In Toronto last week, the Public Policy Forum held a dinner in honour of five former clerks of the Privy Council (a title that’s Ottawa-speak for the head of Canada’s public service). Two of the most eloquent speeches delivered that night came from honorees Mel Cappe and Alex Himelfarb, both now professors at Toronto universities. Pointing out the huge range of ways that public servants advance the well-being of Canada and its citizens, and the dedicated professionalism they bring to this task, the former clerks called for the value of the public service to be better recognized by media, cabinet ministers and the public.
Befitting the nonpartisan role they previously held, Cappe and Himelfarb each delivered strong but not overtly political speeches. A subtext running through their remarks, however, delivers an undeniably political message. Taken together, their comments suggest that the risks the public service should be grappling with today are not the ones the Harper government is forcing it to address — and that diversion of public servants’ attention affects the vital interests of all Canadians, whatever their political views.
What our public service ought to be tackling, Himelfarb’s speech urges , are the challenges of adapting itself to a new age. Some facts remain constant: “the public service continues to be critically important to our quality of life, to our economic performance and to our international standing.” But organizational models of authority and information-sharing are transforming, and “public issues are more complex, often with no historical precedent, and with multiple poles of conflict.” To reinvent itself in response to these changes, he says, the public service must become more creative, open and connected to Canadians.
And for those changes to happen, Canadians in turn must respect and trust the public service enough to accept occasional mistakes as it innovates, without berating the institutions or individuals: “A creative organization will take reasoned risks and learn from good-faith mistakes.” The crux of Himelfarb’s argument is that a prosperous future requires giving Canada’s public servants the necessary latitude to take risks en route to meeting new challenges. These risks are the ones the public service should be preoccupied with, both in terms of achieving substantive results and in being accountable to Canadians.
Today, however, attitudes of respect and trust toward the public service are largely lacking. Distrust and the bureaucratic pathologies it induces may be fed by the media and public attitudes — but their most visible source, Cappe’s speech delicately suggests, is from “some ministers” in the current government.
The proper role of public servants, Cappe says, is to produce “economic, social, scientific and environmental analysis that takes into account the long run and future generations’ interests.” Though they should not talk publicly about policy, they “should be encouraged to talk to the public about their science and their research.” Yet such information-sharing is being thwarted by the Harper government’s obsession with stifling perspectives that might diverge from its chosen policy path. Their disregard of public servants’ analysis and evidence in favour of ideologically-based policymaking is well documented. So too is their restriction of researchers’ and analysts’ capacity to share insights with the public.
The impacts of these actions and attitudes are reverberating throughout Canada’s public service itself—for distrust, as Himelfarb notes, “leads to ever more layers of costly and stifling control and to a culture of fear.” And it’s not just scientists who are feeling the impact. All federal communications and personnel departments are caught up in the fearful, controlling effort to stifle any perspectives or initiatives that ministers or the PMO might object to.
Recall the recently-announced code of conduct at Library and Archives Canada, imposed by senior ranks in the organization. It defines employees’ off-hours classroom teaching, conference attendance or attendance at public meetings as “high-risk activities” that must avoid the topics of their professional expertise and be cleared with managers in advance. (Presumably because some facts or views shared might run afoul of the “duty of loyalty” employees hold to the “duly elected government”.) This code apparently rules out any involvement by federal librarians and archivists in profession-related activities during their personal time.
This policy — and the hundreds of others in a similar spirit throughout Ottawa today — incur a two-fold loss: not just the loss of expertise these subject specialists could be sharing with colleagues in other spheres, but also the loss of time and focus that creating and administering these policies imposes on managers and senior executives. Being preoccupied with the wholly negative risks of incurring their political masters’ wrath makes everyone in the public service less able to tackle the constructive risks of tackling the transformations needed to meet Canada’s twenty-first century needs.
The consequences for Canadians will be tangible: years of public servants’ worrying about the risks of political blow-ups under the Harper government means years not spent figuring out how to keep water and food safe, address poverty, keep cities prosperous and contribute to global security. The former Clerks were too professional to make this point plainly at a nonpartisan event — but it’s up to all of us to connect the dots.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Natalie Brender
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