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

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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

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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

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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.

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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  

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Our health needs a healthy civil service: Picard

2015/08/19 Leave a comment

André Picard on the importance of a strong regulatory capacity and public service. His comment on Blueprint 2020 (highlighted) is unfortunately all too true:

Among other things, we need drug regulators who can regulate rigorously, free of political and corporate pressures. More broadly, we need a public service that works, and is free to work, in the public interest.

It’s not enough to have laws – let’s not forget that drug regulations were similar in Canada and the U.S. at the time thalidomide came along – we need people who can give those laws life, to embrace the spirit and not just the letter of the law, especially when it comes to ensuring public safety.

In short, we need to foster a new generation of Dr. Kelseys.

Sadly, we are doing exactly the opposite.

We have a public service that is muzzled, emasculated, derided and decimated.

There are about a quarter-million federal public servants in Canada, a considerably lower figure than from a decade ago. They serve a broad variety of functions from, overseeing national parks to ensuring aviation safety, and everything in between.

It is in our best interest, economically as well as socially, that every one of those workers serves a useful function.

Yet consultations with the public servants show that they feel mired in red tape and frustrated by cumbersome processes that leave them unable to do their jobs. That’s why the Privy Council has undertaken an initiative to transform the public service, dubbed Blueprint 2020.

The plan features some lovely rhetoric, such as Conservative Leader Stephen Harper saying in the introduction: “An agile, efficient and effective Public Service is essential to the well-being of Canadians.” And it is chock-full of good intentions.

But Blueprint 2020 lacks of a clear philosophical bent and strong political commitment to an independent, empowered public service.

What is required, especially in these difficult economic times, is a scientific, non-partisan approach to drafting and implementing policy.

While it is fashionable to bad-mouth the bureaucracy and sing the praises of free market, public regulation plays an essential role as a ballast to corporate excesses driven by self-interest.

The role of government, duly elected, is to formulate legislation and other policies in what it believes is the best interests of citizens. But its role is not to micromanage and bark orders down the line. Rather, elected officials should depend on civil servants for thoughtful, independent advice, especially on scientific matters.

What we need today is evidence-based policy-making if, for no other reason than it produces better policy.

Public servants should not be toadies, singing the praises of ill-conceived or partisan initiatives. Nor should they be muzzled. They should be offering constructive criticism to ensure policies are workable and fair, and analysis and insight that helps avoid unintended consequences.

For this, we need to create an atmosphere where public servants can innovate, take risks, and, as Dr. Kelsey did, call B.S. when necessary.

If we want better government and more sensible public policies, we need to give public-sector employees autonomy, authority and responsibility.

That, rather than a celebration of individual heroics, should be Frances Kelsey’s legacy.

Our health needs a healthy civil service – The Globe and Mail.

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NCC had ‘no choice’ but to approve victims of communism site, Mills email asserts

2015/08/18 Leave a comment

More email disclosures that are embarrassing to the Government, this time with respect to the Victims of Communism Memorial:

“There was really no choice but to approve what had already been announced,” Mills says in the email to Kristmanson.

“If the NCC board had voted against the site, we would not only have been straying onto the turf of the Public Works department, we would have embarrassed the government in a significant way,” his email says.

While the National Capital Act says the NCC must approve changes to the use of public lands and new “buildings or other work” erected on them, it also gives the federal cabinet the power to give approval if the NCC balks.

Another email from Mills to Kristmanson, dated March 30, 2015, strongly suggests the NCC chair privately opposes the chosen memorial site.

Referring to a letter opposing the memorial’s location he received in March of this year, Mills told Kristmanson the letter writer “is someone whose opinion I respect,” adding: “This likely reflects the view of most thinking people in our community.”

In the letter to Mills, the writer, whose name has been withheld, says he is “deeply disturbed” by the plan to build the memorial near the Supreme Court and asks Mills to use his influence to reverse the decision.

“I know you well enough to know that you probably think this is a bad idea by any definition,” the letter writer tells Mills.

“It is the view of many that the prime minister has seized on this idea, not only to please his political base, but also to make a statement to the court with which he is in an adversarial relationship,” the writer continues.

Allowing the decision to stand, he says, “will lead to the conclusion that the NCC — intended to be a non-partisan agency — has become a willing agent of the governing party.”

Though Mills has not spoken out publicly against the memorial’s location, he was one of only three NCC board members in June to vote against allowing soil decontamination work to start on the site.

NCC had ‘no choice’ but to approve victims of communism site, Mills email asserts | Ottawa Citizen.

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Canada’s democratic institutions are on trial: Savoie

2015/08/15 1 Comment

Donald Savoie on the broader implications of centralization and the ever-growing role of PMO as highlighted in the release of PMO emails during the Duffy trial:

Governing from the centre first took shape under Pierre Trudeau. It has only grown in scope and intensity since. We have reached the point where our national political and bureaucratic institutions have lost their way. We see evidence of this everywhere – voter participation has been drifting down for the past 40 years or so and our national public service suffers from a worrisome morale problem. Why bother voting if what matters is decided by economic and political elites talking to one another or through lobbyists, and why bother generating well-thought and evidence-based policy advice, knowing that there is no political market for it? Why bother trying to manage operations as competently as your private sector counterparts when you are told to avoid all risks in the interest of managing the blame game?

Canadians are paying a high price for this state of affairs. Governing from the centre tosses aside not only Parliament but the voice of the regions as well. Governing Canada as it were a unitary state in a country as geographically and economically diverse as Canada is fraught with danger. Not only are regional ministers now a relic of Canadian political history, provincial premiers are left on the sideline, talking to one another with little influence on national policy.

The state of Canadian democracy and the health of our political institutions require the attention of Canadians and our political leaders. They cannot be relegated to a segment of the leaders debate. Sound public policies and the ability of Canada’s regions to work toward a common purpose are tied to our political institutions.

What the 450+ pages of e-mails reveal is the sorry state of our institutions. An upstairs-downstairs to governing and treating our political institutions as an appendage of the PMO is fraught with danger for democracy, for national unity and sound public policy and for the pursuit of the public interest.

Canada’s democratic institutions are on trial – The Globe and Mail.

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Reevely: Sticking up for the public service a tricky line for Ottawa politicians

2015/08/07 Leave a comment

On the public service and political level relationship, picking up some of the themes of my book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism:

They [the Conservatives] fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for being too meticulous about nuclear safety, forced the head of Statistics Canada to resign on principle, went to war with Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page and Elections Canada boss Marc Mayrand. Ombudsmen for veterans and victims of crime lost faith in the Tories and said so publicly, then got frozen out.

That the Conservatives would be suspicious of the public service is understandable: A small-government party isn’t naturally friends with people who work in the government, who’ll tend toward statist solutions to public problems. And there’s a real divide between public-sector workers with stable employment and private-sector ones in Canada’s growing precariat (some of whom actually work for the government as temps, creating a shadow public service that began under the Liberals).

The Tories’ approach to the genuine challenges they have with the public service has, in the main, been to dump on public servants generally and get rid of specific senior ones who get too uppity. That might be satisfying for certain elements of the Conservative base but does not actually get Canada a better government. After nine years in power, they’ve likely effected about as much genuine reform as we can hope for.

But it says a great deal about how low the relationship between the politicians and the public service has gotten that “we would listen to the advice of professionals even if we don’t always take it” counts as a meaningful change from the way the Canadian government works now.

Reevely: Sticking up for the public service a tricky line for Ottawa politicians | Ottawa Citizen.

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