More and more, public servants are scapegoats

Politicians shifting blame, responsibility a vexing trend,

On June 21, students of Parliament witnessed a historic event.

For the first time in more than 100 years, a non-member of Parliament stood at the Bar of the House of Commons.

Iain Stewart, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), appeared following a Conservative Opposition motion asking the House to find PHAC in contempt of Parliament for not turning over unredacted documents concerning the dismissal of two scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory.

The documents were not produced. In turn, Speaker of the House Anthony Rota formally reprimanded Stewart, who made no statement before he was dismissed.

Under Canada's system of responsible government, ministers answer for the decisions of their departments. The prime minister answers for the government as a whole. Unfortunately, ministerial responsibility has become, as Shakespeare's Hamlet notes, a principle “more honoured in the breach than in the observance.”

The minister of health is responsible for PHAC. Yet the Trudeau government allowed a senior official to endure what amounted to a public shaming. Stewart was almost certainly not acting of his own accord, but in compliance with the government's decision to refuse to release the documents in question.

In his 2003 book Breaking the Bargain, political scientist Donald Savoie warned that the understanding between public servants and politicians was under serious attack.

We continue to witness a disturbing trend in which ministers avoid taking responsibility for their decisions while blaming officials when issues cause discomfort. This tactic, Savoie notes, “breaks the bargain” by which officials offer their non-partisan advice in return for ministers taking public responsibility for departmental decisions.

The documents sought by MPs have become the “MacGuffin” (the literary device that kickstarts the action) in this story, like the letters of transit in the movie Casablanca.

If ministers let officials take the fall, then how can public servants have any confidence that their bosses will stand by them in a crisis?

Instead, the trend toward shirking ministerial responsibility has become a default response — from the Phoenix pay system fiasco, to the sexual misconduct scandal at National Defence, to this most recent episode.

The newspaper photo of Stewart, silent before the Bar of the House, reminded me of the English statesman Thomas More. More paid the ultimate price when he, too, was abandoned by his political master, King Henry VIII. In Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, the Duke of Norfolk pleads with More to agree to the king's demands, “for fellowship.” More's response is a guide for every public servant:

“And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell, for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”

In 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a policy document on “Open and Accountable Government” which underscored “the central tenet of ministerial responsibility, both individual and collective.” In 2021, Trudeau's government allowed a public servant to answer for the government's political choices.

This is an abdication of individual and collective responsibility.

The government has gone to the Federal Court of Canada to prevent the Speaker from releasing the documents sought by the House. Such executive overreach is reminiscent of

King Charles I entering the English House of Commons in 1642 to arrest five MPs. Speaker William Lenthall refused to reveal the whereabouts of the MPs, marking the first time in parliamentary history that the Speaker declared his allegiance to the liberty of Parliament, not to the will of the monarch.

That principle remains as essential now as it was then.

Michael Kaczorowski is a retired federal public servant in Ottawa.