Law Alone Not Enough

I came across a reflection on the implementation of law, once written. The following quote is by Linda E. Ledray, R.N., Ph.D., Recovering from Rape, Henry Holt and Company. New York, NY, 1986, pp 216-217:

Laws alone won’t stop rape. The laws are only as good as the people who enforce them….

When the government decided it was time to stop litter, an active campaign was launched across the country and littering was essentially stopped in many areas. When a West Coast city elected a woman mayor who took an interest in stopping rape, there was significantly less rape. Perhaps when more women are sitting in the House and Senate, preventing rape will become as important as curtailing litter.

Barring the little detail that American mayors have more authority to act than Canadian mayors do, we can see the principle that Dr. Ledray is proposing. One person’s vision does matter.

Dr. Ledray closes her manual with core reflections for women. Only self-reliance will relieve fear and conflict. Dependence relieves it only for a short time. It is false security. Women must become strong, independent, self-reliant and in control of their lives and bodies – in short – women must assume their place as equals to men. She backed up this position earlier in the book with a study of various tribal groupings. It was in the tribes in which the women were dependent that rape was occuring in the society.

Change within society starts with the one. It starts with ourselves.

Unofficial Flows of Communication

Is Everyone Up to Speed?

Unofficial flows of communication within bureaucracy are, well, unofficial. As such, they are difficult if not impossible to pin down in any systemic way. Best guess is that unofficial channels of information do several things: they are convenient, likely interactive with feedback, have the danger of missing out on letting certain people in the department know what is going on, and leave no paper trail. All of these features have an up side to it and a down side. Office dynamics often place a crucial role in the healthiness of unofficial flows of communication. Nevertheless, the twenty-one organizational charts for the City of St. Catharines back in 1994 clearly fall into linear patterns of hierarchical control.

Work reports are quite linear. The information moves from lead hand to foreman, to senior clerk, to manager, to director and then to the City Administrator. So far so good. Straight forward chain of command.

Understandably there are weekly meetings of all department heads. Copies of departmental reports are discussed. Reports which are going to be cancelled are reviewed and reports for information purposes are given. Specific developments on an issue which need to be voted on are brought forward.

Tom Derek, City Clerk in 1994, received all correspondence and passed grant requests on to the various departments and other matters which arise. It is the City Clerk’s department which prepares all information for city council meetings.

Hiring, firing and disciplining for the departments is centralized in the personnel department. They take on an advisory position in the case of grievence meetings and in disciplining meetings. Yet, managers do have a say in who is hired, fired, and disciplined. The supervisor/manager interviews the applicant with the personnel officer to ensure that the interview is fair and consistant among all applicants. The supervisor reviews the specific job requirements which had been listed with the job title. The hierarchy is explained so they know the chain of command.

We can see the stove pipe model of governance which Sheila Copps referred to in Worth Fighting For and I referenced in a previous blog. Input from workers “on the bottom” of the hierarchy to improve and integrate the system is lacking.

The clerical and technical workers are unionized. Postings are thus primarily made on a seniority basis and not necessarily according to the best person for the job. There are always thorough documented interview processes in case the decision concerning the choice of who is promoted goes to arbitration. Consistancy of questions and the presentation of questions helps to offset problems of accusations of unfair hiring practices later by the union. This interview time may be the only opportunity for the personnel officer to meet the employee.

The job description for each job is very specific. To avoid inflexibility the last requirement has a catch-all phrase “to perform other related duties.” This gives the employers and supervisors some latitude in making requests of an employee and in expecting the employee to comply as part of the job.

The senior clerk of the engineering department coordinates the work of the engineering team. There are coordinating functions in the Parks and Recreation Department as well as party chiefs who survey crews. There is no hint of creative interplay between departments for future policy planning. Considering that both “Parks” and “Recreation” are integral to a healthy lifestyle both in ecology and physical fitness, this older administrative model that harked from a more physically active society is not adequate to our present needs.

Max Weber

How Does Weber’s Bureaucratic Traits Track in your Municipal Government?

Weber’s Bureaucracy1
1.Weber’s description of a bureaucracy presents itself as a hierarchical structure, a unity of command. This indicates that there is no conflict in the flow of authority and consequently with the lack of conflict, there is unity. For each position in the hierarchy there is only one supervisor providing a clear line of authority with responsibilities allocated to subordinates in clear unambiguous terms.
2.Specialization of labour is also essential according to Weber. As a person specializes, skills are more nearly perfected and output is more efficient.
3.Employment and promotion is based on merit. This removes the partisan and fovouritism tendencies in choosing staff. The best person for the job is chosen.
4.Full-time employment ensures willingness, dedication and ability to abide by organizational regulations in carrying out duties.
5.Decisions based on impersonal rules toward the public ensures fairness to the public. Also, internal decisions based on impersonal rules protect fairness in the workplace. Impersonal rules also engender rigidity and immobility.
6.Written files are kept of decisions made under established rules and guidelines. This ensures an obedience to established rules over obedience to a superior. A superior does not have the power to arbitrarily change rules and procedures.

How does this work in practice? February 10, 1994 I interviewed Joanne Potter, the personnel assistant for the City of St. Catharines, Ontario at City Hall. I ased her the following indirect interview questions to reveal possible Weberian traits.

Trait 1: Hierarchical Structure
Are there flows of communication and reporting in the workplace which the organizational chart overlooks?
Do workers report their work to more than one individual?
Do several copies of reports go to various departments?
What is the role of the personnel department of hiring, firing and disciplining? Is it advisory?
Do managers have a say in who is hired, fired, and disciplined? Is the responsibility divided?

Trait 2: Specialization of Labour
Is there a job description for every job?
Are there certain departments which have a diverse range of activities for each worker, perhaps in a coordinating capacity?
Are some of the workers rotated on the job periodically?

Trait 3: Employment and Promotion based on Merit
How do you advertise to fill vacancies?
What do you look for when you interview?
How do you make hiring decisions?

Trait 4: Full-time Employment
Are there part-time staff? Is the majority full time?
If so, where are the part-time staff on the organizational chart?
Is there a higher turnover rate in part time staff than with the full time staff?

Trait 5: Decisions based on Impersonal Rules
Is there some mobility with the various departments to meet people’s special needs that may have been previously unanticipated in the guidelines?
Is there an operating manual or a book of procedures for departments? Is it exhaustive or general in nature?
Are these procedures communicated down to staff and to new people on staff?
Do new staff receive an orientation and initial training?
What is the chain of events to implement new rulings passed by city hall?

Trait 6: Written Records
When people make decisions, how are they communicated to other people in the department and to other departments? For example, how does engineering communicate a decision to the planning department?
Is there a reliance upon word of mouth or memos in the bulk of the day to day communication?

There is an interrelationship between the questions and you may find when you ask your administrative assistant these and other questions that some of these later questions will have been answered when responding to earlier questions.

What other questions can you think of upon reflection of previous blogs posted here? Enquire about their advice on improving the organizational model. Do they want more input and respect concerning their expertise regarding policy development? Have there been trust issues in the past between administration and city councillors? If so, what was done to mend the breach? You get the idea.

Local Admin IV – full-time employment

 

Full-time Employment

Full-time employment, according to Weber, is used as a dependency on income mechanism to exert greater control over the worker.¹ Full time workers prevail, functioning well for continuity of communication within departments and outside departments. In terms of Weber’s contention that employees are more agreeable to direction and control when full-time, I would have to agree that full-time employees have more to lose than those who are working part-time, besides the substantial salary, they lose benefits which are only given to full-time employees. This buys allegience beyond the issues of dedication to the workplace.

Issues of merit and impersonal rules enable city workers to apply to other departments of the Corporation without prejudice. The employee would have to develop the appropriate skills on his or her own time to meet the requirements of the desired job in the other department.

The City Administrator is required to inform the council members of problems with implementing policies as set down so that an issue may be dropped or reevaluated according to advice of the Administrator. Thus impersonal rules do not preclude interaction and negotiation.

Weber’s bureaucratic trait of written records is explicitly kept in municipal bureaucracy. Beyond this, the weekly meetings of departmental heads discuss the overall implications of what each department is doing and discusses any possible conflict and establishes coordinating efforts among the departments.

The elaborate filing system is necessary for further reference to clarify issues as the city continues to grow.

The principle characteristics of a bureaucracy as outlined by Weber is present within the Corporation of St. Catharines. The combination of impersonal rules which encompass chains of command, specialisation of labour, employment and promotion based on merit, full-time employment, and written records along with the presence of the Canadian Union of Public Employeess to protect the workers’ established rights within those rules, ensures an efficiently run organisation that is as diverse as any governmental organisation with various departments. The Corporation of St. Catharines has maximized Weber’s traits of a bureaucracy to ensure continuity, efficiency, and fair dealing.

Is that enough? Is that good enough to serve the increasingly complex urban life we live in?

1Ibid., 36, 37.

Daily Grind of Local Administration, III

Diversification on the municipal clerical job include health and safety requirements for workers at computer terminals to have ten minute breaks every hour from the terminals. Other methods of diversion are to simply do a different thing within the framework of the job to get away from the tedium of a specific task. Office work has enough various components to it that complications of overspecialization and forms of burn out can be offset by pacing and varying the work throughout the day.

Employment and promotion opportunities are listed on all departmental bulletin boards three days before the vacancies are listed for the general public. If employees have the qualifications to meet job requirements within a different department, they are eligable to apply for the job. This example continues to illustrate the separateness, the “stove pipe” quality of bureaucratic organizational structure. Daily or weekly interactions between departments do not occur. There is no thought for innovation to promote a wholistic policy development to the members of city council. Would they listen?

Two part-time clerical staff existed in the St. Catharines City Hall in 1994. Temporary staff filled in for the regular staff when on vacation, maternity leave and sick leave.

Ms. Potter expressed some dismay that the meaning of long term disability has changed. She lamented that people do not try to cope anymore. This did not indicate any lack of compassion or active concern for staff. Her manner was careful when explaining how a couple of times when workers developed stress over time in their jobs that the department altered the job description to enable workers to stay on. Some tasks were given to other workers. The personnel had to negotiate with the union for this breaking of established job descriptions and to rearrange the work load. It was carefully put to me that the jobs in themselves were not stressful. This was a clear case of the personnel department having a human face.

Each Department has its own policy and procedure manual. The Personnel Department manual is updated to get rid of redundant material and to comply with the Human Rights Code.

Policy Changes

The line of communication for policy changes move from the director to the City Administrator, to the department heads who then implement the changes in their departments. If the City Administrator does not approve the policy change or finds it unworkable, the policy “dies” on the spot or it is sent back to city councillors for redrafting. Redrafting is not a turn-down of the policy outright. Yet, innovative problem-solving appears to be lacking. Part-time elected city councillors are left with a need to “please” the City Administrator. Is this too harsh?

Do city councillors work for the electorate or for the City Administrator?

I do not mean to cast aspersions upon City Administrators. They are highly educated, with a great deal of experience, and a work load that would daunt anyone. No one knows better how the City works function than they. However, old organizational structures do tend to keep to a status quo that may well need changing.The style of organization does not lend itself to necessary innovations as each person does their best within the framework passed down to them.

Orientation videos and on-the-job training are part of the new employee package.

Communication

Word of mouth communication is used for only minor events. Anything of a legal nature is always sent by memo. Naturally then, all memos must be carefully kept in a safe and organized manner. All correspondence with the union is kept. The Engineering Department and City Clerks have an elaborate filing system in which all items are numbered and filed.

Comparison

Max Weber predicted that bureaucratic administration would pervaid all forms of organization.¹ The City administrative system depends on legal authority. Weber saw administrative bureaucracy through legal authority as an ideal situation in which laws and regulations must be obeyed by both ruler and ruled. Obedience to a set of impersonal rules instead of primary obedience to a person provides order and prevents chaos.²

Embedded in the hiring process, fair play is ensured. If the personnel department wants to promote someone who does not have seniority, they cannot do so unless they can demonstrate with objective evaluations to the union (CUPE, Canadian Union of Public Employees) why this should be the case.

Conversely, when the personnel office wanted to accommodate staff members who were experiencing stress related to the workplace, the personnel department was required to negotiate with the union workplace adjustments to meet these unique needs. Laws and regulations take precidence over personal inclinations, and personal preferences need to be tested by established rules. 

1Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 36, 37.

2Ibid., 26.

CN Municipal Government II -councillors vs staff

  Differences Between Councillors and Staff

Councillors	Staff
Bring energy to the system. Many radical, new ideas, but frequently not very well thought through.	Concerned with stability. Able to discern the difficulties to be encountered in making major changes.
Highly competative. Important to be seen to win around the council table.	Cooperation more important than competition. To maintain long-term stability, better not to be seen as “winning.”
Needs to take credit for all accomplishments to increase profile	Wants to share credit with others to build future alliances.
Need high profile in order to secure re-election. Won’t want staff taking lime-light.	Prefer low profile. High profile just makes them a target. Alliance building with other staff.
Media publicity is essential to ensure that the public knows of accomplishments and improve chances of re-election.	Media publicity is dysfunctional. Both councillors and fellow staff can become jealous.
Need to make strong and clear statements to be certain that message gets across.	Prefer more tentative statements which allow for later modification. Different tone.
Highly and publicly critical of other levels of government when their actions hurt local government.	Values long-term relationship with staff of other levels of government. Tries to work quietly to accomplish change to flow smoothly.
Policies must be vague enough to attract a coalition and satisfy a number of different groups.	Need very clear policies to facilitate proper implementation.
Very sensitive to concerns of constituents. Wants those concerns handled quickly.	Concerned that numerous individual complaints will strain resources and set bad precedents.

Political neutrality includes between political parties, political groups when council is split, and between policy proposals. Such neutrality encourages politicians to trust administrators as professionals who give the best political advice and preserves administrative independence. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, when the administrator “crosses the line,” then booted out when new council elected in because they do not trust the administrator. This political neutrality is an ideal concept to assess practice. However, is this standard practical?

These issues cover all strata of governance, be it municipal, provincial or federal. Managing policies to serve a large populace is daunting to begin with. Over time various policy implementations have overlapped in certain areas and created gross neglect in others. The difficulty of city departments not coordinating with one another, or even being able to move staff around, is a microcosm of the difficulty of governance overall in the land. Archaic bylaws remain on the books with no means to clean up the build-up of the political developmental debris of building a country. Downloading from the federal or provincial governments to the municipal levels, for whatever reason, creates a bureaucratic and political illusion of progress as we regress into greater and greater disorganization, overlap and ultimate neglect as we struggle, full of integrity, to serve.

One principle Sheila Copps promoted in her book Worth Fighting For (McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2004, 38) was that controversial matters, once decided upon, should be dealth with speedily because the opposed will continue to organize while those who agree move on to other things. Sheila believes this is core to why the Meech Lake Accord failed. Bureaucratic and political effectiveness and efficiency are crucial for fruitful outcomes instead of frustration and political dispair and public apathy.

Another principle is the basic rule of collective bargaining: don’t speak until the agreement signed. It is a liability to like hearing yourself talk.

I shall continue with federal insights Sheila gave on administration as it also is relevant to municipal administration (Copps, 127).

The nature of decision making is departmental. Departments have already established spending priorities by the time a cabinet committee is reached. It is difficult to get real structural change. Structural change must come at the beginning of the process. The cabinet process needs to be collaborative from the start.

Re-engineer government with a consensus management model with quality circles of collaboration. The current hierarchy in government is not optimal with stove pipes of government with separate verticle departments having no contact with one another making it virtually impossible to build ground-up consensus. “…as a result we have a dispirited public service that questions the value of their own input” (Copps, 128).  Much of their time is tied up in process, not in output.

Departments and regions have their own method of collecting data and have different computer systems so documents cannot be sent via the internet. Much personal time is used in tracking paper, not in producing creative policy. None of this is efficient, effective or economical.

Canadian Municipal Administration

Municipal government is not entrenched in the Canada Constitution Act. The province can withdrw this structure at any time. City/municipal Council forms Committees and direct the Departments. The Chief Administrative Officer has less control than the American counter-part, relying on providing perspective to the members and votes only to break a tie vote. For the American mayor, the role is of the city manager, leader. The more American system runs like this:

1.No special purpose bodies, no committees.
2.Council, small council, non-partisan election.
3.City manager.
4.Departments.

Economic Development liase with existing businesses to ensure existing businesses are happy, take part in new business development. Inventory of available land is within the planning department.

Problems crop up in municipal administration:
1.Built-in fragmentation: intergovernmental, political leadership, special purpose bodies, departmental.
2.Staff development: because of departmental fragmentation, can’t shift to other departments, can’t get an overall view for planning.
3.Development of management: operational, support, no one knows the whole development structure except CAO.
4.Council-staff relations. How can proper relationship between council and staff be maintained? How can council and staff develop a positive working relationship? Eg.- no separation of policy and administration. Avoid loss of trust. Not to be criticized in public or they will not give best advice but advice you want to hear.

Politics and policy are separated from administration. Politicians make policy decisions. Public servants execute these decisions.

Public servants are appointed and promoted on the basis of merit, rather than on relationships with any group of councillors (however, that may happen at smaller centres), avoiding political activity at the local level and would be wise to avoid activity at the federal and provincial levels as well. Councillors may be involved federally or provincially.

Public servants provide objective advice to their political masters openly and honestly. They make recommendations presenting all available options in a balanced manner. In return, politicians recognize that administrators are using their best judgement and do not criticize them in public for providing honest and forthright advice.

Public servants execute policy decisions loyally, irrespective of their personal views; as a result, public servants enjoy freedom from public criticism by councillors and security of tenure during good behaviour and satisfactory performance. Managers live their lives in the world of politics, and their success as managers is based on their ability to adapt, survive and handle this milieu. Loss of trust with council is one’s death-knell, not the technical things of the job. At the federal level, Sheila Copps said it well: (Worth Fighting For, McClelland & Stewart, Ltd., T.O., 2004, 103) as Minister of Environment, Sheila demanded action from the assistant deputy minister. In response, “Minister, I have outlived seven of your predecessors and I expect I will outlive you. I have to get along [survive] in this town.”

Councillors’ complaints about staff:
1.resist new ideas,
2.too controlling, prevent councillor from presenting new ideas,
3.too slow, lots of research for a couple of pages,
4.unclear reports and advice.

Staff complaints about Council:
1.vague direction with different signals from different people,
2.vacillation,
3.ignore advice, making political choice,
4.public criticism of staff by Councillors.

Our traditional concept holds that it is politicians on top and experts on tap whereas there is a clear division of policy and administration. It is evident that local government is different. Council is seen as ‘a group of anarchists unified by a common parking lot’ in which the executive is not unified. Staff is working for a group of individuals. A local public servant can state a position on an issue, not confidential advice as with provincial or federal governance. Locals work person to person, yet in memos (a group exercise) when a federal or provincial public servant.
Phases of policy-making:

1.The agenda is set with development of policy by staff and council.
2.Around the table, adopt policy.
3.Once the policy is set and ready to go, the staff are dominant to implement said policy. Oversight mechanisms are necessary for the wise councillor to avoid too much “slippage.”

Politicians feel the need to be involved in administration to deal with complaints. Administrators are involved in policy to alert the councillors of administrative issues, assist in setting the agenda, give policy advice, reveal implementation issues to “tweek” policy for maximum effectiveness, and provide evaluation of policy.

Public servants are involved in policy development beyond purely technical advice, and policy implementation subject to imprecise council direction, and a need to negotiate with affected interests to avoid political debate with citizen’s groups.

Role of Senior Management
1.operational over daily issues,
2.to support council, every situation is new with each encounter,
3.development for the future, encourage council planning.

Modes of Interaction:
1.written reports by staff
2.verbal reports as staff respond to questions, directed through the chair to prevent debate with councillor on top and staff on tap.
3.Questions.
4.Meetings.

Canadian Bureaucracy IV

End Notes

1.W.D. Kenneth Kernaghan, Bureaucracy in Canadian Government, (Toronto:Methuen Publications, 1969) 71.
2.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, 2nd edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 341.
3.Rais A. Khan and James D. McNiven, An Introduction to Political Science, 4th edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 300.
4.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada, 2nd edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 342, 343.
5.Ibid., 343.
6.Lord Bridges, The Relationship between Ministers and the Permanent Departmental Head, Canadian Public Administration (1964) vol. 7, in The Machinery of Government in Canada, Audrey D. Doerr, (Toronto: Methuen, 1981) 81.
7.Audrey D. Doerr, The Machinery of Government in Canada, (Toronto: Methuen, 1981) 78.
8.Rais A. Khan and James D. McNiven, An Introduction to Political Science, 4th edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 281.
9.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, 2nd edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 368.
10.Ibid., 368.
11.Ibid., 374.
12.Rais A. Khan and James D. McNiven, An Introduction to Political Science, 4th edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 299.
13.Ibid., 300.
14.14. Ibid., 287.
15.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, 2nd edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 380, 402.
16.Audrey D. Doerr, The Machinery of Government in Canada, (Toronto: Methuen, 1981) 42.
17.Rais A. Khan and James D. McNiven, An Introduction to Political Science, 4th edition (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 289.
18.John Meisel, The Formulation of Liberal and Conservative Programmes in the 1957 Canadian General Election, in Bureaucracy in Canadian Government, W.D. Kenneth Kern, (Toronto: Methuen Publications, 1969) 80.
19.W.D. Kenneth Kernaghan, Bureaucracy in Canadian Government, (Toronto: Methuen Publications, 1969) 80.
20.Ibid., 81.
21.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, 2nd edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 384.
22. Audrey D. Doerr, The Machinery of Government in Canada, (Toronto: Methuen, 1981) 43, 77.
23.Ibid., 88.
24.Ibid., 86.
25.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Siegel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, 2nd edition, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 164.
26.Ibid., 172.
27.Ibid., 175.
28.Ibid., 175.
29.Ibid., 175.
30.Ibid., 381.
31.Ibid., 382.
32.Ibid., 389.
33.Ibid., 390, 391.
34.C.E.S. Franks, The Parliament of Canada in Public Administration in Canada a Text, Kenneth Kernaghan and David Deigel, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 394, 396.
35.Kenneth Kernaghan and David Seigel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1991) 168.
36.Ibid., 172.
37.Ibid., 173.
38.Ibid., 174.
39.Ibid., 371.
40.Ibid., 176.
41.Ibid., 177.
42.Ibid., 178.
43.Ibid., 179.

Bibliography

Doearn, G. Bruce and Peter Aucoin, Public Policy in Canada, Toronto, Macmillan Co., 1979.
Doerr, Audrey D., The Machinery of Government in CanadaToronto, Methuen, 1981.
Khan, Rais A. And James D. McNiven, An Introduction to Political Science, 4th edition, Scarborough, Nelson Canada, 1991.
Kernaghan, Kenneth and David Seigel, Public Administration in Canada a Text, 2nd edition, Scarborough, Nelson Canada, 1991.

Canadian Bureaucracy III

There is a conscious effort to harness the bureaucracy as all ministers have a small personal staff to exercise political control. Further control is in effect through orders in council approved by the Governor in Council establishing rules between public servant conduct and the public. Public servants are restricted in the information which is available to the public and specify what information is to be released among other specifications of conduct. Finally, internal departmental regulations are issued which are binding on all departmental officials (35). Controls are in place to limit the acknowledged influence which the bureaucracy has.

Prime Minister Trudeau issued cost-effectiveness and systems analysis to assist him in attaining specific goals and in using central agencies as competing sources of information. Final decisions were more in the Prime Minister’s hands and the bureaucratic role became more diffuse but not lessened (36). An increase in information generation required the expansion in size and influence of the bureaucracy in political decisions.

Prime Minister Mulroney utilized brokerage politics, drawing power closer to him so that he can better orchestrate accommodating varying interests. This was a shift from Trudeau’s model of rationality. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) rose in importance as the core of public servants in the Privy Council Office decreased in influence (37).

The central agency of the PMO is responsible for planning and coordinating major new policy initiatives and advising on appointments and nominations. Prime Minister Mulroney overturned Trudeau’s tradition of making partisan appointments and appointed several permanent public servants to the office. Such a move further increased political influence of the public service. The public service was even more directly involved with fighting the flash fires of the urgent to protect the flow of implementing the important, thus directly managing the elected offfice of the Prime Minister (38). Mulroney authorized each minister to hire a chief of staff as the minister’s chief political advisor (39). This action diminished further the non-partisan nature of the bureaucracy.

The central agency of the Federal-Provincial Relations Office reports directly to the Prime Minister. Having once been a unit of the Privy Council Office, its secretary to Cabinet status is just below that of the clerk of the Privy Council. It has developed the expanded role of dealing with policy issues and the efficiency of the federal-provincial structure. Any intergovernmental program is succeptible to Federal-Provincial Relations Office intervention. The formation of this branch underscores the growing dependence on the civil service to keep the political machinery flowing efficiently and the dependency of the Prime Minister upon this arm of bureaucracy (40).

The Treasury Board Secretariat has influence upon the political arena as it is merely given general guidelines from the Cabinet Committee on Priorities and Planning and the Department of Finance for it to set spending guidelines for operating departments. It has the power to negotiate the evolution of programs whether they start new ones, diminish old ones, or to close certain programs altogether (41).

The Office of the Comptroller General shares with the Treasury Board Office in making regulations concerning financial management. The OCG guides and directs the financial evaluations of all government departments. The ultimate goal of the Treasury Board is to ensure the wise use of both financial and human resources (42), an area of control over what the government can and cannot do. Until Canada gets its fiscal house in order, this agency will limit the implementation of the politically desirable ideal. The influence of this department on politics has increased and will continue to be great at least for the short term in the present economic climate [as viewed in original writing].

The Department of Finance is more advisory, thus indirectly powerful, to Cabinet than the direct interventionist approach of the Treasury Board. The Department of Finance influences only if its advice is accepted and utilized by Cabinet. Its concern with economic policy does give it the mandate to intervene at relevant points in the policy development process (43).

The influence of the bureaucracy upon government politics has grown to entrenchment at a time when management and coordination of bureaucracy has become more crucial for efficacy and evaluation. As political parties continue to depend upon the expertise of bureaucracy, the government’s dependency and the bureaucracy’s increasing influence is assured.

We need an increase of outside non-political systems analysts of political bureaucracy just as we have government auditors to keep the bureaucracy fulfilling the legislative mandates and to offset political ideologies, burnout and to provide more civil servants to avoid cutting corners, and failures of updating public servants to policy changes.

Canadian Bureaucracy II

More Flexibility

Departmental managers were requiring more flexiblility in managing. By the mid-1970′s there was an effort to coordinate approval for resources allocation with already approved programs to efficiently meet objectives (22). Goals and objectives are established in implementable terms by the bureaucracy in a way that gives flesh to a policy. The efficacy of these actions are then evaluated and affect the perceived viability of the policy the actions were meant to implement (22).

Bureaucratic political influence increased even more when by 1976 individuals were being recruited to executive positions more according to policy skills than to any development of management skills (23).

The governmental departments which have the greatest power and thereby the greatest political influence are those which have:

overall political leadership and strategy, foreign policy and the foreign implications of domestic policy fields, aggregate economic and fiscal policy, the basic legal and judicial concepts and values of the state, and the overall management of government spending programmes (25).

One such department is the Privy Council Office. One of the six full-fledged central agencies, (26) the most senior public servant in the Privy Council Office is the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Secretary to the Cabinet. This is considered the most senior federal public servant. Staffed by career public servants, the Privy Council Office is politically sensitive but not suppose to be partisan (27). Its two primary roles are support for the Cabinet and Cabinet committees and advice on machinery of government (28). The secretariat attached to each Cabinet committee gives advisory input on new policy initiatives or possible solutions to ongoing problems. In this milieu interdepartmental problems are resolved. Political influence is underscored as the Privy Council Office is involved in setting Cabinet committee agendas and in briefing the committee chairperson (29).

It is obvious that bureaucracy has immense influence but it does not have absolute power. If the actions of the bureaucracy damages the reputation of a minister there may be a Cabinet shuffle or a return to a backbench for the M.P. (30. This also damages the reputation of the bureaucracy inspite of public service anonymity (31). Anonymity ensures the freedom of the public bureaucrat to give the best input possible to the minister without the scrutiny of the public eye. Individual ministerial responsibility keeps a balance of power which provides the bureaucrat with a task to perform with respectable responsibility.

Prime Minister Trudeau revealed by an example in a press conference on December 22, 1969 that the Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and his team were largely responsible for the development of the north and the whole Indian policy (32). Breaking the convention of anonymity, Trudeau admitted the immence influence which the superbureaucrat deputy minister and the bureaucratic team wields in shaping public policy.

The Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments (now the Standing Joint Committee on Regulatory Scrutiny) observed in 1980:
There are also traditions in the Public Service, most notably in the drafting of statutes and subordinate legislation, which are more in keeping with administrative ease than in accountability to Parliament and observance of the law. The absence of a clearly articulated philosophy of respect for liberty and propriety in the activities of the executive government of Canada is a serious problem (33).

I suggest that the settling and the founding of this country is permeated with its pragmatic roots of the Hudson’s Bay Company which predispose the citizens of the land to accept administrative rationales of a bureaucracy. Coupling this with a growing distrust of politicians the citizens feel security and continuity in the bureaucracy. In this mood of the country’s citizens it is not so surprising that this administrative amending of policy does not receive much media attention.

Although bureaucratic committees fill a secondary place in the parliamentary process, these committees as Franks notes “are now stronger and more influential than they ever have been in the past” (34).