SREN Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Subcommittee on Public Service Renewal of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Monday, February 17, 2003

»

1735

The Chair (Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, CA))

Mr. Scott Serson (President, Public Service Commission of Canada)

»

1740

»

1745

The Chair

Dr. Peter Harrison (Former Chair, Leadership Network, As Individual)

»

1750

»

1755

¼

1800

The Chair

Mr. Arthur Kroeger (As Individual)

¼

1805

¼

1810

The Chair

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—L'Érable, BQ)

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Scott Serson

¼

1835

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Chair

¼

1840

Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.)

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

¼

1845

Mr. Roy Cullen

Dr. Peter Harrison

¼

1850

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.)

¼

1855

Mr. Scott Serson

Dr. Peter Harrison

½

1900

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

Ms. Judy Sgro

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

½

1905

Mr. Scott Serson

The Chair

½

1910

Mr. Odina Desrochers

½

1915

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen

½

1920

Dr. Peter Harrison

Mr. Scott Serson

½

1925

The Chair

Mr. Scott Serson

Mr. Arthur Kroeger

½

1930

Dr. Peter Harrison

The Chair

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CANADA

Subcommittee on Public Service Renewal of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

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NUMBER 003

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Monday, February 17, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

»  (1735)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, CA)): We'll open our meeting today of the Subcommittee on Public Service Renewal of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

    We certainly want to talk about the new bill that has been tabled in the chamber, the MAPS, I suppose we can call it. We will be developing acronyms for it.

    In terms of witnesses, we welcome today Mr. Scott Serson from the Public Service Commission, Mr. Arthur Kroeger and Dr. Peter Harrison. We'll start with some statements, and then we'll probably take a short break, seeing as we're going into the supper hour, and then we'll make our rounds for questions.

    I'd like to start with Mr. Serson, please.

    Mr. Scott Serson (President, Public Service Commission of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I want to commend the subcommittee for embarking on this very relevant examination of requirements for a modern, accountable public service. I actually want to start my contribution to the discussion this evening on the particular theme of the public service culture, rules versus risks, not only from the perspective of my position as president of the Public Service Commission of Canada, but also my observations over 29 years in the public service, starting as a manpower counsellor and working my way through a series of more senior positions.

    I also serve as one of the co-champions on values and ethics in the public service, and this responsibility has provided me with an opportunity to reflect on the issue at hand.

    I'd start by observing that if I was a young public servant reading the Ottawa Citizen last Monday morning, I would have found two perspectives on page 2, one from the President of the Treasury Board, commenting on her desire to see us attract new talent to the public service in the context of human resource management. She was quoted as saying:

I want them to find it attractive, dynamic, innovative and that they are able to take risks. Even if they do make mistakes we don't want to go back to the rules-based approach.

    The other article on page 2 dealt with the public accounts committee reviews of events at Public Works and Government Services Canada. Here the journalist reported:

The committee

    --which I believe to be the public accounts committee--

which has long railed at the government's lax enforcement of contracting rules, pressed for a zero tolerance policy for the breaking and bending of such rules. It said bureaucrats responsible for contracting shouldn't even be considered for promotion unless they have a track record of complying with rules. It also recommended that any public servant who shows a "pattern of disregard" for the rules should be disciplined and fired.

    I don't raise these quotes to comment on them substantively. I just raise them to illustrate the importance and relevance of your work and to underscore that if you're a young public servant, you have the right to some confusion about expectations.

    My premise is that we are currently putting in place in the Public Service of Canada a management framework that seeks to strike a modern balance between a rules-based system, seen as safe, static, and less responsive to the needs of Canadians, and a change-oriented system that recognizes the changes in Canadian society and puts greater emphasis on innovation, risk-taking, and continuous improvements to respond to the needs of Canadians.

    That framework is known in two ways. The short form is the Treasury Board policy on Results for Canadians, which calls for sharpening our focus on the citizen in the design and delivery reporting of government programs, focusing on results achieved and reporting on them, linking spending to results and ensuring that management frameworks ensure responsible spending, and ensuring management in the public service is guided by a clear set of values.

    The longer form, modern controllership, adds some additional important elements: strategic leadership, a workplace that encourages learning, sound risk management, and improved accountability and increased transparency.

    My proposition is that if you have all the elements of that management framework in place and understood by managers and employees, you can more safely empower managers and employees, and perhaps reduce rules. That is what the Public Service Commission has been trying to model in the staffing and recruitment system over the past number of years.

    There are, however, a number of challenges to putting that framework in place. I'll mention just three, at a range of levels.

»  (1740)  

[Translation]

    First, the public service has been trying to reinvent itself for some time in reaction to social and fiscal realities. This challenge is no less complex today. We must deal with new priorities, rapid technological changes, and greater uncertainty around the world.

    At the very beginning of the renewal process, in the early 90's, it had become obvious that we needed to define the fundamental values and ethics of our organization. In this respect, we can be grateful to a specific person and his report. John Tait, a former deputy minister of Justice, chaired a task force responsible for producing the report entitled A Strong Foundation, an innovative study of public service values and ethics.

[English]

    These values and principles affirm what the public service stands for. These values and principles also help make it clear what the public and parliamentarians can expect from their public service and what public servants can expect from each other. My co-champion and I believe strongly it is time for the public service to adopt a statement of principles and values.

    Second, it is in the nature of these values that they may compete with each other. Public servants must often strike the right balance in the face of competing values. For example, prudence and probity may clash with innovation and initiative. Openness may conflict with the need for discretion. The desire for fair and open processes must be balanced with the need for flexibility and operational effectiveness. In fact, this is the challenge of the new legislation on human resource management, defined in part as that right balance between flexibility and fairness.

    The key word is “balance”. Decision-makers must constantly strive to balance competing values and to look at all sides of the problem to find the best balance possible in the circumstances. To support this search for balance, leaders must encourage the creation of work environments where dialogue can flourish. In this way employees will also become more committed to the solution. In fact, one of John Tait's key recommendations was the need for honest dialogue in the public service. That dialogue should focus on real value issues or ethical problems in the workplace and identify actions to address and remedy these problems.

    The capacity for honest dialogue is at the heart of modern public service management. As both the Association of Professional Executives of the Public Service and the public service survey tell us, executive workload may not allow for that opportunity for adequate dialogue at this time.

    The third thing I'd like to emphasize is the importance of balancing programs to establish values and ethics in the public service with effective procedures to correct any misbehaviour. Integrity can only be the goal for the mass of employees if they are reassured that those who misbehave will be identified and dealt with. Policies on staffing, harassment, procurement, and other issues must integrate this balance of integrity and compliance.

    Public servants live by a host of rules and regulations as they implement the wishes of Parliament. Organizational values, I must stress, do not replace all these rules and regulations. Rather, values help public servants to implement rules. There cannot be a new rule for every new situation in the sometimes turbulent times we are experiencing. We need to keep basic rules in place, then we apply the rules within the framework of public service values.

    To me it's not really about rules versus risks, it's about how the two can be balanced to mutually support each other. I'm pleased to see that this committee is undertaking this honest dialogue on these issues.

    I'd like to conclude by recommending two areas the committee could examine further and on which the views of members of Parliament would be important. First, the public service has made active efforts over the last few years to become a learning organization by taking measured risks and learning not only from what works but what doesn't. But to what extent is this feasible in a partisan political context where mistakes may become hotly debated political issues?

    Second, as I've said, we in the public service are often anxious for more flexibility. I don't believe any public servant relishes red tape. We often compare ourselves with the private sector, but we need some honest reflection on the real procedural requirements in the public service.

    John Tait concluded in his study of values that:

A public organization does not and cannot enjoy the “flexibilities” of private sector organizations. It will always have to meet higher standards of transparency and due process in order to allay any fears of favouritism, whether internal or external, in performing its duties under its position of trust and in its use of public funds.

    I wonder whether this committee would agree with that observation.

»  (1745)  

    Finally, Mr. Chairman, I welcome the creation of this committee as a signal of parliamentarians taking a more active interest in the public service to help us ensure its overall health and its capacity to meet the needs of Canadians now and in the future. My fellow commissioners and I would like to see the Public Service Commission become, as an independent agency reporting to Parliament, a stronger instrument of that interest.

    Merci. Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Serson. It perhaps reflected some of the positive comments I made in my speech on second reading about future potential for the Public Service Commission.

    Now we're going to hear from Dr. Peter Harrison.

    Dr. Peter Harrison (Former Chair, Leadership Network, As Individual): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    As my colleague Scott Serson has said, I welcome the work of this committee, and I thank you for the opportunity to appear.

    I'm currently deputy minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, but I'm here today in a different capacity, and that is to speak to a number of issues related to events relating to cultural change over the last number of years.

    I had the tremendous privilege to be the head of the La Relève Task Force, which is something I know this committee has heard about and is interested in. I was also given the tremendous privilege to be the founding deputy minister of the Leadership Network.

»  (1750)  

[Translation]

    Today, I would like to review what was attempted, how it was done, the results achieved, and what this means in the current context.

[English]

In doing so, Mr. Chairman, I've provided the research staff with a number of documents that, I hasten to say, I've culled from my private collection. I do not pretend that they are complete sets of documents, but I've certainly made an effort to provide them to this committee.

    There are a number of documents from the last number of years I would like to refer to. Beginning in 1997, when the La Relève Task Force was created by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Madame Bourgon, she indicated in her report to the Prime Minister, which is also a report to Parliament, that she had already signalled a “quiet crisis” in the Public Service of Canada. She says:

It was becoming difficult to retain, motivate and attract people essential to the work of the public service. This was the result of years of downsizing and pay freezes, criticism, insufficient recruitment, and the premature departure of experienced public servants. It was a quiet crisis because few people were willing to talk about it and even fewer were doing something about it.

I'm quoting from the fifth annual report to the Prime Minister.

    The challenge the task force was given, Mr. Chairman, was to try to help the clerk, the deputy minister community, and departments to do something about this. The challenge we were given was essentially to try to come to grips with cultural change in an organization. We were created as a very small task force in January 1997, and we were effectively to give support to the clerk and to departments as well as deputy minister champions in doing a number of things, in particular the development of human resource management plans by all departments.

    We worked very closely with a number of functional communities, whether the communicators, the science community, or the policy community, in terms of the renewal challenges that were faced by them. In particular, Mr. Chairman, the task force was proactive in engaging staff in the regions all across Canada, and indeed, my own personal view is that the effort that was put into being present as a task force across Canada was really quite a significant achievement of this small group.

    At that point in time, we also supported a number of corporate activities that were headed by deputy ministers and by the clerk, namely the whole effort in terms of pride and recognition, the recognition of individuals and groups, the development of new corporate programs in terms of career development, and both the accelerated executive development program and the prequalification of people as assistant deputy ministers, and we worked closely in terms of revamping the career assignment program.

    In particular, a significant focus was put on valuing our people and on the need to engage staff at all levels throughout the Public Service of Canada in, as the president of the Public Service Commission has mentioned, a dialogue around the challenges we faced.

    I think it's important to underline for this committee that what we were about at that point in time was quite deliberately not the development of a legislative approach. It was very much a focus on the institution and the challenge of evolving to meet new challenges.

[Translation]

    When I speak of cultural change, I believe it is obvious, within the definition of the quiet crisis I just gave you, that there were extraordinary challenges. How to promote pride? How to support careers? How to address the issue of the future of Canada's public service.

[English]

    A lot of developmental work went into this, Mr. Chair, and the result was a document that was prepared at that point in time by deputy ministers, by departments, regions and so on, called La Relève: A Commitment to Action. This is included in the package I've given your research staff.

    Essentially what the document does is review the very practical things that were put on the table at that point in time to bring about renewal in the Public Service of Canada.

    The task force played the role of secretariat; it played the role of communications group; it played the role of animateur in various venues across the country. One of the challenges we had was also described by the clerk in her report to the Prime Minister:

...to build a modern and vibrant institution able to use fully the talents of its people; a commitment by each and every public servant to do everything in their power to provide for a modern and vibrant organization now and in the future; a duty, as the guardians of the institution, to pass on to our successors an organization of qualified and committed staff ready to face the challenges of their time.

    A number of significant products came out of this, Mr. Chairman: the various action plans resulting from A Commitment to Action. I've provided a copy to the research staff of the report on these various action plans. I don't intend to go into them in detail.

    We found that a very significant need existed for dialogue, very much coming out of the experiences of John Tait. The task force was very central in a number of dialogue experiences across the country. In particular, we supported a number of events, both nationally and in the regions, to engage staff in the dialogue around the challenge of cultural change. We also, as a task force, produced a number of products that I think will bear the test of time, including a review of a day in the life of the Public Service of Canada, which was provided to parliamentarians at the time and which has continued both in written and in virtual form, in order to capture the current richness and the future of the public service.

    What were some of the results of the task force? I give you, Mr. Chairman, my personal view of what these results are. The test of results is clearly one that a number of people have been and will be involved in.

    First of all, we had an enormously important focus on people and human resource challenges at the most senior levels of the public service in an integrated and focused way. Some have said it was probably the first time this had been undertaken in such a concerted way.

    Second, we saw that increasingly people—individuals, “talent”—became the centre of the management agenda.

    Third, we successfully, I think, rolled out a number of corporate programs that I've already referred to, in close cooperation with the Public Service Commission, which had the responsibility for them, and in close cooperation with the Privy Council Office.

    We linked into the dialogue on values and ethics, which I've already referred to. And in the area of pride and recognition, a number of significant decisions were taken by the public service: the creation of the Head of the Public Service Award; the reinstatement of the Outstanding Achievement Award for individuals who have contributed to society; with the Treasury Board Secretariat, reinvigorating Public Service Week; and with departments, regions, and functional communities, focusing on the recognition that was needed.

    In addition, Mr. Chairman, with Statistics Canada, we focused on demographics—demographics not only in the sense of the staffing process, but demographics in the sense of the age/gender distribution over time. This was worked on with departments.

»  (1755)  

    I've already mentioned the cross-country dialogue that took place. Over a period of 18 months, we dialogued with in excess of 15,000 public servants. The decision at that time was taken to have an employee survey. There have now been two. We had an increasing focus on middle managers and the challenges they face in executing their roles and responsibilities, and significant focus on youth and student-employee learning forums.

[Translation]

    Efforts were made to promote dialogue across the system, without considering levels and hierarchy. People from several institutions were to be brought together at the same time.

[English]

The results of that are in the first progress report that I mentioned.

    I'd now like to refer to the fifth annual report of the Clerk of the Privy Council, who indicated that over the period we have seen a number of key things. One is a focus on leadership, and if I may, Mr. Chairman, my personal view is that the dialogue around leadership has evolved significantly over the last five years.

    Second--and the president of the commission is also underlining this--is a focus on learning; and third, the challenge of becoming a borderless institution.

    The sixth annual report, which I've also provided, was not in the form of the Clerk of the Privy Council reporting directly to the Prime Minister, which she did at the beginning, but is a video of employees from across the Public Service of Canada speaking on the challenges they face.

    Let me finish, Mr. Chairman, by referring to a decision that was taken in June 1998 that a task force can continue for a certain period of time--somewhat limited, in this instance. It was intended to be up to a year; in the event, it was over 18 months. The decision at that time was to create the Leadership Network to do two things. First of all, it was to carry on the cultural change, leadership support, and network development of the task force; and second, it was to focus on the collective management system of the assistant deputy minister community, which came out of a number of reports and suggestions to the government.

    The Leadership Network formalized support for the departments, the regions, and communities. We also proactively developed a number of what were then, and I think still are, leading-edge communications tools, in particular, a website.

    Mr. Chairman, the presence of websites today is somewhat more prevalent than it was back in 1998. There's been significant evolution. The website, “leadership.gc.ca”, which is still extant, in the first year of its operation saw over 5 million hits by over 72,000 different subscribers, and that had increased to 8 million hits in 1999-2000.

    We're particularly proud, Mr. Chairman, of the fact that through these various techniques--both face to face and using modern technology--we were able to begin to support the ongoing process of cultural change that I think is required in the Public Service of Canada.

    Thank you. Merci.

¼  (1800)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Harrison. That's a great introduction. It really whets the appetite.

    Okay, we'll now hear from Mr. Arthur Kroeger.

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger (As Individual): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    What I will offer is a few general observations.

    My two colleagues are much closer to recent events than I. I left the public service 10 years ago. I had been a deputy minister for 17 years during my career. I've tried to follow what has happened since I left, in particular this question of cultural change, which you hear a lot about. It is happening. It has happened in the period since I was a member of the public service.

    It isn't easy to point to a couple of high-profile events that received lots of publicity to indicate the changes here. It happens rather slowly and imperceptibly, but it does happen. I think the person who gave the greatest impetus to it was a previous Clerk of the Privy Council, Jocelyne Bourgon.

    Historically, the Clerk of the Privy Council has been a policy adviser and sometimes a negotiator in federal-provincial matters. Madame Bourgon gave unique attention to the needs of the public service. She appointed a whole range of deputy minister committees to look at things like what's our policy capacity like these days on horizontal communications of horizontal work--the La Relève Task Force that Peter Harrison referred to. These things have had an effect that, my sense is, has been materially for the better.

    If I look back down and ask what's different, one of the things that I think is quite markedly different is the amount of networking that goes on. It has been aided by modern technology. E-mail had barely arrived in government in the early 1990s; everybody's using it now. Instead of writing memos to each other, they're sending e-mails back and forth. That may sound technocratic, but it's very important. There's a degree of information sharing in government across departments and within departments and across hierarchies that I think goes far beyond what I was familiar with.

    Government is about information and communication. The technology that produces a qualitative jump in the ability to communicate is important to the way a public service functions.

    There has been a lot of networking. Over time there has come in a much greater emphasis on service. Somebody said that it's a shift from governing to serving. We've always talked about serving the public, but the real orientation historically was on governing. The emphasis now on finding ways of serving the public better is quite striking, partly because the public has demanded it. But it has been happening, and governments that used to operate separately are collaborating. In Winnipeg, I believe all three orders of government are sharing space and providing services together. That sort of thing is quite a significant evolution and obviously for the better in the public service and, indeed, in the way governments function.

    The other comment I would make, because I tend to very brief, is that the legislation that is now before Parliament is an important next stage in fostering cultural change. A lot of the things in that bill could be done without legislation. The Public Service Commission could delegate greater authority to departments to carry out staffing. There are a lot of other things you could do. But it's important that this legislation find its way through Parliament, because it will convey a message to the public service about the importance of continuing the evolution towards, for example, decontrol, greater latitude for managers to manage, and therefore a greater responsibility on managers to manage, which I believe they will rise to, as they have risen to the progressive decontrol that has gone on over my lifetime in Ottawa.

¼  (1805)  

    It's also important, I think, for the public service to have a definitive message from parliamentarians as to what their expectations and desires are. This doesn't happen very often, because there are so many claims on parliamentary time.

    So it's important that this bill get a lot of attention. I hope it will pass, because it will provide a guidepost to the public service for a number of years to come and I think continue the cultural change that, from my perspective, is happening.

    My last comment has to do with the constraint on the evolution of cultural change in the public service, and this is that at the end of the day officials work in a political environment. It's fine to say, well, you have to be innovative, have to take risks, have to be ready to make mistakes; but people can read, and they look around and it will register with them what happens to people who make mistakes. It's one thing to say, yes, it's a great idea to make mistakes and to take risks. What really happens to people who do that?

    Every official has a certain incentive to try to keep the minister from being a target of sustained attack day after day in the question period. Inevitably that produces a certain risk aversion. The question mark about the future is, will there be the kind of acceptance of mistakes that the Auditor General, among others, has called for, or will the temptation to score points continue to reduce the scope or the willingness of people to take risks? That is the question before parliamentarians. I think it will be an important question for parliamentarians to address in the progression of this legislation through Parliament.

    We've come quite a long way in the area of cultural change. I think we can go quite a lot further, because society is changing and the government has to change, but there are some question marks about the speed of change that's going to be possible.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

¼  (1810)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    You introduced an interesting concept of moving from governing to serving. It looks like now under this legislation we're going to leave “serving” behind and we're going to “administer”. That is the new language. Certainly we'll talk about the orientation of cultural change and trying to drive it from the top versus trying to get it from the bottom.

    We're going to adjourn and go off-line for 15 minutes.

¼  (1811)  

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¼  (1830)  

    The Chair: I'll call the meeting back to order. I think we've had pretty close to a 15-minute break .

    I want to thank you gentlemen for your opening statements. There was a lot of food for thought. It was also good to see that when you come to occasions like this, you can actually talk amongst yourselves.

    But we'll start off with some questioning and some observations from Mr. Desrochers.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—L'Érable, BQ): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    I would like to tell you that I have worked for six years on the reorganization of a state corporation in Québec City, and that I see we are facing the same constraints as you are: succession, massive employee departures, competition with the private sector, regional constraints, etc.

    You speak of your new framework of values. Was this framework implemented before the massive departures, or are these simply new values you wish to integrate into the public service to help meet the objectives for the years 2000 and beyond?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Mr. Desrochers, when Ms. Bourgon asked John Tait to study the situation of values, she was concerned that the 1992-1993 program review may have had an impact on our values, on the expansion of values in the public service. John began to study the situation and presented his report. A discussion process was initiated, and my colleague and I continued this discussion process and provided the clerk with a preliminary announcement on the values to implement in the public service. We believe it is now time to legitimize this value base. We had many discussions on this issue with several officials, and they also believe it is now time to submit this value base and legitimize the discussions on our values.

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Currently, in 2003, what are your corporate values compared to those of 1990? Can you identify the organizational values you integrate into the public service?

    Mr. Scott Serson: Usually, we speak of values at several levels: democratic values, professional values, ethical values, and the values of our relations with our colleagues.

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Are these values integrated into operations and existing collective agreements?

    Mr. Scott Serson: No.

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: How do unions react to these new values? Do they feel threatened?

    Mr. Scott Serson: No, not at all. We had discussions with the unions and union representatives, and I believe they feel that now, a statement of values will be somewhat aspirational. This is not a reflection on each aspect of our reality, but something we want to try to achieve.

¼  (1835)  

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Now in more concrete terms, again as regards unions, given the voluntary separations and the aging of the public service, did you evaluate the minimum employee level? We know the public service is modernizing, that everything is modernizing. The public service cannot be asked to operate as it did 20 or 25 years ago. In light of all this, have you established a minimum employee level to meet the new expectations of the public service?

    Mr. Scott Serson: For the Public Service Commission, we have attempted to study the expectations of new employees and communicate these results to the deputy ministers to help them understand these expectations and manage the work environment so as to meet the needs of these young officials.

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Given that you need to catch up, you speak of reinventing the public service. Since you have begun to integrate these values and to recruit young people, are you still behind in the succession program? What is the current situation?

    Mr. Scott Serson: At the Public Service Commission, we have rather studied the succession of management officers. Now we are separating the feeder groups.

    The goal of many officials is to become public service managers. If things remain in balance, we will have enough management officers.

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: One of the values you add at the organizational level is that of performance, efficiency. You have budgets to meet. Are you in a position to attract personnel as good as in the private sector?

    Mr. Scott Serson: We have had challenges to meet in several areas. As regards nurses, it is always difficult because the market is not good.

[English]

    We had particular problems in the area of informatics and that whole field until the economy here in Ottawa turned down and the high tech industry turned down. Now competition is a little bit better.

    We've been trying to emphasize with deputy ministers this whole notion of human resource planning three, four, and five years out. Peter and I were just saying during the break that is one thing from the La Relève process that has not been taken up sufficiently by deputy ministers.

    So when Statistics Canada makes a release, as it has over the last couple of weeks, about labour market shortages later in the decade, I'm very concerned that departments increase the skill of being able to forecast where they're going to experience labour shortages.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: That will be okay for now, Mr. Chairman. I will leave the floor to my colleagues.

[English]

    The Chair: Based on those questions, before I go to Mr. Cullen, does either of the other witnesses want to chime in with their comments? Not at this point?

    Okay. Go ahead.

¼  (1840)  

    Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you, Mr. Serson, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Kroeger.

    Mr. Kroeger, around the time of the HRDC unfortunate events I read an article you wrote. I thought it was quite interesting and right on the point.

    You said, if I understood you correctly, there'll be an emphasis on rules so we'll go through these cycles. Some scandal or something will pop up and the government will retreat to more of a rules-based system. The officials will know that is the signal so they'll become very much more rules-based. Then there'll be a push for managers to be more flexible, and we'll go into that cycle again.

    Is this just inevitable, or is there a way to manage this better so the government at the most senior levels, where I guess it has to start, makes a conscious decision to live with a certain level of risk-taking, notwithstanding bad press that might come from time to time?

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: It's hard to be definitive about it. I don't think there's any question, whatever the merits or otherwise of what was said during the HRDC affair, that it had the effect of re-bureaucratizing government. There's no question about it. Everyone became much more rules conscious, much more worried about what would happen with the next audit and about getting the paperwork right.

    I am currently the chairman of the board at an organization called Canadian Policy Research Networks--Judith Maxwell's organization. CPRN now finds it takes twice as long, if you're bidding on a government program, to get a contract approved. There are any number of voluntary organizations that will give you the same data.

    There is a kind of swinging back and forth. On the one hand, Scott Serson quoted an article about people saying it was really important for the public service to take risks. Then he quoted the other article that said we must have adherence to the rules. There is a certain swinging back and forth.

    I don't know how one gets past that, because when a political target is presented, the temptation to exploit it will always be there, regardless of who the opposition is. But if one wanted to make an outside observation on that, it would be great if people would think about the medium-term effects of that on the functioning of government, because it's a disincentive toward flexible government that tries to show some imagination and take some risks. The disincentives to doing that are quite powerful, because if you land your minister into six weeks of attack at question period, it tends to be a career-shortening event.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: I have a question for Mr. Kroeger or Mr. Harrison--especially you, Mr. Kroeger, now that you're a retired deputy minister.

    If you look at some of these events over the last while--the HRDC story, the gun registry, the sponsorship--on the one hand, people say it's a big organization and we're bound to have mistakes, but I don't buy that argument.

    I understand why in big organizations you always have to have mistakes, but what are we seeing here? Are we seeing some dynamic that says the officials are spread too thinly, we've lost some of our management talent, or there's too much political interference? Is there anything thematic one can deduce from these things, or is it just part of having a big organization?

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: All three of those situations are complex, but I'll give you one explanation of what happened in all three of them.

    In a sense, the public service was doing what it had been told. In the case of HRDC, the department staff had been cut by 20%--5,000 people. What do you do in a situation like that when you're trying to deliver a lot of programs? If you had asked every caucus in the House of Commons, they all would have said, cut the paper pushers and keep on delivering the programs to the people who need them. Get rid of the bureaucracy. Don't worry so much about the red tape. Just get on with it.

    In the case of the gun registry, all kinds of things happened. I certainly don't understand computer systems, so I won't attempt to explain that. But it was absolutely clear from statements by the then Minister of Justice, the Prime Minister, and the government as a whole that this was something that was going to happen. You've seen in the press perhaps that officials in the Department of Justice tried to warn the minister of the day that this was very complicated stuff, a lot of things could go wrong, and it could be very expensive. But the message was to get on with it, and officials got on with it.

    In the third example, the sponsorships, the conduct of officials was certainly not creditable in my eyes. It was again the case, as far as I could see, that these decisions were politically driven to some considerable measure, and officials were again doing as they were told. I don't say that to exonerate officials. They made mistakes, and there are things they should have done differently. But I take exception to some of the things that have been said and apparently have found their way into the draft report of the public accounts committee, that everything that happened was exclusively the fault of the officials. It wasn't.

¼  (1845)  

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Thank you.

    Mr. Harrison, maybe you can comment on that later. But I'll throw out a question to all three of you, for whoever wants to have a go.

    We talk about encouraging more risk-taking and better horizontal management in government. Look at the private sector when it comes to horizontal management and its capacity to take some body blows and accept them. The CEO of a public company must be mindful that they are in a bit of a fish bowl as well. But they can say they've decided to step out of the formal hierarchy to organize themselves and get these results, or they've decided to accept a certain amount of risk. In the public sector we're in this fish bowl, but people demand this kind of accountability for their tax dollars.

    When we talk about better horizontal management and a bit more risk-taking, could we organize ourselves better in government to manage issues horizontally better, and at the same time--and it's a slightly different issue admittedly--organize ourselves and maybe have incentives re-engineered so public servants would take more risks?

    Dr. Peter Harrison: Let me, Mr. Chairman, make a couple of comments.

    I think it's fair to say that all institutions in society can probably see themselves being organized better. The context in which we work is continually changing, and I think part of the challenge is to adapt the organization to those changes.

    The challenge of horizontality, I think, comes in the first instance from the changing nature of the issues. I see it in the first instance not as just an organizational issue, but the issues themselves are in fact pushing horizontality.

    You refer, Mr. Cullen, to the private sector. I think we see this happening there, but certainly in the public sector the issues of the day increasingly do not fall into a particular slot in terms of organization. The challenge we face continually is being able to organize ourselves to deal with those. So my first point is that the issues themselves drive that.

    The second point I would make is that the people we serve, the citizens of Canada, don't think organizationally; they think in terms of results. I think this is clearly expressed through the parliamentary process, which may nor may not be related to a particular organization but more to the results that come out of it. So I think the emergence of horizontality isn't something that's theoretical; it's actually coming straight from society.

    Can there be incentives? It's always possible to define incentives, but I think the biggest incentive the public servants I know have is the desire to do a good job and to serve Canadians, which means increasingly being adaptive, which means dealing with an increased level of uncertainty, which means working in a horizontal way.

    I don't think any organization can ever pretend it's in a steady state. This is why I made my earlier comments around cultural change; I think we're in an ongoing adaptation to the changing needs of society. Clearly the challenge of horizontality is one of those.

    As to complexity, increasingly we see the coming together of issues about which even 10 to 15 years ago we would have said this is an economic issue, or this is a social issue; this is a resource issue, or this is a challenge from a cultural point of view. I think what we're seeing is that the issues of the day cut across those elements. I think it's inevitable that we move that way.

    The third point is in terms of the Public Service of Canada. I remember a wise person many years ago explaining to me that you can structure institutions either vertically or horizontally; it's very difficult to do them on the diagonal. If you're structured vertically, you have to be concerned about the horizontal. If somehow you are organized horizontally, you still have to be concerned about the vertical.

    I think, Mr. Chairman, in this as in many things we're facing, it's obviously a challenge of balance. The balance I'm referring to is that the accountabilities are vertical. They flow from Parliament through ministers to departments, and we necessarily need to respect that. The challenge is how to fulfill those accountabilities while at the same time being able to deal with the issues that cut across.

    My personal view on this is that we've come a long way over the years. Certainly in my experience in the last 20-odd years in the public service we see significantly more attention given and attempts given to dealing with horizontal issues.

¼  (1850)  

    You raised the thought that maybe occasionally specific institutional arrangements are needed. I think that's the case. Indeed, the creation of the La Relève Task Force, which I refer to earlier, was a case in point. To create a group that acts as a catalyst, working horizontally both across the departments and across all regions to do something is needed. I think the challenge is to know when to do that and when to stop it.

    Mr. Scott Serson: As just one very practical comment, Mr. Cullen, as I mentioned earlier, we seem to have a real workload problem at the executive level, the senior management level. Horizontal management is hard work; it's time-consuming. So I'm worried about that intersection of pressures. We want more horizontality, we want more citizen engagement, but at the same time, the pressures are there.

    One of the things I've been concerned about since taking on the job as president of the Public Service Commission is the nature and scope of our management agenda, not the priorities we have in line departments to deliver better services but all the other areas of improvement--the HR planning, which I am always bothering the deputy ministers about, and some of those other things. I often worry that it grows a little bit like Topsy, that we haven't clearly delineated a set of internal priorities and we don't work with that internal set of priorities to say, if we're going to put something on, if we're really going to make a drive to put modern controllership in place over the next couple of years because of some of the events that you talked about, then we have to take the following things off that agenda, because managers simply can't cope with the volume and do the kind of change management and horizontal work that we want them to do.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    We'll go to Ms. Sgro.

    Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.): The more the discussion goes on, the more questions I have. I have to figure out where to start with my couple of minutes here.

    The whole issue of coordination of government services is something I have seen in the couple of years that I've been here and just how critically that is needed, yet all our deputy ministers seem to guard protectively--and I suppose if I were a deputy minister, I would guard it immensely--that this is my department, and so on and so forth, and they seem to be reluctant to come together. How do we encourage that to happen, from the political end? It makes much more sense to be coming together and looking at how to tackle that issue, and whether you bring six departments that you know have an impact....

    I know we're trying to do this in various areas, but it should just become second nature. I hate to talk about more bureaucracy or more levels to go through, but somewhere or another, someone has to be trying to bring these departments together in a coordinated fashion. Of course, the urban agenda is the one that I've had the experience of trying to work with.

    But you can clearly see that we could be so much more successful if we could figure out how to do that, except that when I do some reading of history, I see that 30 years ago they were saying that the federal government needed to get into the horizontality and better coordination. I appreciate the fact that we are getting there, but I'm concerned that we won't get there soon enough. If we waited this many years now to finally try to get there, how do we get there sooner? I think the train is moving quickly, and we cannot be too slow to respond on some of those issues.

    Are there any comments on that? Mr. Serson, you're the head of the Public Service Commission, so I would expect you to be able to tell me all the great things that are happening in order to move that train along faster.

¼  (1855)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: Keep in mind that the Public Service Commission has a fairly limited scope in terms of staffing and recruitment. But if I reflect on my days as a deputy minister, I can say that I think this notion of horizontality in a particular subject area needs real political pressure behind it.

    I was the Deputy Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. There is so much we could be doing to make the life of first nations easier, when it comes to the issues that Arthur was talking about, in applying for a grant and contribution, common terms and conditions, and so on. But without the political impetus behind it and without the interest of parliamentarians in ensuring that happens, there is an inertia, not from lack of will but just so many other priorities that need that attention in that vertical accountability system in which a public service finds itself.

    I put a lot of emphasis on this when we responded to the royal commission that took a profile in government, that allowed us to make some steps forward in terms of coordinating the way we work, because there was a political impetus to monitor how well we were going to do in our response to that royal commission. That gave us some basis for keeping the pressure on the coordination.

    I don't know if my colleagues can add to that.

    Dr. Peter Harrison: Thank you.

    The question you raise is obviously a very important one, on the coordination of services, but also the reluctance to come together. I don't have a view on the particular issue you raised with the urban file, but I think it's fair to say that the way in which deputy ministers come together has changed significantly over the years. Mr. Kroeger has much more experience in this than anybody else, so I defer to his experience and wisdom on this.

    I remember a time when the coming together of deputy ministers was not as frequent as it has become. Certainly for the last decade or so, the Clerk of the Privy Council has brought together deputy ministers every Wednesday—usually when the House is sitting—to review the business of government, the key issues of the day, and management issues, including, I'm pleased to say, the human resource challenges we face on a regular basis.

    We're also increasingly seeing a number of deputy ministers playing a champion role for particular activities. Mr. Serson pointed out his role as a co-lead in terms of championing values and ethics. One of the hats I wear is championing the science community as a group. This has meant there is a need to bring together a number of colleagues who have similar interests and challenges. The list goes on in terms of these things.

    I'm not going to pretend there isn't a lot more to be done, because I think we would all agree that there is. But I would finish by repeating that the challenge is really to get a balance, because on the one hand there is the accountability for the delivery of those things one has been given the privilege of managing by statute or program. On the other hand, there is a need to work with others who may have a different take on a particular issue.

    Mr. Kroeger mentioned the emergence of networks. We've seen a significant evolution of networks at all levels, including at the deputy minister level. The come together, change, and are like amoeba in moving and involving people as needed.

    In fact, madam, I think there has been progress.

½  (1900)  

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: I don't have much to add to what my two colleagues have said.

    One of the things we learned in the past was that if you set up an institution to try to manage a function, it worked fine for a little while, but then it started to develop its own agenda. Sclerosis sets in remarkably quickly when you do that. Based on my past observations, if you have a particular question like implementing Kyoto, dealing with cities, or dealing with aboriginal people who've moved off reserve to Canada's urban centres, my bias is that you are better off if you don't create a new department to coordinate it. You should tailor an institution or process to deal with the particular issue for a certain period of time, and then perhaps the institution or process can self-destruct.

    So the idea of designating a lead deputy minister, or champion, makes sense. Create a network to deal with a particular problem, get it launched and get it going, but don't institutionalize it. A certain degree of improvisation and flexibility in government is probably a good thing to work for. All institutions, banks, private sector organizations, as much as government, have these kinds of problems. But in government, my sense is you're better tailoring a remedy to a particular problem, and when the problem has been dealt with more or less, let the remedy evaporate.

    Ms. Judy Sgro: I have one other fast question.

    How do we improve or create trust between the public service and parliamentarians, since we're all here to do the same job of ensuring we have a strong country? We're coming at it from different areas and different levels.

    I'm quite astonished by the lack of trust I have seen. It is understandable in some areas, but there seems to be quite a lack of trust between parliamentarians and public servants. How do we improve this so there's the mutual respect essential for us to deliver the services we're all trying to do?

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: Maybe it's easier for me to talk about that than it is for my two colleagues, who are still in the system.

    I was very surprised to read in the Ottawa Citizen a week or two ago that the chairman of the operations committee, Reg Alcock, said that the relationship was terrible, and Ms. Sgro is implying that indeed it's not very good. I'm a little surprised at that. I never thought, in my years as a deputy, that our relationship with parliamentarians was bad.

    There's obviously a certain gap, and when you're an official dealing with a parliamentary committee you have to be somewhat careful about what you say, although I've never found the limits on that were all that constraining, because you could be pretty frank, and parliamentarians appreciated it. They felt they were being taken seriously. I guess if I had one piece of advice for my former colleagues in the public service it would be to recognize how important it is in the eyes of parliamentarians to be treated seriously, to be recognized as having a really important function in the system.

    My observation of the other side of Canadian parliamentarians is that on the whole, in my time, they treated officials pretty well. I got a lot of difficult questions, but it was part of a normal, workman-like approach. It may be that I've missed something that has happened in the past decade. But parliamentarians, of course, need to recognize the constraints that officials are under and not try to exploit them for political purposes. In my time, that very seldom happened. I seldom had a complaint about that.

    I think one thing that might be useful--and perhaps it is being done--is, in the training of public servants, to have a day or two on how to deal with Parliament and parliamentarians, collectively and individually. Perhaps Scott Serson can tells us whether such training now takes place. It didn't in my time. I always thought it would be a good idea.

½  (1905)  

    Mr. Scott Serson: I can't say offhand, Arthur. Like you, I believe it was an important part of executive training programs when I came through the system. But whether it exists today or not, I'm not sure. I know there is some discussion taking place about moving back toward mandatory management training, and I think it's because of the need to make sure we're covering fundamental bases like that.

    I guess I feel very much the way Arthur does. I've enjoyed the few opportunities I've had to talk to groups of members of Parliament informally, away from the structured atmosphere. I mean, even this discussion tonight is an unusual and pleasant departure from some committee hearings. I think it leads to a better, more candid dialogue than some of those.

    I may not get many other opportunities to say this, so I will say that with respect to the Public Service Commission, my concern is that in the three and a half years I have been president, we have not had a committee like the government operations committee call us to discuss the length and breadth of the work we're undertaking. In fact, I have been quite struck by this. When I got the job and I looked at the authority Parliament had given to the Public Service Commission, my colleagues will tell you my first reaction was to say, where are our delegation agreements, what shape are they in, because I know they're going to call me and ask me what we're doing and how we're doing it.

    Three and a half years later, I have not been called, and I worry. When I talk to individual members of Parliament, they all tell me these are important issues, but that they have so many important issues and a shortage of time.

    So that's the take on our unique perspective as the Public Service Commission. I certainly attach importance to the accountability relationship with Parliament and I'd like to see it strengthened in the future.

    The Chair: Concerning shortage of time, because of the time line we're on, we're going to bring down the gavel exactly at 7:30 p.m. We're moving along very well, but I'd like to go another round, and I have a few questions myself.

    I wonder at this point if we could just cast our minds a little more on being specific to the bill that's before Parliament, Bill C-25, if you have observations to make. As you know, I made some observations about the merit principle that now have been picked up by some talk shows across the country--whether this redefinition of the merit principle is the right direction to go in.

    Also, one of the things you might talk about is the rights versus needs of growing employees, and giving them an option at some point to get into political life, where that boundary is for public servants. They might want eventually to seek a nomination and get into politics actively themselves, as well as being just a member of a political party or volunteering on a Saturday, doing politics in their local community, and things like that.

    The bill also has tried to outline some clear lines of delegation and definition for deputy heads, and you might want to comment on all the authority that's been given them in the legislation.

    Those are just a few hints on what we might want to go at.

    Mr. Desrochers.

½  (1910)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Thank you.

    I would like to get back to the relations between officials and parliamentarians and the way officials are spoken to. When I speak to an official, it is to obtain information; I do not use any kind of decision power. I believe this is where friction begins. When we call an official and ask him or her what the situation is to provide information to a constituent or an organization expecting an answer, the official acts in good faith. However, when we use our parliamentary title and try to decide for the official, that is when friction begins.

    For my part, I have no problems at all with officials. I feel they have a lot on their shoulders. For example, there is the whole issue of sponsorships and that of firearms registration. It's incredible. All of a sudden, all the responsibility for these issues falls upon the shoulders of officials. Hearings are coming up, including those on firearms by the Public Accounts Committee. I have also heard a lot of things about the sponsorship program.

    I am not here to draw conclusions on these things. However, I would like to get back to the point raised by Mr. Kroeger. At a certain point, certain financial objectives were to be met quickly, and there was a purge, many cuts. Many departments were cut, and contract employees were called in to replace officials.

    You also spoke, Mr. Serson, of ethics, a very important value in the discussion being initiated for the renewal of the public service. I believe ethics are adhered to in the public service.

    I would like to know if the problems we encountered over the past years are due to the fact that cuts were made in the public service. Competent people--and I have no doubts at all about the competence of officials--were replaced by contract employees. Departments do not have the same control over contract employees as they have over public service employees. Public service employees must go through competitions. They must go through a whole process before being hired, and then they are governed by collective agreements or agreements with the Public Service Commission.

    If we had to start all over again, do you think we should do the same thing, or should we consider other ways to save money and maintain efficient and competent personnel able to meet the needs of the public and the population?

    I invite all three of you to comment.

    I do not think the problems we had were due to contract personnel.

[English]

    Like many public servants, I can't say I'm not concerned that we've gone through serious downsizing of our personnel in the mid-1990s, and the workload has increased. I've pointed to that a couple of times. But I don't think contractuals are causing a lack of professionalism or adherence to the values. I think we have sufficient managers, supervisors, and full-time public servants to care for the kinds of issues we're facing.

    Arthur, do you want to add to this?

½  (1915)  

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: I agree.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: That's all? You have no comments, Mr. Kroeger? A moment ago, you seemed to say there had been an overload at a certain point, notably at Human Resources Development, because there had been major cuts. I am talking about maintaining a good level of service to clients.

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: It is true that the dramatic cuts at Human Resources Development have contributed to certain problems identified by the Auditor General. People have to make a choice: will they continue to provide services, or will they deal with it by ensuring that all the forms have been filled and all the rules have been observed?

    I have been deputy minister for four years at the Department of Employment and Immigration, the predecessor of Human Resources Development. It always struck me how our employees identified with the person before them. They were very conscious of the problems of parents who had lost their jobs, etc. They got angry at us when we could not provide enough resources to serve the people. So I understand very well why front-line people said they would continue to provide services to their clients. They made mistakes, and there were obviously major debates in Parliament.

    At the same time, the problems relating to the sponsorship program and firearms registration were not due to the cuts but to the complexity of the programs and political leadership problems. Officials follow political leadership.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    We'll go over to Mr. Cullen.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to be brief, because I know the chair wants to throw in a few questions as well.

    Mr. Harrison, I agree with you that in terms of managing horizontally, it seems to me there is no magic bullet. Maybe we need to be satisfied with incremental improvement. But I still have some concerns about ministerial and departmental accountabilities. In other words, if you have a horizontal issue with, let's say, Environment and Health, and let's say Environment is the champion, or PCO, or someone who has taken the lead, in terms of the way you allocate your resources and some of your own departmental accountabilities—I'm not sure; that's why I was leading to this question of incentives—how do you incent people to manage horizontal issues well when they have line accountabilities that might interfere with that? I don't know if we can get into that, but I'd like you, if you have a chance, to comment further on it.

    I'd like to come back to La Relève. I'm wondering if that is a work in progress. Mr. Harrison, I was listening and trying to read between the lines what you were saying. It seems to me what you were saying is that in terms of leadership and morale and recognition of performance of civil servants there was progress, but there may be some gaps still, or some areas where we should be focusing.

    I notice, Mr. Serson, that you talked about the need for more human resource development plans in departments, which seems to me to be an important matter. With that, are you able to develop the approach to succession planning we have in the corporate sector, where it's almost an obsession? You hear about how the boxes get shunted around and senior executives spend an inordinate amount of time looking at succession plans. Can we do that through a human resources development plan in the public service in Canada?

    What are the areas, Mr. Harrison, where we should be following through more aggressively in the La Relève exercise?

½  (1920)  

    Dr. Peter Harrison: Thank you, Mr. Cullen and Mr. Chairman.

    Succession planning in the public service, I think, necessarily has to be different from the concept in the private sector. I think that goes without saying, given the legislation and so forth.

    That having been said, I think it's fair to say that increasingly people at senior levels--and I include myself in that--spend an awful lot of time, more perhaps than ever before, looking at the challenges we face from the point of view of talent and capacity at all levels.

    The way a number of us would express this is to try to ensure that there is a pool of people with the background and the experience from which the competitive processes or the selection processes can give rise to appointments. That's a different way of looking at it from being able to say, this is the person who will fit into this particular position.

    So even though it may be different from the model in the private sector, I think one of the things we've actually begun doing more than ever before is succession planning. If I look, for example, at the move to having a pre-qualified pool of assistant deputy ministers, this is to create the bassin, if you will. We've moved to similar pools at different levels, including entry to the executive level. Many of us in our departments, at both the technical support and administrative levels, are doing the same kind of thing, with the support of the commission, to create pools of talent. So that is going on.

    Leadership, morale, and progress: this in my view has to be an ongoing challenge for all leaders. I don't think it would ever be appropriate in any organization, public service or wherever, to say we're now at the point where everything is fine, and that's it. It is a constant effort, and through the process of support through the La Relève Task Force and then the Leadership Network, what we attempted to do was provide some of that support, some of the tools to act as a catalyst in this process.

    As to human resources planning, Scott will obviously speak for himself. The comment I made was that I think one of the major achievements was for us to move forward in looking at human resources systematically—across the system, in different communities, horizontally, and in regions across the country. Is this something where more is needed? I think it's fair to say yes, because once again you cannot simply say, that's it, we will declare it finished. However, I think if one looks into it, what many departments and agencies are doing is in fact carrying on the preparation of such plans.

    On your final point, accountability, one of the things all executives, including deputy ministers, have is accountability agreements. Those accountability agreements, which we develop jointly in the case of deputy ministers with the Clerk of the Privy Council and the committee of senior officials, include increasingly a focus on things that are horizontal but, if I may add the concept, also corporate. In other words, the role of the individual is both with the specific organization as well as the broader institution. That links in clearly to many of the recommendations that have come out of the advisory committees in terms of compensation and benefits for senior people.

    Mr. Scott Serson: I'll just make two quick comments, Mr. Chair.

    If you ask me, I am not worried about succession planning at the level of assistant deputy ministers and probably not at the level of directors general. I think most departments are doing a good job at that. My broader concern is looking out at the talent pool that's going to be there in four or five years, and whether it's going to be ready, whether it's going to be bilingual, whether it's going to be diverse. An example of the kind of thing I'm looking for is less one-off staffing and recruitment situations and more looking at the collective needs.

    If we look at our colleagues in the Revenue Agency, who are now working outside the Public Service Employment Act, one of the changes they have made.... They used to do, for instance, something like 6,000 processes to hire 9,000 people. Through good planning, they now write about 1,000 processes and hire 9,000 people. Don't quote me on those numbers exactly, but that's the kind of ratio you can get to if you're thinking about your human resource needs, and the kind of burden you're taking off your managers if you plan in advance. That's the kind of human resource planning I'm trying to move departments to.

½  (1925)  

    The Chair: Bill C-25 is not technically before the committee; I acknowledge that. But it will be. We're going to be hearing witnesses directly related to that process, and you're part of that input.

    We're almost out of time, but I thought at least I could take one stab at asking you if you have some comments to make about the merit principle itself. I understand that historically the merit principle was really just defined by the courts as meaning the best person for the job. I suppose it comes down from a development of the British Home Office in trying to develop an independent public service that's professional and separate from the cycles of the political process.

    We've talked about merit versus political for a hundred years. Now we're going to try to actually put it in the statute, and there has been a bit of a buzz across the country that, with the way the bill has worded it, it's perhaps watered down. My first-blush look at it suggests to me that it may be trying to define something to fix something else somewhere else, and that's not the way to go.

    I've hinted enough as to what I'm inquiring about, scratching the surface, and perhaps you could at least make a stab at that particular process, or that particular issue, at this point, and then I think that's about all the time we have.

    Mr. Scott Serson: My colleagues are turning to me and I have to be a little bit careful, Mr. Chair, because of course we are a three-person commission and we're still studying the bill.

    I understand the purpose of the broad definition of merit, but I would make the personal observation that I worry about the guidance that is there for the Public Service Commission. You commented that the Public Service Commission has an important role there in terms of defining process, but quite frankly, my sense is that we need a little bit more guidance, as Arthur alluded to, from Parliament on how to interpret the public interest in that area.

    Mr. Arthur Kroeger: I suppose the bill will be on the agenda another time. I have read it and I think it's a useful step. It does a number of useful things that are not very spectacular, but it does foster the next stage of evolution of the public service.

    If you look back, there has been a progressive loosening of controls, going back to the days when a department had to get every position in its organization chart approved and classified, and these things were all centrally controlled and departments simply worked with what they had. There has been a huge evolution towards loosening up the controls and giving managers more discretion.

    There's always risk and there's a trade-off between control and acceptance of risk, and a view that has been quite pervasive, I think, is that you have to accept some of these risks. In the United States somebody came up with the phrase, we have been so careful to safeguard the public's money that we made it impossible to manage the public's money. You can say the same thing about human resource management.

    I think it is fundamental that Bill C-25 preserves the role of the Public Service Commission as the upfront guardian of the merit principle. That being said, I don't think you need to have as rigid a definition of merit as historically has been seen in the public service. You need to provide more flexibility and let people make sensible decisions, knowing that they're sometimes going to make not so sensible decisions.

    The ultimate safeguard, aside from the legislative definition, is what manager in his or her right mind would want to hire somebody who's incompetent? All you do is make your own life much more difficult. It is in the interests of managers to hire the best possible people, and if they have a little legislative guidance, that's good. But I don't think you need to prescribe it in a lot of detail.

½  (1930)  

    Dr. Peter Harrison: I think it's fair, Mr. Chair, to say that I didn't come to speak to the bill, and as you pointed out, it is not yet before the committee. And if I may say so, there are people significantly better qualified than I am to deal with your question when it continues to arise in your committee.

    The Chair: I want to thank you for coming today. I took note of a lot of great phrases, and that has certainly whetted our appetite.

    I would hope that you'd continue to be a help to us as we dig into the bill when it finally does come before the committee. I understand that the bill has been called for debate again tomorrow. I don't anticipate a lot of the parties debating this to the end on second reading, but that it will pass fairly soon and get to committee formally, and we will need your advice.

    I want to thank you for coming today. Thank you very much.

    The meeting is adjourned.