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White Paper: Thinking about the Reinvention of Government

The Mulroney government was the first to embrace the ideals of reinvention, and substantial privatization and some deregulation were its primary NPM accomplishments. Also, of importance was the initiative known as PS2000. This was a major rationalistic reform launched by the PCO in 1989 to “simplify personnel policies, to loosen central agency controls and increase managerial freedom of department managers, and to increase efficiency and program delivery” (Inwood 2012, 306). PS2000 was launched with much fanfare, promising more business-oriented strategies for departmental planning and human resources and program management, but it never fulfilled the vision of its creators. Its call for greater decentralization of decision making—to “let the managers manage”—caused infighting between central agencies and departments, and the Treasury Board never shared the enthusiasm the PCO felt for PS2000.

Proponents of the initiative spoke of greater participatory management, but increasing deficit and debt problems confronted by the government encouraged a top-down, command-and-control style of governance. By 1992, PS2000 was dead in the water.

The Chrétien Government and Reinvention

As its Progressive Conservative predecessor was, the Chrétien Liberal government was motivated by NPM principles. In the by then common rhetoric of managerial change, it wanted to make government more responsive, participatory, and accountable, and capable of doing more with less.

The major projects it undertook toward these ends were program review, discussed in Chapter 6, and La Relève, discussed on the web page for Chapter 7. While both were signature developments of the Chrétien government in the mid-1990s, program review was by far the more influential and controversial.

The program review exercise between 1995 and 1998, designed as a rationalistic approach to “rightsizing” the programs and public service delivery methods of the federal government, was first and foremost a method to assist the government in balancing the federal budget. Through program review the federal government

  • eliminated around 39,000 positions from the public service and the military;
  • reduced spending by $29 billion between 1995 and 1998;
  • downsized the Departments of Agriculture, Agri-Food, Environment, Canadian Heritage, Human Resources Development, Industry, National Defence, Natural Resources, and Transportation;
  • Tunilaterally disbanded Established Programs Financing and the Canada Assistance Plan, replacing them with the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST);
  • reduced fiscal commitment to the CHST by $4.5 billion;
  • revamped the unemployment insurance system, renaming it employment insurance, and introduced stricter requirements for making claims and smaller benefit payments;
  • privatized the national system of air traffic control;
  • offloaded to local authorities responsibility for airports and harbours; and
  • downsized federal agencies responsible for environmental protection, food products and consumer protection, and housing development.

Program review, in short, marked the single greatest reduction in the size and scope of the federal government in Canadian history. And it was heralded as the means to control the nation’s finances, lower and eventually eliminate the deficit, and build the framework for budgetary surpluses.

La Relève can be seen as a consequence of program review. As discussed in Chapter 7, restructuring and downsizing took their toll on public service morale and operational capabilities. With years of pay freezes and moratoria on new hiring, the public sector had not been renewing itself, and the quality of service and delivery was suffering. La Relève was launched to revitalize the public service, and to do so it borrowed ideas from NPM with regard to organizational efficiency and effectiveness, participatory management, and improved service delivery. While La Relève was initiated with much fanfare in 1997, by the end of the Martin government in 2006 it had run its course, with questionable success. As is often the case with such reform undertakings, high expectations soon come to confront the realities of standard operating procedures, bureaucratic inertia, and the demands of “command and control” executive leadership.

The Harper Government and Reinvention

When Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006 his government inherited a public service already committed to strengthening its accountability. The focus on reform came from the government of Paul Martin and his attempts to address the fallout of the sponsorship scandal (see Chapter 1). The main NPM features of the Harper years were the Federal Accountability Act and public service renewal.

The Federal Accountability Act

The new prime minister wanted to put his own stamp on federal reform initiatives, and he quickly did so by passing the Federal Accountability Act, 2006, as his first act as head of government. The main provisions of the legislation were to

  • reform political party financing
  • strengthen the role of the ethics commissioner
  • toughen the Lobbyists Registration Act (now the Lobbying Act, 2008)
  • establish a parliamentary budget officer
  • clean up the procurement of government contracts
  • protect public service whistleblowers
  • strengthen legislation governing access to information
  • strengthen the power of the auditor general
  • strengthen auditing and financial accountability within departments
  • establish a director of public prosecutions

When the Act was passed into law in December 2006, the prime minister stated, “We promised to stand up for accountability and to change the way government works. Canadians elected this government to deliver on that commitment and today the Federal Accountability Act has received Royal Assent. From this day on, accountability in government is the law and we can all be proud of that fact” (Canada, Prime Minister’s Office 2006).

Public Service Renewal

The other primary reform initiative of the Harper government was to reshape the federal public service through a policy known as public service renewal. This policy had its origins in the work of a committee established by Prime Minister Harper in 2006 to advise him how to improve the quality of the federal public service. In its first report, in March 2007, the committee articulated seven conclusions:

  • There is a clear requirement for a strong and sustainable Public Service that can be a source of pride and advantage for Canada in today’s globalized economy.
  • While today’s Public Service has obvious capacity, commitment and ability, it cannot afford to take these strengths for granted.
  • Renewing the Public Service must produce an institution that is truly representative of Canadians of all backgrounds and from all parts of Canada.
  • There is a need for a strong and positive Public Service “brand” that will support the marketing of the Public Service as an attractive employment option for talented Canadians.
  • To inspire the best performance from employees, it is essential for leaders to model public service values, and to publicly recognize accomplishments that reflect those values. Non-monetary recognition assumes particular importance in the public service context.
  • The business of the Public Service requires strategic planning and integrates human resources management with business goals, and aligns talent with priorities and higher risk endeavours.
  • The Public Service needs more systematic and rigorous programs of leadership development that involve people with a diversity of skills from across the country, and that equip leaders for success in the future. (Canada, Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee 2007, 5)

Shaping the Policy

These ideas came to form the core of the public service renewal initiative established in 2007, and reform was geared to four priority areas:

  • First, integrated planning. We must understand the current and future business of departments, and ensure we have the people and resources to deliver it. We must ensure that we connect our people requirement to our business plans and align our resources.
  • Second, recruitment. We need to renew and sustain our capacity at all levels. 86% of our hiring right now is for short-term purposes, which only emphasizes the need for strategic, integrated planning. We also need to better promote the Public Service as a dynamic and engaging career choice.
  • Third, development. We must invest in people, at all levels, not only in terms of skills, but also in the kind of leadership we need for the long term.
  • Finally, we must put in place the systems and processes to support efficient, user-friendly planning, recruitment and development.

With the coming into force of the Public Service Modernization Act, parliament gave us the means to improve the way in which we manage HR resources in the Public Service. (Canada, Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates 2007, 3; emphasis in original)

These priorities came to dominate policy discussion in the senior ranks of the public service, as the PCO took the lead in explaining government reform ambitions and giving them focus through specific action plans. As then Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters noted in his 2010 report to the prime minister, the first priority, integrated planning, was the foundation of renewal in that it called upon all departments and agencies to combine their financial and human resources management, operational planning, and policy development initiatives into a comprehensive plan that delineated directions and operational requirements.

“Done well,” Wouters wrote, “integrated planning allows us to clearly identify gaps in resources required to deliver on priorities, and then to close these gaps by redesigning the work, developing employee capacity or devoting more staff to the effort. We can improve our ability to provide advice to ministers and service to Canadians, while simultaneously reducing costs” (Privy Council Office 2010, 16). As part of integrated planning, for example, the federal public service promoted enhanced service delivery through its website. Myriad government services are now available online, from applying for passports or accessing seniors and veterans programs to filing income taxes.

Wouters also asserted that recruitment remained a priority as the government replaced retiring public servants from the baby boom generation and tried to reshape the character of the public service with fresh talent: “Recruitment must be grounded in integrated planning. The goal is to match recruits strategically to identified business needs. Future recruitment efforts will be aimed at both postsecondary and mid-career candidates. Recruitment will continue to be a key tool in increased public service diversity and representativeness” (17).

As new employees entered public service, their training and development were now to be based on a centralized policy, in contrast to the ad hoc and departmentalized initiatives of the past. As Wouters informed the prime minister, “Employee development is the responsibility of both the individual and the institution, but it serves a single purpose: to improve effectiveness and productivity in current and future jobs. This requires going beyond coursework and classroom learning. The task is to consciously create learning environments where knowledge management is done well and where employees have ready access to the information they need to do their jobs” (17).

Finally, Wouters noted that public service renewal would be contingent on improving the organizational infrastructure of government workplaces. Here, the clerk focused on the use of information technologies to give public servants access to the very latest in databases and electronic libraries, web links, wikis, interactive communication systems such as email and text messaging, social networking, information management systems, and systems for planning, implementing, and assessing financial and human resources management. The use of such technologies was also connected to the development of enhanced systems of program evaluation such as the managing for results (MFR) requirements of the expenditure and management information system discussed in Chapter 6. Departments would be expected to outline program objectives and operational targets explicitly in their business plans and to establish metrics to determine how well program activities meet department goals.