Carney’s plan to cut tens of billions in spending is tough but doable, experts say

2025/07/16 Leave a comment

Always interesting to listen to the assessments of previous clerks on some of the lessons learned:

….Mel Cappe, who served as clerk of the Privy Council from 1999 to 2002, a position that includes heading up the public service, said meeting those targets will be tough but doable.

“There’s somebody in the public who’s going to be outraged by the cuts,” he said. “This is going to require all ministers holding hands, saying prayers together.”

…But previous clerks of the Privy Council say it will be difficult for the government to avoid cutting staff because wages, benefits and pensions are such a large part of the operating budget.Leaning on attrition

In 2023-24, excluding one-time payments like back pay made after a new collective agreement was signed, the federal government spent $65.3 billion on salaries, pensions and benefits. That was a 10 per cent increase over the previous year.

“In 1995, the wage bill was so high that it was necessary to invest some money to facilitate people to leave by giving them cashouts,” Cappe said.

“If you are going to do that on a massive scale, you have to be prepared to see those costs up front. Because it will save you a lot of money in the long run.”

Michael Wernick — the clerk of the Privy Council from 2016 to 2019 — told CBC News that relying on attrition “doesn’t make any sense as a management strategy.”

“What happens if your absolute key cybersecurity expert retires next week? You’re not going to replace her?” he said. “If your aspiration is a serious compression of the numbers, then you have to be more mindful about it and you have to do layoffs and buyouts.”

Where you cut — rather than how much

One of the ways the prime minister has said his government will cut operating expenses is by looking for ways to employ artificial intelligence and automation.

Wernick says that approach will require investment in training and technology and that, like buyouts for public servants, comes with an upfront cost.

But both former clerks say the Liberal government can hit its targets and they have a suggestion for how it can be done.

“Stop doing some things, rather than an across-the-board cut,” Cappe said.

By going this route, staff no longer carrying out a given function can be moved to work on other government priorities. Wernick says cutting entire lines of business also prevents spending from creeping back up.

“If you don’t kill the program entirely, the pressure to restore it will come in almost immediately from the clients, from the mayors, from the caucus,” Wernick said.

Donald Savoie, an expert in public administration and governance at the Université de Moncton, said the government can be downsized without hurting service delivery.

“Let’s look at programs that we don’t need anymore, let’s look at organizations that we don’t need anymore,” Savoie said.

He said there is also room to cut the use of consultants and outside contractors, but Wernick warned doing so would cut off access to expertise. That can be mitigated, he said, by training public servants — but that comes with an upfront cost.

Trying to emulate Chrétien and Martin’s fiscal success

Savoie said Carney has two things in common with Chrétien that bode well for his cost-cutting ambitions.

The first is that unlike Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper and Trudeau, both Carney and Chrétien had experience working in government well before securing the country’s highest office.

Savoie said that means Carney, like Chrétien before him, knows which levers to pull.

The other thing both men share is a mandate to respond to a national crisis. In the 1990s, Canada’s federal debt was so large compared to the economy that a third of every dollar collected in tax went just to service its interest payments.

“I think what helped Chrétien immensely in 1994-95 is Canadians were seized with a real crisis,” Savoie said.

“So Canadians said: ‘we got a problem’ and so [Chrétien] could draw on public support. And in the same vein, Carney can draw on public support because Canadians see that dealing with Trump, dealing with tariffs, is very tough and some tough decisions have to be taken.”

For that reason, Savoie said, Canadians will be much more open to suffering through cuts than they were five to 10 years ago, which may be just enough political licence for the expenditure review to bear fruit.

Source: Carney’s plan to cut tens of billions in spending is tough but doable, experts say

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Lynch, Cappe and Mitchell: This is no time for ambitious federal projects

2025/03/04 Leave a comment

Good and needed commentary on Liberal over reach:

…Normally, in the period between the calling of an election and the swearing in of a government afterwards, the government of the day is supposed to refrain from making major discretionary decisions or announcements. The routine business of government carries on, as it must, but it is an important convention of our Westminster system that the government does not take the opportunity of the period between one sdministration and another to announce big decisions. This is called the “caretaker convention.” It’s a norm, a governing convention, not a law. But that doesn’t make it any less important.

Technically, we are not in a caretaker situation. While a federal election has not yet been called, it’s obvious that the circumstances today are far from a normal. Parliament has been prorogued in order that the governing Party can have the free time required to select a new prime minister. Yet however useful prorogation may have been in political or practical terms, it does impose upon the prime minister a duty of care, a duty of respect for the institutions in his charge. Making big decisions of a discretionary nature violates the spirit of the caretaker convention.

Source: Lynch, Cappe and Mitchell: This is no time for ambitious federal projects

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Cappe and Mitchell: Fixing Canada’s access to information regime will require more than just people power

2023/06/26 Leave a comment

Starts with changing the default to being open, as open data illustrates. But the reality that politicians tend to support more open government when in opposition and be “less enthusiastic” when in government is likely the fundamental obstacle. But modernizing the process and digitizing holdings should be doable:

The Globe and Mail has done Canadians a service by exposing the serious shortcomings in federal and provincial freedom of information (FOI) regimes. The reporting done as part of the Secret Canada project has shown that Canadians cannot get timely access to the information held by governments that they need, and to which they are legally entitled. Either the governments are egregiously slow in responding to access requests or, in far too many cases, they simply fail to provide the information requested. These delays are not simply frustrating; in far too many cases, they affect the material interests of Canadians who need to know what the government knows about them.

This problem is an important challenge to democratic governance in this country. But the solutions may not be obvious.

For example, simply adding more people, working millions more hours, to beleaguered access/FOI units in the federal and provincial governments will not solve the problem. Moreover, our Westminster system of government differs in fundamental ways from the municipal-government-style model with which most Canadians are familiar: Westminster government is cabinet government, where there is a fundamental requirement for secrecy to enable frank discussion among ministers and collective responsibility before the legislature, while municipal councils do their business in the open, as they should. But the obligations of openness differ in important ways between these two forms of government, and this can cause confusion.

To figure out solutions, we must understand the source of our access/FOI problem – and that lies with two fundamental features of the current regimes operated by both the federal and provincial governments.

First, the system we have is governed by the assumption that documents belong to government and are protected unless they can be allowed to be released. The result is that officials are obliged to spend an enormous amount of expensive time examining and redacting documents to protect information that, frankly, has no need of protection. Instead, governments should accept that the information they hold is inherently public, unless it falls within a limited set of exceptions to that rule, and make this information easy to access for citizens.

The second and more fundamental problem is that the laws were written, and governments are operating, in an analog world of paper and paper-based processes, while the needs and expectations of citizens reflect their experiences in a 21st-century digital world.

Today, people expect that information will be available instantly online. The notion that the information that someone is seeking from government is sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere in a remote government building seems laughable – but sadly, it is accurate. The fact is that today, a request for information is, in most cases, actually a request for a paper document that must be located then examined by a government official, then perhaps redacted in some way or other, and then physically transmitted to the person who made the access request. That process takes a huge amount of time and effort, and what’s more, it’s expensive: A recent Treasury Board study revealed that the estimated per-page cost of a document released under the federal access to information program is $11.40, and pegs the total cost to administer the program at $195-million a year. Pro-active disclosure, by contrast, would cost a federal department or agency only $64,000 a year on average.

To solve the problem, we should first recognize a clear distinction between information that should be accessible – namely, almost all of it – and information that, for good reason, should be protected.

We should also recognize that different kinds of information require different forms of protection. Tax data require privacy protection, for instance; this is an essential obligation of government to citizens and is fundamental to our “self-reporting” system of tax collection. Discussions in cabinet and advice to ministers need protection to enable the giving of frank advice and to allow for candour around the cabinet table. National security and intelligence records need protection to protect the security of the country; commercial negotiations, as well as federal-provincial and international negotiations, require protection so as to protect individual and national interests.

All these protections should be pretty much absolute. After that, one can apply a harm test to protect the information, if that is necessary. Otherwise, the default position should be that the information held by governments is readily accessible.

Furthermore, in our digital world, not every digital artifact in government should be deemed a “record” for the purposes of access to information. For example, every e-mail and every telephone call inside government is currently regarded, in principle, as a digital record. These should not be considered a record, for the purposes of the Act. Why not? Well, not every request for access is benign; some requests are motivated, quite legitimately, by a political or journalistic interest in simply embarrassing the government or finding information on a competitor. And if all exchanges among public servants were made public, then people simply would not communicate digitally any more. If casual exchanges among public servants are to be accessible then fear of embarrassing the government or themselves would be a chill on frank exchanges.

So how can we best reform the access/FOI regime at the federal or provincial level to better respect the rights and expectations of citizens, while still protecting the legitimate interests of individuals, governments and the country?

Firstly, as noted, start by recognizing the principles of confidentiality of ministerial discussions that underpin Westminster parliamentary democracy.

Secondly, change the default position for access/FOI from one of protecting secrecy to that of making records releasable unless this would violate clearly defined principles of secrecy or privacy. In cases of doubt, apply a clearly defined justiciable harm test for disclosure.

Thirdly, set out well-defined categories of protected documents (e.g., cabinet confidences, national security and intelligence information, and tax information and other records protected by privacy concerns) in the law.

And finally – and perhaps most importantly – begin the essential task of changing the information holdings of government from analog to digital, and amend search and disclosure processes in the same manner. Emphasize the creation of searchable databases which allow for low compliance costs in government and what is equally important, low private search costs. Recognize the social and public costs of compliance in government (high) vs. the private costs of private search of public records (low).

The Globe is right – the system is broken. Canadians are not being well-served. But we can’t fix the system by simply opening it up. We must understand why it’s broken and what it should look like in future if the interests of Canadians are to be protected.

Mel Cappe is a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and a former clerk of the Privy Council. James Mitchell is an adjunct professor at Carleton University and a former assistant secretary to the Cabinet, Machinery of Government.

Source: Fixing Canada’s access to information regime will require more than just people power

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Why Justin Trudeau shook up Canada’s diplomatic corps, diversity

2016/07/21 Leave a comment

HoM 2016 appointments.001The above chart captures the diversity of all 38 Liberal government head of mission appointments in 2016 to date with respect to all appointments as well as those that are classified at the ADM level (EX4-5):

The Liberal government cleaned diplomatic house on Tuesday, announcing the appointment of 26 new ambassadors, high commissioners and consuls general from Havana to Tel Aviv. The list is heavy on foreign service experience, short on overtly political appointments and pristinely gender balanced. In a statement, Global Affairs Canada said the recalls and new postings “ensure its diplomatic leaders represent a wide diversity of Canadians.”

Ferry de Kerckhove, former high commissioner in Pakistan and ambassador to both Indonesia and Egypt over a long career in the foreign service, said the appointments signal a conscientious shift in approach for Justin Trudeau’s government. “We’re back to what I would call normalcy in diplomatic appointments,” he says. “It confirms the Prime Minister’s early statement about giving back to the foreign service its role in representing Canada abroad, and also giving back its ability to actually do their job, which is to report, comment and provide advice.”

Source: Why Justin Trudeau shook up Canada’s diplomatic corps

Tuesday morning started off with a big shuffle as 26 new diplomatic appointments were announced, some replacing political appointments made under the previous Tory government.

As it did with its last shuffle, the department included a statement at the top of the list of appointments stating the government’s “commitment to ensure its diplomatic leaders represent a wide diversity of Canadians and include a greater gender representation.”

While the appointments include 13 men and 13 women, the overwhelming majority of heads of mission being replaced are men. Only four female ambassadors have been rotated out, compared to the 22 men.

A few of the new appointments are simply rotations from ambassadorial positions in other countries, while a few brand new political appointees have been added to the heads of mission team.

Harper appointees replaced, more women added to Canada’s roster of ambassadors

Patrick Martin’s astute analysis of the postings to the Mid-East:

Israel has been watching for evidence of a shift since Canada’s Liberals won the October election. Within hours of being sworn in, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion announced that Canada will strive for a more balanced policy in the Middle East, one that includes reaching out to “other legitimate partners in the region” besides Israel.

He even described Canada’s role as being that of an “honest broker” – no words make Israeli leaders shudder more than those two.

Stephen Harper’s government was very good to Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government knew it had a staunch supporter in Canadian Ambassador Vivian Bercovici. It also knew the next Canadian representative could not be so one-sided.

But in Deborah Lyons, whose name as the ambassador-designate leaked two months ago, the Israelis are being mollified by the appointment of a fair-minded career diplomat of substantial seniority. Ms. Lyons, most recently, has been Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, a posting that gives her credibility in conflict zones. But prior to that is where her résumé gets really interesting.

She served as deputy head of mission in Washington, as chief strategy officer of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa and as a trade counsellor for high-tech industries in Tokyo. Few words give Israelis goosebumps more quickly than “high-tech.”

Does this high-level appointment reframe Canada’s relationship with Israel and the Middle East? Perhaps, but it depends on what policy changes follow the appointment.

The departure of Bruno Saccomani as Canadian ambassador to Jordan will be welcomed by those Jordanians who care about such things. The Royal Hashemite Court grimaced at the appointment of Mr. Harper’s former head of security to lead Canada’s mission in Amman.

Mr. Saccomani lacked the experience of a foreign service officer, but also lacked the ear of the Canadian prime minister, which would have compensated for his not being a diplomat.

In Peter MacDougall, the Jordanians are getting an upgrade. Mr. MacDougall’s expertise is in refugees and in setting standards for admission to Canada – two very valuable traits in a country hosting nearly two million Syrian refugees and the place from which Canada chooses those it will allow entry.

The change of ambassadors in the United Arab Emirates is about equal in quality – both the outgoing Arif Lalani and the incoming Masud Husain are senior officials with lots of expertise and experience.

Which is a good thing, because the Gulf countries matter more than ever – with tensions over Iran, Syria and Yemen, and concern over the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

 Ottawa’s diplomatic shuffle signals shift in approach to Middle East 

Former Clerk and High Commissioner to London on the balance of skills that career and political backgrounds bring to appointments:

After several years watching appointments, I realized that political appointees do these jobs differently. Each person brings different strengths and skills to the job.

David MacNaughton and Gary Doer before him have a strength as Canadian Ambassador to Washington that most other ambassadors do not. They are seen as well-connected and understand politics. When they speak to American political or business leaders they know they speak with the PM’s voice. That is remarkably valuable in doing the job.

When I met political, cultural and business leaders in the U.K. and they heard I had been Secretary to Cabinet, they took me more seriously (more than I deserved to be taken). When we want to be taken seriously at the UN, or in Washington, London and Paris, then the person representing Canada may best be a career diplomat schooled in the intricacies of diplomacy, or a career public servant knowledgeable and experienced in the key issues of the portfolio, or a “political” appointee who has access to the prime minister. It depends.

However, there can be too many political appointees. To run a career foreign service we need to have senior offices available for the careerists to aspire to. However, that there are political appointees is not a bad thing.

The appointments announced Tuesday should be judged on the quality of the people and not on whether they helped get the Prime Minister elected. Every prime minister has appointed former ministers, party apparatchiks, and business people, career public servants as well as career diplomats to the rank of Ambassador or High Commissioner. They should be judged on their talents, what they bring to the job and ultimately on what they accomplish.

I like to think that because I had been a senior public servant with access, I added value to representing Canada that was more than many others could do. My predecessors each brought different strengths to the job and did it differently, not better or worse.

All those Ambassadors and High Commissioners announced Tuesday will do their best to represent Canada well. Many of them will do a very good job and accomplish great things. We should wish them all well.

 Judge diplomatic picks on talent, not their relationship with Trudeau 

 

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Government by referendums is not democracy – Cappe and Stein

2016/07/09 Leave a comment

One of the better articulations against referendums by Mel Cappe and Janice Gross Stein:

The value of representative democracy has been clear since Edmund Burke wrote in the eighteenth century. Public policy problems are by their nature complex. Representatives, meeting again and again formally and informally, can study, analyze and deliberate before they make their judgments. Referendums, by definition, require simplified “yes” or “no” choices and a one-time only opportunity to vote.

This is not, as some populist critics allege, a defence of “elitism” or the “hubris of experts.” Rather, it is an acknowledgment that it is the full-time responsibility of elected representatives to deliberate and come to an informed decision. They are accountable to the voters if they do not, and can be removed from office. Members of the public, by definition, have no such responsibilities or accountabilities.

Referendums also polarize opinion and sharpen divisions among the electorate. It is almost an inevitable result, as partisans on both sides seek to mobilize voters, often by invoking stereotypes and playing to the fears of the public. Witness Jacques Parizeau and Nigel Farage.

The public often responds emotionally to these arguments, especially in a climate of insecurity that is in part the result of leaders on each side manipulating fear to get out the vote.

Especially in these kinds of circumstances, the debate that leads up to a referendum can ride roughshod over the rights of minorities. Immigration in Britain from former colonies surpasses immigration from other countries in the European Union and far exceeded immigration of Syrian refugees. But Nigel Farage used his Breaking Point poster of refugees from the Middle East to whip up passions against the EU. There was no discussion during the period before the referendum that Polish plumbers and Romanian hair stylists were generally doing jobs that Britons were not disposed to do. Polls after the referendum showed that these kinds of attacks against minorities and refugees worked; immigration was the overriding issue among those who voted Leave.

Parliamentary debate is a different kind of process. Debates are a matter of public record and representatives are accountable for their comments. In well-functioning democracies, parliamentarians – not always but often – work to find solutions that serve the interests of the majority but simultaneously protect the rights of minorities. The debate on the right to assisted death in Canada was an example of exactly that kind of debate. For electoral reform in Canada, parliament should study it, consult the public, deliberate and then allow members a free vote on the issue.

Finally, there is a challenge function in parliamentary debate that helps to inform representatives and correct glaring errors of fact. This is especially the case when an independent and vigorous media report on parliamentary debates. This challenge function was largely absent in the run up to the British referendum. Boris Johnson disavowed his allegation that 350-million pounds a week that was going to the European Union would go to the health care system … but only after the vote. Nigel Farage’s charge that Britain would be overrun by immigrants from Turkey was finally exposed as an entirely imaginary issue … but only after the vote.

Misrepresentations and outright lies dominated the referendum debate in ways that would have been unsustainable in a contested parliament where members can challenge each other.

Source: Government by referendums is not democracy – The Globe and Mail

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Les fonctionnaires saluent le gouvernement Trudeau

2015/11/12 Leave a comment

More on the public service public (and private) reaction to the change in government and approach to the public service:

Mel Cappe, un ancien greffier du Conseil privé (sorte de grand patron de la fonction publique fédérale), accueille lui aussi favorablement la nouvelle, tout en apportant un bémol. Il rappelle que les fonctionnaires ont le devoir de servir leurs maîtres politiques du jour. Si les scientifiques devraient avoir le droit de parler de leurs recherches, cela ne leur donne pas pour autant le droit de critiquer publiquement les choix politiques du gouvernement.

Fonctionnaires partisans ?

Cette annonce vendredi n’est pas le seul événement à avoir ébranlé la bulle fédérale. En après-midi, le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Stéphane Dion, a donné à son ministère un point de presse au cours duquel plusieurs fonctionnaires présents l’ont applaudi à trois reprises : lorsqu’il a parlé de la valeur de tous les fonctionnaires, d’évaluations environnementales et de lutte contre les changements climatiques.

Les critiques ont fusé sur les réseaux sociaux, de nombreux commentateurs y voyant la preuve que la fonction publique fédérale est « rouge » dans l’âme et que Stephen Harper avait raison de s’en méfier.

Debi Daviau y voit plutôt une « réaction complètement naturelle et humaine après neuf ans d’abus complet et absolu ». « Notre fonction publique vit une lune de miel du fait qu’elle peut, après neuf ans, être autorisée à faire son travail correctement. On ne doit pas s’inquiéter que notre fonctionpublique célèbre cela. »

Tom Flanagan, professeur de sciences politiques de Calgary et ancien collaborateur de Stephen Harper, trouve ces applaudissements problématiques. Ils trahissent non pas un biais pro-libéral, mais un biais en faveur d’une vision interventionniste de l’État.« Les fonctionnaires ont intérêt à ce que l’État soit gros. C’est leur industrie. Plus l’État est gros, plus il y a d’emplois, d’occasions de promotions et meilleur est le salaire. C’est pour cela qu’ils sont toujours suspicieux des gouvernements qui prônent la retenue. » Les visions politiques libertariennes véhiculées par les partis politiques de l’Ouest sont donc perçues comme étant étrangères.

« Je vais utiliser cet exemple dans mes cours pour démontrer la dominance du courant de pensée laurentien [du Canada central] à Ottawa et comment l’Ouest est encore perçu comme un outsider ! » reconnaît-il.

Mel Cappe lui donne en partie raison. Les applaudissements soulignaient, à son avis, « la revitalisation et la renaissance du rôle du Canada sur la scène internationale ». En ce sens, dit-il, les fonctionnaires avaient beaucoup aimé le gouvernement de Brian Mulroney, preuve que ce n’est pas la « partisanerie » qui anime les fonctionnaires, mais une certaine vision de l’État.

Source: Les fonctionnaires saluent le gouvernement Trudeau | Le Devoir

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Eight steps to get more Syrian refugees into Canada: Adelman, Alboim, Molloy and Cappe

2015/09/16 Leave a comment

Best and most comprehensive advice I have seen so far from Howard Adelman, Naomi Alboim, Mike Molloy and Mel Cappe:

1. The government should authorize the admission of Syrian refugees under a special program without the need for individual determination by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or another state. This has been done for other major refugee movements in the past. This one step would expedite the selection of refugees and reduce the paperwork burden for sponsor groups.

2. The actual number and time frame will have to be negotiated or determined by the government when elected in October, but the method for speeding up the process must be introduced as soon as possible. We believe that it is not unrealistic to call for 25,000 government-assisted and 25,000 privately sponsored Syrian refugees to be admitted each year for the next two years.

3. The vast majority of Syrian refugees should be resettled to Canada from four target countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt . This will relieve the pressure on these countries of first asylum and will reduce the desperation that is compelling people to risk their lives to get to Europe.

4. First priority should be given to displaced Syrian families with children in the four target countries. These would include families with significant Canadian connections, which would include relatives of Canadian citizens or of permanent residents. The fundamental rule (applied during the Indochinese movement) would be that extended family groups that have fled or taken refuge together would be processed and travel to Canada together. Families would not be broken up.

5. In addition to those with significant Canadian connections, the new program should target (but would not be restricted to) cases referred by the UNHCR.

6. Canadian visa offices in the field should be reinforced significantly and instructed to accelerate the selection rate for refugees referred by the UNHCR or with Canadian connections so that they can be referred to both the large umbrella sponsor groups (sponsorship-agreement holders) and local sponsor groups (groups of five) in large numbers expeditiously.

7. An increased number of government-assisted refugees should be selected from the pool of refugees referred by the UNHCR or other reputable agencies and should be destined to communities with reinforced agencies providing immigrant and refugee services. Humanitarian considerations should be paramount and provision should be made for hardship cases and those most in need.

8. Early outreach to employers will be essential; the temporary foreign worker program for low-skilled workers should be severely curtailed, freeing up jobs for incoming refugees.

Now is the time for all political parties to demonstrate to Canadians that they can work together to address a crisis of enormous proportions and to reclaim our leadership role on the world stage that reflects our values as a caring and compassionate society. We have the experience and expertise. We did it before and we can do it again. All we need now is the political will.

 Source: Eight steps to get more Syrian refugees into Canada – The Globe and Mail

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Mel Cappe on ideology over evidence

2015/07/28 1 Comment

Well worth reading the entire issue of Policy Magazine (I previously highlighted Kevin Lynch’s more general commentary Canada’s public service and the new global normal of change).

I particularly liked former Clerk Mel Cappe’s commentary:

However, that requires Ministers to ask policy questions before they find policy solutions. It requires prime ministers to be open to evidence convincing them of the importance of the issue at hand, an analysis of the effects of the problem on Canadians, and the development of policy options and approaches that could be elaborated to deal with the problem.

This model presumes ministers and PMs asking questions before they have answers: has violent crime increased or decreased in Canada and why? It presumes that we would invest in data collection with quality assurance to ensure that we know who we are, the problems we face and possible policy avenues to address them: for instance, a long form census instead of a voluntary national household survey.

In this model, the demand curve of ideas in the market for public policy is robustly shifted out and to the right. It still slopes downwards, but it values ideas. The marginal value of the last idea is significantly positive. Unfortunately, now that ministers ask fewer questions and demand less of their public servants, the marginal value of the last idea is very large. But it is not actually leading to increased use. Curiosity is a prerequisite for vigorous public debate.

The more that ideology plays into the picture, the more that answers are provided before the questions are posed. If you have ideology you don’t need evidence.

…Quality public policy requires a fine understanding of the nature of the problems that afflict us, of the impacts of alternative policies and an analytic basis for informing public policy. This requires a robust evidentiary basis for the market in ideas. It requires a vigorous, analytic and highly educated public service to do the analysis. And most importantly, it requires ministers who will ask tough questions, be open to the evidence and be prepared to make their decisions informed by that evidence and analysis.

Public Service in the Digital Age

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New PCO Clerk Charette takes on ‘battered’ PS, reform issues in federal election year | hilltimes.com

2014/10/07 Leave a comment

Lots of positive comment on new PCO Clerk Charette and observations on some of the challenges she faces from previous Clerks, Donald Savoie and others:

“There’s no question the federal public service is crying out for some sense of direction,” Mr. Savoie said. “I think it’s been battered about, not just the past 10 years, but it’s been battered about for the last 20-30 years. In some ways it’s lost its moorings. It’s not anchored like it used to be, in terms of knowing it was there to provide evidence-based policy advice, it was there to deliver programs in a professional manner.”

Part of the problem has been the trend across English-speaking democracies to view “the latest management fad coming out of the private sector as a panacea to dress the public sector to look like the private sector,” Mr. Savoie said, which has undermined the public service’s values.

In his final report as chair of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service, former Conservative and Liberal Cabinet minister David Emerson warned that public servants had to work to remain relevant amid the digital revolution and global economy.

The report recommended pushing authority down in the organization and empowering people to make changes; streamlining business processes; investing in learning and leadership development, especially in middle management; and focusing on longer-term thinking.

Former clerk Mel Cappe, who served under prime minister Jean Chrétien, said keeping the bureaucracy relevant and attracting bright young people will be Ms. Charette’s biggest challenge.

“I think the challenge is going to be adapting to the Twitterverse and modern communications and the transformation that’s taking place in the political world, and keeping the public service relevant to be the privileged adviser to government,” he said in an interview.

New PCO Clerk Charette takes on ‘battered’ PS, reform issues in federal election year | hilltimes.com. (pay wall)

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Public service losing its ability to provide policy advice, former top bureaucrat says

2013/10/22 Leave a comment

A good article by Kathryn May of the Ottawa Citizen on Mel Cappe’s upcoming Public Policy Forum speech. Thoughtful remarks on the decreased demand for policy advice and reduced role of the public service. Reinforces points in my book. Quote:

“The issue isn’t whether advice is followed or not but whether public servants can prepare the work they need for ministers to make decisions … Let the minister choose whether to take or ignore the advice, but they should hear it. Let the minister choose to ignore the evidence, but don’t allow them not to have the evidence in front of them.

“I never expected my advice to be followed, but it was heard, listened to and taken into account. When the government did what it thought was politically the right thing to do and I was heard, I was successful whether they followed my advice or not. But if public servants don’t get heard, it’s not a good thing for the country.”

Public service losing its ability to provide policy advice, former top bureaucrat says

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