Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council, Wellington Street, Ottawa/Gilles Y. Hamel

Brian Bohunicky

May 17, 2023

It’s the heart and the muscle of everything our government does, so if reform of the federal public service is “having a moment” as some observe, that’s to the good. But it needs a lot more than a moment. Real reform needs political leadership.

The core function of the bureaucracy is to serve those elected to government. That makes the relationship between the public service and political leadership essential to the success of both sides. The conduct of that relationship has been growing more problematic for years, with real consequences for both development and implementation of policy.

The linchpin for reform of the public service is not about the public service itself; it’s the political-bureaucratic bilateral relationship. No-one in political leadership today has prioritized addressing either that relationship or reform of the public service. Canadians have long had reason for pride in the quality of our public service. But its credibility is dwindling, and it’s difficult to be hopeful about solving our biggest public policy challenges without broad confidence in it.

So, it’s no mystery why talk of reforming the public service is on the rise. However, the political-bureaucratic relationship is so fundamental that, without its repair, even the best-conceived reforms will sputter.

That repair will need to confront many challenges. However, the two most consequential drivers of decline of the relationship are on the political side: distraction and centralization. Addressing these would be a good start to improving the relationship.

Everyone in politics is increasingly distracted by the velocity and volume of the social media hothouse and, with it, the runaway vitriol, personal attacks, mis- and disinformation, misogyny and conspiracy theories. Superficiality, also a criticism of every previous news media technology, might be the least of its flaws. Distraction is key here because a certain subset of political actors — the ones governing — have to do more than play the game of media-driven, partisan politics, they have a country to run. The media ecosystem in which they must operate is impeccably built to distract them from that task. In an atmosphere of narrative warfare, in which every content drop provokes a response, which provokes a counter-response, “winning the day” often supersedes the governing agenda of the day.

For the political level, distraction and centralization converged in day-to-day operations that are dominated by “issues management”. There are issues management staff in every minister’s office and the PMO. They and others take part in a highly routinized process, driven aggressively by the PMO, in which potentially problematic issues are identified through a vast, 24/7 media scanning operation, with probing questions and spokesperson responsibilities tasked-out early each morning to departments; media lines drafted, vetted and approved.

The issues management approach to politics is, in large measure, an attempt to keep up with the pace of information. It inevitably produces an overreaction to the issue of the hour, and monopolizes vast amounts of political time and attention in doing so. It also sucks in public servants, who must scramble to generate instant information and advice, the raw material that ends up in “lines” at the other end of the issues management meat grinder. This role has not come naturally to the public service, and the adjustment often creates friction.

The other major driver of decline in the political-bureaucratic relationship is centralization of decision-making in a small coterie of PMO political staff with limited experience in government on arrival. Scholars have been analyzing and warning of it since the tenure of the first Prime Minister Trudeau. Many in the system thought this form of centralization reached a new level under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Still more believe that has since been surpassed.

On one level, this issue is the understandable product of human nature and our relationship to power. A tightly connected political team whose trust has been forged in the crucible of a campaign wins power and is reluctant to suddenly hand it over to bureaucrats. Traditionally, that cyclical phenomenon has abated as trust and practicality replace suspicion and insularity. But in this era of the perpetual campaign, it can become a permanent feature of governance.

In today’s centralized and distracted political environment, trust doesn’t take root easily or deeply between ministers and their senior staff on one side, and the senior bureaucracy on the other.

In today’s centralized and distracted political environment, trust doesn’t take root easily or deeply between ministers and their senior staff on one side, and the senior bureaucracy on the other. And trust is essential to the relationship functioning well, for both the hour-to-hour exchange, and even more so for attempts at bigger- picture policy development.

When I was a senior political staffer, I worried when some colleagues would scoff at sending a request “down to the department” or complained that officials “didn’t deliver” what was wanted. The syntax betrayed a lack of not only trust but of respect, and a prevailing view of the relationship that contributes to its decline. Public service guidance isn’t supposed to be Uber for policy.

The relationship should work like a team, though a special one. The two sets of teammates have very different roles, and they need to respect the differences and understand the pressures and limitations of the other. That requires time and effort invested to build relationships of trust. It also takes the maturity to understand the mandate of public servants and where it fits in the political pressure cooker. Good bureaucrats will never help their political teammates in their political game, but they’ll work tirelessly to help their ministers succeed in their executive responsibilities. If the political side leverages that success for partisan gain, that’s fine. Heaven knows they face fierce efforts by political opponents every day to turn their executive functions into their political doom.

The political side must fully grasp that their public service teammates might have to work just as hard for those opponents after the next election, within an atmosphere fraught with just as much suspicion as to their loyalties. And the public service must be capable of executing such transitions seamlessly. So, it’s not an ordinary team.

Some observers point to a lost era when public servants had the capacity and the freedom to do the real policy work isolated from the political level, and develop robust options for presentation to their political “masters” whose role was to pick one. If that pre-millennium utopia ever really existed, it’s not a model to reach for now. Both the policy challenges and the public environment in which policy must gain acceptance are ever-more complex and fast-moving. Successful policy has always required partnership between the public service and political players, including in direct collaboration on its development.

So, the practice of the relationship needs to be nuanced, and that relies on trust. Each side has to trust the other to do its job. However, doubts are growing about the capacity of both sides to contribute the necessary substance. And it’s not just a problem of capacity — in the absence of trust, the whole relationship is in disrepair, after a long decline.

It doesn’t need to be this way. Important successes that would be impossible without high performance teamwork continue to occur. That suggests the relationship is not broken beyond repair. I’ve experienced such successes while serving in both political and public service roles. Here is one example when the relationship worked very well, when I was on the political side of the process.

The 2017 defence policy, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, while criticized subsequently for its implementation, has been rightly described as the product of a superior process compared to its predecessors. It succeeded in putting in place the largest and most transparently planned defence spending increases in a generation (by 70 percent over the ensuing decade on a cash basis, and by $62 billion over 20 years). It was driven by an effective, hight-trust collaboration between the political level and, in this unique corner of government, two sets of teammates; senior officials in the Department of National Defence (DND), and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The process worked because the relationship worked.

Today, capable people in political offices and the public service work tirelessly on all manner of issues. But increasingly, the stories of successful teamwork are exceptions to the day-to-day reality.

The Liberal platform in 2015 included a defence policy review. But the policy shop in DND did not sit back and wait for the results of the election. Instead, they assumed a policy review would be likely and appropriate regardless of who formed the government, so they began quietly designing it. When the new government took office, it was well-served by background research and a proposed process on the table.

It started with a public consultation phase. The political side added an element that wasn’t proposed — an expert panel whose endorsement would be sought for the final product. That group — the late Bill Graham, former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, former Chief of the Defence Staff Ray Henault and security expert Margaret Purdy — advised the minister at regular intervals as the policy was being drafted, but they also rolled up their sleeves and worked with the officials of DND and CAF. They debated, asked questions, pushed for greater depth and precision, contributing substantively to the already solid work coming from DND and CAF. The process design integrated good ideas from both sides, which helped build in trust.

After the cabinet deliberations took place, and decisions crystallized, a whole new process kicked into gear. Once again, the political-bureaucratic-military relationships proved their value when the PMO decided that the new defence policy would be treated somewhat like a budget. That meant PMO sign-off on the core publication of more than 100 pages, which would underpin government-wide communications, but only after weeks of re-drafting, vetting and approvals.

The exercise was intense. It resulted in a stronger communications product, importantly with a sharpened emphasis on people who serve in the armed forces. But the final document would be not only a communications piece. That anchor document was also destined to guide policy implementation for years to come inside DND and CAF. So, everyone had a major stake in getting the details right.

Key staff from the minister’s office shuttled between the PMO and the top leaders of DND and CAF. We did a lot of explaining each side to the other. At key points, we pushed back on the PMO strategists when we could demonstrate that a certain nuance would alter or undermine the policy intent. That was respected. Similarly, we parsed the language with DND and CAF leadership and insisted on certain wordsmithing to deliver the government’s message. The officials did not have a veto over the decisions at this point; but trust meant that we valued their technical expertise, and wanted a final product that had buy-in from all sides. That was achieved because the underlying policy was sound, the yearlong process that produced it was rigorous, and it was all underpinned by a relationship that functioned at a high level.

The example illustrates how the relationship works when it works well. Today, capable people in political offices and the public service work tirelessly on all manner of issues. But increasingly, the stories of successful teamwork are exceptions to the day-to-day reality.

The relationship is, in general, unhealthy, and practiced badly. That’s getting in the way of effective policy — both its development and its implementation. Reform of the public service is a rising topic among those who still care about good government. But substantial change will be realistic only when there is interested political leadership willing to support a sustained period of modernization, and even more crucially, willing to overhaul how it conducts that fundamental relationship with its advisors and implementors in Canada’s federal public service.

Brian Bohunicky is a former senior political staffer in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Justin Trudeau, and a former public service executive in several departments. He is currently Vice-President, Policy at the Public Policy Forum.