Political staff

[Edward Campbell]

I have, elsewhere, railed against the twenty-somethings who inhabit ministers' outer offices and, too often, speak for their bosses when they have neither the skill/knowledge nor authority to do so. Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an unflattering  look at one of them:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ex-tory-aide-applied-to-work-at-lobbying-firms-he-leaked-to/article1837236/

Ex-Tory aide applied to work at lobbying firms he leaked to

BILL CURRY

OTTAWA— From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010


A Conservative staffer who leaked confidential finance committee documents to five lobbyists had approached all of them previously in an attempt to land a job.

Speaking for the first time since he was fired as an aid to Saskatchewan MP Kelly Block, Russell Ullyatt apologized to MPs and his family and insisted the leaks were not an attempt to improve his chances of making the jump into lobbying.

Yet his testimony to a parliamentary committee and some e-mail exchanges made public Tuesday opened a rare window into the behind-the-scenes relationships between political staffers – working long hours to serve the political process – and well-paid former colleagues working a few blocks away as lobbyists for corporate clients.

“I understood after the fact the gravity of the error that I made,” Mr. Ullyatt told MPs. The consequence, beyond embarrassing himself and the Conservative Party, which campaigned against cozy relationships with lobbyists, is that the leak derailed the main venue for Parliamentary input into the budget.

The hearing may not be the last word from Mr. Ullyatt. It was also revealed on Tuesday that he’s under investigation by the Commons committee that oversees spending in MPs’ offices.

Mr. Ullyatt owns a private printing company that boasts of sending more than five million pieces of mail in the past two years as “Canada’s only completely political mail provider.” Mr. Ullyatt denied suggestions he was using Ms. Block’s Parliament Hill office to run a private business.

The House of Commons rules empower MPs on the finance committee to travel and hear massive amounts of testimony over a period of months on what should be in the budget. Every December, the MPs try to bridge their differences behind the scenes to issue an extensive pre-budget report outlining where they agree, and including add-ons showing where they don’t. Last year’s report was 174 pages.

But because Mr. Ullyatt leaked a draft outlining where parties stood heading into the final horse-trading, a majority of the committee opted to abandon the process, fearing a final report could be used against them politically because it would indicate where parties compromised.

As a result, a Parliament already viewed as sidelined on key issues will not express itself on a budget that moves the federal government away from stimulus spending and toward a new era of deficit fighting.

The Commons procedure committee, which is looking into the leak, heard from Mr. Ullyatt on Tuesday, then from the five lobbyists with whom he had applied to work and who received the leaked material.

To Mr. Ullyatt, they were more than just work contacts.

“The people I sent the documents to were friends,” he said, describing relationships focused on politics-heavy chats about the timing of the next federal election.

When the lobbyists testified about their relationship with Mr. Ullyatt, some accepted the term friend, but described a relationship that was far more business-like. Some of their e-mails, which were read to the committee on Tuesday, in contrast, were quite friendly.

“Thought you might want a peek at this in its infancy,” Mr. Ullyatt wrote in an e-mail as he leaked the draft document to one lobbyist. The document was listed “confidential” and “draft report,” according to descriptions read into the Parliamentary record.

“I heart you,” Lynne Hamilton, vice-president of public affairs for GCI Group, responded when she received Mr. Ullyatt’s e-mail. Ms. Hamilton, a former senior Conservative aide in the Mike Harris Ontario government, insisted she had not read the e-mail when she wrote her response.

“Does this make up for all my other shortcomings?” Mr. Ullyatt replies.

“You have no shortcomings!” Ms. Hamilton writes back.

“As God is my witness,” Ms. Hamilton told MPs on Tuesday, “I did not know that this was a confidential document when I got it... We were just chatting.”

“It’s a reaction to the report, Ms. Hamilton. Get real,” retorted NDP MP Thomas Mulcair.

The committee is scheduled to hear from Mr. Ullyatt’s former boss on Thursday.

None of the five lobbyists – who also included Andy Gibbons, Clarke Cross, Howard Mains and Timothy Egan – said they planned to hire Mr. Ullyatt.

These young people – they are almost all young – are, in my (limited) experience, very bright, very aggressive, tightly focused, very hard working, fiercely partisan and, above all, ambitious. Their moves from political staff to government, proper and to and from the 'lobby' industry are normal in Ottawa. I, personally oppose the current rules that allow automatic appointments to the public service for political staffers – the argument for it is that they need that 'incentive' in order to take on these lowly paid but very tough jobs. My solution: much more public funding for political staffs, à la the USA, so that MPs can have larger, well qualified, experienced and well paid staffs, the members of which will not 'need' a public sector safety net.

Some (many? most?) political staffers, despite being very bright, are unaware or unconscious of the fact that there is a 'line' separating ministers and their staffs from officials. That line normally runs through the deputy ministers' offices but I have seen it as a 'wavy' line that, now and again, allowed ADMs and even DGs to deal directly with ministers on certain subjects. But, 'wavy' or not, the line separates politics from policy and it needs to be respected – by officials, politicians and, above all, political staffers.

Mr. Ullyatt has screwed up, badly, and he will, doubtless, be punished for it. But I do not believe his error is unique.

 

[The Bread Guy]

I have, elsewhere, railed against the twenty-somethings who inhabit ministers' outer offices and, too often, speak and ask for things from the system for their bosses when they have neither the skill/knowledge nor authority to do so.

I humbly add the bit in yellow to your bang-on vent.

These young people – they are almost all young – are, in my (limited) experience, very bright, very aggressive, tightly focused, very hard working, fiercely partisan and, above all, ambitious. Their moves from political staff to government, proper and to and from the 'lobby' industry are normal in Ottawa. I, personally oppose the current rules that allow automatic appointments to the public service for political staffers – the argument for it is that they need that 'incentive' in order to take on these lowly paid but very tough jobs. My solution: much more public funding for political staffs, à la the USA, so that MPs can have larger, well qualified, experienced and well paid staffs, the members of which will not 'need' a public sector safety net.

In my limited experience, these folks aren't happy getting involved in the longer, more deliberate work of most government bureaucracies, so your idea makes sense.

Some (many? most?) political staffers, despite being very bright, are unaware or unconscious of the fact that there is a 'line' separating ministers and their staffs from officials. That line normally runs through the deputy ministers' offices but I have seen it as a 'wavy' line that, now and again, allowed ADMs and even DGs to deal directly with ministers on certain subjects. But, 'wavy' or not, the line separates politics from policy and it needs to be respected – by officials, politicians and, above all, political staffers.

Then who should be "educating" them?  The DM's?  Someone else in the system?

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
Then who should be "educating" them?  The DM's?  Someone else in the system?

That's why, à la the USA, the political staff should be professionals with 'career' streams of their own.

Part of the problem might be that Trudeau was right - MPs are nobodies - but even before they leave Parliament Hill. In the USA representatives and senators are always somebodies, especially on the "hill." Their staffs reflect that status: they are (fairly) well paid professionals. Staffers in Washington, like lobbyists, are frequently (almost always?) lawyers who understand the system - the machinery of government and the 'making' of laws. Many move to and from lobby firms and think tanks and, even more often, to and from the even more powerful committee staffs.

I make no secret of the fact that I admire the power and utility of US congressional committees; all is not perfect, not by any means, but the US committee system and its output is several orders of magnitude better than that of our (especially minority) parliamentary committees - even the usually good ones like banking and finance.

 

[Kirkhill]

Then who should be "educating" them?  The DM's?  Someone else in the system?

I once found myself bemoaning the civilian organization in which I worked, a privately held engineering firm, which was undergoing a personality change.  It was a 100 year old and succesful operation that bought into the youth culture and started promoting youngsters, "tightly focused and very aggressive".  The company started making more and more mistakes at a faster and faster pace......and ultimately was the victim of a takeover.

At the time of the moaning I was wondering where you could find a good RSM, someone steeped in the culture of the organization who could collar the youngsters and govern and direct that aggression and, when necessary, "school" the youngsters.

The need was never met.  The question remains unanswered.

 

[The Bread Guy]

At the time of the moaning I was wondering where you could find a good RSM, someone steeped in the culture of the organization who could collar the youngsters and govern and direct that aggression and, when necessary, "school" the youngsters.

I kinda like this parallel, but is there such a beast in our bureaucracies anymore?  DM's are appointed by the PM and moved about back and forth (allowing for breadth, not depth of experience).  I get the feel that in general, there's very few "career corporal" equivalents in the PS who could bring some level of institutional history into the work.  Also, in the RSM model, the RSM is on the "same team" as the CO and the troops, while political staff are the political operators there to make the Minister look good and get what s/he wants done, as opposed to the bureaucrats making the process happen according to the rules.

Re:  the poli staffers, I was thinking more along the lines of:  when poli staffer in our system wants x or y done, and it's either outside the authorities, or can't be done for some other reason, where's the buck stop re:  someone telling them accurately, briefly and clearly, "I'm sorry, we can't do that because...."  After all, one argument that could come up here is the "the electorate voted for my boss, not you bureaucrats, so we're expressing the will of the people."  Not saying that's a legit argument, just saying it could come up.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The analogy doesn't stretch very far, but the Clerk of the Privy Council is both the CO and the RSM. He is the professional "head of the service" and he is responsible, personally, for its "good order and discipline." He and the DMs are the "sergeants' mess" - the officers may have custody of the colours (and the good silver) but the regiment's honour and pride reside in the sergrants' mess. I said the analogy doesn't stretch far enough, but you get my idea ...

A strong clerk and strong DMs will protect the civil service from weak ministers and inept staffers. But when DMs are weak or, worst of all, when the Clerk is not the best possible choice then the service and its integrity will suffer. It is my belief that Michael Pitfield made the Clerk's office too powerful - even though he was not, personally, 'strong' enough to use all that power effectively. Other clerks had the brains to use all that power but, sometimes, not the judgement to use it well (e.g. in my opinion Jocelyne Bourgon and the result may have been preventable things like the sponsorship scandal. (I do not suggest, for a moment, that she had any role in it - not at all - but I believe that she weakened the civil service so much that ministers and the PMO had too much authority.)

I believe that there is a real need to check the power of elected politicians with that of unelected and unaccountable (to parliament) civil servants. It is how our 'system' was designed to work; if we want to change the way the system works then, I believe, we must change the system, itself, in quite fundamental ways.

 

[a_majoor]

Re:  the poli staffers, I was thinking more along the lines of:  when poli staffer in our system wants x or y done, and it's either outside the authorities, or can't be done for some other reason, where's the buck stop re:  someone telling them accurately, briefly and clearly, "I'm sorry, we can't do that because...."  After all, one argument that could come up here is the "the electorate voted for my boss, not you bureaucrats, so we're expressing the will of the people."  Not saying that's a legit argument, just saying it could come up.

From Deconstructing Progressive thought:

http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014555.html

Fearless advice you can't refuse

In the Ottawa Citizen, U of Ottawa professor Errol Mendes expresses his thinly-veiled outrage over Stephen Harper's attempts to wrest control of public policy from a deeply-embedded shadow government of unelected bureaucrats:

The proper role of the federal public service is to provide fearless advice to the government on policies that are critical to the future of all Canadians. The government has the right to decide whether to accept that advice or reject it and then to expect the federal public service to loyally implement the government's policy decisions if they are lawful.

What the government can't do, if it does not want to torture Canadian democracy, is to force public servants to develop and promote policies they do not accept as in the interests of Canadians, and then pretend the public service is fully supportive of the ideologically driven policies.

Yes, you read that right: it's up to public servants to decide whether they will accept or not accept the policies of an elected government, and they have a right to determine whether or not a particular policy is "in the interests of Canadians." As for the PM, he's getting in the way, and overstepping his bounds:

This is not the first time the government has sought to undermine the critical task of the public service to provide fearless advice.
What Mendes euphemistically calls "advice," of course, rational people would call "unelected, partisan bureaucrats opposing and stifling the policies of an elected Conservative government":

There is a deep chill in many departments such as Environment, Justice, Foreign Affairs and CIDA, where objective research and advice by department officials on issues such as the real dangers of climate change, deeply counterproductive use of mandatory sentencing, and unbalanced foreign policies and foreign aid are stopped from ever seeing the light of day. In addition, the Prime Minister's Office vets almost all external communication, resulting in Canadians not being able to test the fearless advice offered by public servants against the destructive ideologies of perhaps Canada's most ideologically driven government.

Mendes asks Canadians to join him in conflating democracy and behind-the-scenes bureaucratic rulership:

The undermining of the public service of Canada should be one of the most important ballot box issues in the coming federal election
Yes, well, if millions of Canadian voters were CHRT Tribunal Members like Mr. Mendes was, or if they had been hired by a Liberal prime minister as a senior advisor in the Privy Council Office to "handle diversity in the public service," perhaps they might consider the matter of entrenching the back-door powers of the unelected public service as being one of the most important ballot box issues. As it stands, they seem to prefer that their government be an elected one.

and:

Reader William Harrington emails:

    In your post you comment that the judge is stating the obvious in calling California government dysfunctional. But it’s important to note that he apparently doesn’t consider the elected officials to be dysfunctional. Instead, he blames the voters. Government is dysfunctional in the judge’s eyes principally because California voters, using the referendum process, created a requirement of a supermajority to raise taxes and consequently “California’s lawmakers, and the state itself, have been placed in a fiscal straitjacket by a steep two-thirds-vote requirement — imposed at the ballot box — for raising taxes.”

    It apparently didn’t occur to the judge that Californians might not want to make it easy for their legislature to enact confiscatory taxes, or that California’s fiscal mess could be resolved through cuts to profligate spending rather than to continue to shovel ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer dollars into government’s gaping maw. Rather, he sees the voters and the referendum process as impediments to unrestrained government spending.

  It’s astonishing to see how many of our public officials appear to be firmly convinced that the people work for the government, and not the other way around.

Now there are limits to what governments and government departments can and should do, so ensuring your political staffers have a clear understanding of what they can reasonably demand is important (and an RSM figure does exist to do this in theory; the politicians Chief of Staff), so there is latitude on the issue.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

More problems with Minister staff than MP’s, normally our comms dept take care of the MP requests. Our previous Minister was a Micro-manger type, which quickly became an issue as managing 4700 employees starts to fall apart at the seams. The Ministers Office was a year behind on responding to letters. The staff was not generally all that pleasant or experienced. Our new Minister takes a better approach likely due to his owning his own businesses. There is much relief throughout the regional headquarters.

The Liberals worked hard to destroy the loyalty that senior managers felt towards their departments and the careers of these “rising stars” was very much tied to promoting the Liberal polices. I suspect the current minority government status has caused many of these people to stick on the Liberal bandwagon as they see this government as a assign fad and don’t want to tried and found guilty of treason to the Liberal party when they gain back their “rightful place”. I suspect the only immediate cure would be a majority government for the CPC, whereupon there would be much bandwagon jumping taking place.

 

[Jed]

I think that is a very astute opinion, Colin P

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
The Liberals worked hard to destroy the loyalty that senior managers felt towards their departments and the careers of these “rising stars” was very much tied to promoting the Liberal polices ...

Which is precisely what Prof. Mendes says the Tories are doing, right now - see Thucydides' post just above (at 13:42:25). And I think both you and he are correct.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I have no doubt that the CPC is pushing people into senior positions that support their polices. I suspect it’s the only way they can see to make a change in a “brickwall” of non-compliance, (perceived or real)
I think it’s clearly the duty of a Civil Servant to advise their political masters. The advice must weigh the pro’s and con’s of the various actions and the legal implications. The advice must be complete and not weighed to one solution over another. Now that’s the perfect world, it would be impossible to get totally balanced advice from senior management as they have far to much stake in the system and see themselves as the “Keepers of the flame” who must balance out the next few years over the long term consequences of any decisions that they are associated to.

I recently got my hand gently slapped for providing to much information in a briefing note for the Minister. Normally these are first written by operational staff involved with the matter and then edited by successive levels of management. Sometimes the edits make the supplied information more readable, but often remove pertinent information. Frankly I will continue to be detail heavy in my notes and allow the HQ types to take the fall if they neglect to inform the Minister correctly. A minister lives and dies by the information passed to him by his department, unless they are knowledgeable on the subject themselves.   

 

[The Bread Guy]

Colin:  thanks for the valuable background info.

ER/Thucydides - Between your material here....

The analogy doesn't stretch very far, but the Clerk of the Privy Council is both the CO and the RSM. He is the professional "head of the service" and he is responsible, personally, for its "good order and discipline." He and the DMs are the "sergeants' mess" - the officers may have custody of the colours (and the good silver) but the regiment's honour and pride reside in the sergrants' mess. I said the analogy doesn't stretch far enough, but you get my idea ...

Now there are limits to what governments and government departments can and should do, so ensuring your political staffers have a clear understanding of what they can reasonably demand is important (and an RSM figure does exist to do this in theory; the politicians Chief of Staff), so there is latitude on the issue.

.... I've come up with another (albeit imperfect) analogy.

The PM is the CO (who, like officers very generally, moves to ensure the right things are done), and the Clerk PCO is the RSM (who, like NCO's very generally, moves to ensure things are done right).  Given the loyalty-must-go-up principle, the RSM/Clerk is duty bound to give his/her straight, honest advice to the CO/PM re:  what's good for the troops and good for the system.  If the CO/PM chooses to overrule him/her, though, the RSM/Clerk (I presume) can resign, or carry on with the orders, knowing their best advice was given frankly, clearly and forthrightly. 

The analogy isn't perfect:  Since the Clerk is appointed by the PM (while I don't believe CO's pick RSM's - I stand to be corrected), there's a different power relationship there.  A strong Clerk could do a lot, but a stronger PM would always trump.

Excellent discussion here, folks, BTW.

 

[Kirkhill]

Here's another "random" contribution:

A Belgian engineer at work and I were talking about the fact that, once again, the Belgian government is in crisis and they are trying to cobble together another minority coalition.  In the interim life continues and the bureaucrats continue to function as they always have.  Ultimately, it seems, both the bureaucrats and the Belgian citizenry have given up on the politicos.  The elections are basically bread and circuses.  If my colleague's observation is accurate then it would explain a lot about the EU and the EU citizenry.

Now, wrt this discussion, it seems that we need the "creative tension" that comes from an entrenched and, dare I say, "conservative" bureaucracy that is married to their plans, and a governing body that "governs" the bureaucrats - applying both brake and gas.  The government has to be able to trust that the bureaucrats are acting in good faith and not out of their own careerist or philosophical motives.  The government has to be able to know that when they turn the wheel, step on the gas, or apply the brake, that the system will respond as they anticipate.  At the same time the government has to be aware that radical moves are not likely to succesed simply because there are way too many moving pieces between the Observe, the Orient, the Decide and the Act.

The US system of replacing the bureaucrats every 2 years or so keeps the bureacrats more responsive to their masters but runs the risk, as in the current situation, of putting neophytes in charge.  That is offset to an extent by the ability of the party institutions to keep a coterie of experienced personnel engaged even when out of office.

The Euro system ensures that you have highly competent technocrats that can run rings around their putative "masters" but are generally ungoverned and irresponsible.

I noted that my RSM question was never answered....the reason for that is, in my opinion, that in the army the RSM and the senior NCO's represented not just a part of the institution that is the army but a third institution within the army alongside the commissioned officers and the other ranks.  Thus, in any policy discussion there wer always three points of view to consider.  That three legged management system, as I perceive it, is unique.

In the rest of the world management is a binary operation that pits two parties against against each other... and, I guess, from time to time , they have to hire an RSM, in the form of a judge.

Long way round to say.... I don't know how you solve the problem. ???

 

[a_majoor]

As a small "l" libertarian, I am firmly of the opinion that the larger the bureaucracy the more it is concerned with its own political rent gathering and power. Jerry Pournelle's "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" explains the process, and there is no reason to expect that any bureaucracy is immune

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

The sensible solution is to prune out bureaucracies (Edward has posted lists of bureaucratic organizations of very dubious utility that could be eliminated with few people even noticing they are gone) until they are of a size where the political masters and their staffs can get inside the OODA loop and will be able to apply the brakes, gas and steering wheel with predictable effect.

Of course, the bureaucrats have many well established means to fight back and defend their perques and privileges (and they will fight to the last taxpayer), and elected officials seeking reelection may be as willing to take on the bureaucracy as they are to go bare handed against a crocodile, so the easy answer in theory is the hardest solution to execute in practice. Political staffers, concerned with long term job prospects, may also be unwilling to take on the people who have access to all their records and information. Knowledge really is power.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think we need to be careful when considering a parliamentary system like ours which is both revolutionary (the government can must be dismissed when it cannot command the confidence of parliament) and evolutionary (the rules can – often must – be made up as we go along, as Speaker Milliken demonstrated earlier this year in his ruling re: Afghan detainee documents.)

For centuries, going back well before e.g. Wolsey and the Cecils (père et fils), the division between the Kings' councillors and his parliament, on one hand, and his chancellor (and secretary and treasurer) on the other has deepened. The former often (usually) represented, in England, the interests of the entrenched landed nobility, they were a check on the sovereign's power and (one hoped loyal) advisers to him (or her). Some of the great offices, including e.g. Earl Marshal, were hereditary but came with (generally) automatic access to the Privy Council. The increasingly bureaucratic and, much later, independent royal servants (both armed and civil) were selected by the sovereign – based upon some assessment of the servants' utility; it was, de facto a meritocracy.

The rules are, and need to be, somewhat hazy, reflecting the evolutionary nature of the offices and their key role when, now and again, the revolutionary nature of our 'system' becomes evident and a change of government is forced, by a vote on a confidence issue, or e.g. (à la the Second World War) when the British Parliament passed an Act to suspend the Parliament Act of 1911 which set the terms of parliaments at five years.

The Clerk of the Privy Council and his team of Deputies have a very long term master plan for the country which is shared with the prime minister and (I think) his priorities and planning committee of cabinet. Prime ministers can and do order the government to deviate from that course, the civil service course, but, most often, they (both the politicians and the bureaucrats) are careful to keep the deviations fairly small. Analogies are dangerous but so, I think, are radical course changes. For a fairly long period, say 1930 to 1990) successive Liberal and Conservative governments steered slightly left of centre – towards increased national intervention in areas constitutionally reserved for the provinces and towards a welfare state. They did so, I believe, against a consistently right of centre 'master plan' from the PCO. Beginning in the 1990s the civil service pushed back and successive Liberal and Conservative governments now steer right of centre – towards balanced budgets. When the course changes are all taken together Arnold Heeney and Norman Roberston might well find that their long term plan has been, very roughly, implemented – just not in the rather straight libe they envisioned.

Canadian delegation at the 1946 Paris Peace Conference, Palais du Luxembourg. (L.-r. Norman Robertson, Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, Hon. Brooke Claxton, Arnold Heeney

I think this tension is useful, healthy, indeed necessary to the functioning of a Westminster style parliamentary democracy, and, as far as I know, it exists in varying degrees in e.g. Australia, Germany, India, New Zealand and Singapore but not in e.g. America, China or France which have different government systems.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I debated about posting this opinion piece, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Ottawa Citizen, at all but, Prof. Ron is so far off base that I think we, military folk, need to understand why he is wrong:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/civil+servants+serve+hated+master/5027463/story.html

How civil servants serve a hated master

By James Ron, Ottawa Citizen

June 30, 2011

For a brief moment this spring, it seemed the NDP and Liberals might cobble together a ruling coalition. As speculation mounted, I wondered how the town's senior civil servants would respond.

In Ottawa, the civil service is, in theory, a neutral administrative tool. In reality, of course, civil servants have scruples and ideologies just like the rest of us. Individual opinions matter, particularly in the upper ranks, as senior civil servants are expected to be role models. Thus, when serving a government whose policies they personally dislike, senior civil servants can't help but face a powerful ethical choice: lead with enthusiasm, secretly resist, or resign? Economist Albert Hirschman nicely laid out the choices in his classic text, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: keep one's mouth shut (Loyalty); protest forcefully from within (Voice); or leave (Exit).

Hirschman's options were on my mind these last few years as more and more civil service acquaintances complained about serving their Conservative political masters.

For some, the most painful of Stephen Harper's policies was Canada's handling of the alleged torture of Afghan detainees. For others, it was his odd support for radical Zionism, his opposition to gender equity, or his policies on third-world maternal health, an international ban on cluster munitions, or on climate change. Most of the civil servants I knew detested at least one Conservative policy; many hated the entire package.

My circle of acquaintances is small, and I make no claims to statistical precision. No doubt there are many bureaucrats in the system who implement Conservative policies in good conscience. But my concern is with the ethical dilemmas of individuals working for large bureaucracies whose policies they dislike. I am particularly concerned with the men and women working in the government departments I am most familiar with: foreign affairs, international development, and defence.

This interest stems from personal experience. I grew up in Israel during the 1980s, in a period when debates over individual morality and government policy were commonplace. A radical-right government had launched Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and was building Jewish settlements throughout the Palestinian West Bank. These policies, in turn, helped prompt the first Palestinian uprising and its brutal consequences.

In those years, I learned that individual resistance to bad policies mattered, and was personally inspired by soldiers and bureaucrats who publicly voiced their criticisms and refused to carry out policies they deemed immoral.

I reached my own personal red line in 1991, when I refused to participate in my military reserve unit's manoeuvres in the occupied territories. I could have been sent to prison, but my commanders avoided controversy by losing the paperwork.

That incident, in turn, drove home a second lesson: the higher your organizational status, the more the system feared your ethically based resistance. My military reserve unit was an elite combat formation, and my commanders had no interest in turning my refusal into a cause célèbre.

The dilemmas faced by Ottawa's bureaucrats are not typically so dramatic, although the Afghan detainee scandal comes close. The basic moral dilemmas, however, are the same. Where does each individual draw the line? When, if ever, does one move from Loyalty, to Voice and then to Exit?

These questions are especially acute for the organization's elite, since it is they who are expected to lead by example and demonstrate enthusiasm for current policy.

To better comprehend the bureaucracy's response to Harper's policies over the past few years, consider this.

Canada's civil service prizes discretion, and in Ottawa, a tacit Code of Silence prevents most bureaucrats from speaking out within or outside their organization. If you keep quiet and help your superiors look good, you will be promoted. If you protest too often, however, your career will come to a grinding halt.

And while civil service jobs are not wildly well paid, they are well worth having. They offer job security, excellent benefits, a well-defined career ladder, and endless opportunities for promotion, growth, and change. When bureaucrats voice opposition to policies they dislike, however, they quickly find themselves denied opportunities for professional advancement.

Given all this, it is hardly surprising that only a handful of policy leaders exercised the Voice option during Harper's minority government; call these the Public Dissenters. The system, as best I can tell, made short work of these brave souls.

A second small group was the Private Dissenters, people who refused to implement Conservative policies, but who also maintained the Bureaucrat's Code of Silence. These folks took unpaid leave or early retirement, viewing silent Exit as their best option.

The third and largest group was the Stoics, individuals who engaged in Loyal behaviour even though they personally hated Conservative policies.

How do the Stoics do it? For starters, many Stoics felt that the Conservative policies they most detested originated elsewhere in the bureaucracy; as a result, the policies presented no personal moral dilemmas. Bureaucrats who reviled the handling of Afghan detainees, for example, could feel personally uninvolved if they did not work for the ministries of defence or foreign affairs. Still other Stoics belonged to those two ministries, but felt ethically removed from the issue because they did not personally work on the detainee file.

In both cases, an ethically convenient bureaucratic division of labour diminished individuals' sense of personal obligation.

Another common Stoic approach was to say that despite increasingly tight Conservative supervision, it was still possible to do good things at the office.

Thus, for example, development officials who disliked the broader Conservative approach to international aid felt able to promote the anti-poverty policies they liked in their own country of responsibility. Again, a division of bureaucratic labour diminished individuals' sense of personal responsibility.

Finally, there were those Stoics who said that they were holding on until the end of Conservative minority rule. Harper, these Stoics said, was bound to lose a parliamentary vote sometime soon.

All these arguments make rational and ethical sense. Still, they all leave one crucial question unanswered: Where would each Stoic draw the line? What would the Harper government need to do for each one of them to exercise Voice or Exit, rather than quiet Loyalty?

Consider the Afghan detainee case. The number of innocent persons tortured due to Canadian policy may have numbered in the hundreds. What would it take to trigger Voice or Exit by Stoic officials in the ministries of defence and foreign affairs? The torture of 1,000? Of 10,000?

In theory, everyone has a moral red line. In most large bureaucracies, however, the structures of work, promotion, and authority are such that personal ethical considerations are easily pushed aside. Many Stoics, in other words, are unthinking Loyalists, unconsciously sidestepping painful moral choices.

There is, of course, a fourth group of bureaucrats, the people who told their friends that they disliked Harper's policies, but who then enthusiastically enforced Conservative policies at the office. Let's call them the Opportunists.

Before the NDP/Liberal mirage faded, I enjoyed speculating how each of these four groups might react to leftist rule. Would the Dissenters return from exile, and if they did, would they purge the Opportunists, and perhaps even some Stoics? Would the Opportunists head for the bleachers, or would they simply switch uniforms and play for the opposing side? Would the Stoics begin claiming that they had been courageous and vocal opponents of Conservative policy all along?

Governments come and go, and senior public servants will always be asked to implement policies they dislike. Loyalty, Voice and Exit are their options, and each person will have to discover his or her own red line.

The only truly bad option is not to think about this at all; after all, a life unexamined is a life not worth living.

Bureaucrat, know thyself.

James Ron (jamesron.com) has resigned his job as a tenured professor at Carleton's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Beginning this August, he will be the University of Minnesota's Stassen Chair of International Affairs, and a visiting professor at the Centro de Investigacion y Docencias Economicas in Mexico City.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

First: it has been a long, long time since I read Hirschman my recollections are that, while his thesis is, broadly, applicable to many fields, he is, really, talking about how we react to his idea that organizations all go slack and become less and less effective and productive – many of us “vote with our feet' taking our money or labour elsewhere. I also agree with the anonymous author of a Wikipedia article that Hirschman's littel book is ”a polemical piece; Hirschman uses his analysis of “exit” and “voice” in order to strike at the foundational assumptions of liberalism as supported by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.”

I fear that Ron is using the polemical nature of Exit, Voice and Loyalty to feed his analysis of what he thinks he sees in the public service.

Second: despite his good education, I think that Ron fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the public service in a Westminster style democracy. For example, Ron says, ”If you keep quiet and help your superiors look good, you will be promoted. If you protest too often, however, your career will come to a grinding halt ... In most large bureaucracies, however, the structures of work, promotion, and authority are such that personal ethical considerations are easily pushed aside.” This is a gross misrepresentation of how the professional public service works. It is true that promotion, even retention, prospects are enhanced if you make the “boss' look good but the “boss' is not the “Harper government,” or any “government,” for that matter. The “boss,” as one learns as soon as (s)he moves into a director's office, is the Deputy Minister and his or her boss is the Clerk. This is quite remarkably different from the US system wherein the top two or three levels of the bureaucracy are political appointees, selected for their loyalty to the Administration's platform. In Canada there is another, independent ”platform,” indeed a coherent national policy, that is developed and maintained by the civil service and which is used to contain most government initiatives. This plan – and the operative descriptive word is coherent – is not secret: the PM and ministers are well aware of the limitations that the professional bureaucracy expects them to observe when they propose their own policies. This form of government has been evolving for 450 years, ever since the Cecils pere et fils put it in place.

There were, indeed, bureaucratic debates about e.g. The Afghan detainees, but I am about 99.9% certain that they had little to do with the “Harper government.” Those debates were, rather, mostly about (failed attempts at) career building and (more successful) ass covering.

There is merit is Hirschman's ideas – and I will have to back and re-read them after many decades but, I am sad, to say, there is no merit is Ron's attempt to apply them to a 'problem' that does not really exist. I have no doubt there are some civil servants, including some senior ones, who disagree with Harper's plans and policies; I also have no doubt that and equal number are of the opposite view. Most, from the Clerk on down, probably agree with some and disagree with others – just like the rest of us. No doubt one or two civil servants voter with their feet and left over policy issues, but most did not – and Ron, if he wants to make that argument, must accept that everyone who has joined the service since might have done so because they want to help Harper implement his policies.

Finally, I think his suggestion that most civil servants oppose Harper and his policies is way off base and insults civil servants by assuming they are of a single policy mind.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Have to agree it oversimplifies why public servants who stay stay, and why those who go go.

On this, educate me....

.... This is a gross misrepresentation of how the professional public service works. It is true that promotion, even retention, prospects are enhanced if you make the “boss' look good but the “boss' is not the “Harper government,” or any “government,” for that matter. The “boss,” as one learns as soon as (s)he moves into a director's office, is the Deputy Minister and his or her boss is the Clerk. This is quite remarkably different from the US system wherein the top two or three levels of the bureaucracy are political appointees, selected for their loyalty to the Administration's platform ....

.... what happens in the likely very rare instances of the Minister wanting x, and the DM saying it should be y?  Given both (as well as the Clerk) are appointed by the PM, in some ways, this kinda sorta makes the PM the DM's/Clerk's "boss" as it does the Minister?  Or am I reading the org chart way incorrectly here?

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I think he's just trying to justify his 'Exit' while making it sound like it's everyone else's fault.

Kinda like Iggy's last tome. http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/my-name-is-michael-ignatieff-and-i-am-canadian/article2079267/?service=mobile

They both come across, to me, as whining.

Maybe I'm being too simplistic and can't grasp the big adult words :

 

[GAP]

No....that was my read on it too....

 

[Edward Campbell]

Have to agree it oversimplifies why public servants who stay stay, and why those who go go.

On this, educate me........ what happens in the likely very rare instances of the Minister wanting x, and the DM saying it should be y?  Given both (as well as the Clerk) are appointed by the PM, in some ways, this kinda sorta makes the PM the DM's/Clerk's "boss" as it does the Minister?  Or am I reading the org chart way incorrectly here?

I think it works both ways ... my impression is that a Deputy can and sometimes does defy his minister by going "over his (or her) head" to the Clerk. Sometimes the PM may support the minister, just as often the PM may defer to the Clerk.

The position of the Clerk is endlessly fascinating - no modern PM has tested it and I doubt, after the Diefenbaker/Coyne* fiasco, that any would wish to try to plumb the depths of the Clerk's power.

We have, recently, fiddled with Deputies' power - most notably by designating them as "accounting officers." The impact, I think, has been to make them more powerful and, eventually, a Deputy is going to contradict a Minister at a parliamentary committee and my bet is that the Minister will lose his job and the Deputy will get a sideways promotion.


__________
* In firing Coyne, Diefenbaker, de facto, confirmed the absolute independence of the Governor of the Bank of Canada. There is no need for written guidance in laws and statutes: the Governor's sovereignty is now guaranteed.