David McLaughlin is President and CEO of the Institute on Governance.
Canada faces a trust crisis. Trust is the mortar that seals Canada’s democratic foundations and public institutions together. Those seams are cracking.
Unchecked, this will irretrievably alter who we are as a country and how we govern ourselves. We will become more divided and less able to achieve big things that matter.
A polarizing pandemic has quickened the latent populism, alienation and nativism in Canada’s body politic. The ailments are plain to see: an increasingly coarse and negative political dialogue; a rejection of public policy compromise; and rising misinformation in society and across information platforms.
Strong public trust requires good public governance. A recent report by the Institute on Governance and the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University called Top of Mind underlines the importance of this connection. Based on interviews with senior public servants across Canada in all levels of government, it found real concern about a growing trust deficit between Canadians and their governments. And it raises core questions about what this means to governing in Canada.
Public servants are clearly not indifferent to the consequences of this situation. Nor can they be. They are responsible for translating political direction from elected politicians into public policy and public services. They are charged with providing advice not just on the right public policy but on its effective implementation.
To do this well in our system of responsible government with non-partisan, independent public servants, requires “fearless advice and loyal implementation.” That is, the ability to speak “truth to power” and abide by the decisions of duly elected leaders.
But senior public servants who live by this dictum are questioning its vitality in an increasingly changed and charged political environment. Simply put: less room than ever exists to play this role. Political platforms fetter adjustment to new circumstances and information. Social media dynamics and demands from party political bases constrain reflection and consideration of alternative approaches. Layers of internal accountability process built up over time have hampered governments’ ability to be nimble and responsive.
COVID-19 both refuted and reinforced these dynamics. Once the scale of the pandemic became clear, governments moved quickly to respond to one public need after another. Neither perfectly designed nor perfectly delivered, they demonstrated the capacity of our public institutions to adapt and confront new, urgent needs. Trust levels by Canadians in their governments rose in the spring of 2020, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. But that trust declined as the pandemic wore on, proving durability and duration were linked.
Good governance is literally baked into Canada’s constitutional DNA or, more properly, its BNA, the British North America Act. The phrase “Peace, order and good government” stems from the original 1867 constitutional document, which legally formed Canada. It has been a guiding principle ever since.
Today’s tumultuous times are raising new questions about the relationship between governments and the governed, or citizens and state. What do we want from government? Not just bigger or smaller government, but what is the role of government and its institutions in society today? In the end, those questions come down to ones of governance: the way we do things.
Good governance means increased confidence in the decisions and actions by governments. That leads to greater legitimacy and acceptance of those decisions by citizens. Higher trust and faith in our public institutions then follows.
These are existential concerns for any democracy today. Canada is not immune to these threats. We need to take them more seriously than before in this fraught time of misinformation and public alienation.
To do so, we must understand that mistrust is not uniform. It varies by issue and where people sit on the ideological spectrum. Mistrust in government pandemic actions was higher on both the right for doing too much and the left for doing too little. So, no one solution or action can change this; in fact, quite the opposite.
Canada’s governments and leaders will need to listen to and learn from Canadians in the months and years ahead to maintain our strong democratic traditions and public institutions. Our public servants tally among the best in the world. They have a big stake in getting this right. Listening and learning from their front-line experiences with citizens and inside experiences with politicians would be smart.
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