders

2015/11/04 Leave a comment

Will be interesting to observe over the next year whether or not there are major changes (my expectation is that the incoming government will move incrementally, as they develop a better sense of current senior public service executives, given that dramatic change is disruptive when a public service  is trying to deliver an ambitious agenda):

There has been much speculation about whether executives – particularly the deputy ministers, almost all of whom were promoted to top jobs by outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper – are up to implementing the agenda of a more activist government.

Some argue the public service needs a shakeup at the top to bring about the “culture change” expected after Liberal promises of openness and respect in the battered relationship between bureaucrats and politicians. “You can’t change culture with the leadership that created that culture in the first place,” said one official.

But most expect the government will opt for continuity, quietly shuffling the people it wants in or out of top posts in coming months.

There’s no word, for instance, whether Justin Trudeau intends to keep Charette as his deputy minister and secretary to cabinet, but incoming prime ministers typically do, if only for a few months.

There’s much debate on what needs to be done to “fix” the public service. Numerous studies – many done by APEX – have examined the problems facing executives and the changing nature of their work over the decade.

[Linda] Duxbury says public service culture was reshaped at every level over the past decade by a government that didn’t respect public servants, didn’t want their advice, barked orders from the Prime Minister’s Office, ignored data, and rewarded “doers” and implementers. Those who “joined the public service to serve didn’t know what their jobs were anymore,” she said.

But “I sense there is a pent-up demand in the public service to show people what they could do, given half the chance,” said Duxbury.

She is confident many of the senior executives who worked in government before the Conservative ethos took hold can quickly adapt to Liberal demands. They have the needed policy- and decision-making skills but have spent the past decade “out of their comfort zone,” with those skills “dormant and pushed underground,” Duxbury said.

She argues political leaders, not senior bureaucrats, set the tone in government and “if the Liberals practise what they preach, we could see a blossoming of the public service.”

James Lahey, a former senior bureaucrat who teaches federal executives at the University of Ottawa, said he thinks executives are generally up to the challenge, and those who aren’t will be weeded out. The risk is that if they aren’t fast enough, the government, with a small window to show progress, will look elsewhere for help.

“In general, people are energized by the expected change in tone and chance to do what they like but haven’t been able to do as freely,” said Lahey.

Lisanne Lacroix, APEX’s former chief executive officer, said the bureaucracy reacted to the Conservative culture of fear and disrespect by building a system that turned leaders into micro-managers: too controlling; focused on details rather than priorities, not trusting the people who work for them; avoiding risks and wanting no surprises.

“I feel people are tactical, not strategic; focused on the narrow and short-term, and their decisions are guided by rules, not judgment. People are paid to do, not to think or question,” Lacroix said.

“We need leaders but the culture is such that the ones promoted and rewarded are the micro-managers, and that has to change.”

Source: New executives anxiously await Liberal marching orders | Ottawa Citizen

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Liberals to restore mandatory long-form census

2015/11/04 Leave a comment

Expected, needed and welcome:

Restoring the long-form census will be among the first acts of the new Liberal government, which takes office Wednesday.

Prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau and his cabinet are expected to move quickly on the formal decision to reinstate the mandatory questionnaire that was axed by the Conservatives in 2010, the Star has learned.

The move, seen as vital by those who rely on the census data, is an important symbolic one, too, for the Liberals, demonstrating a commitment to science-based policy while taking the first steps of undoing the legacy of almost a decade of Conservative rule.

“It will be fairly easy because it doesn’t take legislation. All it requires is cabinet saying so,” said Ivan Fellegi, who served as Canada’s chief statistician for 23 years and retired in 2008.

“It’s definitely an excellent step,” he told the Star Monday.

Fellegi was among the many voices who raised concerns about the Tory move in 2010 — done with no consultation — to replace the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary household survey for the 2011 census. The eight-question mandatory short form was distributed as well.

The 61-question long-form census — sent to one in five households –— included questions on language, aboriginal heritage, ethnicity, education, employment and commuting habits and was meant to provide greater insight into the country and its citizens.

The responses to those questions — and the trends revealed from one census to the next — helped public officials plan infrastructure and urban services and give private businesses insight into their customers.

Munir Sheikh, the head of Statistics Canada, quit in protest over the decision, warning that a voluntary survey would not work.

That warning was borne out as many experts viewed the data from the National Household Survey with suspicion because it was voluntary.

Indeed, because of the questionable nature of some results, Statistics Canada was unable to publish detailed census data for some smaller communities.

“The move to the voluntary census had a fairly substantial impact, particularly for small towns and cities and neighbourhoods . . . that’s where the impact was really felt,” said Doug Norris, the chief demographer at Environics Analytics.

But Norris said the missing data was equally felt by the business community.

“Many companies depend on the census data as a bit of a building block for many other types of information they develop to make their decisions,” Norris said.

Source: Liberals to restore mandatory long-form census | Toronto Star

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Punjabi now third language in the House | hilltimes.com

2015/11/03 Leave a comment

The changing face of Canada and Parliament:

With the election of 20 Punjabi-speaking MPs on Oct. 19, the Punjabi language is now the third most common in the House of Commons after English and French.

In total, 23 MPs of South Asian origin were elected to the House last month. Three of them—Liberal MP Chandra Arya (Nepean, Ont.) who was born and raised in India, Gary Anandasangaree (Scarborough-Rouge Park, Ont.) who is Tamil, and Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kwartha, Ont.) who is of Afghan origin—do not speak Punjabi.

Of the 20 who do speak Punjabi, 18 are Liberals and two are Conservatives.

The NDP does not have any Punjabi-speaking MPs in caucus after B.C. MPs Jinny Sims and Jasbir Sandhu both lost on Oct. 19.

Among the newly-elected Punjabi-speaking MPs, 14 are males and six are females. Ontario elected 12, British Columbia four, Alberta three and one is from Quebec.

Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) is scheduled to unveil his Cabinet this week and some of these Liberal MPs are expected to be included in the front bench.

According to Statistics Canada’s 2011 National Household Survey, 430,705 Canadians identified Punjabi as their mother tongue, making it the third most common language after English and French.

About 100 million people in the world are native speakers of Punjabi, most of them based in Pakistan and India. In the Indian state of Punjab, Punjabi is the official language. In Pakistan, despite being the single largest linguistic group, Punjabi does not have official language status in the province of Punjab. Instead, Urdu and English are used in schools and offices.

 In an interview with The Hill Times, Navdeep Bains, a Liberal elected in Mississauga-Malton, Ont., said that although 20 Punjabi-speaking MPs have been elected, these MPs represent all constituents regardless of their party affiliation or ethnic origin.

“It speaks to our commitment to diversity and allowing individual [MPs] to play an important role in our political institutions,” said Mr. Bains.

Source: Punjabi now third language in the House | hilltimes.com

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Top bureaucrats met to resist partisanship imposed on public service #cdnpoli

2015/11/03 Leave a comment

Encouraging sign that senior levels appear not to have remained in denial mode (the change in government makes this all the more pertinent as the incoming government and the public service need to establish trust):

As a new Liberal government takes the reins this week, Canada’s top bureaucrats are looking for ways to purge partisan politics from the shell-shocked public service.

The highest echelon of the bureaucracy met in the spring, before the election was called, to discuss ways to insulate public servants from intense pressure to be “promiscuously partisan” instead of neutral in carrying out the government’s agenda.

The May 13 meeting of deputy ministers was asked by Canada’s top civil servant to consider how Canada’s Westminster parliamentary system needs to be “re-set and if medium-term planning could provide the opportunity.”

The group was provided with one paper for backgrounding — dating from 2010, by the late scholar Peter Aucoin — describing how partisanship has damaged Westminster systems in Canada, Britain and Australia.

The new reality “is characterized by integration of governance and campaigning, partisan-political staff as a third force in public administration, politicization of appointments to the senior public service, and expectation that public servants should be promiscuously partisan,” says a summary provided for the meeting by the Privy Council Office, the central organ of government .

The group was urged to consider how the damaged system could be fixed “during periods of transition and government formation.”

One proposal called for clarifying the job description of Canada’s top public servant, the clerk of the Privy Council.

‘Confusion and mistrust’

“Without a set of guidelines to clearly determine which of the clerk’s roles should be given primacy in situations where duties may conflict, confusion and mistrust can arise during periods of government formation.”

Meeting documents, some heavily censored, were obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act. They represent a candid acknowledgment by the bureaucracy that partisan politics have radically changed the nature of their work, especially under the Harper government.

A spokesman for Janice Charette, appointed clerk just last year, declined to respond to questions, including what actions were taken arising from the meeting. “We are not able to provide details of meetings of senior executives,” Raymond Rivet said in an email.

The so-called “creeping politicization” of the public service dates as far back as the 1970s, under Liberal governments, but the Harper administration has come under special criticism from some scholars.

Ralph Heintzman, a research professor at the University of Ottawa, has cited the example of a communications directive requiring bureaucrats to refer to the “Harper government” in news releases, rather than the government of Canada.

Other examples include a request last year that departments send retweets promoting a family-tax measure not yet passed by Parliament, including a hashtag with the Conservative slogan #StrongFamilies, and public servants working overtime to create promotional videos about child benefits, spots that prominently featured Pierre Poilievre, the employment minister.

“For anyone who cares about the condition of our federal public service, this is a very depressing story,” Heintzman wrote about the “Strong Families” tweets last April, a month before the deputy ministers’ meeting.

“It seems to confirm the widely reported slide of too many senior public service leaders from their traditional and proper role as non-partisan professionals to a new and improper role as partisan cheerleaders for the current political administration.”

Source: Top bureaucrats met to resist partisanship imposed on public service – Politics – CBC News

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Why Canada’s shift to conservatism isn’t dead: Bricker and Ibbitson

2015/10/29 Leave a comment

Bricked and Ibbitson appear to be remain in denial mode given the results in the 33 ridings where visible minorities are the majority and where the Liberals won 52 percent of the popular vote compared to the Conservatives 32 percent.

Their thesis was always suspect as it presumed that more conservative social and political views among some visible minority groups would lead to a permanent conservative shift.

They neglected to factor in issues of particular interest to new Canadians (e.g., immigration and citizenship policies) and broader values also influence election outcomes.

Moreover, using 2011 as a baseline was always questionable, given that the 2011 election was characterized by an exceptionally inept Liberal leader and campaign:

Mr. Trudeau’s astonishing revival of the Liberal Party – one of the greatest political achievements in this country’s history – masks a contradiction within his caucus. That caucus consists of a large contingent of MPs from Atlantic Canada and Quebec, where attitudes to wide-open immigration and multiculturalism are ambivalent at best. Both regions are, broadly speaking, economically weak, making them dependent on federal subsidies.

But the caucus also contains a large swath of MPs from the so-called 905, the suburban cities surrounding Toronto, named after their area code; and from similar ridings outside Vancouver. Polling shows that the immigrant voters who dominate these ridings are economically and socially more conservative than many of the native-born with European backgrounds.

The prospect of four more years of Mr. Harper pushed them away from the Conservatives and over to the Liberals. But we believe that, all things being equal, they will be inclined to drift back.

Of course, all things may not be equal. Mr. Trudeau may prove to be an inspired prime minister. The Tories could choose badly when they select the next leader. Any student of history knows that both tectonic forces (the U.S. economy surpassed all others in the 19th century) and individuals (Lincoln became president at the Republic’s most perilous hour) shape events. In the next Canadian election, anything could happen.

But slumping commodity prices notwithstanding, Western Canada will continue to grow in population and influence. In recent years, the Conservatives boosted immigration from 250,000 a year to 285,000. If any further proof of the seismic demographic shift that is under way were needed, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that (a) between 2011 and 2014, the Canadian population grew by a healthy 1.1 per cent per year, (b) two-thirds of that growth was due to immigration and (c) the three fastest-growing provinces were Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Asian immigration and the rising West are making Canada a more Pacific and a more conservative place. We note that Mr. Trudeau, while campaigning on a message of hope and change, crafted a platform that left the meat of the Harper government’s agenda – low taxes, non-interference with the provinces, expanding trade opportunities, tougher penalties for some crimes – intact.

The shift is real and it will only grow more real with every passing year. We suspect no one understands that better than Mr. Trudeau himself. To beat him, the next Conservative leader must embrace it as well.

Source: Why Canada’s shift to conservatism isn’t dead – The Globe and Mail
And my letter in today’s Globe making the same points:

The case for the “big shift” toward conservatism driven by more conservative suburban immigrant voters assumes that more conservative social and economic values will dominate over general Canadian values.

The Conservatives lost decisively in most of the ridings in the Greater Toronto Area and in B.C.’s Lower Mainland that they so assiduously courted. Look at the seat counts in 33 visible-majority ridings: the Conservatives: 2; the Liberals: 30; the NDP:1.

The Conservatives took 32 per cent of the total popular vote in these ridings, compared to 52 per cent for the Liberals, a much wider gap than the overall popular vote. While many of these voters may have more conservative values, these did not trump concerns over restrictions to immigration and citizenship, the divisiveness of the Conservative campaign, and the likely attraction of infrastructure investment to reduce gridlock.

As Michael Adams has argued, “Canadians deeply value their pluralistic society; they believe government has a role to play in building a fair country; they believe in empathy and compromise as social habits.”

The election results indicate that these values are shared by new and old Canadians alike.

 Oct. 29: Bronze statues of limitations, and other letters to the editor 

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Will Justin Trudeau keep fighting Stephen Harper’s court battles?

2015/10/27 Leave a comment

Likely that a number of these kinds of cases will be dropped, presumably to the relief of Justice Canada lawyers (given that at least part of the Harper government’s motivation appeared to be more scoring of political points than enforcing the law):

Bahareh Esfand couldn’t vote for Justin Trudeau, but she sees the prime minister-designate’s victory reflected in her own Federal Court battle

For the past year, the Coquitlam, B.C., woman has locked horns with a Conservative government bent on winning the right to remove her permanent resident status.

It’s a complicated story: Esfand came to Canada from Iran in 2006 with her political refugee husband, but the minister of citizenship and immigration wants to strip her of refugee status for returning to see her ailing mother.

Regardless, the battle is almost pointless, because even if the government won, it’s unlikely they could deport a hard-working, non-criminal mother of a Canadian-born child and wife of a newly minted Canadian citizen.

As if to put a fine point on all of that, Federal Court Judge George Locke sided with Esfand this week in a scathing decision that suggests the outgoing government was “more concerned with removing refugee status than granting it.”

‘They’ve got a lot of decisions to make’

Esfand claims Stephen Harper’s government threw her life off balance in a bid to score an ideological point.

In that, she wouldn’t be alone. Canada’s courts are packed with claimants alleging their rights were violated by an agenda that purported to be tough on bogus refugees and tough on crime.

But her case also raises a question. What next? Even before Locke handed down his decision on Esfand, Ottawa announced plans to appeal if they lost.

But will Trudeau want to continue fighting Harper’s battles?

“They’ve got a lot of decisions to make,” said Josh Paterson, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

“They’re going to have to take a good, hard look at the whole suite of laws that have been passed by the current government and the legal challenges that are out there and figure out what to do.”

Broadly speaking, the cases in front of appeal or Federal Court judges involve either broad Charter of Rights challenges to legislation or specific cases where the application of policy allegedly undermines the intent of a law.

Issues range from mandatory minimum sentences, victim surcharges, the Fair Elections Act, refugee health care and Bill C-51 to the controversial niqab issue — just for a start.

Source: Will Justin Trudeau keep fighting Stephen Harper’s court battles? – British Columbia – CBC News

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Long-form census could be reinstated for 2016, experts say

2015/10/23 Leave a comment

An early test  of the incoming Liberal government, one that looks like it could be done:

The return of the long form, promised by Justin Trudeau during the election campaign, would yield vastly more reliable data and cost less than running another national household survey, the former heads of the agency say.

“It should be possible. I am certainly very hopeful. But [the decision] needs to be done very soon. It’s an enormous logistical operation,” said Ivan Fellegi, chief statistician from 1985 to 2008.

It’s “no problem” to reintroduce the long form in time for the 2016 census, said Munir Sheikh, head of the agency from 2008 to 2010. The questions needn’t change, he said – just the instructions at the top. “All they need to do is put on the front page that this is mandatory.”

The other step is for “cabinet to approve it as a census, which they can do at any time – it would take a matter of seconds.”

Researchers are already pressing for action. “Undoing these mistakes cannot wait; the time for action is now as Statistics Canada is on the cusp of launching the 2016 census,” says a letter signed this week by 61 academics and directors of research centres, including Statscan’s former assistant director Alain Bélanger.

Issuing an immediate order in council “is the only way to implement the long form in time for the census six months from now,” they said. “This must be one of the first moves made ​​by the Liberal government of Mr. Trudeau. It would mark a clear break with the previous government and ensure that future social policies can be made on scientific grounds rather than ideological dogmatism.”

….The Liberal platform pledges to “immediately” restore the mandatory long form – and make Statistics Canada “fully independent.”

Mr. Sheikh, who resigned over the controversy in 2010, said having the agency operate at arm’s length to the government is an even more crucial step. “I would say that is more important than restoring the long-form census, because that really was the cause of the problem, that the government can interfere with Statscan on issues like this.If you have an independent agency, the census in the future wouldn’t be the cabinet or minister’s problem, it would be the chief statistician’s problem.”

Mr. Sheikh said “anyone who uses data” will benefit from the return of the census. The biggest beneficiaries would be governments at all levels, “which have to base their policies on reliable data. And then of course researchers, who use this data to determine social outcomes, the condition of households in terms of income, poverty, unemployment, the state of housing, transportation needs, the needs of ethnic minorities, language, the employment equity act. Any kind of social and economic policy issues you can think of really are related to the census.”

As well, “the census provides an anchor to all other surveys, will have much more reliable data to check all other survey results against that.”

Both former chief statisticians said the switch could save money by reducing printing costs and expenditures associated with the labour required to administer and analyze the separate household survey. The NHS was sent to about 4.5 million Canadian households while the 2006 long-form census was sent to 2.5 million dwellings. Running any census is a massive undertaking that typically takes years to plan. The total projected budget for the 2016 census – which had been planned as a mandatory short form and voluntary NHS – is $701.8-million.

Statistics Canada wouldn’t comment on whether it’s possible to make the changes in time for the 2016 census. “It’s a policy matter, and we can’t comment,” said spokesman Peter Frayne.

Other experts say it can be done. “It is inherently easier to return to a well-tested methodology” such as the traditional census, said Ian McKinnon, chair of the National Statistics Council. “If any statistical agency in the world can do it, Statistics Canada can.”

Reinstating the census “soon, both sends a signal of change of policy, and interest in basing policy on evidence – evidence-based decision-making, which I think is very healthy,” said Charles Beach, professor emeritus at Queen’s University and head of the Canadian Economics Association. Moreover, “doing something that is both cost effective and more useful, it’s an economic no-brainer.”

Source: Long-form census could be reinstated for 2016, experts say – The Globe and Mail

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Nancy Peckford and Grace Lore: When it comes to gender parity in Parliament, better is always possible

2015/10/22 Leave a comment

More from Equal Voice on women representation in Parliament:

But there is one change that we at Equal Voice hoped for that did not happen. The percentage of women elected to the House of Commons did not meaningfully increase. It is just one point higher than the last time, at 26 per cent. How could this be? Many remarkable women were elected. Eighty-eight in fact. Fifty of them Liberal women. Further, the Conservative party, which fielded the lowest percentage of women, lost. Resoundingly. And yet, still the percentage of women barely increased.

In short, we can’t elect more women unless far more of them are on the ballot. More women won’t win unless many more women run. While overall in this election, there was a small uptick in the percentage of female candidates for the major five parties (33 per cent), it wasn’t enough. The significant variability among parties produced, in the end, a House of Commons whose gender balance is no different. While the NDP has a much smaller caucus of over 44 MPs, 18 are women (41 percent). The Conservatives, now with 99 MPs, elected 17 per cent women, the same as when they were in government. The Greens, despite hopeful projections, elected only the party’s leader Elizabeth May. The Bloc Québécois elected two women out of 10.

The women-held NDP seats that were lost in Quebec went to largely male contenders from the other parties. In Ontario, while Liberal women won far more seats, 28, it wasn’t enough to make up the difference. In Alberta and B.C., while the raw numbers stayed the same even with the addition of new seats, proportionally, women won fewer of them than they did last time. Other than Ontario, only in the Atlantic and Saskatchewan did we see an increase in the proportion of women elected.

Election after election, the uneven addition of women candidates to party slates has meant very small incremental gains when it comes to women in the House. And while the dramatic turnover in party fortunes means the addition of some incredibly talented newly elected women, in addition to the return of some high performers from all sides, the pace of change is incredibly slow. Given this rate of change over the last five elections, it will take 89 years before we reach parity.

We know we can and must do better than this. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Canada’s ranking has changed from 50 to 48 among 190 countries when comparing elected women in national Parliaments. Equal Voice has a plan to change this. Our multi-partisan national board has committed to encouraging and equipping up to 5,000 women to run over the next five years. This way, political parties won’t have to do all of the heavy lifting. We will recruit and help prepare hundreds, if not thousands, of prospective women candidates. So that more women will self identify as candidates, say yes when approached to run or, even better, not wait to be asked.

We know the next prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who understands the merit of a cabinet that is 50 per cent women, wants to make his own mark on the just society to which he believed so many Canadians wished to return. We can imagine no better goal than ensuring gender parity in the House during his lifetime. In his words, better is always possible.

Source: Nancy Peckford and Grace Lore: When it comes to gender parity in Parliament, better is always possible | Ottawa Citizen

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Union wants top bureaucrat to help restore public service ‘neutrality’ | Ottawa Citizen

2015/10/20 Leave a comment

Various commentary on the decision by unions to play a partisan role in the election. I agree with the overall message that this harms the overall public service-political relationship:

This wasn’t the first election in which unions opposed the government of the day but many say it was the most aggressive.

“The decision of unions to campaign against Harper … was unfortunate and harmful because it legitimizes the Conservative view that the public service is a partisan institution. I don’t think it is, but the actions of unions certainly makes it appear to be,” said Ralph Heintzman, a University of Ottawa professor who has proposed various reforms to restore public service neutrality.

He said a Liberal or NDP government would have to wonder about whether the public service could turn on them.

“No party can rejoice in public servants becoming actively involved in electoral politics against the government,” said Heintzman. “Mulcair and Trudeau … can’t be thrilled with unions campaigning against the Conservative government because it suggests that if unions don’t like what you do, they will become partisan again.”

That trust was further called into question when a secret policy briefing, prepared by the Department of Foreign Affairs for deputy ministers on Canada’s shrinking international clout, was leaked during the election campaign. Charette called in the RCMP to find the leak. In a separate incident, the deputy minister at Citizenship and Immigration called the Mounties to track down who leaked that the Prime Minister’s Office had directed bureaucrats to stop processing Syrian refugees pending an audit.

Donald Savoie, a Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at Université de Moncton, said leaking information to embarrass the government in an election is such a breach of the public service’s ethos that the clerk had to play hardball and call the Mounties.

“They hurt the institution they service. What is the opposition supposed to think if they do this to the government of the day; what will stop them from leaking when we’re the government?” said Savoie.

But Daviau is convinced the public service will have the trust and respect of the Liberals or NDP because both parties were “forthright” in their promises and consulted with unions on their proposed reforms months before the election.

“I feel confident that with the declarations of the other parties to revert back to the traditional way of doing business, that the genie can be put back in the bottle, but now comes the work to get us back to where we were,” said Daviau.

But Heintzman said the eroding neutrality of the public service goes much further than unions’ electoral activism and the system needs a structural overhaul.

He said the Conservative government “exploited all the ambiguities of the parliamentary system for its own partisan advantage,” pushing public servants over the line that used to be drawn between politics and public service.

A big problem, he said, is that deputy ministers didn’t challenge this politicization of the public service, particularly “turning the PCO into a partisan communications machine.” The most talked-about example was a video Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre had public servants produce with department funds to promote the Conservatives’ universal child-care benefit.

“The clerk is part of the problem. (Her) role corrupts the public service by creating a hierarchy of power that no deputy minister will challenge. The deputy minister is appointed by the clerk, looks to the clerk as boss and won’t challenge directions from PCO,” said Heintzman.

David Zussman, the Jarislowsky Chair on Management in the Public Sector at the University of Ottawa, has written a book on transitions from one government to another called Off and Running. He said questions about neutrality will have to be dealt with but they won’t be on the priority list of a new government.

But the public service is the key player in managing a transition, giving it a “chance to shine” – which can go a long way to rebuilding trust, Zussman said.

Source: Union wants top bureaucrat to help restore public service ‘neutrality’ | Ottawa Citizen

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Federal Access to Information law ‘critically sick’: new study

2015/10/19 Leave a comment

Confirms all the various articles and reports over the years, along with my experience:

The federal access-to-information law is “effectively crippled” as a means of promoting accountability, says a new study that tested open records legislation across the country.

The latest annual freedom of information audit by lobby group Newspapers Canada says long delays, staff shortages and blacked-out pages add up to an Access to Information Act “that just doesn’t work.”

The organization, which represents more than 800 newspapers, sent almost 450 access requests to federal government departments and Crown corporations, ministries, departments and agencies in all provinces and territories and to municipalities and police forces.

The report says the results revealed familiar, entrenched patterns, and some new ones.

In the digital age, it stresses, the willingness to disclose data in formats that can be read by computers is increasingly important and, once again, the audit found many public bodies “resistant to releasing information in these formats.”

People who want information from Canada’s cities could expect reasonably speedy service, while provinces, on average, took a little longer and the federal government trailed far behind.

Requesters who file an application under the federal Access to Information Act should be prepared for a long wait and to see more information withheld, the report says.

“There is no doubt that the federal access system is critically sick. Departments can take months to answer requests, even though the normal time from start to finish is supposed to be 30 days or fewer.”

 Source: Federal Access to Information law ‘critically sick’: new study | Toronto Star

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