Speaking Truth to Power

The line between the public service and politics is a fine, and sometimes, faint single Some politicians cross that line and ask civil servants to take a certain quantity of action that is clearly political in nature. That's when bureaucrats face the difficult choice between letting it advance or saying forcefully, "No, Minister"

Ottawa's bureaucracy is structur like a pyramid. At the lowest horizontals are large numbers of civil servants whose piece of work it is to keep the machinery of rule running. These are the family that ensure pension cheques pass out at the right time to the right family They test drugs to make positive they are safe for use through patients. They draw up contracts and negotiate prices for the purchase of serviceables and services by the management They carry out thousands of different tasks.

Their work is supervised by dint of managers. The work of the managers is supervised by means of higher level managers. Let's take a quick direct the eye at Environment Canada to earn an idea of the constitution of the system.

The department is a small single by Ottawa standards, but it still has 4700 employee and an annual packet of about 5500 million. Each year department staff:

* Make thousands of inspections and centurys of prosecutions for offences against Canada's environment laws;

* Monitor the greatest in quantity dangerous chemicals among the 24000 or for a like reason in use in the country;

* Provide ready scientific advice and environmental impact assessments in significant spill incidents;

* Implement or support 350 environmental technology advancement casts in Canada and abroad;

* Issue more than a million weather forecasts and reply to 44 million requests for weather and environmental information;

* screen more than 400 species of internationally shared migratory birds and 11 million hectares of habitat;

* Sustain the 291 plant and animal species listed as endangered or at risk in Canada; and,

* Carry without scientific research and publish more than 350 scientific articles.

The turn and complexity of the work has to be organized and managed. At its Ottawa headquarters Environment Canada has five divisions, each l by means of Assistant Deputy Ministers. There are five regional divisions each l by dint of Regional Directors General. These ten division heads report to a envoy Minister, who is the top civil servant in the department. The delegate Minister reports to the Minister, who is the political head of the department. on the contrary the Deputy Minister is also responsible to the Public Service Commission, whose chief has the title of scribe of the Privy Council.

The scribe is at the top of the public service pyramid, on the contrary even this exalted official has a bos - the Prime Minister.

The scribe of the Privy Council gives "advice and support" to the Prime Minister upon every subject that he or she is likely to have to deal with. The registrar is supposed to be neutral politically. on the other hand he or she is appointed by dint of the Prime Minister who is certain to want someone in the piece of work who has similar political views. The scribe and the Prime Minister work actual closely together so keeping politics on the outside of the relationship is actual difficult. The same problem exists between Ministers and proxy Ministers.

If all this unmutilateds bewilderingly complex that's because it is. It's in the way that complicated, in fact, that clevers with multiple degrees have agitate untangling it. The different meanings of words similar as accountable, answerable, and responsible are debated and fine distinctions made among them. A doctorate in public administration is wanted to make sense of it all.

Mid-level bureaucrats do not advance with such lofty qualifications. When the Minister wanders into a civil servant's cubicle and remind ofs a contract for computer services be placed with a particular company what's he going to do? sum up the Minister she's crossed the line of political interference or place the contract?

Judge Gomery whose commission of inquiry studied conduct structure in detail, describes a likely consequence in his report: "In practice, as we have seen individual public servants may hesitate to voice like opposition, for fear of losing their piece of works or jeopardizing their chances of advancement."

The intertwined responsibilities and fuzzy lines between political interference and public administration made it simple for the Sponsorship Program to be hidden within the mingled maze of government operations. justice Gomery blamed former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Chief of Staff Jean Pelletier for deliberately creating the close program.

He said the sum of two units men directed the "virtually close program of discretionary spending to chooseed beneficiaries, saying that they believed in serviceable faith that those grants would enhance Canadian unity.

"They did not verify this assumption smooth though they had created a program lacking all the normal safeguards against maladministration."

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1 Mr Justice John Gomery said that former Prime Minister Jean Chretien was not personally corrupt. However, justice Gomery said Mr. Chretien must cany more [i]or[/i] less blame for the Sponsorship Program. The former prime minister has launched a lawsuit to the Gomery Commission findings. render free of access a file and follow progres upon this issue.