The Madness of Ottawa

[August1991]

Warren Kinsella has posted the speech of a senior Ottawa bureaucrat given to several hundred ADMs. The speech shows that the problem in Canada goes beyond the federal Liberal Party - it includes the upper echelons of the federal public service.

Or you could be a Canadian working ... for one of a depressing number of provincial administrations which substitute partisanship for competence in appointments.

....

A major part of the reason Canada works at all, let alone as well as it does – which is very well indeed – is because the Public Service carried on in spite of all this nonsense.

Kinsella's website

I have avoided the thread about the English-French divide in the federal public service. The politicos in the federal Liberal Party may be arrogant but they're not stupid. The senior civil servants in Ottawa are filled with hubris and they just don't get it.

Canada (and the provinces) works because of ordinary people who get up every day and do a job connected directly to the real world in which they live. Senior civil servants in Ottawa exist in a fantasyland where they believe they make everything go.

[FTA Lawyer]

Canada (and the provinces) works because of ordinary people who get up every day and do a job connected directly to the real world in which they live.  Senior civil servants in Ottawa exist in a fantasyland where they believe they make everything go.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Bravo...

FTA

[fellowtraveller]

The speech in the link is an astonishingly frank and political speech at that level.

I'm surprised.

[August1991]

If you are at all curious about Harry Swain, here is his bio (on a federal government web site that we have all paid for):

Mr. Swain worked in nine federal departments in the period 1971-1995, not counting two years at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Laxenburg, Austria) and one in the BC government. He was deputy minister at the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs during the Oka standoff in 1990 and during the constitutional wars, and he was deputy minister at Industry Canada during the period when the modern department was created.

PSHRMAC

[shoop]

This is a very interesting speech. I don't know if it is a good thing in how raw it is or it is too unprofessional. He makes a lot of good points, but a lot of his points are laughably sad.

Great point! (Albeit poorly written.)

The last two years have been a quite amusing combination of dumb things done just to make the Martin government look different from Mr. Chrétien's - splitting DFAIT for one.

But who is he kidding with this one?

The suspicion that we are no longer the best of all public services.

Did he mean in the world? ba ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. When was that ever true?

I can see if he was comparing the Canadian public service to provincial services...

[Argus]

Finally there are the bits of “policy” that aren’t policy at all, just a frantic attempt to clamp down on all discretion, all creativity, in the name of control. It is said that all this is in aid of preventing another Adscam. Horsefeathers! Even Sheila didn’t say there weren’t enough rules. She said the rules were broken. Two hundred and thirty-eight new rules, plus legions of comptrollers and auditors, will not prevent malfeasance if a prime minister decides that a higher cause justifies playing fast and loose with the rules.

Certainly true on that one. I know it will never wind up being entered as a budget item anywhere, but if my department is any indication, the public service is spending a ghastly fortune on implimenting new rules to avoid misspending. The money is being spent on the costly delays in acquiring goods and services, in the salaries of expensive employees at stunningly high levels wasting massive amounts of time on the minutia of buying everyday things. What could once be done in ten minutes and a phone call can now consume weeks of work, meetings, high level EX involvement, and endless forms and documentation. The amount of money the government has spent on my time alone, because of these added purchasing regulations and processes, plus the wasted salaries (in time) of the people I have personally had to involve on issues concerning my group, would probably buy a reasonably priced car. Just in the last year and a half. Just for my one group.

Multiply that by thousands.

And for what? So we can have all these shiny new rules which will again be ignored at the drop of a hat if the politicians in charge say we should.

[August1991]

Random readings (both short and good) which I'll stick here since they're connected to Madness in Ottawa:

The officer who has most benefited from the PG program is Col. Dominic McAlea, deputy JAG, who has received two advanced degrees at public expense.

In 1989-1990, he completed Master of International Law studies at LSE that included Law of Armed Conflict, International Air Law, Law of the Sea, Environmental Law -- all at an estimated cost of $200,000, including his salary.

After being promoted, Col. McAlea completed a Master of Philosophy in International Relations at Cambridge in 2003-2004. Thanks to Access to Information, travel and housing expenses for him and his family (wife and five kids), kids' education and his tuition costs and books and salary totalled over $300,000.

Worthington

The auditor-general asks repeatedly, in vain, for real tests of the effectiveness of regional development agencies.

Such examples are legion. We cannot discuss openly and critically equalization, regional development, EI or a host of other programs to see if they actually do good, or if they, in fact, corrupt our politics, mire us in dependence, ruin our competitiveness and obstruct efforts to raise our productivity and hence our standard of living.

Crowley - Atlantic Institute