Neil Macdonald: Government sensitivity over you hearing about ‘sensitive’ information

2015/10/14 1 Comment

While MacDonald is unfair to CIC DM Anita Biguzs (she had no option but to investigate the leak), his broader points are valid:

But to Biguzs and her fellow mandarins at Citizenship and Immigration, the public should never have been told any of these things in the first place, and the fact that it was constituted a grave crime.

Interestingly, Biguzs’s memo does not call the information leaked “classified.” She calls it “sensitive.” There’s a big difference.

Classified information is an official secret, determined by security professionals to be potentially injurious to national security. (Or at least that’s supposed to be how it works.)

Disclosing an official secret is a crime.

“Sensitive information,” on the other hand, is anything the government doesn’t want the public to know, and, as noted, the government that Biguzs has served for a decade doesn’t want the public to know much.

Prosecuting embarrassment

Using Biguzs’s logic, federal scientists who decide the public should know about a scientific finding about the quality of the air we breathe or water we drink are unethical underminers of democracy, too, unless they seek permission to speak, which is rather difficult to obtain nowadays in Ottawa.

Of course, when a government does want reporters to know something, the information is suddenly not sensitive at all anymore, and democracy is well-served by its disclosure, sometimes even — and I speak here with some experience — when it’s an official secret.

In the case of the immigration and passport stories, apparently, the government was embarrassed, so the RCMP are now stalking the department’s hallways, further intimidating an already scared group of bureaucrats.

Politicians, including Harper’s Conservatives, love to talk about the supreme importance of accountability. It is a word that has been milked, flogged and ridden practically to death.

So Biguzs and her political masters might want to ponder this: If the information about the refugee review and the faulty passports had been divulged in a timely fashion, as a matter of public accountability, democracy would not only have been served, there’d be no need to call the police.

Source: Neil Macdonald: Government sensitivity over you hearing about ‘sensitive’ information – Politics – CBC News

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How Tories win immigrant votes using anti-immigrant messages: Doug Saunders

2015/10/13 Leave a comment

Doug Saunders, always worth reading, flags the longer-term risks of the Conservative approach, drawing on the analysis of Peter Loewen (see earlier post Support for Conservatives’ niqab ban is deep and wide, even among immigrants). We will, of course, see the extent to which the strategy works on election day:

The second is that after accomplishing this, Mr. Harper’s party has run a 2015 campaign built on ethnic and religious distrust, fear and divisiveness. By turning a non-existent issue – involving a miniscule subgroup, women who wear the niqab – into a major campaign issue, and by tying immigration and terrorism policies together rhetorically, the Conservatives have stoked anti-immigrant sentiments and religious intolerance.

That leads to the third surprise: This does not appear to have cost the Conservatives support among immigrants and members of most minorities.

I checked this with Peter Loewen, a specialist in public-opinion analytics at the University of Toronto’s department of political science. He is one of the operators of localparliament.ca, an online portal that tracks the voting intentions of 11,442 eligible and likely voters across Canada. While the survey’s big-picture forecasts are subject to the distortions and biases of online polling (and use algorithms to correct for these), it shines at providing a uniquely large-sample, daily breakdown of intention by immigration status.

It shows that, as of Wednesday, non-immigrant Canadians have a predicted likelihood of voting Conservative of 27 per cent, while foreign-born Canadians have a likelihood of 34 per cent – a statistically significant 7-point difference recorded well after the Tories’ tilt toward ugly ethno-politics.

More significantly, Dr. Loewen told me, “there is no evidence that immigrants are becoming less likely to vote Tory as the campaign goes on. In fact, if anything, the opposite appears true.”

By turning sharply toward anti-immigrant messaging, the Conservatives didn’t lose, and might even have gained, support among immigrants. What gives?

It shows that the politics of intolerance, as well as the more benign social and economic appeals to small-c conservatism, are at least as likely to appeal to minority immigrants as they are to “white” Canadians. On one level, realizing this represents a sort of political maturity – better to have conservative parties fighting for minority votes than the situation in the United States or France, where the right-wing parties still rely on the monolithic intolerance of the white majority.

David Cameron, Britain’s Tory Prime Minister, ran a re-election campaign this year larded with tough messages about detaining and sending back immigrants; he not only won a majority but also doubled his party’s support among ethnic minorities, attracting a million visible-minority Britons.

On a more extreme level, former Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s xenophobic and often outright racist rhetoric made him the preferred candidate for lower-income immigrant voters; his faction still controls the city’s most minority- and immigrant-heavy wards.

Mr. Harper has probably lost the Muslim vote, but that’s only 3 per cent of Canadians. He and his ethnic-outreach agent, Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney, are evidently making a calculated bid to make gains among Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Christian diasporas by playing on their atavistic fears of their Muslim neighbours.

This is a dangerous game.

Research has shown that Canadians do not bring the ethno-political divisions of their home countries with them: Indo-Canadian Muslims prefer to live among Indo-Canadian Hindus and Sikhs rather than Muslims from other backgrounds, for example. Intermarriage rates are high.

But diversity does not mean that everyone trusts everyone else. My Trinidadian neighbours have sour things to say about Jamaicans, and the Malaysian guy up the street says unprintable things about the local Eritreans. The schisms of the Indian subcontinent – Hindu, Sikh and Muslim; Sinhalese and Tamil; Sunni and Shia; Deobandi and Barelvi – are woven into many family histories. The schisms of the Middle East are woven into others. But in Canada’s system of democratic pluralism, those private divisions are kept in the background, subsumed under a larger values of mutual respect, cooperation and equal treatment. Playing on these histories for electoral gain goes against Canada’s basic values.

Building a diverse and inclusive conservative movement ought to have been a historic accomplishment. But by using intolerance to fuel sectarian mistrust, Mr. Harper is damaging that legacy.

Source: How Tories win immigrant votes using anti-immigrant messages – The Globe and Mail

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Ministers had no objection to niqabs in public service last March | hilltimes.com

2015/10/13 Leave a comment

Ongoing interest in my study (Religious Minorities in the Public Service):

But at the time Mr. Clement made his remarks as he and other Cabinet ministers were reacting to the court decision in Ms. Ishaq’s case, several of the ministers said their opposition to the wearing of niqabs only pertained to citizenship ceremonies, not in the public service.

Canadian Press reporter Joan Bryden and other journalists questioned the ministers about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comment then that wearing the niqab was contrary to Canadian values and “rooted in a culture that is anti-women.”

“That is what the prime minister said and that is a point of view that one can hold,” Ms. Bryden reported Mr. Clement as saying at the time. “That doesn’t mean that you can impose that view in the workplace or in the private sphere. The one place where I think we have a right and an obligation to stress Canadian values is the act of obtaining one’s citizenship.”

As the election sparks flew again this week over Mr. Harper’s view on the niqab, the department that oversees the public service on his behalf, Treasury Board Secretariat, said in response to questions from The Hill Times it does not have “any data or other information pertaining to niqabs” or any complaints about women wearing them in the public service.

The election campaign research by Mr. Griffith might back up a statement to The Hill Timesfrom the head of the Canadian Council for Muslim women, Alia Hogben, that it is likely no Muslim women in the public service wear niqabs.

…Mr. Griffith prepared a brief paper on the topic based on data he obtained from Statistics Canada from an inquiry last April, when his curiosity was piqued after Mr. Clement’s comments after a change Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney ordered for a legal manual citizenship judges must abide by.

Federal Court Judge Keith Boswell ruled last February the change, which required citizenship judges to reject citizenship applications from female candidates wearing niqabs if they refused to show their faces at two successive ceremonies, was unlawful because it violated an existing regulation that requires citizenship judges to administer the oath of citizenship “with dignity and solemnity,” and “allowing the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization or the solemn affirmation thereof.”

The Harper government appealed the ruling, failed in a bid to get the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn Judge Boswell’s ruling and also failed in an attempt to get the Federal Court of Appeal to stay the ruling during an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Mr. Griffith’s paper  included a wider comparison of religious minorities employed in the federal public services and the public services of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. Quebec was the lowest at 2.1 per cent, compared to 6.2 per cent in the federal public service, 8.7 per cent in Ontario, 6.8 per cent in B.C. and 6.2 per cent in Alberta.

Source: Ministers had no objection to niqabs in public service last March | hilltimes.com

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Prime Minister’s Office ordered halt to refugee processing: Globe article and response

2015/10/09 Leave a comment

Following this Globe story, PM Harper stated that:

… when it comes to admitting refugees, his government ensures the selection of the most vulnerable people while keeping the country safe and secure.

“The audit we asked for earlier this year was to ensure that these policy objectives are being met. Political staff are never involved in approving refugee applications,” Harper said. “Such decisions are made by officials in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.”

No PMO vetting of refugees, say Conservatives

But it appears that it was not prompted by security:

Sources tell CTV News that a temporary halt to the processing of some Syrian refugees was ordered earlier this year to make sure the types favoured by the Prime Minister’s Office were being prioritized.

Department of Citizenship and Immigration insiders told CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife that PMO staff went through the files to ensure that persecuted religious minorities with established communities already in Canada — ones that Conservative Leader Stephen Harper could court for votes — were being accepted. Insiders say PMO actively discouraged the department from accepting applications from Shia and Sunni Muslims.

Private applications, which are often from church groups, were allowed to continue while the rest were on hold.

PMO sought political gain in prioritizing certain Syrian refugees: sources

Should this be true, it is highly inappropriate both in substance (taking identity and ‘shopping for votes’ politics to a new level) and in process (PMO directed rather than PCO directed), not to mention morally wrong given the impact on refugees and the delays incurred.

During my time at PCO (1998-2000), when PMO had concerns about handling of files, PCO would play a strong policy coordination (and sometimes direction) to departments in close coordination with PMO. But the bureaucratic chain of command was respected.

This indicates a lack of confidence of CIC (and Minister Alexander’s ability to direct the department) to implement preferences for more vulnerable ethnic groups. Globe article that started it all below:

The Prime Minister’s Office directed Canadian immigration officials to stop processing one of the most vulnerable classes of Syrian refugees this spring and declared that all UN-referred refugees would require approval from the Prime Minister, a decision that halted a critical aspect of Canada’s response to a global crisis.

The Globe and Mail has learned that the Prime Minister intervened in a file normally handled by the Citizenship and Immigration department in the months before dramatic images of a dead toddler brought the refugee crisis to the fore. The processing stop, which was not disclosed to the public, was in place for at least several weeks. It is unclear when it was lifted. At the same time, an audit was ordered of all Syrian refugees referred by the United Nations in 2014 and 2015.

The Prime Minister’s Office asked Citizenship and Immigration for the files of some Syrian refugees so they could be vetted by the PMO – potentially placing political staff with little training in refugee matters in the middle of an already complex process.

PMO staff could have also had access to files that are considered protected, because they contain personal information, including a refugee’s health history and narrative of escape, raising questions about the privacy and security of that information and the basis on which it was being reviewed.

As a result of the halt, and the additional layers of scrutiny, families that had fled Syria and were judged by the United Nations refugee agency to be in need of resettlement had to wait longer to find refuge in Canada. It also meant there were fewer cases of UN-referred Syrians approved and ready for sponsorship when the public came forward in large numbers after the drowning death of three-year-old Alan Kurdi in August.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not directly respond to a request for comment, nor did it confirm Stephen Harper’s involvement.

A spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, however, said the government was concerned about the integrity of the system and ensuring that security was not compromised in any way.

“The processing of Syrian Government Assisted Refugees resumed only after there was confidence that our procedures were adequate to identify those vulnerable persons in most need of protection while screening out threats to Canada,” said Chris Day, spokesman for Mr. Alexander. He noted that processing of privately sponsored refugees, who are not referred by the UN but by their Canadian sponsors and who make up a growing portion of Canada’s refugees, continued throughout this period.

Critics have long complained about the centralization of decision-making in the PMO – and it would be unusual for a prime minister to sign off on refugee files that have already been vetted by the UN refugee agency, Canadian visa officials and in a small minority of cases by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Canada Border Services Agency.

Source: Prime Minister’s Office ordered halt to refugee processing – The Globe and Mail

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Bureaucracy baffled by Harper’s niqab stance: Quotes and Interview

2015/10/09 Leave a comment

Following the PM’s more measured comments Wednesday on the niqab and the public service, comments by me and others:

Unions and other political party leaders were quick to condemn the Conservative leader’s remarks. However, it wasn’t clear if there were more than a few, if any, women who wear the niqab – a veil that conceals the face except for the eyes – in the federal public service.

A request to wear the Islamic garb would have to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis under the federal government’s “duty to accommodate” policy – which would set a precedent for all departments, said Andrew Griffith, a former senior public servant who writes extensively on citizenship and multiculturalism.

“Frankly, I don’t think the issue has ever come up and it’s unlikely it would have happened without consultations at the high levels,” he told the Citizen.

At a campaign stop in Saskatoon Wednesday, Harper repeated his intention, if re-elected, to consider federal legislation modelled on Quebec’s Bill 62, introduced by the provincial Liberal government in June. If passed, that law would prohibit public servants from wearing niqabs in provincial offices.

“Let me be very clear, we’ve actually been saying the same thing for several months,” said Harper. “The Quebec government, the Liberal government in Quebec, has brought forward legislation to require that people reveal their identity when delivering or receiving frontline service. They have tabled a bill before the Quebec assembly, we’ve said we will look at that bill before taking further steps.

“The Quebec government has been handling this controversy in a very responsible manner and we will do exactly the same things.”

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents the majority of federal employees, said it doesn’t know how many women working in the public service wear a niqab – if any – and has never received concerns or complaints about the garment.

Still, PSAC President Robyn Benson said a ban on the niqab or any religious symbol would violate the anti-discriminatory provisions of employees’ collective agreements and the Canadian Human Rights Act.

“This is just another cynical attempt by the Harper Conservatives to distract from what is really at stake in this election: the reckless government cuts that have impacted millions of Canadians,” said Benson.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair Wednesday called Harper’s remarks “bizarre.”

“For him to run an election campaign on the backs of minorities, stigmatizing, singling out, going after minorities … he’s looking to divide Canadians,” Mulcair said.

But beyond the barbs, puzzling questions loom.

Griffith argued the public service should get a better handle on religious and minority groups as part of its employment-equity strategy so managers are better prepared if and when a request to wear the niqab actually does arise.

The number of Muslims working in the public service is likely in line with the proportion who are Canadian citizens (the public service has a hiring preference for Canadian citizens). Muslims women represent about 1.8 per cent of the population.

Source: Bureaucracy baffled by Harper’s niqab stance | Ottawa Citizen

And my interview on CBC’s Ottawa Morning:

Should public servants be allowed to wear the niqab?Andrew Griffith is a former director general at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. He’s also written about multiculturalism and government.Listen 7:10 

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PS fighting for respect in election, not sick leave

2015/10/06 Leave a comment

Reaction by public sector unions to PM Harper’s letter (Stephen Harper writes open letter to Canada’s ‘world-class public service’ in order to correct ‘misinformation’), appropriately focusing on the higher level issues of the relationship and trust:

Canada’s public servants won’t buy Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s last-minute love letter to them because respect and the ability to do their jobs — not sick leave benefits and pensions — are what they are fighting for in this election.

Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said Harper’s recent open letter to public servants, patting them on the back and offering assurances that sick leave reform will be fair and pensions untouched, totally missed the mark of what public servants and their unions are campaigning for.

“We aren’t active in this election because of sick leave and pensions … These aren’t public servants’ issues and I don’t think our members will be fooled by it,” said Daviau.

“What it comes down to is that we don’t believe that Canada’s public service can survive another Harper government mandate.”

Harper’s letter zeros in on sick leave and pensions — the terms and conditions of public service employment that have been under attack by the Conservatives. Sick leave is the big hot-button issue in the ongoing round of collective bargaining with federal unions.

But Daviau said those are “Harper’s issues” and the letter is a “trap” — a last-minute effort to woo the public service vote in Ottawa while portraying public servants for Canadians as “petty” and only concerned with pay and benefits.

Federal unions have been very active in this campaign, their focus on eroding public services caused by budget cuts and the deteriorating relationship between public servants and the government. For many public servants, the big concerns revolve around the culture of fear and erosion of the traditional role of the public service.

The Liberals and NDP have both announced public service platforms aimed at rebuilding the relationship and restoring trust.

Source: PS fighting for respect in election, not sick leave | Ottawa Citizen

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Stephen Harper writes open letter to Canada’s ‘world-class public service’ in order to correct ‘misinformation’ | National Post

2015/10/03 1 Comment

This is funny and is likely not targeted at public service voters:

After publicly taking swipes on the campaign trail at bureaucrats in Ottawa, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives say they are the party to best protect the interests of federal public servants and are proud of Canada’s “world-class public service.”

Harper released an open letter Thursday to Canada’s public service that thanks them for their hard work on implementing government policies and cutting red tape, but also tries to correct “misinformation” he says is being spread by opposition parties and unions about the government’s plans on sick leave and pensions.

With Conservatives facing tough challenges in a number of Ottawa-area constituencies – including John Baird’s former riding of Ottawa West-Nepean – the Tories put on a full-court press Thursday to try to solidify the support of voters in the National Capital Region and combat recent announcements from the NDP and Liberals about their commitments to the public service.

Unfortunately, in the current election context, misleading statements are being made about certain issues that matter to you and your families, including sick leave and pension entitlements

Senior Ottawa Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, flanked by several Ottawa-area Conservative candidates, Thursday unveiled Harper’s letter to the public service and try to reassure bureaucrats that they have nothing to fear should the Conservatives win another mandate.

Harper, in his two-page letter, lauded the work of federal bureaucrats in Ottawa and elsewhere.

“Canadians are well-served by our world-class public service, and I have seen this first-hand as Prime Minister. During our time in Government, we have worked with you to ensure your efforts are focused on the things that matter most to Canadians, and to create a healthier workplace where good work is recognized, red tape is removed, and benefits meet real needs,” Harper says in the open letter.

“Unfortunately, in the current election context, misleading statements are being made about certain issues that matter to you and your families, including sick leave and pension entitlements.”

Source: Stephen Harper writes open letter to Canada’s ‘world-class public service’ in order to correct ‘misinformation’ | National Post

Full text of the letter: Open letter 2[1]

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Court won’t block rollout of new screening process for public service | Ottawa Citizen

2015/10/02 Leave a comment

While I understand the Court’s reasoning with respect to fingerprinting, credit and criminal checks, as these are objective measures, I am less convinced by the need for sweeping searches of social media, given the greater degree of subjectivity in assessing security risks (e.g., while advocating for ISIS is an easy one, what about environmental activism, criticism of government policies etc).

Given that new recruits will invariably be digital natives, with rich social media histories, there will invariably be less clear cases. The old adage remains, ‘let he or she who is without sin,’ as most new employees will likely have some sharing that in retrospect was not wise:

The Federal Court has refused to stop the rollout of a new security screening process for Canada’s public servants, which includes fingerprinting, credit and criminal checks and sweeping searches of social media as the minimum clearance needed for the job.

The decision was a setback for the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which had sought an injunction to partly halt the implementation of the process, which is supposed to be fully operational by October 2017.

The union is appealing the decision.

In her decision, Federal Court Judge Catherine Kane said the union raised a “serious issue” but failed to prove the key tests needed for an injunction. She said the union didn’t provide “concrete evidence” of “irreparable harm” and offered only “speculative assertions” that the public interest would be harmed by proceeding.

“The applicants have raised one or more serious issues but have not established with any non-speculative evidence that any one of its members will suffer irreparable harm in the interim period,” Kane wrote.

The judge, however, found that the government would face “irreparable harm” if it had to halt the process and such a delay would not be in the public interest in ensuring Canada’s national security.

“There is also a public interest in maintaining international relations and in maintaining the trust and confidence of Canadians in the government employees who administer and deliver programs and services and have access to a wide range of information from and about citizens,” Kane wrote.

“The public has an interest in ensuring that government employees who handle their information are properly screened.”

PIPSC originally filed a legal challenge alleging that the new screening process is unconstitutional and violates the Privacy Act. That case has not yet been heard.

Meanwhile, it sought an injunction to stop public servants from the “irreparable harm” of turning over all kinds of personal and sensitive information before that court decision is rendered. It argued that once information is revealed and privacy is lost, it can’t be regained.

Departments have until October 2017 to implement the new security standard, which replaced a 20-year-old standard. Implementation coincidentally began days before the killing of a Canadian soldier in Quebec and the shooting of reservist Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial, which threw the government into a heightened security crisis.

Like the old policy, the new security protocol requires a basic reliability status and an enhanced reliability status. There is also a secret and top-secret security clearance.

PIPSC is objecting to the amount of information the government will be collecting for the “basic reliability status” — the minimum standard of screening for any public service job — arguing that the type of information required is unreasonable, unnecessary and unjustified.

The institute says that credit and criminal checks with fingerprinting and open-source searches are invasive and not necessary for most ordinary employees who don’t work in intelligence and security.

It argued the screening measures force employees to reveal details about their lifestyle and personal choices. They violate “reasonable” expectations of privacy and “employees shouldn’t have to trade off privacy rights” to become employees.

The union wanted the government to go back to the old standard for those who don’t need “enhanced reliability status” until the court decides on its constitutional challenge.

The government, however, argued the overhaul was necessary because the old one didn’t live up to the security standards of Canada’s allies. Halting screening for basic reliability would be confusing and unworkable because it’s the base level all employees would have to meet first.

The government has been screening employees since the 1940s, but a standard was not introduced until 1994. The government argued it had to modernize the standard to keep up with technology changes, security threats and to “maintain trust in government by citizens, stakeholders and other foreign governments.”

The government also noted that credit and criminal checks, including fingerprinting, aren’t new and were previously done on a case-by-case basis.

The government said that old policy had already been rescinded so there would be a big gap in screening which would undermine Canada’s relationship with its allies and their confidence in Canada’s security.

In her ruling, Kane said the basic reliability status was the foundation for all security clearances, and reverting to the previous standard would be “impractical, inefficient, costly and would create inconsistency, confusion, gaps in security screening pending the determination of the judicial review.”

She said government has a responsibility and authority to make policy to screen its employees and contractors to “ensure proper administration of government.”

“Modernization of the standard is in the public interest. The advances of technology cannot be ignored,” she wrote.

“On the one hand, technology that allows broad access to networks of information and collaborative work environments has many benefits but, on the other hand, permits a wider range of people to access information they otherwise had no access to and no need to access. “

She said drawing that line between employees’ privacy and ensuring that government programs operate securely “is not the role of the court on this motion.”

 Source: Court won’t block rollout of new screening process for public service | Ottawa Citizen

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Religious Minorities in the Public Service: What the data tells us

2015/10/01 Leave a comment

Public_Administration_-_Religious_Minorities_-_Core_Public_AdminTo complement the employment equity analysis in my book Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote (see here), I applied the same methodology using NHS data for religious minorities.

This was prompted in part by Minister Clement’s comment that hijabs and niqabs “are frequently worn” in the public service and that “I’m sure we have employees in the public sector who wear a niqab – I’m sure we do.”

The full series of charts, tables  and related analysis are found here.

The main conclusions:

Policy makers at all government levels should complement their internal employment equity data with the NHS to assess whether there are issues with respect to particular groups. This analysis of religious and visible minority data indicates that there is variation among groups, and this needs to be considered as part of employment equity strategies and programs. The five-year frequency of this NHS data also provides a longer-term view of employment equity trends than the annual government reports, which tend to focus on year-to-year changes.
Given overall demographic trends, the percentage of newer religious minorities in government will likely continue to increase. While most members of religious minorities may not need or request accommodation, the more traditional members will, and it is likely that the number and type of requests will increase.
Getting back to Minister Clement’s statement, while we know that some 8,800 Canadian Muslims work for the federal government (47 percent women), we do not have any information regarding their religiosity and the extent to which deeper religiosity is reflected in men’s facial hair or women’s head coverings (which do not mean identical religiosity, beliefs or interpretations of the respective religions). Nor do we have such information regarding other religions (e.g., Canadian Jewish public servants wearing the kippa, or Canadian Sikh public servants wearing turbans and carrying the kirpan). Nor to my knowledge is there any publicly available summary of religious accommodation requests.
We may not have hard numbers to back his assertion that “we have employees in the public sector who wear a niqab.” However, any public servant who wished to wear a niqab would provoke considerable bureaucratic discussion regarding whether this could be accommodated. That no such discussion has come to light suggests that there are no such cases at the federal level.
At some time, however, it is likely that someone will request such an accommodation (just as voting, citizenship and judicial processes have shown). While some would argue that such a request should be accommodated, this would not be healthy to an integrated workplace and society given the degree to which the face provides needed cues to interpret words.
In the interim, the public service may wish to consider collecting and analyzing data related to accommodation requests in core public administration to complement employment equity reporting and strengthen the current framework by providing a more comprehensive and consistent evidence base.

 

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What Kevin Page gets wrong in his new book: Tapp

2015/09/30 Leave a comment

Stephen Tapp, a former senior economist at the PBO, on the weaknesses in Page’s book:

Regrettably, Page’s repeated demands for transparency merely become slogans. Critical questions go unaddressed about the fully transparent government he so desires, such as:

  • What are the pros—and cons—of an open approach to government in a time of ubiquitous social media, 24/7 news and political commentary, when information (and any misinformation and missteps) can quickly go viral?
  • Should the media have open access to public servants, and if so, how would the civil service convey the facts as well as the context of complex, competing factors that cabinet weighs in its decision-making?
  • Should senior civil servants speak out publicly when they disagree with the political choices of a democratically elected government—which is at odds with the Westminster system?
  • Which countries should Canada be following to improve our public service?

Likely – and hopefully – this will prompt a reply from Page and thus continue an important conversation.

Source: What Kevin Page gets wrong in his new book – Macleans.ca

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