Book Launch Announcement in The Hill Times

Along with other ‘Heard on the Hill’ items, a good pre-article about my book Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias (half-way down the first page). The Hill Times main audience are political staffers, officials who need to follow the politics, and the journalists who cover the hill.

Should generate some interest. Full article below given pay wall:

Former top bureaucrat Griffith to release provocative new book, Policy Arrogance, on Sept. 23 at Three Brewers on Sparks Street

Six years ago, Andrew Griffith, a director general at the Canadian Heritage department, received a call from then-secretary of state for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney asking him why he had not approved language that was to be sent out in a press release. He replied, “But minister, it doesn’t sound ministerial.”

It was a late afternoon on a Friday and his first day on the job. He says in his new book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, he spent the weekend wondering if he was still employed.

“I survived, and went on to work with him and his staff for close to four years, first at Canadian Heritage and then at Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), following the transfer of the multicultural program to CIC in October 2008 after Kenney’s appointment as Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism,” he wrote in the preface to Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias. “During this period, citizenship (added to my responsibilities at CIC) and multiculturalism policies and programs were fundamentally reset, in line with the government’s emphasis on more meaningful citizenship and more integrative multiculturalism.”

Mr. Griffith, who is launching his book on Sept. 23 in Ottawa, said that Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias is a small case study about how the public service had to readjust to policy-making following the federal Conservatives’ rise to power. He said public servants had to “become more modest about the degree of expertise and knowledge” it provided to their political masters, “forced by the radically different perspective that the Harper government and Minister Kenney brought to these inherently complex social policy issues.”

In addition, Mr. Griffith wrote, “It is also the story of how officials balanced the public service challenge function role of ‘fearless advice’ with the need to serve the government of the day through ‘loyal implementation.’ Given the sharp nature of the policy reset, and the entrenched views of many public servants, this book aims to provide a small case study of how public servants adjusted to the new reality—one in which their expertise was fundamentally challenged, discounted, and at times ignored.”

The changes to policy making were so fundamental, Mr. Griffith said, that “In many cases, officials had to work through the Kübler-Ross stages of grief and loss—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—in dealing with the traumatic challenge to their role, as well as to the long-standing consensus between previous Liberal and Conservative parties on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.”

He called this period “an intense and interesting time of policy change and political-bureaucratic interface challenges.”

The book launch takes place on Sept. 23 at The Three Brewers, 240 Sparks St., from 5 to 7 p.m.

Fight Club, anyone? Hill Times, Embassy, and GCTC start Friday Night Fights | hilltimes.com.