Paul Wells: How to get inside Harper’s head – The Globe and Mail

2014/03/22 Leave a comment

I found Well’s book, The Longer I’m Prime Minister, a compelling and informative read. He really does try to understand the philosophical and ideological foundations, with empathy, not just dismissing them. The section on the census – which apparently Well’s editors wanted shortened – is one of the better sections, as is some of the background of thinkers like Brimelow that have been influential:

It’s the empathy thing again. I was actually preparing to deliver a sustained critique of the census changes. But there were a lot of people telling you why it was a bad idea, and not an awful lot of people telling you why he would have thought it was a good idea. And the answer is because there’s this rich intellectual heritage in Western conservative circles of mistrusting the census man. When Jed Clampett, at the beginning of the Beverly Hillbillies, takes a shot and hits oil, he thinks he’s shooting at a revenuer. That persists in our culture, and I wanted to trace that at some length so that people would see that where Harper comes from has been there along – and has been ignored by a lot of people who now suddenly can’t ignore it because he’s running the joint.

A great para on Jason Kenney:

Jason Kenney’s a spectacular exception to that. Jason Kenney says what he wants. His staff say what they want. The autonomy of being a junior staffer in Jason Kenney’s office is greater than the autonomy that most cabinet ministers enjoy. And the answer is because Harper knows, or believes, that Kenney would never turn that fire-hose on him. James Moore is another good example. We draw these facile distinctions between loyalists and a strong personality with something to say. But of course there are all kinds of examples of loyalists who have a strong personality. And as long as you’re a loyalist first, Harper’s happy to let you stay around.

Paul Wells: How to get inside Harper’s head – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Government Tagged with

Evidence vs Anecdote, Trust and Distrust

2014/03/22 Leave a comment

Some good pieces in The Citizen picking up on some of the these in my book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism,

Starting with Stewart Prest, who goes too far in praising the neutrality and impartiality of public servants, neglecting that we public servants also have our own perspectives, bias and ideologies that we need to be more aware about to provide our best and most neutral advice:

However, in modern democratic states one of the most important sources for non-partisan information and expertise is the government itself. Government bureaucracies are the only institutions in the world today with the access, the resources, and the motivation to systematically monitor and study the entirety of a country’s population and the extent of its human and natural environment.

Examples are legion, from statisticians to health officials to diplomats to environmental scientists. They exist throughout the much maligned but nonetheless vital bureaucracy of the country. Crucially, their professional incentives push them to resist conclusions that may even be perceived as partisan. After all, a long-serving civil servant will work under different parties and political masters. Their professional success comes from striving to provide politically neutral advice and support for political decision-making, and engaging in equally neutral policy implementation. Though part of the machinery of the state, these experts are — or ought to be — distinct and largely independent from the particular partisan interests of the government of the day.

Such bureaucrats are, among other things, keepers of tradition: a reservoir of knowledge about how Canadians have governed themselves over previous years and decades. They know and can speak to what works, and what does not. In this regard, theirs is a deeply conservative (small-c) form of expertise, one that has played no small part in whatever good government Canadians have enjoyed since confederation.

That is not to say that his overall message of suppressing speech, undermining data, eroding science, and increased partisanship has more than an element of truth.

Op-Ed: The war on experts

The Public Policy Forum in its recent study, Flat, Flexible and Forward-Thinking, focusses on declining levels of trust in the public service:

Mitchell said part of the problem is that some public servants have taken the traditional principles of a neutral and non-partisan public service too far.

“I think we prided our public service on being politically neutral and non-partisan to a fault because it has persuaded some to think they cannot even engage in meaningful dialogue with elected representatives or their staff.  That is an extreme view but I think it may have been taken to the extreme and we have to build stronger understanding and more trust.”

But Mitchell said rebuilding trust will take more than the effort of public servants. He said the government will have to be “political champions” for this change as well as for other sweeping reforms of the public service.

I think the trust issue goes deeper than that on both sides. Public servants may have viewed the new government as “barbarians at the gate” given how different public service and political perspectives were, and similarly the government viewed many public servants as “hopelessly compromised liberals.”

‘Trust gap’ a growing problem for public servants and politicians, think-tank warns

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with , ,

How losing 18,000 people made Manitoba $100-million poorer – The Globe and Mail

2014/03/20 Leave a comment

Although the article doesn’t state it, hard to believe that the shift from the mandatory Census to the National Household Voluntary Survey didn’t have something to do with it:

In past years, many people in Manitoba were missed. It has a large aboriginal population and aboriginal people tend to be missed at higher rates. Immigrants tend to get missed, and Manitoba had its highest levels of immigration in decades between 2006 and 2011. In 2011, the province also faced massive flooding that forced many people from their homes. Yet once the results of the reverse record check were complete, Statscan concluded that the adjusted population was only 1,233,728. A year earlier, it was thought to be 1,251,690.

But when they looked more closely at that sample, they examined something called the T-statistic, which acts as a test of statistical accuracy. Manitoba’s T-statistic was extremely high, “way out of bounds,” Mr. Falk said. (Manitoba’s was 3.35. Next highest was Alberta at 1.61). It points to a bad sample in the reverse record check, he said.

“It’s the canary in the coal mine,” he said. “The probability of getting a more extreme result than we observed in 2011 … is nearly non-existent.”

Statscan agreed there was something unusual. “We took a rigorous look at this,” Mr. Smith said. “We found nothing, and we went over it with a fine tooth comb.”

How losing 18,000 people made Manitoba $100-million poorer – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with ,

Veiled voting furor’s unlikely ending: Delacourt | Toronto Star

2014/03/17 Leave a comment

Good piece on evidence vs anecdote with respect to Elections Canada and the veiled voting controversy. Also nice mention of my book:

It should remind us of the push and pull that former bureaucrat Andrew Griffith has described in his book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, about his experiences at Citizenship and Immigration when Jason Kenney became the minister.

Griffith writes of how the public servants came to the table with reports and research, only to be met with anecdotes from the minister’s many, many meetings with cultural communities.

“While anecdotal in nature, the scale of ministerial outreach meant that public servants could not ignore what he was hearing from his ‘practicum,’ as he called it,” Griffith wrote.

Veiled voting furor’s unlikely ending: Delacourt | Toronto Star.

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

How to Get a Job at Google – NYTimes.com

2014/02/24 Leave a comment

Good piece on Google’s hiring practices. Antitheses to how government hires:

To sum up Bock’s approach to hiring: Talent can come in so many different forms and be built in so many nontraditional ways today, hiring officers have to be alive to every one — besides brand-name colleges. Because “when you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people.” Too many colleges, he added, “don’t deliver on what they promise. You generate a ton of debt, you don’t learn the most useful things for your life. It’s [just] an extended adolescence.”

Google attracts so much talent it can afford to look beyond traditional metrics, like G.P.A. For most young people, though, going to college and doing well is still the best way to master the tools needed for many careers. But Bock is saying something important to them, too: Beware. Your degree is not a proxy for your ability to do any job. The world only cares about — and pays off on — what you can do with what you know (and it doesn’t care how you learned it). And in an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills — leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work.

How to Get a Job at Google – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Government, Other Tagged with , ,

Nudges vs. Shoves by Cass R. Sunstein

2014/02/15 Leave a comment

For those interested in public policy and nudges, good discussion by Cass Sunstein on the benefits of nudges, which preserve choice, to mandatory measures. Another instrument in the public policy toolkit.

Dry abstract below:

Behavioral findings, demonstrating human errors, have led some people to favor choice-preserving responses (“nudges”), and others to favor mandates and bans. If people’s choices lead them to err, it might seem puzzling, or even odd, to respond with solutions that insist on preserving freedom of choice. But mandates have serious problems of their own, even in the face of behavioral market failures. Mandates might not be able to handle heterogeneity; they might reflect limited knowledge on the part of public officials or the interests of powerful private groups; and they override freedom, potentially producing welfare losses and insulting individual dignity. It is true that in some cases, a behavioral market failure (such as a self-control problem) might justify a mandate on social welfare grounds, but on those very grounds, it makes sense to begin by examining choice-preserving approaches, which are far less intrusive and often highly effective.

Nudges vs. Shoves by Cass R. Sunstein :: SSRN.

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with ,

Haute fonction publique fédérale – Après le silence, la révolte | Le Devoir

2014/02/11 Leave a comment

More on Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and its former head, Daniel Caron. Part of his problem was that the savage cuts to traditional archival activities, done to meet government expenditure reductions and generate savings to capture the digital records or contemporary events, never had a public constituency. Meanwhile, the LAC constituency of academics, librarians and archivists strongly protested about the loss of traditional archive activities (see Jack Granatstein’s excellent Who will preserve the past for future generations?).

M. Caron dit avoir été injustement cloué au pilori, sans l’appui du ministre du Patrimoine, James Moore, ni même de BAC, où les réformes liées à la numérisation du présent qu’il était en train de mener créaient beaucoup de remous, admet-il. « Les changements étaient importants et ne plaisaient pas à tout le monde, dit-il. Il y a des gens qui avaient un intérêt à me voir partir. Quant au ministre, il avait, lui, un intérêt à se faire du capital politique en tapant publiquement sur un fonctionnaire pour des allégations de mauvaises gestions de fonds publics. Cela est cohérent avec le discours sur la réduction des dépenses ». Et il ajoute : « J’ai également résisté sur des projets d’acquisition de documents liés à la guerre de 1812 [un dossier historique hautement controversé et alimenté par les conservateurs], et poussé pour documenter des mouvements comme Idle No more [mouvement d’affirmation des autochtones et de contestation ciblant l’administration Harper] ou des projets comme Keystone XL [oléoduc canado-américain]. Cela n’a pas été très bien perçu. J’étais au milieu d’un tir croisé, dans une impasse. Je n’avais pas d’autres choix que de me retirer ».

Haute fonction publique fédérale – Après le silence, la révolte | Le Devoir.

Filed under Government Tagged with , ,

John Ivison: Ottawa will lose top human rights crusader when Liberal MP who fought for Mandela retires

2014/02/07 Leave a comment

Nice tribute to Irwin Cotler by John Ivison:

Yet Mr. Cotler has emerged intact and unspoiled by his 15 years in the House of Commons.

In the Tim Hortons in Mount Royal, he confided his motivation – the fundamental teaching handed down by his father, who used to tell him in Hebrew: “Justice, justice shall you pursue. This is the equal of all the other commandments combined.”

His father would surely be proud of the use to which his teaching has been put.

John Ivison: Ottawa will lose top human rights crusader when Liberal MP who fought for Mandela retires | National Post.

Filed under Antisemitism, Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Former PBO Kevin Page says federal government should reveal plans for public service

2014/02/05 Leave a comment

Hard not to agree with Page on accountability and transparency grounds. I recall working on implementation of the Conservative government’s Accountability Act, and particularly the role of Deputy Ministers, and it is hard to square that with the refusal to release information on spending plans (PBO should not have to file ATIP requests to get this info):

Page said the big problem is that the government hasn’t revealed its spending plans, including the nature of the cuts and their impact on service levels. While at the PBO, Page waged a public battle with Privy Council Clerk Wayne Wouters and deputy ministers over their refusal to turn over information on the government’s spending plans.

The closure of veterans’ offices and libraries — and the resulting political backlash — is what happens when departments live under steady cuts and everyone has been kept in the dark about their impact.

“You can look more productive … but we don’t know for the most part whether service levels are being maintained or the same quality of service is maintained because we don’t get that information from the government. They won’t allow the public servants to release it,” said Page.

“I would think if you asked public servants working at those regional veterans offices … if they were maintaining the same quality of service, I am pretty sure they would say ‘ no, we’re not but we are better off fiscally because we’re taking people out. So productivity gets a bit of boost but if service goes down and outputs go down, Canadians aren’t getting the same quality of services, and in the long run we are not better off.”

Former PBO Kevin Page says federal government should reveal plans for public service.

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with , , ,

Why we should listen to Elizabeth May – Paul Wells

2014/02/03 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Paul Wells on the shrinking role of government and the reduced capacity it implies:

In 2009, after the opposition forced him to run very large deficits as the price of Conservative political survival, Stephen Harper made a simple, crucial decision: He would eliminate the deficit over time, not by cutting transfers to the provinces for social programs, but by cutting direct spending on the things the government of Canada does. The government of Canada operates embassies, labs, libraries, lighthouses, benefits for veterans and Arctic research outposts. Or rather, it used to. These days, each day, it does a little less of all those things.

The sum of these cuts is a smaller role for the federal government in the life of the nation. Each of the steps toward that destination is trivial, easy to argue both ways (who needs fancy embassies?) and impossible to reverse (if a future government decides, “We need fancy embassies,” it can never get back the prime real estate this government is now selling).

In his long-delayed appearance before the cameras (sorry), Trudeau depicted the Harper government as devoid of ideas. “Its primary interest is the well-being of the Conservative Party of Canada and not of Canadians.” May, on the other hand, is sure the government has ideas; that it is pursuing them even when the rest of us are grandly bored with details; and that it is changing the country. She’s right.

This is not to say that period trimming of government is not needed – it is – but the stealth approach (i.e., the PBO should not have to submit ATIP requests for information on cuts), and limited public debate are worrisome.

Why we should listen to Elizabeth May – Inkless Wells, Opinion, Paul Wells – Macleans.ca.

Filed under Government, Public Policy Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →