The federal public service needs to adapt to a new political reality, and stat

OTTAWA—Former heads of the public service usually issue parting suggestions for public service reform. The ideas range from reclaiming eroding values to the use of technology and tweaking of the bureaucratic machinery. Obsolescence of the structure itself is rarely discussed. Former clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick compiled a list of challenges in managing the public service: outsourcing, dealing with poor performers, pay scale of senior managers, etc. Wernick’s replacement, the newly-retired Janice Charette, suggests more digitalization is needed, because as she see its, the public service is stuck in the analog age. She doesn’t elaborate much, but her point is that things need to change. Ministers, meanwhile, are busy blaming the flow of information for their own missteps. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino pegged his mishandling of the Paul Bernardo file on glitches in bureaucratic briefings. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did the same to rationalize his inaction on foreign interference. As did Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to deflect opposition attacks when a Global Affairs officer attended a Russian Embassy event in 2022. Joly now plans to overhaul the entire department to make it “fit for purpose.” Donald Savoie, the leading expert on public service administration, has called for a royal commission on the bureaucracy. Among many other things, he is concerned about the diminishing policy adviser role of deputy ministers, the increasing amount of power exercised by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and bureaucratic bashing by politicians of all stripes. These reactions are focused on the symptoms, not the root causes of why things go sideways. They scratch only the surface. In response, a few ad-hoc fixes get put in, like Joly’s planned re-organization exercise at Global Affairs, and probably a renaming to go with it, too. But the symptoms always reappear. This is because the fixes fail to recognize that when the system malfunctions, it's not a one-off. It is the result of structural conditions. The Canadian public service is an authority-based structure with stringent top-down controls. It is modelled after military formations of the colonial era. Internally, it functions as a tightly-wound hierarchy. Externally, it is steered by the political power of the minister and commands of the PMO. Faced with modern labour practices, globalization, equity, inclusion, social media, and the internet, the structure has become unwieldy. While briefing notes no longer end with “I am, sir, your humble servant,” the edifice that demands that servility still stands, stifling speed and creativity. There is a way out. But first a few nascent realities must be accepted. The centralization of power within the PMO, for instance, is here to stay; the old principle of ministerial responsibility is pretty much dead; the number of political staffers will keep growing; rank-and-file public servants will demand more work-life balance and autonomy; and the idea of ministers seeking policy advice from deputies will die a slow death. These trends have taken root in the public imagination and with the political class. They will not be reversed. Governments stopped looking to the bureaucracy to generate great big policy ideas quite a while ago. They now have their party platforms, compiled via opinion research and data-mining techniques. In fact, ministerial mandate letters generated by the PMO do not invite feedback, they direct the deputy to action. From this vantage point, the bureaucracy is essentially viewed as a delivery channel to implement government programs, advance the government’s plans and priorities, and to speed up service provision. Operational dexterity—not policy capacity—is effectively the top accountability item for deputies. Unlike the private sector where the profit margin acts as a feedback loop to compel structural changes and adaptation, the public service must look to political trends. The task at hand, then, is to find the sweet spot where three emergent trajectories intersect: autonomy for frontline workers, rapid execution of government policies, and political cover for ministers. The latter is easy. It requires public servants to build new guardrails to better demarcate the professional and the political domains of responsibility. The former two are harder. They require replacing top-down hierarchical controls and titular authorities with well-paid and empowered work places. One noticeable lesson coming out of the COVID-19 crisis is that the hard work of service delivery is not done by the top-heavy executive cadre. It is done by unionized staff who process payments, clear passport applications, and attend to long lines at airports. This is where the intellectual energy should go. The status quo of any organization is fed and sustained by the collective ethos of its leadership. Real structural change, as such, requires that the next generation of public service executives get promoted because they possess contemporary skills and savvy, not because their resumés check off some arbitrary boxes designed during the colonial era. Put differently, senior leadership should stop lamenting what was and start adapting to what is, by trading deference for critique and creativity; and old, exhausted hierarchies for flat, mission-driven teams. Bhagwant Sandhu is a retired director general from the federal government. Between 2002-21 he held senior roles in several departments, including Fisheries and Ocean Canada, Infrastructure Canada, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and Public Works Canada. He has also held executive positions in the governments of Ontario and British Columbia. The Hill Times