Clerk of the Privy Council John Hannaford relaunches ethics and values discussion in the public service

2023/09/25 Leave a comment

Count me among the sceptics despite the need and I share the concerns and questions raised by others. The Tait report was written by one deputy working full time on the report rather than having a committee of deputies, likely accounting in part for its clarity and sense of purpose:

Canada’s top bureaucrat is making values and ethics a top priority, striking a task force of deputy ministers to lead a “broad conversation” on reaffirming the core values of a non-partisan public service in a changing world where crises never stop.

John Hannaford, named clerk of the Privy Council Office three months ago, put together the five-member task force with marching orders to “bring our collective values and ethics to life within a dynamic and increasingly complex environment.” He sent notice of the new task force to all departments last week and outlined the plan in a keynote speech at recent conference that was closed to the media.

“As head of the public service, fostering a renewed conversation on values and ethics will serve as one of my priority areas of focus over the next year and will support the effective management and renewal of our public service,” he wrote in a letter to public servants.

Hannaford said the task force will spend the next several months conducting outreach with public servants, networks and communities — both inside and outside the public service. He expects a “milestone report” by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, he wants every department, branch and division to come up with activities and ways to discuss public service values and ethics and what they mean in today’s world.

The task force will be chaired by Catherine Blewett, a former top bureaucrat in Nova Scotia who is now deputy minister of Economic Development and president of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

Other members include: Stephen Lucas, deputy minister at Health Canada, Christiane Fox at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and Caroline Xavier, the chief of the electronic spy agency Communications Security Establishment (CSE). Donnalyn McClymont, PCO deputy secretary for senior personnel and public-service renewal, will support the task force as an ex-officio member.

A first in 30 years

This marks the first major values and ethics review since the groundbreaking report A Strong Foundation, by former deputy minister John Tait nearly 30 years ago.

That report was also built on a conversation with public servants. It laid the groundwork for values-and-ethics code that came into effect in 2003 to govern how public servants work, behave and their relationship with Parliament, ministers and Canadians.

Tait’s report also grew out of a task force of deputy ministers appointed by then-PCO clerk Jocelyne Bourgon at a time of huge flux. She created nine task forces to study the big challenges for public servants in the aftermath of the  Chrétien government’s historic program review. That review completely rethought the role of government and wiped out more than 50,000 federal jobs to beat a crushing deficit.

Times have changed, but Hannaford said the core values outlined in Tait’s report — respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship and excellence — are enduring and are still the compass to guide public servants’ behaviour.

“Our world is increasingly dynamic, complex, and ever-changing,” Hannaford wrote in a letter to departments.

“As public servants, we play an important role in the Canadian democratic system. We continue to rise to the occasion to serve Canada and Canadians. Our public-service values and ethics serve as an important compass to guide our actions and behaviours, particularly as we adapt and evolve in times of change.”

He said the task force’s work will complement other ongoing priorities to improve workplace wellness, accessibility, anti-racism, equity and inclusion and reconciliation. 

Public servants work in much different circumstances today, but like 30 years ago they face challenging questions about what they do and how they do it.

Public servants feel besieged these days by everything from workload to hyper-partisan politics. Federal executives report high levels of stress and burnout with rising levels of cynicism and mental-health problems. A Top of Mind report found public servants at all levels of government worry they can’t speak truth to power and have to toe the party line in giving advice

They’ve come through a pandemic, the convoy protest, service-delivery fiascos, the biggest strike in 30 years, working remotely and are now in the throes of a $15.4-billion spending review. The public service, at 350,000 people, has never been so big, so diverse, and millennials now dominate the workforce with very different attitudes than their baby-boomer predecessors.

Then there’s climate and geopolitical crises after crises. There is war and floods and fires, soaring inflation and housing shortages compounded by the day-to-day distractions of social media, hyper-partisan politics, and the 24-hour news cycle.

Questioning “moral fibre”

Stephen Van Dine, who led the Top of Mind study, asks why the clerk is focusing on values and ethics when public servants are worried about basics like giving fearless advice, eroding policy capacity and the impact on governance. He said this is sure to raise alarms among public servants who will be asking, “What did we do wrong?”

“Why in heaven’s name would you start with values and ethics unless you believe the root problem is the moral fibre of the public service at this stage,” he said. “Why not examine what public-service leadership looks like in the 21st century?”

Senior officials say Hannaford isn’t re-opening the code or picking between new and traditional values. Hannaford also isn’t sounding the alarm about the public servants’ integrity. They say it is about adaptability: he wants public servants to better understand how to apply long-held  values in a rapidly changing world.

Alasdair Roberts, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and former visiting scholar at the Canada School of Public Service, studies how countries can adapt and thrive in this turbulent century.

Roberts point to a number of threats to Canada’s adaptability, but the health of the public service and its ability to execute quickly is a key one.

The mountain of controls, rules and new parliamentary watchdogs built up over the decades – all in the name of accountability – stifles innovation and makes publics servants risk averse, he said. On top of that, they face a new layer of political control – which he calls the “political service” of ministerial staffers.

And then there’s the shift to remote work, which raises big questions for leaders on how to build common purpose and values when people are rarely working together in-person.

Although Hannaford is tying the exercise to a renewal of the public service, the preliminary plan falls short of the kind of major reform critics have called for over the years.

Donald Savoie, considered the éminence grise of public administration in Canada, argues the public service has so lost its way that only an independent body like a royal commission could fix it.

Roberts, who supports the call for a royal commission, called Hannaford’s task force worthwhile and well-timed, but five busy deputy ministers, under-the-gun in their day-jobs, will be constrained in what they can do.

They can’t really tackle legislative barriers, the morass of controls, rules and structures and outdated processes that need to be fixed. They also can’t grapple with the vexing question about the role of the public service, especially its strained relationship with ministers, Parliament and political staff.

Many argue the clerk simply doesn’t have time for the kind of review needed. With an election two years away, if not sooner, he has to be deep in transition planning. And if polls hold out, a Conservative government could come to power with a very different view of the public service and the role of the state.

Others, like Alasdair Roberts, question whether values and ethics can be discussed without sorting out the role of the public service: “I don’t want to diminish the significance of doing this, but it can’t be a substitute for a broader, bigger and independent review about the role and structure of the public service.”

Source: Clerk of the Privy Council John Hannaford relaunches ethics and values discussion in the public service

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Oaths, trust and Canadian democracy

2023/03/22 Leave a comment

Interesting they left out the oath of citizenship.

The government’s proposal to allow self-administration of the oath (“citizenship on a click”) was raised at CIMM 20 March by the Conservative vice-Chair Redekopp, who requested that the Minister and officials be invited to the committee to explain the reasons for the change.

Redekopp also called for in-person ceremonies to be the default, with virtual only in limited circumstances.

Hopefully this broader discussion at the political level, along with the almost universal opposition in most media and social media to date, will result in the government abandoning this ill-advised proposal.

My apologies for using this post as a means to raise the citizenship oath again!

Occasionally, the Oath of Allegiance to the sovereign enters the news cycle.  Most often, it is raised in the popular debate of whether Canada’s constitutional ties to the monarch as a head of state are anachronistic. For some office holders it’s cast as a kind of “conscientious objection” to the concept of a monarchy. But these views are grounded in confusion.

What’s in an oath?

Privy Councilors, Supreme Court Justices, the Canadian Armed Forces, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, among others, all take an oath of allegiance to the King or sovereign, the person who embodies the Crown.  But when an officeholder swears allegiance to the monarch, they aren’t committing to a personal, or even a political, belief in the principle of hereditary office.  Taking the oath is an acceptance of the legitimacy of our constitutional system – one in which the Crown heads each branch of government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

Like it or not, the monarch is the legal repository of all authority of the Canadian state (although most of his powers are exercised by the Governor General). A minister is a minister of the Crown and exercises power only in its name. In formal terms, prime ministers and their cabinets are merely advisors to the Crown, such that decisions of Cabinet acquire the force of law only as acts of the Governor in Council.  If nothing else, this puts prime ministers in their place.

Does an oath matter in practice?

It’s easy to think of the oath of allegiance as something purely symbolic and as such dispensable. Our prime minister sometimes appears to think so. But oath takers put their integrity on the line, and a blithe attitude towards such “symbols” contributes to the toxic cocktail of declining trust in our public institutions and legitimacy.

Recent revelations of China’s interference into Canada’s last two federal elections as well as related intelligence leaks by unnamed intelligence sources to the Globe and Mail and Global News have shown how vulnerable our institutions can be, including the public service tradition of speaking truth to power.

One of the extraordinary things about the system to which a Canadian officeholder swears allegiance is the deep well of conventional, which is to say mostly unspoken, rights and obligations that it taps into.

To take one example of these deep historical roots, when William Cecil, principal counsellor to Elizabeth I for 40 years, entered her service she required three commitments from him:

that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gift, that you will be faithful to the state, and that without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel that you think best.

In less than one sentence Elizabeth required a commitment to honesty and avoidance of conflict of interest, to acting in the public interest, and to speaking truth to power. Much of the content of our public service code and conflict of interest act is a less pithy and eloquent codification of these three centuries-old principles.

Incidentally, Elizabeth committed herself to a reciprocal confidentiality, such that what Cecil confided in her he should “assure yourself I shall keep taciturnly therein.”

Truth to power: A reciprocal commitment

Elizabeth’s commitment to her counsellor reminds us that oaths by office holders can carry reciprocal, if unspoken, commitments on the part of the Crown. Being obliged to speak truth to power, for instance, implies a commitment by the Crown not to mete out punishment for truths it doesn’t want to hear.

Unlike whistleblowing protections that afford those who risk personal career harm or injury by bringing to light unlawful behaviour for fraud by governments, the oath requires its keeper to give fearless advice even when the receiver is likely not asking for it.

In the case of alleged leaks of intelligence information to the media by unnamed officials, there is much we do not know.  We do know that the RCMP is investigating and will determine if the Secrecy Act has been breached.  We also may never know the granularity of the information provided to the prime minister and officials in his office.  We can assume, however, that the office holders providing the intelligence briefings were obligated to provide “fearless advice” on the nature of the threat and likely means to mitigate such threats.

A key question is, was the information leaked to media materially the same or different from the material used to brief the prime minister and his office?  How thorough was the advice?  Did the Prime Minister’s Office acknowledge receipt and take a different course than was recommended (which is their democratically elected prerogative).  Alternatively, was the information and advice provided limited or perhaps even diluted?

If the latter, then “fearless advice” is being undermined.  The intelligence sources who leaked the information may be prime candidates to test the level of reciprocity that comes with an oath of allegiance: To serve faithfully, honestly and fearlessly and to be shielded (protected) from potential political or career reprisal.

Acknowledging the authority, you seek to exercise

Many people think the Westminster system, including the concept of the Crown, is one of humanity’s greater achievements. Readers are under no obligation to agree. But if you want to participate in the exercise of the Crown’s authority – even for the purposes of seeking its abolition – you must acknowledge it. Legally speaking, when and if the monarchy is ever abolished in Canada, it will be by and with the assent of the monarch.

When we dismiss oaths, we blithely toss away the richness and gravitas of the Canadian state, for the sake of a glib confusion.

Stephen Van Dine is the former Assistant Deputy Minister of Northern Affairs for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. Karl Salgo is Executive Director of Public Governance at the Institute on Governance.

Source: Oaths, trust and Canadian democracy

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The federal public service desperately needs renewal

2022/02/02 Leave a comment

Under-reported:

The 28th Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada was released on Dec. 13, two weeks after the throne speech, one day before the economic update, and three days before the prime minister’s mandate letters to his cabinet.

The thread that connects each of these major transition milestone documents is the impact of the pandemic, the response to it, and its long-term economic and health implications for Canada. This report addresses the same theme with a focus on the professional public service.

Admittedly, the annual report to the prime minister generates few headlines in the mainstream media. Nevertheless, the report is one of the few public communications between the clerk of the Privy Council and the prime minister in his role as head of the public service. It’s one of his three roles, including deputy minister to the prime minister and secretary to cabinet. The latter two seldom lend themselves to regular or even annual public disclosure.

In broad terms, the report acknowledges the relationship or “partnership” that exists between the elected government and the professional non-partisan public service. While governments may change, the permanent public service supports peaceful transitions from one political party to the next, as well as continuity of services to Canadians, and, indirectly, a measure of predictability that financial markets crave.

The role of the public service is an important one and seldom discussed in any great depth. The annual report on the “state of the public service” provides a measure of transparency to the public, parliamentarians, and civil society. The report usually touches on the dominant issues, challenges, and opportunities that faced the country the previous year, and how the public service responded. While the clerk often highlights significant achievements, such as accepting 50,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, it also acknowledges failures, such as the Phoenix pay system.

This year’s report (April 2020 to March 2021) covered the standard “boilerplate” information contained in annexes, including the composition of the public service, key demographics, and the public service’s more notable achievements and successes that both the prime minister and the public should know about.

The report also looks forward. It recommends doing more to improve diversity and inclusion in the public service, as well as harnessing the “lessons from the pandemic.”

“Like an elastic band, we stretched to support the government’s response to the pandemic,” reads the report. “As the pressure eases, and, in time, it will, the natural inclination will be to ‘snap back’ to our previous state. That should not happen.”

Such strident language by the head of the public service reveals that the pre-pandemic situation wasn’t working particularly well, and the “suspension” of certain rules and procedures was necessary to respond to the public-health crisis at hand.

Yet, it would be a mistake to believe this was a call for the “swashbuckling” days of an older era in Canada that likely never existed in the first place. The clerk notes the need to ensure that probity, risk assessment, transparency, and accountability not be set aside, but perhaps applied in new, less cumbersome ways.

It also recommends exploring the benefits of going fully digital and increasing remote workforces. Each area interconnects with collective agreements, real property, official-language requirements, and possibly employment equity. The Accountability Act, which passed in 2006, would likely need updating.

Taken together, questions posed by the clerk in his report to the prime minister amount to a robust agenda for public-service renewal. Yet no such ambition was referred to in the throne speech, the ministerial mandate letters, or the economic update.

It’s interesting to note that the last reference to public-service renewal in a speech from the throne was under prime minister Stephen Harper in 2013. Admittedly, he didn’t have a global pandemic to contend with, but he did have his fair share of global problems, including the economic crisis of 2008, deficit reduction, and international events requiring the deployment of the Canadian military. Harper nevertheless made space on his policy agenda for altering the public service.

If public-service renewal isn’t in Budget 2022, it probably won’t be on the 44th Parliament’s agenda. It will be interesting to see what next year’s Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada says about the issues raised in this one.

Stephen Van Dine is senior vice-president of public governance at the Institute on Governance.

Source: The federal public service desperately needs renewal

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