University graduates increasingly view the federal public service as a cumbersome bureaucracy where it is impossible to take even some ownership of your work, which is a basic requirement for job satisfaction, writes Savoie.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Donald J. Savoie is the author of Speaking Truth To Canadians About Their Public Service.
The 1960s were the high-water mark for the public sector in this country.
Governments of that era delivered the Trans-Canada Highway, medicare, the Canadian Pension Plan, a rethink of the Canadian Penitentiary Service, an immigration policy free of controversy, a national flag, a national student-loans program, and more. Ottawa’s machinery of government was lean, home to 650 executives and 233,000 employees. Central agencies were small – the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office only had 300 employees – and ministers and their departments had the latitude to shape policies. There were only three Officers of Parliament, or independent watchdog agencies. Ottawa ran a $140-million surplus in 1969, and economic growth was robust, clocking in at about 5 per cent annually. Confidence in the public sector was high, and governments attracted the best and brightest from fast-expanding universities.
Today, in contrast, the federal government often misfires, at significant cost to the taxpayer: examples include the Phoenix pay system, the ArriveCAN app, efforts to merge 1,500 websites into one central platform, and myriad more program delivery failures. Still, policy-makers continue adding new measures, which only compound the government’s overload problem. But they know that the system cannot deliver on their agenda. It explains why the Major Projects Office was established, almost as an admission of failure.
The issues don’t stem from a lack of resources, either. The federal government has not delivered a meaningful surplus since 2008, and it is projected to run a $66-billion deficit in 2025-26, with the public service having ballooned to 9,000 executives and 415,000 employees, even after computers transformed government administration by substantially reducing the staff needed to process payments and record-keeping.
So what happened?
One thing is that we have made government excessively complex by adding oversight bodies. Today, central agencies combined employ 4,300, and nine Officers of Parliament employ another 2,400. Central agencies run too many things, deal with too many issues, and leave too many decisions unattended. Officers of Parliament are only accountable to themselves, and their purpose is to find fault, which only fuels the blame game and makes government more risk-averse.
Collective bargaining arrived in Ottawa in 1967. Today, public-sector unions are present in management decisions, and their purpose is to promote the interests of their members, full-stop. They push against the political-bureaucratic will, which is more pliable than market forces. It is revealing that union coverage in the public sector is 77 per cent versus the private sector at 15 per cent.
Letting managers manage is hardly possible when decisions are taken out of their hands and turned over to collective bargaining, and to a multitude of regulators and committees. The costs associated with managing any anticipated risks far outweigh any benefits. The system has put handcuffs on managers and their staff, leading people to ask why government can’t get things done. And it explains, in part, why Ottawa has had difficulty reallocating funds away from low-priority programs and toward measures dealing with the breakdown in Canada-U.S. trade talks, or toward priority areas like national defence.
University graduates increasingly view the federal public service as a cumbersome bureaucracy where it is impossible to take even some ownership of your work, which is a basic requirement for job satisfaction. Managers delegate decisions upward, knowing that doing nothing carries less risk than doing something.
Starting in the early 1970s, the federal government began hiring more policy specialists than it could find interesting things for all of them to do. Today, people look at government economists and ask: If they are really smart, why are they not working for McKinsey or the banks? The best students now often look to the private sector, where they stand a better chance of making a difference.
Those who rejoice that the public service can no longer attract top talent should think again, however. A well-functioning economy requires a strong public service.
Change is needed, and it starts with the House of Commons. It should rethink its supply and estimates process, which is currently little more than an empty ritual. The doctrine of ministerial responsibility requires a fresh look, given that policies now cut across departments and, in some cases, provincial jurisdictions. How can Parliament ensure accountability in comparison to years past, when it was possible to hold ministers responsible for everything in their departments? Today, leaving aside prime ministers and their staff, everyone is responsible for everything – which means no one is responsible for anything.
Policy-makers need to review the impact of public-sector unions and the influence that central agencies have on managers and their staff. They should reduce management levels – there are now at least seven, not including numerous associate positions – before reaching the political level. And they should eliminate low-priority organizations and programs to deal with the government-overload problem – an issue that can largely be explained as the result of government inefficiencies and blurred lines of accountability.
The goal is to see Parliament improve at holding the government to account, the government improve at getting things done without establishing new offices, and midlevel managers and staff being able to produce rewarding work for themselves and taxpayers. Kicking the can down the road is not a strategy. It would only mean that more government agencies will some day be on the menu.