A story about a Liberal direct mailing program;
Liberal party president Mike Eizenga mailed bright yellow teledispatches directly to the office addresses of employees of the PCO, which is supposed to remain non-partisan and non-political.
The memo lays out the Liberal election platform and asks for a minimum $100 donation.
“We need your support now to make sure we form the next government,” says Eizenga’s letter, which landed in many in-boxes of the Privy Council’s Sparks Street office building on Jan. 9
Et tu, DND?
The evidence from Department of National Defence documents and internal correspondence illustrates a pattern of Liberal partisan support during the election campaigns of 2000 and 2004. National Defence deputy ministers and other officials tracked, evaluated and analyzed opposition platforms and passed the results of their findings in weekly policy reports to the Liberal Cabinet.
A reader writes;
I’ve worked in the federal civil service for eight years, and during my entire tenure there I have always been amazed and disgusted at how blatantly many individuals in my department and elsewhere in Government talked about how “we” had to protect the prime minister or the “government” (read Liberals). Often decisions taken at the working level were informed by what the Liberals wanted or were thought to want (the Sea King saga is a perfect example of this). To profess a political party affiliation other than Liberal was often met with dazed wonder and sometimes with open hostility. Recently myself and a few of my colleagues were labelled by a co-worker as “not politically reliable”. Not politically reliable? I thought civil servants worked for the Crown and the citizens of Canada, not political parties.
Stephen Harper is correct when he labels the federal civil service as largely Liberal. One doesn’t have to think to hard to see how this came about. For thirteen long years the Liberals have ruled Canada. During this period many (if not all) senior civil servants came into their jobs under Liberal leadership, which has led to many of them (but not all) feeling that they owe their careers to the Liberals. Moreover, it means that any aspiring civil servant who wished to reach the top levels of the civil service knew that to get ahead one always kept the interests of the “party” in mind. It’s not a healthy situation to say the least.
Steve Janke has more direct evidence.
Shame isn’t it? Our civil service is bound and determined to keep the Libreals and their politics in the forefront.
Too bad the laws of this country don’t allow Harper to go through some of these ministries firing a lot of these weasels. Their first and only duty is to a job that benefits the country and follow the orders who whomever is in power. They have to check their poltics at the door, but of course, the Libreals have done nothing to discourage the civil service from helping them.
I worked at DNDHQ for two years long time ago just when the NEP was coming out. I can’t tell you how many times I almost came to blows over that issue. I stuck up for Alberta but my Colonel, Lt Col and almost everyone else I was working with were Trudeau plants and didn’t really know there ass from page 8!!!!!!!! That was the longest two years of my career and I give big Kudos to all MPs from the west who have to go down there now and try to straighten out Ottawa. It is going to be a mammoth job but someone has to kick ass……..If I were younger right now I would be down there in a shot and try to find those wing-nuts I worked with so many years ago. Good luck Stephen!!!!!
You mean to tell me that the senior ranks of the Canadian Forces have been politicized? Say it ain’t so.
Dalton Camp was quite a distinguished political figure, he started out in
his political career as a Liberal until he found out what they were really
all about on the inside, finding he couldn’t stomach this he went on to a
very honorable political career——–as a Conservative
In light of the extremely low gutter level panic commercials put out by
the Liberals lately the following holds particularly true.
A quote written by Dalton Camp in the 1940’s that holds as true today as
it did then——-
“The professional Liberal will sell any principle, as he has done
throughout history, and looks like doing today……..if the selling will
yield him increased power. If professional liberalism means anything
today, it means an ability to hold power by the subtle exploitation of fear
and suspicion.” Sound Familiar?
According to http://tinyurl.com/drvoc op. cit., from the Privy Council Office web site, “The primary responsibility of the Privy Council Office is to provide public service support to the Prime Minister, to ministers within the Prime Minister’s portfolio, and to the Cabinet in order to facilitate the smooth and effective operation of the Government of Canada.” and “PCO assists the Clerk of the Privy Council Office in providing professional, non-partisan support to the Prime Minister in his or her role as head of government on all policy and operational issues.”
The Clerk of the Privy Council, Alexander Himelfarb, “is the most senior non-political official in the Government of Canada, and provides professional, non-partisan support to the Prime Minister on all policy and operational issues that may affect the government.” He is also head of the permanent civil service.
Mr. Himelfarb is the equivalent of Sir Frank in Yes Minister, and Sir Humphrey in Yes Prime Minister.
I have three observations:
(1) It is incorrect to say the PCO works for the citizens, it clearly works for the “the Prime Minister, to ministers within the Prime Minister’s portfolio, and to the Cabinet”.
(2) Is is clearly a gross violation of at least protocol for the Liberal Party of Canada to pamphleteer at the Privy Council Office, per their “provides professional, non-partisan support” mandate.
(3) If you want to review what Mr. Harper’s relationship with the PCO will be like if and when the Conservatives form the government, rent the Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister DVDs and settle down for a solid days lesson on the relationships between civics, politics, and the permanent civil service.
As for public servants, it’s just one rung in the pecking order for the Liberal animal farm status.
Kate, I’m surprized the RCMP haven’t raided your place yet, being the head huncho’s are Liberal lap dogs. Remember the Ottawa reporter.
So be ware, Liberal don’t play…wait there’s a knock at my door…oh oh, they’ve traced my IP…
Actually, the situation in Ottawa is worse than described, and is not limited (I am sorry to say) to Liberal plants. I spent nearly 8 years in RCMP “HQ” in Ottawa…on a weekly basis I received telephone calls from MPs or senior staffers of MPs demanding information on one operational issue or another, each of whom was apparently startled when I told them that they were not entitled to such information and they were just not going to get it.
In my mind, the apex of the “politicization of bureaucrats” for me personally was, as Acting Officer in charge of Drug Operations for the RCMP (nationally), I was invited to a 1989 meeting of senior bureaucrats within the then-Solicitor General’s Ministry, also attended by senior staffers with Health & Welfare. I was told that it was a meeting to discuss the National Drug Strategy…None of these people were “political staffers”, they were all regular bureaucrats on the public payroll..
Shortly after the meeting began, several of those around the table opined that then-SG James Kelleher was in trouble in his own riding in the upcoming election, and they were hoping that somewhere in Canada we had a major drug bust that could perhaps be advanced in order to create headlines to buttress support for the re-election of Mr. Kelleher.
My verbal response to that suggestion was that I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether Mr. Kelleher was re-elected or not, there would be no “drug bust” other than according to the schedule of the RCMP and I immediately left the meeting…my departure was clearly a shock to those who remained…
My point being…the politicization of Ottawa’s bureaucrats isn’t necessarily party-specific, although I have always had a problem with the practice of allowing political staffers to move to senior government positions.
The main problem, in my mind, is that some senior staffers adopt an affinity to their political masters and develop a loyalty to them rather than the taxpayers….having people employed by our government feeling any sort of obligation to their political masters is very dangerous indeed…
Understood, Bruce, yet I remain convinced that the true loyalty of the PCO and the Permanent Civil Service is to the Permanent Civil Service.
In one episode of Yes Minister, Hacker gets an important file from a member of the opposition who was previously in govenment and responsible for said file. Hacker asks him, “Why are you giving me this?” He responds, “Jim, we’re not the permanent opposition, we’re the opposition in waiting; the permanent opposition is the civil service.”
In an episode of Yes Prime Minister, Hacker is asks his principal private secretary, Bernard Wolley, “Who’s side is the civil service on.” Wolley, looking somewhat surprised and sheepish, says “Oh, Prime Minister, the winning side.”
I think that’s part of what we’re seeing happen in Canada in this election, and should Mr. Harper become the next prime minister, I think he’s going to have the same kinds of problems with the civil service that Mr. Hacker did.
Vitruvius:
Thank you….you have, thru British television fiction no less, made the case I was trying to make….
Now if we could only find a “Fawlty Towers” episode that would make the point for Stephen Harper’s agenda (hey…I’m retired from the RCMP now, I’m allowed to make political comments)
Cheers
Bruce
Vitruvius:
Actually, I should apologize because I did not fully address your comments as to the loyalty of the public service to the public service….you are absolutely correct….
I vividly recall attending a meeting with senior staffers (at the A/d/Minister level) concerning the National Drug Strategy.
At some point in the meeting I happened to point out that we were talking about “taxpayers money” and that prudence was a primary consideration….frankly, the response around the table was characterized, in my mind at least, as being blank stares and a reaction akin to as if I had inadvertantly “broken wind” at the table…in short, I had suddenly, apparently, broken into a discussion in a foreign language…
In my experience, the loyalty of the public service is to their budget, and you have never seen an orgy of spending like what occurs in Ottawa between March 1st and March 31st….the point being, spend it all on absolutely anything or you will face a decline in next year’s budget…
Dame Thatcher once said that Yes Prime Minister was the most accurate portrayal of Westminster Parliamentary Democracy she had ever seen (I’m paraphrasing from memory).
One of my most trusted advisers has said that if one studies and understands the Yes Prime Minister series, and the two John Cleese productions Meetings Bloody Meetings, and More Bloody Meetings, one will have acquired a minor in organization theory.
I admit to having watched the YM & YPM series through, twice, since I got the DVDs for my birthday a few months ago, and I’ve watched the entire series at least twice before on broadcast television, so I have a habit of seeing things through that experience.
Yet I must say, it does seem to me that YM & YPM explain more about what’s going on in Canadian politics and government than does the news of the day.
Except for things like the brown envelopes full of cash that the Liberals passed under the table at a Montreal restaurant &c, of course. The series was a situation comedy after all, whereas the Liberal Party of Canada’s recent history is more of a tragedy: for Canada.
Mr. Harper, once of firewall fame, becomes Captain Canada, federalist. Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee. If the CPC gets a minority, the fight will be with politics. If the CPC gets a majority, the fight will be with the permanent civil service.
As an employee in the federal civil service I can say (at least in the area that I work) most of the people are small “l” liberals. Most however would be NDP supporters and the next group would be Liberal supporters. Conservatives such as myself number about the same as the Marxists. Heck in my office even the gays outnumber the conservatives. I feel so alone. 🙁