In the past six weeks, there have been 17 major changes to the ranks of the senior public service, sparked by a series of high-level retirements, but this isn’t a major shakeup of the system, say the experts.
“There are no huge surprises here,” said Evert Lindquist, professor and director of the school of public administration at the University of Victoria.
“The lens of many people will be: who’s in, who’s out, what does this say about where the government wants to take the public service? That’s one legitimate way to look at it, but the other way to look at it is to say, ‘Well, if you’re developing a cadre of really good deputy ministers and associate deputy ministers, how do you keep on developing them?’” he said.
Andrew Graham, a former associate deputy minister who is now a professor of policy studies at Queen’s University, said the changes in the senior ranks of the public service indicate that Mr. Harper is taking a traditional approach to developing and managing public service talent.
“I see these as a reflection of a normal churn, turnover, and tweaking and adjustments in the senior public service that is very consistent with both his behaviour, and with the last 20 years of practice. My biggest observation is how little he has changed this process,” he said.
There are currently 42 deputy ministers and 37 associate deputy ministers, according to statistics kept by the clerk of the Privy Council. The average age of a deputy minister is 56.1-years, while the average associate deputy minister is 54.9-years old.
University of Ottawa professor David Zussman, a former assistant secretary to Cabinet in prime minister Jean Chrétien’s Privy Council Office, noted that the Clerk sits down with DMs and ADMs every year to talk them about their career plans and whether retirement will soon be on their horizon, and would have known about the recent retirements well in advance.
Prof. Zussman said that so much movement happens at the same time in the summer because Parliament isn’t sitting and it’s a relatively quiet time in Ottawa.
“All of this is quite good succession planning, frankly,” he said.
In recent days there have been a number of examples of retiring deputy heads being replaced by those groomed to succeed them.
Paul Boothe, deputy minister of Environment Canada, retires as of July 31 after two years at the department and 33-years in the public service. The department faces hundreds of job losses as a result of budget cuts. Critics of the government say that the department’s role in providing science-based evidence for government policy decisions is under siege.
Replacing him on Aug. 1 is Bob Hamilton, who was Environment Canada’s associate deputy minister in 2009. Mr. Hamilton is now at the Treasury Board Secretariat.
At Veterans Affairs Canada, deputy minister Suzanne Tining retired after five years at the department and more than two decades in the public service. Ms. Tining oversaw the department while it dealt with veterans returning from the war in Afghanistan, and through a privacy scandal that revealed that hundreds of department workers had looked through the private medical records of veteran and community advocate Sean Bruyea.
She is being replaced by Mary Chaput who was her associate deputy minister since 2010. One of her priorities as ADM was the department’s five-year transformation plan.
Moving into Ms. Chaput’s old job is Anne Marie Smart. She was a special adviser of communications and consultations at Privy Council Office, a position she entered just this January after occupying a similar role as assistant secretary to the Cabinet for four years.
“You’re not expected to stay in PCO for very long,” said Prof. Graham.
The Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy behind the Prime Minister’s Office, acts as a “finishing school” for senior executives who are socialized in executive culture before being assigned to an operating department, said Prof. Graham.
At PCO, fledgling senior executives get experience in the “pressure cooker” that is the centre of government. It’s an opportunity for the Mr. Wouters, the top bureaucrat in the country, to keep an eye on how they work with ministers and handle the friction between policy and politics, explained Prof. Graham.
It’s also a resting place for battle-worn deputies who need a reprieve from the pressure of running a large department or who are between assignments, Prof. Graham said.
Another high-level retirement is that of Richard Dicerni, 63, who has been deputy minister of Industry Canada since 2006. He retired as of Monday, July 30. Mr. Dicerni held a lot of responsibility in his post, regarded as one of the most complex and substantive in the bureaucracy.
Some of Mr. Dicerni’s most recent responsibilities include developing the tendering process for $35-billion in shipbuilding contracts that were awarded last fall and being named to the National Fighter Procurement Secretariat, tasked with overseeing the proposed purchase of the 65 F-35 jets.
Though he could have retired earlier, Mr. Dicerni stuck around to see his department through to a landmark budget this spring, said Prof. Zussman.
“He’s a guy who wants to do a good job as a deputy,” he said.
“Dealing with all of these layoffs and the decisions to make the cuts, in his view, these shouldn’t be handed off to someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience in the department. Having spent six years there, he’s the right person to make these decisions. I think he felt that was his responsibility,” Prof. Zussman said.
John Knubley will replace Mr. Dicerni on Sept. 17. Mr. Knubley is currently at Agriculture and Agri-Food where he has been deputy minister since 2009.
“In a sense my reading of that is that it’s a bit of a nod to his good performance at Agriculture,” said Prof. Graham.
“He’s always been regarded as one of these solid citizens who is the ideal sort of person to take on complex departments like Agriculture and now Industry,” he explained.
In appointing Mr. Knubley to the job, it may seem as though the PM is passing over Simon Kennedy, Mr. Dicerni’s young and highly capable associate deputy minister, but Prof. Zussman said that’s not the case.
He said that while Mr. Dicerni had thought that Mr. Kennedy might one day succeed him, his youth and relative inexperience—this is his first associate deputy minister position—mean he still has some time yet before getting such a senior position.
At Agriculture, Suzanne Vinet, the current president of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, will fill Mr. Knubley’s old position. Ms. Vinet got her start in the public service at Agriculture in policy 28 years ago.
“She’s an incredibly good manager, well-regarded,” said Prof. Graham.
As in Mr. Dicerni’s case, the strategic and operating review, which will cut billions of dollars and thousands of jobs from the federal government over the next three years, is a factor when it comes to individuals’ decisions to retire.
“A good leader will say, ‘Am I the right person to do this?’ For some people, they may say, ‘I’ve done this two times before in other positions, I’m 60 years old, life is too short. I will indicate that I am ready to be rotated and move on out.’ But you can have someone who is exactly the same age who will feel very loyal to the department, feel like they have to see it through,” said Prof. Lindquist.
Prof. Graham said that the cuts also likely alienated some senior bureaucrats, who either disagreed with the decisions or their aftermath.
When it comes to promoting up-and-comers into senior positions, the cuts will also play a factor in determining who gets the job, noted Prof. Graham.
Prof. Zussman explained that the clerk of the Privy Council “would ask himself whether the person he is going to appoint is going to be able to deal with the downsizing, for instance, and the management part. This is always the case. You look forward in the mandate and you say what’s this job going to demand?”
Mr. Wouters has his eye on not only the top 40 to 50 people filling deputy minister positions, but the top 500 people filling executive positions throughout the government. There are currently 6,966 executives in the public service. With the help of a committee of senior bureaucrats, Mr. Wouters would have thought up a number of potential replacements for any vacancy that comes up, said Prof. Graham.
Prof. Lindquist said that while the Mr. Wouters certainly determines which people are suggested to the Prime Minister to fill certain rolls, he thinks that the cream would rise to the top no matter who the Privy Council clerk is.
“Some might have been matched in a different way, of course, because of who is the clerk but still most of those people would have risen to the top any how,” he said.
When a post goes unfilled for some time, such as deputy minister of Public Safety, there is usually an underlying reason, said Prof. Graham.
Bill Baker retired as that department’s deputy minister this spring, after a 33-year career in public service.
“Bill has done, frankly, some amazing work,” said Prof. Graham.
“He was very much involved in the early times of bringing Public Safety post-9/11 into that new world. That was pretty challenging work,” he said, adding that Mr. Baker had “great depth” in his portfolio.
“He’s taken with him one tail stream of experience,” he said.
Graham Flack, usually the department’s associate deputy minister, has been Public Safety’s acting deputy minister since April.
Prof. Graham said that while Mr. Flack is “perfectly competent” at his job, the fact he is in the acting position is no guarantee he will get the permanent job. He said that the reason the job has been open for so long could be because Mr. Baker retired unexpectedly or because it’s being held for someone who is wrapping up another position. That individual could be tied to a diplomatic or fixed-term post.
Prof. Zussman noted that over the course of the past six years, the Prime Minister has made close to 100 appointments to the senior civil service. He said while there is no clear sign that he is trying to remake the public service in his image, there has been a long-term trend away from those who specialize in policy-making to those who are able to manage.
Prof. Graham said that this shift was taking place internationally, not just in the Harper government.
“Increasingly, we’re looking at deputies who should be good implementers, not just good policy wonks. That’s the biggest change that this government has made. I personally view that as a positive change,” said Prof. Graham.
In the build up to this spring’s Cabinet shuffle, there was also speculation that the public service could be in for a major changing of the guard too. But with such a minor shuffle at Rideau Hall, it’s unlikely, said Prof. Lindquist.
“That means that there’s not a lot of new people coming in that need to be matched with really good deputies. There’s lots of known quantities on both sides there,” he said.
Other recent changes in the public service include Marie Lemay, who has been at the head of the National Capital Commission since 2008. On Aug. 27 she will be going to Infrastructure Canada, where she will be associate deputy minister.
Daphne Meredith, who occupied the position of Chief Human Resources Officer at Treasury Board Secretariat, an important position considering the fate of more than 19,000 federal public servants will be determined over the next three years due to the budget cuts, is going over to Western Economic Development, where she will be deputy minister. That agency’s current deputy minister, Daniel Watson, will be taking over her role at TBS.
At the Justice Department, associate deputy minister Yves Côté retired from his 34-year career in the public service, only to take up the position of Elections Canada commissioner after the retirement of William Corbett. Assistant deputy minister Pierre Legault and Lori Sterling, who is currently a deputy minister in the government of Ontario, will both become associate deputy ministers.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Jessica Bruno
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