An interview with Morris Rosenberg, Deputy Minister of Health Canada, by David Hume.
Can you tell us a little about your career path?
I began my career as a lawyer, working in private practice. It was a good job with a good firm, but I felt like something was missing. So I decided to go to Harvard to pursue a Master’s Degree in Law.
While I was at Harvard, the Canadian Justice Department took the initiative to recruit Canadians doing graduate work at U.S. universities. In 1979, I finished my degree and decided to take a position with the Department of Justice working on economic regulation and competition law. It was an exciting time to be in this field. From 1980 through 1986, I had the opportunity to work on a number of significant cases that ended up before the Supreme Court and led to significant expansion of the federal power over trade and commerce. I was also part of a team that developed a new Competition Act.
From that first job I moved into a series of, to me at least, really fascinating posts. They included working my way up the ranks as a manager, becoming involved in working with American colleagues on implementing the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, to becoming responsible for intellectual property, bankruptcy and corporate law as an ADM. I was even able to step out of my comfort zone in the legal field to take on the challenge of working in regional and economic development at PCO. From there I had a role as Deputy Secretary of Cabinet for Operations responsible for economic and social policy, which saw many of the hottest files of the day come across my desk. I was truly privileged to be in that position.
By 1998, I had come full circle and was appointed Deputy Minister at the Department of Justice. This was a great time to be at Justice, because increasingly, many of the significant issues facing the government had an important legal dimension. The issues I had the opportunity to be involved with included trying to develop a balanced legislative response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, addressing the globalization of crime, and addressing complex legal issues in the area of Aboriginal policy, immigration policy, and equality rights.
I’ve now been the Deputy Minister at Health Canada since 2004. Interestingly, Health Canada has a lot in common with the work at Justice. Legal advice and scientific advice are both hugely important to the enterprise of government. Both types of advice tend to go through rigorous peer review processes. Both have the common challenge of being quite technical and therefore needing to be interpreted for non-experts so that they can be effectively taken into account in formulating policy advice.
Since you began your career, what has changed in succeeding as a public servant?
I think the big challenge for public servants starting out is that the federal public service is a lot bigger than it used to be. When I started, departments were smaller, which meant it was easier to meet senior people who were willing to mentor me as I got going. These days, those mentors are harder to find. Departments need to be systematic about attracting good mentors and providing newer employees with opportunities to access them.
On the other hand, departments are more rigorous in providing formal training these days. The kind of professional development that new public servants have access to these days is way beyond what I was offered when I got started.
Where are the big opportunities now?
The great opportunity of working in the public service is the chance to shape the future of the country and the role of the government in improving society. And right now is a really exciting time to have that opportunity.
In the 1970s there was a sense that the federal government had the “answers” to all problems. Today, that is not the case. Most of the problems facing Canadians aren’t always going to be effectively dealt with using legislative and spending power. The emphasis is now on “softer” tools – partnerships, capacity building, information sharing, education and research.
The opportunity for young public servants is to learn what these different tools are, and how and when to use them.
So what sort of “big lessons” have you learned that would be helpful to young public servants?
The main set of lessons would be about why I’m happy to have had the opportunity to work in the public service.
The first thing would be to recognize the wealth of interesting and complex and high quality work available to us. All the way through my career I’ve had the opportunity to work on really fascinating files and issues. I think the fundamental issues governments are called to address are some of the most interesting challenges. Related to this is the opportunity to move into new areas if you wish to expand your horizons.
The second would be to recognize the incredible access to the most outstanding people in the world in their fields. Working in the public interest gives you opportunities to meet and work with people who are shaping developments within the government, in other governments, in business and in non-government organizations. You get to see outstanding leaders and get to realize that some of the most inspiring are working in relative obscurity on very local problems.
The third, and most important, is the real sense that you are able to make a difference to the country – to the public good. That’s a rare thing. It’s what was missing from my work in private legal practice.
Any advice for public servants on how to succeed?
Something that is really important is to be selective about who you work with. In some ways this is more important than the actual work that you do. A good manager or supervisor will find ways to empower you, and encourage you to grow. I was lucky enough to get some significant responsibility early in my career, and my managers helped me recognize opportunities when they come along. Managers have a responsibility to seed the public service with capable people.
As much as possible, it’s important to try and develop your own sense of the country and what Canada is. That means going out and meeting with Canadians and finding out what issues they are facing. Test your own assumptions about what’s happening in their lives and ask the question “what is the problem that we’re trying to solve?” This can take you beyond analytical understanding into a honed sense of how to help. This experiential learning will not undermine your existing work – it will supplement it. I try to do this sort of thing regularly.
Recently, I had a community organization come in and talk to me about their work. We sat in the boardroom and they presented me some slides, as I guess both they and I were expecting. Then I asked if there were any local projects they were involved with. They took me to a school not five minutes from my office where they helped build a play structure. The school has really complex problems – gang issues, needles and condoms all over the grounds; parents are working hard and many did not have the time to get involved in their community.
By leaving the office I was able to see the policy issues of health, security, poverty and social cohesion in real life. I’ve had similar experiences visiting Kingston Penitentiary and learning about mental health treatment, or going to Aboriginal communities in distress. I remember those experiences vividly, and some of them happened many years ago. While meetings will always be a necessary part of life in government, balancing them off with getting out of the office has really enriched
