Salgo: Trudeau missed his chance to reshape the public service

2025/01/14 Leave a comment

Most governments do not want to invest valuable political capital in public service reform given the complexity of the public service, relative lack of public interest, pushback from pressure groups, and long timelines:

…The real failures of the Trudeau government vis-à-vis the public service have been ones of omission.

Public servants face a host of problems — outdated structures and hierarchies; too much accountability for process and too little for outcomes; and a failure to keep pace with modern skill sets and digital service capabilities — that don’t seem to have interested the prime minister much. Nor did he ever revisit the more questionable elements of Harper’s Accountability Act.

In fairness, the government’s early focus on the systematic delivery of identified priorities (so-called deliverology) initially held out some promise that public servants could focus more on outcomes. But the initiative seems to have fizzled out under a heavy paper burden, an indiscriminate sea of “priorities” and an underdeveloped sense of irony.

Of course, the failure to modernize during these years must also be laid at the doorstep of the public service leadership. Still, the government of the day plays an important role in shaping that leadership, its goals and the management policies under which it operates.

The Trudeau government’s most conspicuous legacy to the public service was to expand it massively during COVID. Was this good or bad? As Ho Chi Minh said of the French Revolution, it’s too early to tell, but a looming retrenchment suggests that the hiring went at least a little overboard.

And in addition to being hugely expensive, the expansion was strikingly non-strategic, arguably even haphazard. The Treasury Board’s equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives did reflect a kind of vision for the public service, but it had more to do with the government’s broader social agenda than a rethinking of what the bureaucracy does.

The government missed yet another opportunity to forge a new kind of public service in the post-COVID period. While in formal terms it left issues like return-to-office to the bureaucracy itself, the senior public service was as mindful of optics as the government could have wished. Public servants have no inherent right to work remotely, but it would have been nice to have data on functional matters such as productivity before decisions were taken.

And while public servants got respectable raises under Trudeau, the government didn’t exactly roll over when public sector unions went on strike in the wake of inflation and a return-to-office mandate. While it worked out a deal with PSAC in 2023, it has since proved willing to put the collective bargaining process to one side, undoubtedly in keeping with the sentiments of most Canadians.

All things considered, the Trudeau years amount to rather thin gruel for anyone who hoped for public service transformation. But these may yet look like halcyon days if a new and cost-conscious government arrives with a limited store of patience and a willingness to put a few agenda-friendly officials in place.

Source: Salgo: Trudeau missed his chance to reshape the public service

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

MacDougall: Memo to the public service — From here on in, all change, all the time

2025/01/02 Leave a comment

Not cheery but realistic:

To the esteemed members of the public service,

As the calendar prepares for its switch to 2025, it is time to take stock of 2024 and what it portends for the new year.

First, the obvious: There is likely to be a change in the political control of the government. To put things bluntly, it would take a miracle (Christmas or otherwise) for Pierre Poilievre to not become prime minister in the first quarter of the new year, now that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has indicated his intention of moving a vote of no confidence in the Liberal government.

What’s more, the current Conservative advantage in the polls translates into a size and strength of government that will be unlike anything we have seen in the modern age. Forget the first minority Harper government in 2006. Forget even the 2011 Harper majority. It is likely to be a record majority. As a result, Canadians are going to expect significant change and they will be expecting the public service to deliver that change.

And the public service is likely going to have to do so as a smaller team. Its numbers have grown — and grown enormously — under the current Liberal government. In 2015, the number was under 258,000. As of today, it is just under 368,000, which represents an expansion of some 43 per cent. Expect the headcount to come down, in some places significantly. There is no point bemoaning this fact.

It doesn’t matter what your politics are. Yes, you are here to advise the government of the day. But in the end, and after providing that fearless advice, you are also here to deliver the mandate of the government elected by the Canadian people. So public servants would do well to pay particular attention to the policy priorities of the modern Conservative Party of Canada. The carbon tax will go. Housebuilding will become (even more of) a priority. Budgets will be reduced. And criminal justice policy will once again become more aggressive.

Government workers will, of course, be busy elsewhere too. Canada’s foreign policy, for one, will take on a new posture. And those of you working in immigration are already toiling hard to reshape our core programs. We can expect this work to continue at pace. We have lost the pan-Canadian acceptance of our historically high immigration levels and we will have to work hard to re-establish control over the numbers, especially if the incoming American administration does what it says it will do with respect to a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Indeed, the incoming Trump administration will provide a number of challenges to our country’s government. Many of you are already seized with tariff policy and border security measures. Many more of you will be seized by Canada’s reactions to the other whims of the former and soon-to-be president. An already increasingly unpredictable world is going to throw up even more wild cards.

It is perhaps trite to observe at this point that we are now a long way from the heady days of 2015, which is the last time this vast team of bureaucrats faced a change of administration. Ten years ago, public servants felt that their efforts were about to be more fully appreciated. Ten years on, many are sitting down with their families in apprehension this holiday period.

What I propose is to make this challenge an opportunity. For there is an advantage to be had. What the current prime minister has described as a “post-national state,” i.e. Canada, is once again about to feel acutely aware of its Canadianness in the face of Donald Trump. There is work everyone can do to make Canada (even) great(er) again.

As Marcus Aurelius once said: “The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.” As Friedrich Nietzsche put it: “Amor fati”, i.e. love your fate. And if that’s too high-brow for you, you can try this: “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Source: MacDougall: Memo to the public service — From here on in, all change, all the time

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

A new generation of judges is redefining what Canada’s top courts look like 

2025/01/02 Leave a comment

Really good and thorough analysis of judicial appointments under the Liberal government. My 2016 analysis of the Harper government appointments referenced. Legacy achievement of the Liberals and their first minister of justice, Wilson-Raybould. The next needed analysis would be to assess their impact on jurisprudence and decisions, a much harder task.

Likely that there will be a contrary shift under the likely Poilievre government in terms of process, appointments and transparency (i.e. FCJAC reports):

…A decade ago, and forever before that, a clear majority of judges on Canada’s most important courts were white men. That began to change after the federal government’s 2016 reshaping of the judicial hiring process, which in part focused on increasing diversity.

Now, among 1,180 federally appointed judges, 47 per cent are women, 6 per cent are racialized and 2 per cent are Indigenous, according to data compiled by the Office of the Commissioner of Federal Judicial Affairs in 2024. It is the first time the agency has compiled statistics on the varied backgrounds of all judges who decide the biggest cases.

Underrepresentation remains an issue, especially among Indigenous and racialized people, but recent gains are significant. In unofficial data from 2016, compiled by a former senior federal civil servant [me!] in Policy Options magazine, 30 per cent of judges at the time on federally appointed benches were women, 2 per cent were racialized and 1 per cent were Indigenous…

Up until 2016, the top judicial ranks were dominated by white men, chosen by Liberal and Conservative governments alike. From 2007 through 2015, when Stephen Harper was prime minister, two-thirds of 701 appointments were men, according to earlier data on gender from Federal Judicial Affairs. For several years, almost all new judges appointed by Mr. Harper’s government were white, a 2012 Globe story reported.

The federal Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment.

In the new data compiled by Federal Judicial Affairs, with numbers as of February, 2024, the shift under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is distinct….

Source: A new generation of judges is redefining what Canada’s top courts look like 


Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

2024 Looking Back, 2025 Looking Forward

2024/12/20 Leave a comment

That time of year to look back on my articles and commentary, and look forward to what will likely be my focus in the coming year.

Best wishes for the holidays and the new year, when I will restart my blog.

In addition to my news clipping in Multicultural Meanderings, the majority of my writing focused on citizenship issues, given C-71 and some data projects that I have worked on.

Citizenship

Bill C-71: The need for a timeframe limit (submission to Senate SOCI, 2024)

Bill C-71 opens up a possible never-ending chain of citizenship (Policy Options, 2024)

What citizenship applications tell us about policy implementation (Hill Times, 2024) (paywall, unpaywalled version https://multiculturalmeanderings.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=74476&action=edit

Naturalization Visualized: A Study of Canadian Citizenship Data (Institute for Canadian Citizenship, 2024)

Time to take citizenship seriously in ‘I Am Canadian’ – Or Not: Essay Collection (ACS, 2024)

Other

Misleading Canadians: The Flawed Assumption Behind the Government’s Planned Reduction in Temporary Residents (LinkedIn, 2024)

Anti-hate initiatives have not been able to stop the surge in crimes (Policy Options, 2024)

How diverse are Order of Canada appointments? (Policy Options, 2024)

Executive Diversity within the Public Service: An Accelerating Trend (Hill Times, 2024). Unpaywalled: https://multiculturalmeanderings.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=72434&action=edit

New electoral map and diversity (The Hill Times, 2024) Not paywall protected

Preparing for a Conservative government in the public service (Policy Options, 2024)

Most popular posts on LinkedIn:


What a Conservative government might change in immigration, citizenship and employment equity

Employment Equity in the Public Service of Canada 2022-23: Preliminary Observations

Explaining the decline in national pride in Canada

Clark: It’s too late for universities and colleges to complain about the foreign student cap

Keller: Thanks to Marc Miller, the immigration system is (slightly) less broken, Clark: Ottawa finally acts on international student visas, setting a challenge for Doug Ford

Clear majority of Canadians say there is too much immigration, new poll suggests

Immigration Minister urged to crack down on international student ‘no shows’ at colleges

Preparing for a Conservative government in the public service

Misleading Canadians: The Flawed Assumption Behind the Government’s Planned Reduction in Temporary Residents

Flawed Assumptions and Misleading Information: Outflows

Looking ahead to 2025, I expect that birth tourism will become an issue again given president-elect Trump’s planned actions and likely ensuing litigation.

Given the likely earlier demise of the Liberal government, unlikely that C-71 will make it through the process, leaving a vacuum for the expected Conservative government to address.

The impact of an expected Conservative government on a range of immigration, citizenship and employment equity policies will provide a range of opportunities for commentary and analysis.

Filed under Citizenship, Government, Immigration, Politics Tagged with

Lang: Deconstructing Canada’s ballooning $67-billion federal bureaucracy

2024/12/16 Leave a comment

Good column by Lang (our paths crossed when I worked in PCO and he in PMO):

Forty-three per cent.

That is how much Canada’s “core” federal public administration — the civil service — has grown since Justin Trudeau’s government took office in 2015. The raw numbers are even more striking. There are 110,738 more federal public servants employed today than a decade ago.

Not surprisingly, this rate of bureaucratic growth has faced some scrutiny.

Some have claimed that the increase was necessary to keep pace with population growth, yet Canada’s population only expanded by about 17 per cent over this period.

The COVID pandemic, and the programs and initiatives that were created to deal with it, is also cited as a factor. To be sure, the federal bureaucracy increased by about 35,000 during the three COVID years. But that means the rest of the personnel growth — more than two-thirds of it — happened before and after the pandemic.

If service to Canadians during this time had improved meaningfully, that might justify the rise, but there is little evidence of that. For example, complaints to the federal Office of the Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson about excessive wait times with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) call centres were up 45 per cent in 2023. And stories of long wait times at passport offices are legion.

Such scenarios support the conviction that the federal government is bloated and in need of radical surgery. At the very least, some of this swelling of public service ranks should be examined and questioned.

Growth is concentrated in the Big Six

Where has most of the surge occurred?

More than half of the increase – 60,000 positions – has taken place in just six out of some 115 federal departments and agencies. Let’s call these the Big Six.

The largest increase – by 19,000 employees – has occurred at the CRA, a 48-per-cent expansion of its total staff.

That’s impressive, but in percentage terms it pales in comparison to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which more than doubled in size with 105 per cent growth during that decade, equal to 6,700 additional employees.

Also noteworthy is Employment and Social Development Canada, which grew by some 18,000 personnel, or 86 per cent.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans increased by 4,800 or 49 per cent, while Public Services and Procurement Canada is bigger by 6,900 people or 57 per cent.

Rounding out the Big Six is the Department of National Defence, whose civilian workforce expanded by about 6,100. Ironically this occurred at the same time the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) have been hemorrhaging military personnel and are now more than 15,000 people short of the enlistment target set in the government’s 2017 defence policy. The CAF — which is facing major demands on its services at home and abroad — is probably now at its lowest military head count since the end of the Second World War.

Some of the hiring binges appear to be indicators of the government’s priorities and modus operandi. 

The big hike at Citizenship, Immigration and Refugees, for example, is related to the Trudeau government’s aggressive (if not reckless) immigration policy, which in 2023 alone saw 469,000 new permanent residents admitted and over one million foreign student visas approved.

The staffing boom at Employment and Social Development Canada likely reflects the establishment of new social programs such as the Canada Child Benefit, Canada Dental Care Plan and various housing benefits.

For the CRA we can safely say that at least some of the expansion is owing to government efforts to track the underground economy and collect more tax revenue to pay for its agenda.

The increase at Public Services and Procurement Canada may have been caused by the urgent need during the pandemic to acquire mass quantities of everything from masks to vaccines. The rationale for the spike at Fisheries and Oceans is less obvious.

The peculiar case of the PCO 

Looking beyond the Big Six, however, it is worth pointing out that the Privy Council Office (PCO) – the prime minister’s department – has ballooned by three quarters since Trudeau came to office, from 727 employees in 2015 to nearly 1,300 today.

Historically the PCO – which runs no programs and delivers no public services to Canadians – has been a secretariat of a few hundred people. Today it is 27 per cent larger than the Department of Finance, which is arguably Canada’s most important ministry, responsible for developing the government’s budget, tax and fiscal policies, among other things.

This nearly doubling of the PCO in just a decade is more evidence of the pernicious trend toward prime ministerial government, where collective Cabinet decision-making is replaced by prime ministerial fiat on most issues.

If Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre becomes the next prime minister, as is widely expected, and is serious about reducing the $40-billion federal deficit, trimming the public service payroll – which now runs to $67 billion per year, a staggering 68 per cent increase since 2016 – will have to be in his sights.

While Poilievre should definitely take aim at the Big Six, he also needs to lead by example and cut his own department in half. No Canadian beyond the shadow of the Parliament buildings would notice.

Source: Deconstructing Canada’s ballooning $67-billion federal bureaucracy

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

Salgo: What if Canada’s public service is actually too accountable?

2024/12/10 Leave a comment

Has a point. Too much largely process accountability, too little substantive outcome accountability:

In the wake of this finding, it may sound foolhardy to ask whether there’s such a thing as too much accountability in the federal public service.

But yes, Virginia, such a thing exists, and it hurts the interests of Canadians.

To be clear, I’m not arguing with the AG. Accountability is a core tenet of good governance. Oversight and controls are essential, and when things go wrong, someone has to explain, take corrective action — and face the consequences.

What’s more, the public sector has a unique responsibility to be accountable. Citizens who feel ill-served can’t just take their business elsewhere, and last time I looked, paying for government services wasn’t voluntary. Still, when it comes to ensuring accountability, more is often less.

How so? First, more rules do not necessarily translate into better outcomes; the opposite is sometimes true. Many public sector controls are aimed at demonstrating good conduct rather than getting better results, as anyone who’s dealt with government procurement or staffing knows. Piling on rules doesn’t improve performance, and beyond a certain point it doesn’t improve public trust.

Second, rules are a lot more costly than people tend to realize – not just the cost of people who run accountability systems but the time of people who comply with them, who could be doing something more productive instead. Such costs are particularly onerous for small agencies. No one in the government of Canada knows the full measure of these costs and no one seems to want to.

Third, and perhaps most damaging, is the impact too much accountability can have on public service behaviour and culture. People who say there’s no accountability in government typically mean that heads don’t roll (or don’t seem to) when things go wrong. But when most of the rules are either proscriptions or exercises in box-ticking, and real-world outcomes aren’t your responsibility, avoiding blame gets easier, while innovation looks more risky and less urgent than it actually is. When your briefing note to a senior manager goes through 17 sign-offs (as I recently heard one deputy minister acknowledge) it’s a little hard to take full ownership of any slipups.

As Exhibit A, I offer the Federal Accountability Act, which I once described as “the definitive legislative monument to risk-averse, blame-avoiding institutional rigidity in the government of Canada.”

Enacted in the early days of the Harper government, the act did some good or semi-good things to hold public servants to account. Unfortunately, it also included a host of dubious measures such as redundant anti-fraud penalties, the judicialization of ethical regimes, and a series of increasingly detailed behavioral constraints.

But what was remarkable was how little connection the act had with the reality on the ground. We usually require any expenditure of public resources to address a demonstrated need. But in the case of the Accountability Act, there was often no evidence that the problems it was meant to address actually existed, or that the purported solutions would help.

The government talks a lot about risk but no risk assessment was conducted here.

This worst thing about the Accountability Act and its ilk is the missed opportunity to help modernize the public service: to streamline decision-making, encourage collaboration and innovation, and recast accountability in terms of achieving results for Canadians.

To-date, there has been no systematic assessment of the act, and the rules remain in place, as such rules usually do. Yet an underlying takeaway from COVID is actually that bureaucrats can be nimble when they are focused on outcomes and the political leadership seems to have their back. That may seem odd to say given the AG’s findings, but the scale of COVID payouts ($360 billion) was extraordinary and the government’s express goal was to get money out the door asap and ask questions later. The tolerance for error quickly snapped back, and rightly so, but the basic lesson holds.

So, yes, public servants are subject to too much of the wrong kind of accountability, and this isn’t likely to change through purely internal processes. We need an independent, public review of our accountability rules and of the opportunities to build a public service that will better serve a new and differently minded generation.

Source: Salgo: What if Canada’s public service is actually too accountable?

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Globe editorial: A Trudeau government trademark: Act now, mop up later

2024/12/06 Leave a comment

Cutting and accurate for the most part:

…This is what happens when politicians devote themselves to generating talking points and social-media content instead of making sound policy. Good governance requires serious planning and execution, something obviously lacking in this late-stage Liberal government.

Source: A Trudeau government trademark: Act now, mop up later

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Beech | The federal government is spending millions fighting a discrimination suit by Black employees. This is what it should do instead

2024/11/22 Leave a comment

Reminder that the public sector employment equity numbers for the past 6 years have shown Black Canadians having better hiring, promotion and separation outcomes than whites and most visible minority groups (Executive Diversity within the Public Service: An Accelerating Trend and How well is the government meeting its diversity targets? An intersectionality analysis):

…Knowledge of Canada’s legacy of racism against Black, Indigenous and other people of colour needs to become as mainstream as the multiculturalism that masks its existence.

Acknowledging anti-Black racism while simultaneously attempting to dismiss a class action lawsuit about anti-Black racism within the federal public service is an example of the paradox of progress that fuels the relentless cycle of performative politics. Working conditions in the federal public service are so hostile toward Black employees that it led to mental health challenges resulting in the use of antidepressants and suicide attempts.

More broadly, what are Black Canadians supposed to feel when a federal government seems so keen to avoid taking responsibility for bigotry in its own service? If we truly want to become the Canada we claim to be, and who Canadians believe themselves to be, we must live up to our stated ideals.

The federal government must stop fighting for a dismissal, and the Federal Court should greenlight the lawsuit and reckon with this country’s legacy of anti-Black racism. Only then can we build a future rooted in truth, transparency, equity and inclusion. Until then, Canada will remain a hostile homeland.

Source: Opinion | The federal government is spending millions fighting a discrimination suit by Black employees. This is what it should do instead

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Sean Speer: Pierre Poilievre should follow Elon Musk’s lead and bring his own Department of Government Efficiency to Ottawa 

2024/11/21 Leave a comment

While I get the attraction of the Citizen Musk approach, the lack of rigour in assessing its practicality in both the US and Canadian contexts is disappointing. The most effective exercise I have seen was the Chretien-Martin program review in the 1990s that addressed some structural issues and had a major impact, more so arguably than the Harper government exercise.

The risk of course of the Citizen Musk approach is that his cuts will be so ideologically driven and so drastic that worthwhile programs and capacity will be cut, with significant impact on the more vulnerable and core expertise (e.g., CDC, FDA and other necessary regulatory bodies).

The other question is what has Canada learned in the IT space, having a number of high level private sector interchanges (e.g., Alex Benay: the public service’s disruptor-in-chief). To what extent have they succeeded, and how effective were they in removing barriers etc. Some case studies here would be helpful in terms of what worked, what didn’t, and why:

…The D.O.G.E. exercise may therefore represent something of an inspiration. Its mandate to go beyond immediate-term savings and ask more structural questions about the operations and role of government is precisely the type of exercise that Ottawa needs. It should be understood as an effort to get out of counterproductive activities and boost federal state capacity where necessary. The Trudeau government has been a renewed education of the old conservative adage: limited government is better government.

As for who ought to lead such an exercise, my former colleague Rachel Curran has rightly argued that you probably don’t want to fully outsource it. Information asymmetries and the need for bureaucratic and political buy-in require that ministers and their departments be actively involved.

But there is something to the idea that entrepreneurs and technologists can bring a different perspective to the ones represented within the government or the management firms that are typically tapped to advise it. They bring a creativity and energy that’s often undersupplied in government. They’re unconstrained by bureaucratic assumptions and thinking. And they tend to have better track records of successfully overseeing structural reform.

Put simply: Outsiders like Musk and Ramaswamy may come with risks but they may also be more likely to overcome the public choice barriers (including confirmation bias and sunk-cost fallacy) to serious public administration reform.

Who then should lead the Canadian version of D.O.G.E.? How about Shopify’s co-founder and CEO Tobi Lutke?

Not only is he arguably the country’s most successful technologist and is increasingly commenting on Canadian public policy, including its state capacity and poor productivity performance, but Lutke’s background and experience make him an ideal candidate to deliver on a D.O.G.E.-like mandate in time for the 160th birthday of Canadian Confederation.

Source: Sean Speer: Pierre Poilievre should follow Elon Musk’s lead and bring his own Department of Government Efficiency to Ottawa 

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Public service job cuts loom as Ottawa misses spending and deficit targets

2024/11/18 Leave a comment

Will likely be brutal with a change in government:

…Some argue part of the problem is today’s bureaucrats aren’t used to austerity and have only known growth for the past decade.

Today’s leaders may have been in the public service during the Harper government’s downsizing, but few were in senior positions directly responsible for managing those cuts. Back then, the government did regular strategic reviews, which were key to identifying budget cuts and the thousands of jobs that were eliminated. The Liberals had pledged a similar strategic review in their election platform, but it has yet to materialize, leaving some to question how prepared departments are to tackle current fiscal pressures.

It’s unclear what progress the government had made on these reductions. In fact, a PBO report that tracked the Liberals various spending reviews flagged the difficulty tracking the “overall plans, progress, and results” because there is no central document publicly available…

“There’s a coming squeeze here…and something has to give,” said Khan. A Liberal or a Conservative government in the future is “going to face the same stark choice. Before you cut programs that people want or need, the outsized growth of the public service has to be on the table. The unions will face this no matter who’s in power. It’s not going to go away.”

Source: Public service job cuts loom as Ottawa misses spending and deficit targets

Filed under Government Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →