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.
As they say in the shrivel service: “to error is human; to get paid for it is divine”. Just the unions looking at protecting their monthly income from unions dues.
The arguments from the special interest groups, unions and now the public servants has nothing to do with making the compliance voluntary. Its all about maintaining the Liberal status quo to ensure money keeps going to them from the public purse.
But Mendes may have a point.
If the fearless advisor feels their job is to stand on principle and that there is a point of principle involved, isn’t the right thing to do, to resign? The bureaucrat Liberal aparatchick should not be forced into doing things they are principally opposed to doing or saying they support policies they don’t. If it is important to them, they should resign.
But if they view their job to be to implement lawful policy, they won’t have any issues with implementing policy based upon principles that differ from theirs, and they should be able to support the government’s right to make that policy decision.
I think that when a government changes, they should review the civil service and fire those that view their job to be to stand on principle. Can you work with us? Will you work with us? If the answer is yes, then keep them. If the answer is no, then let them go. If the answer is yes, but the actions or results of the department’s activities are that the policy doesn’t get implemented – – fire for incompetence.
This happens regularly when one company buys another or when one person gets promoted over another one and they bring different policy ideas forward. Why doesn’t it happen in the civil service?
Yes I always knew the civil service had too much power, probably more than most of the ministers of various departments.
So we have the civil service, the unions and the media openly advocating for a return to liberal/left leadership.
Nice.
rove @2:20 am:
Thanks for that lovely list of beaurocrats. Intersting Kady O’malley made a similar list and asks an interesting question in this link.
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2010/01/what-could-all-these-witnesses-have-in-common—liveblogging-the-liberal-caucus-forum-on-governance.html
Indeed…what do they all have in common with the Liberal caucus?
No sympathy here for that crew, rove.
The monster that is Big Government is fed by the Liberals. Their power and waste is threatened by PMSH. The beast is cornered and is getting nastier by the day.
Wake up Canada!
Mandarins and senior bureaucrats in Ottawa and every provincial capital should change every time a government changes. If these career bureaucrats had any scruples they would resign because their beliefs on government policy is not in tune with the incoming government. Failing that the incoming government should simply fire them all. That is what happens in the USA.
Fiumara@9:59
I hope you realize that senior public servants are not what we would call unionized. If you want to criticize public sector unions, there are better arguments. In fact, at the highest levels, public sector unions and public sector employers conspire together in order for senior union officials and senior public servants to have even less to do and to be rewarded even more so for not doing anything but feather their own nests.
What people tend to underestimate is the extent to which the PRIVATE SECTOR has appropriated gov’t for its own financial gain.
The recent bailout of GM provides ample proof of that.
We have politcians, and behind them we have the bureaucrats, but behind the bureaucrats are numerous financial interests (some foreign) who are influnecing gov’t policies and deftly pulling a lot of strings.
Our disastrous policies on immigration, for example, have largely been designed and implemented at the behest of the private sector in order to ensure an abundant and supine supply of cheap labour
john P; The US govt didnt bail out GM,they bailed out and rewarded GM and Chrysler employies.They cared not a whit for GM bond holders but exempted GM employies from the tax on so called “Cadillac health plans”,gave them bail out money and then gave them other money to pay back the bail out money.In effect,they nationalized GM and Chrysler.Do you hear the same concerns about Freddie Mac and Fanny May which received billions in bail out money? No,because they are govt entities.Any more govt money given to GM or Chrysler you probably wont hear about either.
And people wonder why PMSH has “changed” and is now no longer listening to his base, hasn’t shut down the CBC, hasn’t scrapped section 13, etc.????
First, he has to get good impartial advice from the public service in order to make good policy decisions….so how does the Conservatives know when they got all the information, advice, etc they need? Does the senior civil service hold back information, truncate it, demphasize, decontexualize it etc? What do you think? (to be fair, the senior civil servants did this to the Libs too although likely not as frequently).
I actually think Tony Clement got good impartial advice from StatsCan. They are primarily technocrats and less ideological than most. This is why the government was able to actually make the decision regarding the long form. But when the cabinet took the decision to implement the least favourable choice (from the liberal viewpoint), all the blowblack came to StatsCan (my guess is mostly WITHIN OTHER GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS), THEN the StatsCan boss resigned.
Decreasing the size and power of the senior civil service, in particular, will be a herculean task.
You’ve got it backwards, John P: First, the crypto-communist who is the current US President didn’t bail out GM as part of any attempt to bolster the private sector. And once the bailout took place, we were more or less force to do the same thing on a smaller scale or else lose a big part of our auto sector to the US.
Second,
“Our disastrous policies on immigration…have largely been designed and implemented at the behest of the private sector in order to ensure an abundant and supine supply of cheap labour.
When Liberals bureaucrats opened up the doors and brought over elderly family members of immigrants from (relatively) backwards nations they weren’t doing the bidding of the private sector, they were importing *Liberal Voters.* Do you think that the private sector was asking for 70-year-old Sikh/Pakistani women to be brought over for “cheap labour”?
Adrian MacNair has a piece up in Full Comment about the census issue, but it applies to Mendes’ POV as well:
“Am I supposed to care about how public sector bureaucrats feel about their job? This pearl-clutching melodrama has been going on for a month now, and every subsequent opinion piece on the story gets less and less interesting.
“You’d think we were discussing something where morale is actually important, such as the attitude of our troops in the field of combat. But no, we’re talking about pencil-pushing number-counters in their public sector union-protected pension-indexed 17-sick-days-a-year bureaucratic jobs. The only thing less interesting than what these people think or feel is Chelsea Clinton’s royal wedding.
“Here’s a tip for the princesses lying on peas in Stats Canada: a large majority of Canadians go to work every single day with low morale. They don’t like their jobs. They’d rather be doing something else. They’re forced to do difficult tasks for far too long, and for far too little pay. But not one of these people gets a newspaper article written about how difficult life is for them. No, they suck it up, and work paycheque to paycheque.
“If they don’t like their jobs, the solution is simple. Join Munir Sheikh on the unemployment line, or better yet, find a job in the private sector. Life isn’t candies and double rainbows all the time.”
bluetech: “The beast is cornered and is getting nastier by the day.”
That’s right. And the cornered beast is thrashing its tail, trying to take out as many people as it can, the target being the “nasty” Prime Minister and his hard-working, disciplined cabinet who are working for ALL Canadians, not just the beast’s small, special-interest cabal.
This is a war, no doubt about it. Democracy vs the Librano hegemony. Prime Minister Harper’s David to the Lib/Dipper/Bloc/MSM Goliath. I sure hope the stone hits the right spot.
It would appear Harper has kicked the mandarins of Ottawa squarely in the privates with this census thing.
I look forward to the next kick. In fact, I look forward to it so much that I’m happy to vote CPC purely for the collective screams of anguish coming from Ottawa.
“This pearl-clutching melodrama”
Steyn himself couldn’t have phrased it better.
The Media and the Snivel servants working hard to convince Canadians that the criminalized census form is good for us, if we decriminalize it our roads will cave in, bus routes will disappear, street lights go bye bye. I haven’t seen MSM this shrill since the whole proroguing thang, the Free Press sound a great deal like our snotty leftwing elites these days.
Remember when the US Air traffic controllers tried to dictacte to Ronald Reagan, He fired them all.This type of posturing by Mr Mendes only gets the heckles up of the voters who see them as Left wing plants.
These people are supposed to be Professionals and they are well paid at that. If they have a moral issue with working on behalf of Canadians through the vision of the Conservative Party.They should have the courage of their convictions and resign.
Crickets
Mendes: “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, actually, a governing party that has been elected by the people of Canada, can indeed force public servants to do as they are told. If the Canadian voters don’t like what they have done, they can vote them out of office at the time of the next election. Doing that is not “torturing” democracy as a concept cannot be tortured. Nor is the governing party torturing public servants. They are employees. If they don’t like what they have been asked to do, they can resign and find another job. That is the daily reality of most who work in the private sector.
Mendes: “There is increasing evidence that the Harper government does not seem to get this fundamental tenet of Canadian democracy.”
Actually, it is Prof. Mendes that does not get that an elected government has the right to insist that the public service develop and promote policies — whether the public service agrees with them or not. That is what all employees are expected to do if they want to keep their jobs.
Mendes: “These issues are beyond partisan politics and go to the core of Canadian democracy. It is primarily in totalitarian regimes that there is little use for an independent public service, or judicial or quasi-judicial bodies that seek to promote the public interest regardless of politics. The undermining of the public service of Canada should be one of the most important ballot box issues in the coming federal election.”
The public service of Canada is not an independent body. It exists through the Constitution of Canada and the will of the people of Canada and the “elected” Ministers in Her Majesty’s government. Therefore, it is not totalitarian for the government to tell the public service what to do or not do.
The crux of the matter:
To say that I disagree with Professor Mendes would be an understatement. What he is suggesting, even if obliquely, is anarchy – saying that public servants should not have to develop and promote policies they disagree with. To put it bluntly, tough! Rather, what they ought to do, is resign on principle as was recently done by Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh.
Actually, it is Prof. Mendes that does not get that an elected government has the right to insist that the public service develop and promote policies — whether the public service agrees with them or not.
– Monty88.
Not quite. The proper role of the public service is the efficient cost-effective implementation of public policy determined by the elected government. It doesn’t develop policy and should not be promoting anything.
No one wants the public service to express its approval, genuine or faked, of government policy. A professional public service is neutral – has no view on the policy itself, only on the most effective way of executing it.
Everything old is new again. Diefenbaker ran into the same garbage from the self-appointed guardians of canerduh in the day.
Fire. Them. All.
Good post EBD. A very good Question. Frankly last time I heard where a Democracy not an amalgamated Bureaucracy. They just don’t comprehend their not top of the heap. The voters are. It maddens them like a bull stuck with pinions. After all the players change while they stay. Moving this be-mouth about, or shaking it up. Would be in Canada’s best interest. If not getting rid of half of them.
These folks are loons.
JMO
You will note that Mendes is neither a public servant or a useful contributor to society in any other sense.
A self appointed moral and intellectual better to you and I who has been given a soapbox and a megaphone by the MSM.
File under know your enemy.
Where’s this guy Mendes from? I was hoping for a Wiki entry, or something, to tell us more about this guy’s background. Somehow, I don’t think there’d be too many surprises.
He gives me the creeps.
The undermining of the public service of Canada should be one of the most important ballot box issues in the coming federal election.
I’m all for that! I’ll vote for whoever’s going to do the undermining!
For batb@6:33pm, from the “know your enemy” file:
Born in Kenya, East Africa, Professor Mendes obtained his Bachelor of Law
degree from the University of Exeter, England, where he ranked first in
his graduating class. He obtained his Master of Laws degree from the
University of Illinois in the United States. He was called to the Bar of
Ontario in 1986.
Thanks, turtle. I rather thought that he was one of our newer immigrants who feel entitled to trash our institutions and traditions. I wonder why I got that feeling?
He may have come first in his class, but that was in England which was fast going to the dogs when Mr. Mendes was taking his degree in Exeter.
Mr. Mendes does not know the role of the public service in Canada. He hasn’t done his homework or, if he has, he’s revised it to his way of thinking.
That’s not on. And, visible minority status does not give him the “rights” or “freedoms” to play around with our institutions which have offered very generous hospitality to him.
I am getting very tired of newcomers to Canada telling us WHAT to do. He has no right to do this and it is arrogance in the extreme for him to do so and to get his facts so terribly skewed. No excuses. He’s got a university education, he’s a lawyer, and he should know better.
If he doesn’t, maybe he needs to go back to school.
I too, am getting very tired of newcomers to Canada telling us WHAT to do. I’m also getting tired of ignorant racists who have no reading comprehension skills completely misinterpreting what Mendes said:
“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.”
and…
“What the government can’t do…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.”
HAS THE RIGHT VS. WHAT IT SHOULDN’T DO.
Example:
Tony “Liar, liar, pants on fire” Clements saying “I asked [Statistics Canada] specifically, ‘Are you confident you can do your job?’ They said ‘If you do these extra things: the extra advertising and the extra sample size, then yes, we can do our job.'”
Ya’ know what sum injun?
If I went to another country as a new immigrant, all puffed up because I was a lawyer and teaching at a university, and began to tell them what to do, how they should run their government, what was wrong with their prime minister or president, using inflammatory language to make my point, do you think what I had to say would be welcomed by the citizens who had built the society whose rights and freedoms I was enjoying?
Turn the tables around. Use your imagination. It’s not that hard to do.
And stop throwing the “r” word around. There’s no misinterpretation of Mr. Mendes’ intentions, to tell the CPC government to stop doing what they were elected to do and to fall in line with what the entrenched civil (sic) servants think PMSH and the CPC MPs should do:
“torture Canadian democracy”?, “a deep chill in many departments”?, “the fearless advice offered by public servants against the destructive ideologies of perhaps Canada’s most ideologically driven government”?
This is not measured language, but ideologically driven propaganda by a man who financially supports the Liberal Party of Canada. Mr. Mendes tortures the English language and reasoned thinking.
Nice one, EBD! Maybe if Stephen Harper gets his majority he will further “undermine the public service” by laying off three-quarters of them. Canadian taxpayers should be so lucky.
“If I went to another country as a new immigrant, all puffed up…”
Posted by: batb at August 3, 2010 10:22 PM
Stop throwing the “r” word around?!? Sure…when you stop complaining about the uppity nignogs having opinions and all that. I suppose living in Canada for almost 30 years makes makes him a “new immigrant” who is not entitled to speak against our Dear White Leader.
Now go fetch your husband his slippers, crack open a beer for him and then go finish doing the dishes.
The bureaucracy is a creature of he liberal establishment. You can bet they aren’t helping the government.
Bureaucrats living on the immoral proceeds of government.
I don’t Mendes is confused at all. For his liberal establishment pals, the liberal party is the natural governing party and it is only right that this liberal establishment should continue to govern as it has, even if the actual party isn’t in power.
sum injun: ” … when you stop complaining about the uppity nignogs having opinions …”
What a pile of crap. “nig nog”? Doesn’t compute.
Anyone whose heritage in Canada goes back centuries or is a newcomer to Canada has a right to freedom of expression, no matter what colour, creed, or ethnic background. Mr Mendes certainly does. And, so do I.
However, when what you express is hogwash and bears no resemblance to reality, when you create straw men to knock down, and suggest as a replacement your own view of how Canadian democracy should operate, then you’re on thin ice.
Mr. Mendes is on thin ice. (And, I’m not even sure he knows how to skate.)
Just because he thinks he’s entitled and special doesn’t get him off the hook when it comes to knowing the mandate of the Canadian civil service in relation to the duly elected representatives of the people in Parliament. Canada isn’t a banana republic yet, although if it were to go in the direction that Mr. Mendes suggests, it would be. He’d have the tail wagging the dog.
Well, no thanks.
PS. sum injun:
Mr. Mendes is “uppity” (your word) in his position as a lawyer and university professor who hasn’t done his homework. With his education, he knows better, he’s simply chosen to repeat the lazy, left-lib mantras of Harper and the CPC, bad; Liberal-appointed bureaucracy, good.
Many of us are heartily tired of this worn-out shoe: It’s ugly, it doesn’t support us anymore, and it stinks.
You’ve got it backwards, John P: First, the crypto-communist who is the current US President didn’t bail out GM as part of any attempt to bolster the private sector. And once the bailout took place, we were more or less force to do the same thing on a smaller scale or else lose a big part of our auto sector to the US.
No, I don’t have it backwards. Gov’t has been appropriated by a “private” sector that is populated by utterly short-sighted and incompetant quangos. Various financial and business interests pretty much dictate the policies the public mistakenly believes have been drawn up by the gov’t manderins.
When Liberals bureaucrats opened up the doors and brought over elderly family members of immigrants from (relatively) backwards nations they weren’t doing the bidding of the private sector, they were importing *Liberal Voters.* Do you think that the private sector was asking for 70-year-old Sikh/Pakistani women to be brought over for “cheap labour”?
Mass immigration isn’t a liberal thing. Mulroney was an even bigger fan of immigration than Trudeau ,and had nothing but praise for multiculturalism, a term that is just code for cheap labour. Those immigration policies were devised and implemented at the behest of various business groups. You can bet your mortgage that if those business owners ( AND THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF THEM!) employing illegals were to be fined or even sent to prison, the probleme of illegals would be far, far less than it is today.
The dupe advocacy groups defending illegals are laregly left-wing in nature, but they’re just idiots doing all the thankless grunt work that ultimately does little more than provide cheap labour for the benefit of your local chamber of commerce. Any social/health-care costs ( ie elderly parents) involving illegals and immigrants are picked up by us working stiffs. Gov’t doesn’t really draw up nor even advocate for these policies, they just rubber stamp ’em.