FEATURE 6 / Canadian Government Executive // WINTER 2025 UNCERTAINTY IN A TIME OF TRANSITION: AHEAD FOR PUBLIC SERVANTS 3KEY ISSUES Uncertainty is not a bug but rather a feature of working in Canada’s public service today. Three years on from the pandemic, a return to normalcy is more elusive than ever. We remain mired in a post-pandemic transition period dealing with the economic and social fallout of two years of upheaval. It is as if ‘long COVID’ has infected our body politic as a whole. Demands on public servants are growing not lessening. The pace of work, supercharged for many to deal with COVID-19, has not lessened. Any expected snap-back to a form of business-as-usual has evaporated. The uncertainty of navigating through COVID has been supplanted by the uncertainty of navigating old issues under new circumstances. Housing and immigration are two big examples where pre-pandemic policies are being radically overhauled to address massive structural inequities and policy failure laid bare by the pandemic. Whether it’s figuring out new post-pandemic policy approaches or accommodating ‘return to office’ obligations and changed working environments, or even having to prepare for a change in government at the top, uncertainty is more and more the operational order of the day for federal public servants. The first step to dealing with uncertainty is identifying what’s ahead. Regardless of who’s in charge, these three key institutional issues will be affecting all federal public servants. BY DAVID McLAUGHLIN, BA, MA, MBA
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