Federal public servants too afraid to speak truth to those in power: study
Canada’s public service leaders have a problem telling the truth to their political bosses.
A new report, Top of Mind, says they feel illequipped to gather evidence for policy advice, especially in a world where facts are distorted and drowned out by disinformation, polarization and hyperpartisan politics.
To make matters worse, they appear afraid to tell their political masters the hard truths when they do find them.
Getting back to the basics in policy-making and execution are among the top worries that senior bureaucrats raised in the new study into the state of the public service in Canada. It was conducted by two think-tanks, the Ottawa-based Institute on Governance (IOG), and the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University.
The study, launched in the middle of the pandemic, was aimed at understanding the challenges these executives face when doing their jobs, which is to provide reliable, well-run services for Canadians as well as policy advice to ministers. It was based on interviews with 42 senior leaders from all levels of government and a survey of 2,355 public servants in the same departments and agencies.
The big worries — which many felt were accelerated by the pandemic — included falling trust in government; the decline in sharing “fearless advice”; a hollowing out of policy capacity; a post-pandemic economic reckoning; conflicts between different levels of government; and the need for public service reform.
The report didn’t dig into the root causes, but the responses raise enough red flags to justify a debate and development of a roadmap for reform, said Stephen Van Dine, IOG’S senior vice-president, public governance.
“We have enough from this report to say we better be looking into this,” he said.
An impartial public service is a cornerstone of Canada’s democracy. Bureaucrats are supposed to speak truth to power. The ethos of “fearless advice and loyal implementation” is its motto, and public servants take an oath to uphold it when hired.
“The participants felt rational thought and evidencebased decision-making are being circumvented by politicization, polarization and disinformation,” said Van Dine.
“Do public servants have access to enough truth to give fearless advice? If all their information is coming from above rather than from networks in and outside government, how much truth is there really? What happened to the role of public education in the policy development process?”
The responses paint a picture of a bureaucracy that’s too isolated from Canadians and not independent enough from politics, said Van Dine.
Over the years, rules restricting travel and hospitality expenses put a damper on public servants’ ability to meet with provincial counterparts, industry representatives and civil society. They aren’t networking, developing contacts outside of government, or educating Canadians about the factors at play in policymaking.
“This has isolated the public service from the outside world and given the outside world the only door into government, which is through the Prime Minister’s Office or a minister’s office,” said Van Dine.
But public servants need new skills and modern technology. They need people who think digital, understand systems, analytics, data and can manage projects. That means attracting people to government and hiring them more quickly than the eight months it takes now.
All of this is having an impact on a long-strained relationship between public servants and ministers. Twothirds of respondents said that relationship was “an important challenge that requires more effective management.”