Policy skills at risk, observer fears
There are not a lot of policy ideas floating around Ottawa these days because cabinet ministers don’t ask for any and public servants may not be offering them.
As Mel Cappe, one of Canada’s former top bureaucrats puts it, there is a “supply and demand” problem for ideas in public policy. On the supply side, there is a shrinking number of smart policy analysts and researchers in the public service.
That’s exacerbated on the demand side, where ministers are not asking for evidence or advice.
And to use the analogy of the free market further, Cappe argues the policy role of Canada’s public service is in a deep “secular decline” to which he sees no end in sight.
“Ideology doesn’t need analysis, and if you have the answers you don’t need questions, and that’s where we are these days,” said Cappe, a longtime deputy minister and former clerk of the Privy Council Office.
“The public service runs the risk of being in decline and if this continues to happen, Canadians will be worse off,” Cappe said.
That idea vacuum was evident in last week’s throne speech, which laid out a “consumer-first agenda” that Cappe says was more in line with the ideology of individuals having the right to choose in the marketplace than evidence-based policy.
“It wasn’t a speech from the throne that provided a strategic direction filled with ideas but rather was tinkering with minor issues,” he said.
Cappe is delivering a guest lecture on this “supply and demand” public service at the University of Ottawa on Monday evening. Organizers at the Public Policy Forum say the lecture is attracting a lot of interest in a city that used to live on big ideas led by the latest evidence.
“I think we are at a very important watershed in the evolution of the public service and its future role,” said Public Policy Forum president David Mitchell.
Cappe believes a decline will leave Canadians worse off because they face public policy issues of a magnitude and complexity never confronted before — climate change, aging populations, labour shortages, Arctic sovereignty, energy and the list goes on.
The government needs people who can “deconstruct” issues, consider options and make recommendations. If the government stops listening, he said, the public service will stop giving advice and will lose that skill.
Cappe worries about ministers who come to the table with readymade policies while public servants are ignored, told to implement them or asked to shape the evidence to support them.
“Our problems have never been more complicated and we have never had better analytic tools to deal with them, but the government seems to be going in the other direction … and not asking for advice and counsel and losing the capacity to deal with those issues. … The problem is less (policy) is being done and ministers are coming in with the solutions.”
Evidence is the backbone of decision-making, he said. Cappe has been an outspoken critic of the Conservative government’s decision to scrap the long-form census and replace it with a voluntary survey, which he calls a “goddamned shame” because it leaves a huge information gap that undermines the value of nearly a century of census data.
“The issue isn’t whether advice is followed or not but whether public servants can prepare the work they need for ministers to make decisions ... Let the minister choose whether to take or ignore the advice, but they should hear it. Let the minister choose to ignore the evidence, but don’t allow them not to have the evidence in front of them.
“I never expected my advice to be followed, but it was heard, listened to and taken into account. When the government did what it thought was politically the right thing to do and I was heard, I was successful whether they followed my advice or not. But if public servants don’t get heard, it’s not a good thing for the country.”
Many think-tanks and advocacy groups do strong research, but others don’t, and the public service historically helped sort the wheat from the chaff, he said.
“The focus of analysis has shifted from the public service and now comes from an array of groups but we still need someone whispering in the ear (of government) who says whether it’s BS or not. We need a filter and the public service played that role.”
The role of the neutral bureaucrat whose job it is to provide policy analysis and advice to ministers has been shifting for 30 years after politicians decided they wanted more say in policy-making.
Over the same period, governments focused more on fiscal restraint than on big, bold policy ideas and Canadians elected governments they thought would deliver efficient and cost-effective government.
As politicians called more of the shots on policy, the public service’s primacy in providing advice was unseated by think-tanks, NGOs, universities, advocacy groups and lobbyists, which all fight for a say in shaping policy.
That trend was underway by the time the Conservatives came to power, but relations between politicians and bureaucrats deteriorated as the government tightened its grip on communications and management in a bid to remake the public service, which many say the Conservatives find too big, too independent and overpaid.
Years of steady budget cuts have also chipped away at the bureaucracy’s policy capacity. Cuts to operational budgets in the 1980s forced deputy ministers to reduce spending on policy so they could keep delivering programs and services to Canadians.
By the 1990s, the Liberals’ massive program review eliminated entire policy shops. After the downsizing, then-PCO Clerk Jocelyne Bourgon tried to restore policy capacity by creating the Policy Research Initiative. Successive clerks similarly tried to rebuild policy capacity out of discretionary spending.
The fear is the Conservative government’s call in the throne speech for further spending cuts in operations will bring more policy cuts.
The public service still runs several elite recruitment programs for policy analysts, such as one at Finance Canada, the accelerated economists program and the Recruitment of Policy Leaders, which are aimed at finding top talent in all disciplines for fast-tracking to senior policy jobs.
Cappe said those recruits, from 50 to 100 people a year, may help “rejuvenate” but they aren’t bringing in the critical mass of analysts needed to reverse the decline.
“The public service is a source of policy advice and if they don’t exercise those muscles and have some capacity, those skills will atrophy and if the pendulum ever swings back for (big ideas) those skills won’t exist,” said Mitchell.
“A short-termism is affecting all governments, to the next throne speech or budget and medium to long-term policy development isn’t a priority. Can Canadians count on government to look at what challenges we face over generations?”