Repairing public service a major government task

Opinion

If Shakespeare had written a tragedy about election campaigns, it would surely have found voice in Macbeth’s famous “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”, soliloquy after learning of the death of his notorious wife. He concludes with: “It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So, in the end, will Canada’s 45th general election about Canada’s “tomorrow” truly “signify nothing”?

In the hurly-burly of an election campaign, thinking about tomorrow falls to the public service. Formally, it’s called “transition,” the assumption of office and power by an incoming government, new or renewed. While voters are focused on the “who,” the public service is focused on the “what” and “how.” Come Tuesday, the federal public service must begin to advise on exactly that, no matter who voters choose.

But given the stakes of what faces the country — tariffs and Trump, a housing crisis, infrastructure bottlenecks, sluggish economic growth, rising deficits, and income stagnation — it is a fair question as to whether Canada’s federal public service is up to the job.

In too many ways, the public service has been falling down on its job. Accountability is dodgy, service delivery is uneven, and there is culture of political accommodation and risk aversion from the senior ranks down that works against change and improvements.

There are three big issues the next government must confront to fix the public service: its size, its operations, and its productivity.

The federal government has grown more in the past 10 years than in the previous 10. There are now over 367,000 public servants; over 100,000 more than when the current Liberal government took office — a record 26 per cent increase. Yet, both parties have promised not to actively downsize the public service. Instead, they will “cap” its growth, reducing its size over time via attrition as public servants retire. With both leaders representing Ottawa ridings full of voting public servants, this is perhaps unsurprising.

As an institution, the federal government has privileged policy and ideas over operational delivery as the litmus test of relevance and respect within the public service. “Climbing the greasy pole” of a public service career meant showing political and personality chops in what mattered to the politicians namely, issues management and fixing the problem of the moment. Steady, boring, behind-the-scenes operational expertise and project management delivery, much less so.

Yet, the pandemic reinforced the importance of efficient, effective delivery of government programs and services to Canadians. Governments did this well, until they didn’t. The failure to anticipate a pandemic can be excused; the failure to anticipate service delivery and operational needs post-pandemic, cannot.

For 10 years, the Trudeau Liberal government paid little attention to the plumbing of public service delivery as they announced one big policy initiative after another. Accounting for results and performance gave way to readying the next big political announcement. As Donald Savoie, the dean of public sector governance in Canada, wrote in his last book, Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service: “If accountability cannot be fixed, government operations cannot be fixed.” Restoring this link is crucial for the next government.

More bureaucrats clearly do not mean more productivity. The CD Howe Institute found that, post-pandemic, public sector labour productivity has been going down each year, despite the share of public sector employees in total employment rising by over 21 per cent.

Blaming “lazy” bureaucrats is a convenient trope for big, expensive, inefficient government. The reality is that many officials labour hard within a system that is overly complex and cumbersome with too many layers and processes. All this stifles innovation and efficiency, creating a risk-averse culture inside that favours consistency and avoiding mistakes. While the system works against public servants, it works against Canadians too through higher taxes and sub-par services.

Are the parties paying attention? Kind of.

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The Liberal platform promises to “…launch a comprehensive review of government spending in order to increase the federal government’s productivity.” A permanent review process will then be instituted at the departmental level “to link spending and outcomes”.

By contrast, the Conservative platform sets new management and accountability targets for how it would run government. It promises a “one-for-one spending law. For every new dollar spent, an equal amount must be reduced.” It would “cut red tape by 25 per cent and bring in a two-for-one rule” for any new regulations. And it would “ensure that for every $1 of new administrative burden, $2 is removed.”

The Conservatives, the party of opposition, propose a more disruptive, stringent rules-based approach to changing how the public service works. The Liberals, the party of government, propose a more measured, systemwide approach to public service reform.

Next week, we will know which approach we are in for. But, without truly fixing the federal public service, the ability of the next government to deliver on “tomorrow” for Canadians will “be all sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.