Canadians open to quotas to boost indigenous representation in government

2016/09/10 Leave a comment

Interesting and significant. Of note that opposition is highest in the two provinces with the largest percentage of Indigenous people, Saskatchewan and Manitoba:

The majority of Canadians are open to designating seats for the country’s indigenous people to boost their representation in Parliament and on the Supreme Court.

A recent survey by Environics Institute and the Institute on Governance found that two-thirds of Canadians are open to improving the representation of indigenous people in federal institutions.

They are divided, however, when it comes to how that representation would be achieved.

When asked about hypothetically designating a specific number of seats for indigenous representatives in the House of Commons, Senate or Supreme Court, one-third backed the idea; one-third opposed, and one-third said it “depends” on how it was done or were unsure.

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance (IOG) , said the nearly 30 per cent who said they could support quotas depending on how they are handled suggests an “openness” among Canadians and a significant shift in attitude.

 “We don’t have comparative data but I … think these numbers represent an evolution in public opinion and in the minds of many Canadians. I would bet that we wouldn’t have had those responses five years ago and that attitudes have evolved that far.”

She also said Canadians seem to recognize that we can’t fix the country’s relationship with indigenous peoples “with good intentions (only) — they have to be in the positions driving it.”

Scott Serson, a former deputy minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, said the survey suggested Canadians are more open today than when a group of seven organizations conducted a major survey of non-aboriginal Canadians in 2014.

That survey was conducted by Environics as a baseline to track changing public attitudes towards reconciliation. It found Canadians increasingly recognize the historic and current challenges indigenous people face, with many indicating support for reconciliation and finding solutions.

“We have always said that First Nations must be at every table where decisions are being made that affect us, including the cabinet table, the boardroom table, the Supreme Court of Canada and beyond,” said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde.

“I am encouraged that many Canadians have confidence in the ability of First Nations leaders, and support the need for us to be fully involved in setting the path forward as partners.”

Emmett Macfarlane, a political scientist at the University of Waterloo, called Canadians’ openness to increased indigenous representation in government a “turning point” in attitudes.

He said the intense media attention around the Truth and Reconciliation Report into the residential school system, coupled with the Idle No More movement and the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, have all helped increase Canadians’ knowledge and understanding.

“This is an important development that puts them at the top of mind for non-indigenous people. It’s a bit of a surprise because it’s a departure from historical norms where non-indigenous Canadians have not given a lot of thought to indigenous Canadians.

…According to the survey, 46 per cent of Canadians support more indigenous representation while 16 per cent are opposed. Nearly 30 per cent responded with “depends” how it was done and nine per cent had no opinion.

The level of support, however, divided along East-West lines.

Support to expanding representation was strongest in Eastern and Central Canada, especially in Quebec where 56 per cent said they supported the idea. Opposition was most evident Manitoba and Saskatchewan where 26 per cent were opposed.

The survey asked Canadians who opposed expanding indigenous representation to give reasons for their objections. The most common reason, given by 35 per cent of them, was that all Canadians are equal and no group should be given preferential treatment.

About 10 per cent said indigenous peoples are adequately represented; nine per cent said they were over-represented; nine per cent said they were irresponsible and might abuse the system, and that representation should be based on qualifications not background.

About 28 per cent offered no specific reasons for their objections.

Source: Canadians open to quotas to boost indigenous representation in government | Ottawa Citizen

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Canadians lack faith in upper ranks of public service: survey

2016/09/08 Leave a comment

Interesting and worrisome for the public service:

The findings of a survey, conducted by Environics Institute and the Institute on Governance, into how Canadians view accountability and oversight in government underscore a troubling level of mistrust among Canadians in their government, both elected officials and public servants.

Canadians put more faith in front-line public servants delivering services — as long as they have the resources and authority to do the right thing — than they do for MPs and senior bureaucrats.

The majority have at least some trust in front-line workers and MPs, but views of senior public servants are almost equally divided between some trust and little or no trust.

At the same time, Canadians overall perceptions about government and its effectiveness — even among its harshest critics who believe government is broken — improved significantly since a similar survey in 2014, which some attribute to the “Trudeau Effect.”

 The two surveys into Canadians’ views into how we are governed were conducted 18 months apart.  One survey was conducted during the final stretch of the Conservatives’ near decade in power, and the second was conducted during the early months of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau.

The latest study was conducted online in February with 2,000 Canadians over the age of 18.

In that survey, only six per cent of those surveyed expressed a lot of trust in senior public servants compared with 18 per cent who reported trusting front-line federal workers.

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance, said Canadians’ growing trust appears to rest with the prime minister, not government institutions such as the public service.

That, she argued, poses a big challenge for the public service.

Expectations of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government are running high, but it’s the public service that has to deliver on their promises. She said the bureaucracy’s bungling of its new pay system and foul-ups installing a new email system raise questions about management.

“It’s Trudeau they trust, not the public service,” she said. “Now the question: Is the public service up to the challenge?

“A public service mired in trying to think through how to manage a new pay system and consolidate email systems is not a good match for the aspirations of an activist government and a Canadian populace who seem to have elected this government with a blank cheque.”

Canadians in the survey pointed to the public service and the Senate as two federal institutions that need changes. Those surveyed said the Senate needs a bigger overhaul than the public service and they ranked Senate fixes as a top priority.

About 56 per cent of those surveyed said the Senate needs major changes and 23 per cent said minor reforms. For the public service, 33 per cent said it needs major change and 47 per cent thought minor changes were needed.

In all cases, support for major changes is strongest among two groups:

  • Those who also said they feel the government is broken; or

  • Those who said they had faced bad service or an unpleasant experience dealing with government over the past year.

Source: Canadians lack faith in upper ranks of public service: survey | Ottawa Citizen

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Harper’s Accountability Act, ten years on: Flumian and Salgo

2016/07/19 Leave a comment

This lengthy commentary is well worth reading and is should provoke considerable and deeper discussion both within and outside government beyond the online comments.

Would be interesting to hear from some of the former public servants who worked on the Act for their take:

Still, our own view, bluntly, is that both the Act and the audit culture it sustains are fundamentally wrongheaded, and have contributed to a normative culture that is a roadblock to modernization. Far from fostering genuinely efficient stewardship of public resources, this culture over-manages minor risks in government, ignores far larger ones, and stifles appropriate risk-taking and innovation. If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is serious about its focus on delivering better outcomes for Canadians, it needs to shift to a system of accountability that is itself more focused on outcomes and less on micro constraints and the avoidance of blame.

To this day, the FedAA — which was actually part of a broader program of initiatives described as the “Federal Accountability Action Plan” — stands, we would argue, as the definitive legislative monument to risk-averse, blame-avoiding institutional rigidity in the government of Canada.

So, as the Act approaches its tenth anniversary, we may well ask: Accountability for what? Has government become more accountable as a result of the act? More to the point, has the FedAA and similarly-spirited initiatives contributed to better societal outcomes? Does it position the Canadian government to evolve nimbly to meet the challenges of governing in the digital age?

…A methodologically rigorous assessment of the impact of the FedAA — like one of the need for it — remains to be conducted. To date, much reported criticism draws on a broadly negative assessment by the public service textured by compelling personal anecdotes. A public service thumbs-down is neither definitive nor something that should be casually dismissed. Indeed, a systematic survey of public service experience would make a good starting point for a robust analysis. In the meantime, however, our principal basis for assessing the FedAA remains a parsing of what the legislation did and did not do.

Before assessing the individual elements of the legislation, let’s consider its overall thrust. Did this act about accountability have anything to say about being accountable for better outcomes? For working collaboratively on horizontal files? Did it give deputy ministers the responsibility and flexibility to improve the bottom line? Indeed, did it include any inducements to work pro-actively for improvements?

On the contrary, almost every provision was a further proscription, a more refined behavioural restraint, an intensification of scrutiny to smoke out unknown misdemeanours. And more to the point, the requirements of this regime could be satisfied in a purely negative way — that is, not by actually delivering something good, but by keeping your head down and avoiding blame.

As befits accountability legislation, the FedAA strengthened internal audit requirements in government departments and designated deputy heads as “accounting officers” for their organizations, meaning that they had to account in some way to Parliament for their managerial custodianship. Now, internal auditing is itself a laudable practice — one that that should actually be welcomed by a CEO as a tool for keeping tabs on the organization. However, the actual impact of internal audits on government departments is an area that merits closer study; the decision to conduct an audit by external committees may at least initially have reinforced a tendency to see the function as something to be managed rather than embraced.

As for the accounting officer function, this was evidently structured to minimize the risk of public servants becoming politically accountable to Parliament (itself a defensible goal). Partly for this reason, the responsibility is cast heavily in terms of demonstrating compliance with Treasury Board rules. But again, that is really not an outcome-oriented focus for deputy ministerial accountability, and it is highly unlikely that disregard for Treasury Board requirements was a significant problem in the deputy community. There is also the possibility that it reinforced a siloed focus on one’s own department.

…We need to replace what the FedAA has given us — more detailed rules and more costly and powerful people to oversee them; a chilling effect on public service and engagement with the outside world; and redoubled focus on departmental siloes and accountability conceived as compliance — with a system oversight and accountability that hones in on real risks across the system and that encourages collaboration, innovation and a focus on outcomes. Are public servants accountable for ticking boxes, or for helping the government of the day improve the lives of Canadians in meaningful ways?

If there is a real risk to the effective governance in Canada today, it is the risk that government will not meet these challenges, diminish in relevance, and be beaten at its own game by external providers of goods and services with no mandate to look out for the public interest.

Source: Harper’s Accountability Act, ten years on

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ICYMI: So how are those ‘sunny ways’ working out so far? Flumian

2016/02/12 Leave a comment

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance and one of my former deputies, on the new government’s steps to dates and some of the deeper challenges.

Hard to argue with her formulation of one of her broader questions:

As it contemplates new engagement strategies, the government confronts a broader question — how governance needs to evolve in the digital age, when ubiquitous information and the instantaneous ability to collect it have challenged the position of many traditional intermediaries, governments included. Governments have already ventured into the twitterverse, with mixed results.

But for the most part it has yet to confront a host of issues. For example, what are the benefits and risks of massive “virtual” engagement in policy making? What are the best techniques? What happens to so-called ‘message control’? What frameworks might guide interaction between the public service, citizens and the media?

The governance challenges of the digital age don’t stop there. In an age of near-frictionless connectivity, why do citizens have to deal with multiple government silos to address various aspects of the same issue — whether it’s a disability, a business start-up, or becoming a senior? And given the ever-expanding applications for data, why do governments continue to sit on vast stores of information they can’t begin to fully use in the name of “confidentiality”?

Here again, the government is off to an encouraging start. In his (no longer secret!) mandate letters to ministers, the prime minister charged several of his colleagues with working toward single-window service. The government also has committed to a policy of open data by default. Some traditionalists have cautioned that it may come to regret such a commitment, but among other considerations, it’s far from clear that a generation accustomed to the digital sharing of information is invested in the information-hoarding ethic of an earlier age.

So how are those ‘sunny ways’ working out so far?

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ICYMI: Mistrust between bureaucrats and politicians bad for Canada: survey

2015/01/05 Leave a comment

doing their best 1224-survey2-ps04-grInteresting survey. Above chart I found particularly striking and worrisome.

While it is unlikely that a new incoming government will be much more trusting and reliant on public servants for broader policy advice given some of the macro-trends at play, some of the more fundamental distrust and ideology regarding the role of government may improve the relationship:

About 66 per cent of Canadians think public servants should “actively” provide expert advice and recommend policies, compared to the 18 per cent who say their job is simply to implement the desires of politicians. This view is evident across the country but is strongest among older, more educated people and higher-income earners.

And nearly three-quarters of those asked believe the best policies would come from a “collaborative” working relationship between public servants and politicians. Only 10 per cent believe “tension” would generate better policy.

The survey provides Canadians’ perspective on an issue that has been hotly debated in Ottawa for several decades, as power shifted to the Prime Minister’s Office and public servants lost their onetime monopoly on providing advice to ministers.

The findings are also at odds with the view of the current Conservative government, which, after nearly a decade in power, doesn’t particularly trust the public service and sometimes finds its advice obstructionist.

Public servants complain their advice isn’t actively sought or is ignored if offered on big issues and direction. They say ministers come to the table with ready-made policies that public servants are told to implement. The rising stars among public servants are issue-managers and fixers, not big-idea thinkers.

This view of policy advice was recently illustrated when Finance Minister Joe Oliver gave a $550-million tax cut to the small-business lobby without his department — once the bureaucracy’s crème de la crème of policy analysts — conducting any analysis of its own.

…Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance, said she commissioned the survey to determine how Canadians feel their governments serve them.

She said the findings suggest Canadians still support a parliamentary democracy even though Canada has drifted towards a “Washminister” system — the name used for a hybrid of Washington’s presidential and Britain’s Westminster systems of responsible government.

“We see a mismatch in expectations and outcome from all the players: politicians, public servants, citizens, and we wanted to see how Canadians viewed this,” she said, “and they think the spirit of co-operation would have better outcomes and they understand who is accountable: the people who form the government and make the decisions,”

Although Canadians expect public servants to have a policy advisory role, they don’t necessarily think public servants of the future should have more influence on managing departments and agencies than they do now. About 28 per cent say they should have more influence; 17 per cent said less and 34 per cent were in the middle, happy with the status quo.

Mistrust between bureaucrats and politicians bad for Canada: survey | Ottawa Citizen.

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How public servants support democracy: a response to latest Canada 2020 study | hilltimes.com

2014/07/08 Leave a comment

More reaction from Maryantonett Flumian to Ralph Heintzman’s Canada 2020 report:

But doesn’t there come a point where a public servant—whose ethical code requires that he or she act “in the public interest”—must say no? Indeed there does. But the threshold is high, and the public servant’s responsibility to act in the public interest does not mean the public service determines the public interest.

For an unelected official, acting in the public interest essentially means three things:

  1. not acting in one’s private interest or in the special interests of those one personally favours;
  2. bringing one’s best professional expertise to bear on the tasks one performs; and
  3. acting consistently with the agenda and direction set by one’s minister, provided it is consistent with the law, with formal government policies, and with public service values and ethics.

So, yes, a public servant could and should refuse, say, to provide support for a partisan event. But he or she could not decline to implement a policy because he or she judged it not in the public interest….

Heintzman’s concerns here are fair enough, but the public service doesn’t operate in an ivory tower. Policies and practices that embarrass governments have never been matters of indifference for public servants. What has intensified in recent years is the pressure of the public environment. Instantaneous digital technology and 24/7 media are undercutting the deliberative, process-driven way in which governments have traditionally responded to issues. “Issues management” has emerged as a growing government need and perhaps the most in-demand skill for an up-and-coming public servant. This reality makes for fine lines that demand vigilance, but it does not mean that the public service has gone political.

Interesting relative lower emphasis on “fearless advice” (from someone who was fearless!) in favour of the softer “bringing one’s best professional expertise,” a not insignificant nuance in the current context of sometimes fraught government public service relations.

How public servants support democracy: a response to latest Canada 2020 study | hilltimes.com.

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Reforms to bring neutrality to public service could lead to ‘government by the unelected’: think tank | Ottawa Citizen

2014/07/02 Leave a comment

More on the debate over the Canada 2020 by Ralph Heintzman, this time from  Maryantonett Flumian, who reminds us of the parameters of public servants:

Maryantonett Flumian, president of the institute, a think-tank devoted to public service issues, said a debate on the nature of governance is long overdue, but the answer to the trust gap between politicians and bureaucrats isn’t to isolate the public service and protect it from politics.

“That means Canadians would have a public service that no one wants. There is already an official opposition in this country and no one wants to be governed by the unelected. That is not the role of the public service,” she said. ….

She said deputy ministers are the “linchpins” between the government and the public service. They bridge the two worlds. They have to translate the prime minister’s agenda into action by the public service. Similarly, they explain the views of the public service to politicians.

Flumian argues the Clerk, not the Public Service Commission as recommended by Heintzman, is ideally positioned to select deputy ministers who have the capabilities, skills and personalities best-suited to work “this two-way relationship” with ministers.

She argues turning these appointments over to the Public Service Commission makes bureaucrats independent of their political masters and risks politicizing the public service.

“Who will become those linchpins?” Does the deputy minister role get taken over by the ministers’ chief of staff?” she asked.

“If senior public servants are cloistered priests and nuns who don’t speak to the outside world and who don’t think their jobs is to understand the governance from the party in power, through to the prime minister and cabinet, then who will do that bridging?

Flumian believes Canada needs a neutral public service so to can work with any party in power. As a result, public servants don’t have an “independent voice” and their advice must be given in confidence “because it is the government that has a positions on issues, not the public service,” she said.

She acknowledged public servants are obliged to act in the public interest but the public interest is determined by the government and public servants must implement its policies whether they like it or.

“Politicians are elected, not public servants and they get to set the ground rules and, as long as they are not breaking the law, they are boss. That is what democracy is. “

Reforms to bring neutrality to public service could lead to ‘government by the unelected’: think tank | Ottawa Citizen.

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Public service needs ‘moral contract’ to keep it neutral, study says | Ottawa Citizen

2014/06/13 1 Comment

More on the respective roles of the Government and the public service, this time from Ralph Heintzman and Canada 2020. While much of his observations and criticism is valid, it is no accident that no government has accepted an explicit moral contract or charter to govern the relationship. Ambiguity has its advantages for both sides, and the wish for clarity in the essentially messy business of governing is unrealistic.

None of this condones a number of the actions of the Conservative government but as I argued in my book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, the public services was also responsible for some of the breakdown in the relationship:

Canada 2020, a progressive think-tank, plans to release a paper Wednesday that calls for a “charter of public service” or a “moral contract” to set the boundaries for a bureaucracy whose role and responsibilities have become blurred by a powerful Prime Minister’s Office with an iron grip on communications.

Ralph Heintzman, the University of Ottawa research professor who wrote the paper, said the line between public servants and politicians has been blurring for years, but rapidly changing technology, the 24-hour news cycle and government’s obsession with communications and “spin” have made the problem worse.

“I think behaviours in the public service are not what they should be, but not because they are bad-willed but rather because we don’t have the right systems, rules and mechanisms to direct people how to behave properly,” he said in an interview.

Heintzman proposes a new charter that would be legislated and far-reaching. It would enshrine a value and ethics code to guide behaviour. It would include tougher communications rules; give teeth to the accountability of deputy ministers as accounting officers; and revamp the appointment process for deputy ministers by taking it out of the hands of the Clerk of the Privy Council.

… Heintzman argued the three-way relationship – between public servants, MPs and ministers – is critical to the implementation of any government’s agenda regardless of political stripe, but the need for a charter is more critical today for a public service that has been “neglected,” “devalued” and has seen its neutrality “abused” by the Harper government.

The role of the public service has been in the spotlight because of Privy Council Office Clerk Wayne Wouters’s ongoing Blueprint 2020 exercise to retool the future public service. Wouters’s report, like many previous reform exercises over the past 25 years, dodged the deteriorating relationship.

… The grey zone between politicians and bureaucrats was at the heart of everything that went wrong and led to the sponsorship scandal, concluded Justice John Gomery, who headed the sponsorship inquiry. He also recommended a legislated charter. The Tait report made a similar recommendation a decade earlier.

Heintzman argued the Conservatives’ flagship Federal Accountability Act, meant in part to fix the problem, was badly flawed and increased confusion around deputy minister accountability.

Heintzman concludes a big problem is that the Conservatives don’t value the public service as a national institution for Canada’s democracy and see it as an extension of the government to be used as desired; for example it is expected to adhere to a communications strategy to rebrand the “Government of Canada” as the “Harper government.”

“They make no distinction between the Harper ministry and the government of Canada,” he said. They think it is the same thing, so the public service is just there to achieve their own partisan objectives.”

Public service needs ‘moral contract’ to keep it neutral, study says | Ottawa Citizen.

Subsequent article and interview comments are even more critical:

The study, Renewal of the Public Service: Toward a Charter of Public Service, released by the think-tank Canada 2020, says Privy Council Office Clerk Wayne Wouters became the government’s political spokesman for stonewalling Page and refusing the information Parliament needed to do its job – right down to the language of a letter in which he wrote that “in our view” the government’s reductions are credible.

The new study, written by University of Ottawa Prof. Ralph Heintzman, argues that Wouters could have provided an explanation of the government’s reasoning but should never have publicly justified or defended a “contestable political decision” and made it his own.

“Words such as ‘in our view’ – our! – would be quite natural in the mouth of a prime minister. In the mouth of the head of the public service, they are very difficult to explain, or justify. In using them, the clerk left no space whatever between himself and the current ministry,” writes Heintzman.

“A Privy Council Office that could draft such a letter and a clerk who could sign it are at serious risk of abolishing the distinction between a public service and the political administration it serves. No wonder that under the Harper administration, the PCO has become home to a large communications machine serving the partisan needs of the incumbent government and the prime minister.”

When public servants go partisan: new study seeks solutions

The alternate view by  Maryantonett Flumian and Nick Charney, in Canadian Government Executive, is more nuanced, noting how the public service has to adapt to the government of the day:

As the new Clerk, Wouters could have taken the public service in many directions. He chose to rise to the challenge by recognizing the somewhat strained relationships and by doing what he is best at, thoughtfully and persistently building bridges between those who must work as one in the public interest. With the Prime Minister’s public support, he chose a path of reenergizing the public service and channeling its leadership toward transformation and modernization of the institution supported with the necessary infrastructure and tools to serve Canadians and the government. He has not ducked the challenges, nor has he focused on confrontation.

To everything there is a season, and this is the time when both major players seem to have understood that they depend on each other to fashion a modern, resilient and agile public service that supports a modern nation in achieving its place on the global stage. And so, in Wouters’ time at the PCO, his greatest skill as head of the public service may well turn out to be his capacity to get the Prime Minister on side and work with him on issues having to do with the role of the public service, the size of the workforce, and changing the business model of government. This bridge to the future began when he launched the Administrative Services Review. The review looked for government-wide opportunities to consolidate and standardize government operations and led, among other things, to the creation of Shared Services Canada.

Wouters’ ability to work closely with the Prime Minister has manifested itself in other areas than public service renewal, however important that may be. He used his position as Clerk, working with colleagues such as the deputy minister of Finance, to support the government’s economic goals, ensuring the development of five successive budgets that kept Canada out of recession and brought the government back into surplus. His support and advice was critical to the finalization of a number of bilateral trade agreements, including the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union and the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement. ….

Through Blueprint 2020, Wouters is moving the public service into unchartered waters. Responding to criticism that the public service is too focused on the short term, he is using it to promote a longer term view of policy, program development and service delivery. He is staking the future on the belief that the leadership – at all levels of the largest employer and most diverse workforce in the country, operating in very complex domains – is up to the challenge.

The Prime Minister and the Prime Ministers’ Advisory Committee on the Public Service, until recently chaired by David Emerson, are supportive and aligned to the challenge. The call to arms in the Blueprint 2020 exercise has been launched against a backdrop of cynicism, cost reduction, and a drive to operational efficiency. This renewal starts at a time when the same sort of efforts at transformation are being led by public services around the world. Blueprint 2020 fundamentally recognizes that existing policies, tools and processes no longer fit the needs of today.

The issues of engagement, culture, agility and relevance are at the heart of this renewal. There is a profound recognition, which the cynics missed in the early days, that reforming public service is a team sport where every player must be called upon to be a leader, where every step, big and small, will add up to change. With the public service going through a transformation, the need for broad engagement is fundamental. That is the engagement that Wouters, as head of the public service, has unleashed in Blueprint 2020. Over 100,000 public servants from 85 different departments and agencies have participated in this dialogue.

With the release of Destination 2020, the call to action is clear and the momentum continues. Social media, along with the openness of spirit and engagement with which Wouters has launched this dialogue on collaboration, innovation and modernization, is unprecedented in the history of public service reform. The engagement at so many different levels of the organization will ensure that the momentum will not end with the “tabling” of this living, crowd-sourced document.

To come full circle, two unlikely partners – Stephen Harper and Wayne Wouters – picked each other to work together in support of the public interest. Each is working to reshape his own sphere. There is no question that tough conversations occur – as they must – behind closed doors. What will be accomplished is a modern, relevant public service better able to serve Canadians.

I find this to be an overly optimistic take on the government-public service relationship. It avoids the difficult issues of conflicting ideologies, reliance on anecdotes over evidence, and major reductions in core policy and analytical capacity.

However, relationships and trust matter, the Clerk, deputies and other senior managers have to decide the appropriate balance between “fearless advice and loyal implementation,” and where greater cooperation rather than “confrontation” is appropriate. The public service has to adapt to the government more than the other way round.

I worked at Service Canada under Flumian and she was one of the strongest and effective leaders I have encountered. Like Steve Jobs in her ability to inspire and develop a vision, with some of the same human flaws. One of my most rewarding times in government.

To everything there is a season

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