Yes, minister, no more: Today’s bureaucrats have a different attitude: Yakabuski quoting Paquet

2015/09/29 Leave a comment

Yakabuski presents one side of the debate on the political-bureaucratic relationship, that of Gilles Paquet and his followers, which emphasize ‘loyal implementation’ at the expense of  ‘fearless advice.’

Many others take the contrary view, flagging the rise of ideology and the decline of ‘fearless advice’ (e.g., among the former public servants fingered by Paquet and his acolytes, Mel Cappe on ideology over evidence, Ralph Heintzman: Creeping politicization in the public service, Kevin Page delivers a warning to the public service, among academics, Boundary between politics, public service is ‘no man’s land’: Donald Savoie, David Zussman quoted in Ideology, minority rule, distrust shaped Harper government’s relationship with public service).

As I argued in my book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, written from my perspective working to implement change by then Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and CIC Minister Kenney, the public service failed to provide impartial ‘fearless advice’ and recognize its own ideologies and biases, and was not quick enough to shift to ‘loyal implementation’ once the advice had been given. (Disclosure: I had worked with Paquet and his press on Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias but our divergence of views was too great).

Canadians need to understand better how the balance between the bureaucratic and political roles plays out in the related debates over evidence-based policy (and which evidence), the decline of government policy expertise and data and other issues.

While academics and some journalists can and do raise these issues, former public servants should also contribute to discussions on the role of the public service and the political-bureaucratic relationship given their on-the-ground experience.

While such contributions run the risk of having a partisan element in their critique of Conservative government actions (and certainly being perceived this way), it is also non-partisan in that such contributions also form advice to any future government on both framework and specific policy issues (which of course, it would be free to accept or refuse).

And of course, the sharper ideological edge of the Conservative government compared to the more centrist public servant perspective accentuates distrust on both sides:

This view is echoed in a March article in Optimum Online, a public-sector management journal that Prof. Paquet edits. The article, by a senior Ottawa-based policy analyst using a pseudonym, asserts that “many senior federal public servants [develop] a conviction that they are better guardians of basic values of our democracy than elected officials. While this attitude had to be somewhat tamed while they were on active duty, it has become fully unleashed in retirement.”

The author goes on: “This has naturally generated a flow of self-righteous condemnation of current government policies by many newly unencumbered retired senior officials, and has thereby provided immense moral support for those senior public servants still in active duty – former colleagues and friends – to heighten their own passive (or semi-active) opposition to the elected government from within. As a result, the corridor of what has come to be regarded as tolerable disloyalty from within would appear to have widened considerably.”

This trend is nearly certain to outlive the Harper government. Future governments will become even more suspicious of the bureaucracy they inherit. To some extent, such suspicion has always existed. But Canada has always resisted the American practice of administrations stuffing the top layers of the bureaucracy with political appointees. Prof. Paquet worries that will change unless the principles of bureaucratic loyalty and discretion are restored.

“Loyalty breeds loyalty,” he says. “It’s 50-50.”

For my take on the same article, see The Demonization of Stephen Harper.

A review I did on an earlier Paquet article, Super-Bureaucrats as Enfants du siècle, provides further material for this ongoing debate (‘Mental Prisons,’ the Public Service and Gilles Paquet).

Source: Yes, minister, no more: Today’s bureaucrats have a different attitude – The Globe and Mail

And my letter to the editor on this can be found here.

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Kevin Page delivers a warning to the public service

2015/09/28 Leave a comment

Excerpt from Kevin Page’s book, Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill. Some uncomfortable observations that merit reflection:

The ethical values section of the code speaks to a public service reflecting the need to act at all times in such a way as to uphold the public trust. It says that public servants shall act at all times in a manner that will bear the closest public scrutiny, an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.

This does not happen when deputy ministers refuse to provide spending plans to Parliament and the PBO that outline where Budget 2012 cuts will take place, along with an explanation of how those cuts will affect services to the public. Shame on all of us for sticking our collective heads in the sand.

Finally, under the code, the people values stipulate that public servants should demonstrate respect, fairness, and courtesy in their dealings with both citizens and fellow public servants. It says that appointment decisions in the public service shall be based on merit and that public service values should play a key role in recruitment, evaluation, and promotion. This did not happen with the recruitment of the new PBO.

What I learned from my PBO experience is that our public service has become good at avoiding accountability and transparency. The result is that public trust in the public service declines. Jane Jacobs, the famous American-Canadian urban activist, said “the absence of trust is inimical to a well-run society.” If only we could institutionalize trust, but alas, that is impossible.

Our public service leaders are going to have to step up and earn trust! To my friends and colleagues in the public service, I say this: Blueprint 2020, more than anything else it espouses, must be about restoring trust to the public service in Canada.

Source: Kevin Page delivers a warning to the public service | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

Reviving the census debate

2015/09/14 1 Comment

I would expect any change of government to result in a restoration of the long-form census given the widespread support across different groups.

However, the extent that this change could be made in time for 2016 is unclear (expect that this issue will figure in any transition briefings by Industry Canada/StatsCan).

In Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote, I was advised by a number of experts not to compare 2011 NHS data with 2006 data given the issues flagged below:

Canadian researchers Daniel Wilson and David Macdonald say they are facing enormous stumbling blocks due to the federal government’s elimination of the mandatory long-form census in 2010.

The pair, doing work for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), a non-partisan research body that focuses on social, economic and environmental issues, is struggling to reconcile trends they’re now seeing in child poverty rates among native children.

The problem: they’re comparing data between the 2006 mandatory long-form census and the new — optional — long-form National Household Survey (NHS) that the federal government introduced in 2011.

Because the data from 2006 and 2011 came from two different processes, the researchers say they can’t tell if the latest trends they’re seeing are real or due to the fact so many fewer people filled in the optional long form in 2011.

“The practical challenge with working with the NHS is doubt — doubt that what you’ve found isn’t what’s actually happening in the world, but rather is a statistical artifact,” says Macdonald, who is also an economist.

Researchers, public policy advocates, statisticians, business groups, economists — and the Liberal and NDP parties — continue to call for the mandatory long-form questionnaire to be brought back, arguing that important statistical data is getting lost.

In a package of recently proposed reforms on transparency, the Liberals are promising to immediately restore the mandatory long form if they form government in the Oct. 19 federal election.

And Jean Ong, a spokesperson for the NDP, said in a statement that the party has long advocated for the restoration of the long-form census and continues to do so.

The lost data has massive implications for public policy decisions, business planning and a host of other areas, proponents of the mandatory long survey say.

Yet so far, the census hasn’t been in the spotlight on the campaign trail. But could it become an election issue?

Paul Jacobson, a Toronto economics consultant who relies heavily on census data for his work, believes it should. He says business planning is being seriously harmed by the new census data collection system.

“All the money in the world given to business surveyors could not replace the (mandatory) long form, period. You need a mandatory survey to get the quality of data you need to make good comparisons in small areas. That’s how you do business planning,” Jacobson says.

Stephen Toope, president of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, a national public policy advocate for Canada’s scholars, students and practitioners in the humanities and social sciences, says the “essence of the concern” about not having the mandatory long-form census is the impact on public policy.

“Thinking about questions around immigration, social service, children’s health and what kind of investments need to be made and where they need to be made — if we don’t know who is where, it’s very difficult to make informed policy decisions,” Toope says.

 Source: Reviving the census debate | Toronto Star

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Bringing Canada’s access to information back from the brink

2015/09/14 1 Comment

More a niche issue rather than one to attract general public attention but important and central to democratic government:

In 2009-10, the federal government logged 35,154 new access requests. That number nearly doubled in five years, to 60,105 requests in 2013-14.

But Michel Drapeau, a lawyer specializing in access law, doesn’t believe the system is suffering due to the increase in volume. Drapeau instead places the blame squarely on the “centre” of the government — the Privy Council Office, the department that supports the prime minister — and department’s willingness to run requests by them.

“To claim a delay becomes now not the exception but the normal course of events,” Drapeau said in an interview last week.

“Access to information is on a slow descent into irrelevance.”

There have been signs that the strain on the system is taking its toll. Summer students and temporary workers are being brought in to deal with “surges” in requests, which typically occur around a big news story. The situation lead one senior access officer to report a “critical shortage” of qualified staff to her superiors.

At the same time, the Conservative government has boasted of a record number of pages released to the public. The government repeatedly pointed to the volume of material released as a sign the system was healthy.

But according to Treasury Board data, only 27 per cent of those requests were “all disclosed” — uncensored — in 2013-14. A further 50 per cent were disclosed “in part,” which includes everything to documents with one line censored and records almost entirely blacked out.

Over their time in power, the Conservatives have made strides towards “open data,” releasing information and datasets collected by federal departments as a matter of course. While most of the files released to date are mapping files from Natural Resources Canada, several departments have released substantial files that can be accessed through the open.gc.ca portal.

But Teresa Scassa, a University of Ottawa professor who served on the federal open government advisory committee, said the government is less likely to voluntarily turn over sensitive or controversial documents — and that’s where access to information comes in.

“These are data sets that are useful to the private sector,” Scassa said of the government’s open data efforts to date.

“And that’s more the orientation of it rather than transparency or accountability, the kinds of things that journalists go after for example when they’re looking to see how governments are dealing with certain kinds of (issues).”

Information Commissioner’s Recommendations

In March, Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault released a comprehensive list of 85 recommendations to overhaul Canada’s access to information system. Broadly speaking, they include:

Maximize Disclosure — Overhaul exemptions that prohibit disclosure, create a public interest override, create a statutory obligation to declassify material.

Reduce delays — Limit extensions by government to a maximum of 60 days, limit internal consultations with other government agencies.

Expand coverage — Expand the institutions covered under access to information to Parliament, ministers’ offices, and the courts.

Toughen penalties — Create new offences for obstructing access, destroying or altering records, and prohibit failing to document decisions or substantial discussions.

Giving the watchdog teeth — Give the commissioner the power to order government documents released.

Source: Bringing Canada’s access to information back from the brink | Toronto Star

Filed under Government Tagged with

Public servants brace for war against Conservatives | Ottawa Citizen

2015/09/11 Leave a comment

More on the Tony Turner fall-out and the public service unions campaigning against the Conservatives:

It’s unclear when Environment Canada — Turner’s employer — will make a decision on whether the singer breached the ethics act with his song. This will turn on whether he can still be perceived as objective and impartial at his job, which is tracking migratory bird patterns.

But [Donald] Savoie and [Ian] Lee agree on one thing: the partisan Harperman performance could undermine any party’s trust in the neutrality of public servants and could particularly reinforce the Tories’ long-held view that bureaucrats are mostly a bunch of Liberals.

“The public service should be concerned about this,” said Savoie. “If the Conservatives are re-elected … they can question if they can really get policy advice that supports their agenda without fear or favour,” he said.

“If Harper sees this video he might say, ‘We can’t trust public servants’ advice …. so let’s go somewhere else.’ This doesn’t help a relationship that has been strained for years.”

Agree with Savoie as both the Turner song and the union campaign will only further Conservative distrust of the public service, not without reason.

Source: Public servants brace for war against Conservatives | Ottawa Citizen

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Missing in Ottawa? Government transparency

2015/09/08 Leave a comment

Sounds familiar.

When I was in government, we regularly used Blackberry PINs for sensitive stuff although I was always careful (I think) in my use of language as I always assumed that anything electronic is saved somewhere (and there was a CIBC case, I believe, where PINs were accessed). But hadn’t heard the term off-line used as a verb before:

But the “real problems” go even deeper than that. The revealing PMO emails have hinted at an even more secretive Ottawa, where staffers, diplomats and journalists communicate with each other by direct messages, private emails, or services such as LinkedIn—in other words, on any platform that cannot be exposed under the Access to Information Act, or can be erased before called for as evidence. Call it the Official Underground Ottawa.

“The rule is: Don’t write anything down on official channels that you wouldn’t want to see on the front of the newspaper,” one government source told me. We connected via direct message on Twitter, then used the phone. No email. “And, since the Duffy trial, people in government are even more cautious.”

So what happens in Underground Ottawa? No one uses official, on-the-record channels for the “real” problems. Everyone “off-lines”—it’s a verb. As one MP told me, “I never get on those email chains where cc’ing 10 people is normal. I insist on using the phone.” At the Duffy trial, we learned that key players in the PMO were using instant messaging and text messages to talk about Duffy, but none of it was entered as evidence.

In 2013, information commissioner Suzanne Legault investigated a range of government departments over their use of offline communication. She uncovered the secret door leading to Underground Ottawa, a world with no oversight, no rules and no transparency. Key information “is being irremediably deleted or lost,” she wrote. Legault concluded that retrieving messages was “practically impossible,” and the likelihood of getting instant messages from within a ministerial office was “non-existent.” No records means no accountability.

Source: Missing in Ottawa? Government transparency

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Debate about the women’s debate missed a bigger point: Antoinia Maioni

2015/08/29 1 Comment

Provincial_Under-Representation_of_WomenIn addition to federal under-representation, the chart above indicates provincial representation. Of note, British Columbia and Alberta have achieved gender parity in cabinet:

If we really want to raise consciousness about women in this election, let’s start with the glaring fact that women are still sorely under-represented in politics and that the face of this election campaign is dominated by male politicians. Notwithstanding that three of Canada’s provinces are now led by women premiers, federal politics has yet to become gender-friendly. The presence of Elizabeth May as leader of the Green Party is the exception that proves the rule: powerful parties (as in, parties that expect to gain power in Ottawa) are not populated or led by as many powerful women as men.

By international comparison, as my colleague Elisabeth Gidengil has pointed out, women are still few and far between in Canadian politics (we rank 49th worldwide in terms of women elected to legislatures). There are myriad reasons why women are less likely to choose, or be successful at, a political career, that range from obvious societal realities (family and children) to more subtle yet significant reasons (workplace culture and boys’ clubs) to enduring structural obstacles (money, power, influence). And in the Canadian case, these are exacerbated by a political system that concentrates power at the top, and a first-past-the-post electoral system that allows fewer entry points for women seeking office.

Even though political parties have worked toward recruitment – or even quotas – the presence of women is relatively weak. One aspect is the plight of so-called “sacrificial lambs”: tabulating data from the past five Canadian general elections, political scientists Melanee Thomas and Marc-André Bodet found that female candidates are still more likely to run in ridings their parties expect to lose. Another is “the higher you go, the fewer you find” phenomenon of women in political party leadership that Sylvia Bashevkin revealed decades ago.

Today, some of the key party players behind the scenes are powerful women; the national campaigns are being led by Jenni Byrne (Conservatives), Anne McGrath (NDP) and Katie Telford (Liberals). But for voters, the election is not about who is in the backroom, the war room, or even the pundits’ panels. And for us, the public persona of political leadership – the faces and voices that we see and hear – remains resolutely male.

The real women’s issue in this election campaign should not be about the merits of a separate debate, but how these issues matter to all Canadians and why the main leaders debating them are all men.

Of course, under-representation of visible minorities is also an issue:

Provincial_Under-Representation_visible_minorities

Source: Debate about the women’s debate missed a bigger point – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

And just like that, the NCC’s a problem again: Kate Heartfield

2015/08/25 Leave a comment

More fall-out of the Government’s efforts to railroad the NCC on the Memorial to Victims of Communism:

No longer reviled and mistrusted, the NCC has done a great job lately at seeking ideas and input. The few political fights in recent years have been a symptom of the still-unresolved contradiction at the heart of the very idea of the NCC. It’s supposed to be a check on politicians (and the people who elect them). But there is a limit, or should be, to what an unelected body can do with any legitimacy.

That contradiction might have evolved into a healthy tension, steering the NCC into a role of wise, independent counsel.

Instead, as with another chamber of sober second thought, the Conservative government chose to manipulate the NCC into doing the government’s bidding. So we have the worst of both worlds: an unelected body doing the bidding of (certain) politicians.

An email from chairman Russell Mills to Kristmanson (released under access to information) shows the NCC felt it didn’t have a say in the new location of the memorial to the victims of communism, because two Tory ministers had already announced it. “There was really no choice but to approve what had already been announced,” Mills wrote.

This despite the fact that Mills acknowledged that opposition to the memorial’s location “likely reflects the view of most thinking people in our community.”

This news led my colleague, Kelly Egan, to wonder, “isn’t it wonderful to know we fly in these esteemed thinkers from across Canada so they can rubber-stamp stupid ideas, cooked up in a partisan kitchen?”

The mayors of Ottawa and Gatineau have asked for representation on the NCC board, which might help prevent future rubber-stamping.

The next minister responsible for the NCC will have a choice: To encourage and respect independent thought at the NCC, or not. If it’s the latter, let’s revisit that abolition idea.

And just like that, the NCC’s a problem again | Ottawa Citizen.

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Donald Savoie: How government went off the rails

2015/08/24 Leave a comment

Donald Savoie confirms the policy/service delivery hierarchy.

My experience when Service Canada was established, and then watching how the both the Government and the public service whittled away at the vision of making service as important as policy, is a case in point.

Another example was Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s inability in 2010-12 to implement a series of inter-related changes – new citizenship test, language assessment process, anti-fraud efforts and program review cuts to the regions – which resulted in a dramatic fall in the number of new citizens:

Below the fault line is where government is coming up short, often because the ones operating above it have no appreciation of how the machinery operates. It is also where the great majority of Canadians deal with their government. The view among politicians and the courts is that government is about 90 per cent ideas and 10 per cent implementation. Making a policy or program announcement, defining the right media line and keeping an eye on the blame game as it is played out in Parliament and the media are what truly matters. They expect that program managers below the fault line should simply run on their tracks and avoid providing fodder for the blame game. The view among the majority of Canadians and front-line government workers, however, is that government should be 90 per cent delivering services efficiently and 10 per cent ideas. Canadians are too often left waiting, for an hour or so, to talk to someone after calling a 1-800 number, days to get a phone call returned or weeks to get an answer to what they regard as a straightforward question.

Not only have we overloaded the machinery, we have also misdiagnosed the patient. The thinking that we could somehow make the public sector as efficient as the private sector was misguided, costly and counterproductive. The thinking conveniently overlooks the fact that the public and private sectors are different in both important and unimportant ways. Consider the following: 76 per cent of public-sector employees belong to a union versus 16 per cent for the private sector. The blame game plays very differently in both sectors and the private sector has an unrelenting bottom line, while the public sector has none, or rather has a top line called the prime minister, Parliament and the media. In the private sector, good managers learn to delegate down. In the public sector, good managers learn to delegate up.

In the search for a bottom line, governments have created an abundance of oversight bodies, management constraint measures and vapid performance and evaluation reports. It has only made the machinery of government thicker, more risk-averse and created a veritable army of public servants kept busy turning a crank not attached to anything. It has also given rise to a serious morale problem in the public service.

This is not an indictment on what government tried to do or on the role of government in modern society but rather how the government tried to do it. Thinking that you can simply pile on responsibilities to the existing machinery and somehow emulate private-sector management practices while retaining the command and control approach to operation is where things went off the rails.

  Donald Savoie: How government went off the rails  

Filed under Citizenship, Government Tagged with ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →