Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22 - Issue 6

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30 / Canadian Government Executive // June 2016
The recent retirement of seven federal deputy ministers
(DMs) reminds us of the pivotal and crucial role that
the deputy minister community plays in the success of
governments—particularly a newly elected one. Look-
ing beyond the retirement numbers reveals a concerted effort by
the current Prime Minister to renew the DM community by mak-
ing an unprecedented number of deputy minister-level appoint-
ments since his swearing in on November 4th. Up until now, he
has appointed twenty new deputy ministers which represents a
very significant shuffling of the 73 designated DMs who, in Ot-
tawa, also include associate deputy ministers and senior central
agency officers in the Privy Council Office and the Treasury Board
Secretariat.
The prime minister understood early in his mandate that to
implement his ambitious election platform he and his Ministers
would need a very energetic and knowledgeable deputy minister
cadre supporting their efforts. He resisted calls from some of his
advisors to bring in “new blood” from the provinces and the pri-
vate sector and instead, aside from two instances, he maintained
the longstanding federal tradition of appointing from among his
current cadre of senior public servants. In each of the nine press
releases since the government’s swearing in, the PM has sent a
very important signal that he trusts the public service despite its
having loyally served another government for almost a decade.
The most unanticipated appointment was that of Michael Wer-
nick who was tapped to replace Janice Charette as Cabinet Sec-
retary (Clerk of of the Privy Council Office). While it was largely
expected that the PM would, at some point, follow convention
with his own appointment to this crucial position, the timing be-
fore the first post-election DM retreat, caught most observers off
guard. However, his choice of Michael Wernick to replace Cha-
rette was seen as consistent with Canadian tradition since he was
an experienced DM. Wernick was serving as Deputy Clerk of the
Privy Council and was one of the most central players during the
transition from the Harper to Trudeau government.
Deputies are unique public servants in the Canadian system.
In the first instance, they are appointed by the prime minister (or
premier) to serve the government of the day and to perform as-
signed duties. As well, they are legally bound to be accountable
to Parliament for the actions and activities that take place under
their areas of responsibility. Given the nature of this unique
working arrangement, they belong to a community that identifies
with one another for support and with the government in their
willingness to serve. By convention, they are non-partisan, politi-
cally sensitive and responsive to their political masters. This is a
complex set of expectations and they all struggle, at one time, to
find the right balance in establishing a personal relationship with
their political masters and at the same time providing “fearless”
and independent advice.
Additionally, DMs work in an increasingly complex policy en-
vironment due to more transparency and greater globalization
of issues where their accountability due to the 2006 Federal Ac-
countability Act (FAA) plays out in parliamentary committees, in
the public domain with the increasing array of oversight bodies
which are monitoring their behaviour, and in increased scrutiny
from public and industry interest groups.
The ten years of Harper government were not easy on the DM
community because of many areas of distrust and conflict be-
tween the prime minister’s staff and the senior public service.
Even though the current government has pledged to return to a
more traditional relationship between the government and pub-
lic servants there is much rebuilding work to be done to overcome
the poisoned working environment that existed in many depart-
mental offices within the federal bureaucracy.
The current renewal efforts by the prime minister accompanied
by high turnover rates at the deputy minister level, the increased
complexity of the DM job and the lingering effects of the disillu-
sioned senior public service offers an opportunity to take a mea-
sured look at the evolving role of the DM community. In fact,
here has been very little attention paid, in recent years, to ways
in which deputies lead and manage their departments aside from
the changes in accountability regimes contained in the FAA. In-
terestingly, the last systematic evaluation of the deputy minister
community was done almost 30 years ago, in 1988, when former
Cabinet Secretary Gordon Osbaldeston provided a forward look-
ing report on the evolving nature of governance and accountabil-
ity within the senior public service.
As a starting point, some areas that would benefit from a sys-
tematic assessment would be the selection and recruitment pro-
cess for Deputy Ministers, a repositioning of the accounting officer
model, a consideration of core management and policy compe-
tencies for “digital” government, and an imaginative rethinking
of ways in which deputy ministers will relate to employees in a
modern government department.
David Zussman is a Senior Fellow in the Graduate School
of Public and International Affairs at the University of
Ottawa and is Research Advisor to the Public Sector
Practice of Deloitte.
The Last Word David Zussman
The Deputies in the Trudeau Regime
web
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