The clerk of the Privy Council’s report of the Task Team on Values and Ethics in the federal public service was released in December 2023 with limited public attention. It may seem like a wonky, bureaucratic exercise. But it was an important opportunity to think fundamentally about the ideas and values that underpin Canada’s public service. From my perspective, as a long-time public servant, it was a missed opportunity.

The report followed several months of consultations by a task force of deputy heads (who conducted over 90 conversations with public servants and external stakeholders) and was positioned as a “prologue to a broader dialogue on values and ethics in the public service.” Its highlights included concerns with real or perceived issues associated with political influence inside the public service, the promotion and deployment of “bad people,” double standards in the application of values and ethics, and concerns with accountability. Notably, “the higher up the food chain you go, the less accountability seems to exist.”

Reactions to the report were somewhat muted or polite. Former clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick observed that “it’s oddly lacking a point of view or position or a stance on anything.” He added, for example, that the report “identifies a problem with the incursions of political staff, but there’s no advice on what to do about it.”

At the time of the report’s release, I was newly retired and encouraged by several former colleagues “not to be too critical.” I jotted a few thoughts down and then watched the spring of scandals and auditor general reports for 2024 unfold. I also took the time to consult my network inside the public service on what middle management and the “rank and file” of the federal public service actually thought.

The results were not good. Of those I consulted, most wrote off the report as meaningless (which is a profound statement in and of itself). Many saw it as a missed opportunity to substantively address a growing list of issues and concerns, particularly with respect to the erosion of accountability across the system, with too many weak, fluffy recommendations.

There was one theme, however, that truly unsettled me. That theme was that the values the federal public service supposedly aspires to are not truly respected anymore, nor—and more importantly—are they rewarded inside the federal public service. This view was summed up with the following comment:

Scott, we need to start telling ourselves the truth. What matters inside the public service today is not respect for core values such as integrity, stewardship, excellence, and respect for democracy. What matters is blind loyalty to the political agenda, regardless of whether taxpayers are getting good policy, programs, or results.

I was gob-smacked by the comment, and not because it didn’t resonate. In fact, it did. And then I wondered: Is it true? Is it more true today than in the past? Has the public service indeed drifted this far from its core values? And, if so, why?

In pondering these questions (as a former public servant with more than 30 years experience), it is certainly debatable whether “blind loyalty to the political agenda of the day” outweighs core values, and whether it is more or less true today than in the past. Regardless of where one lands on these questions, there is significant evidence to suggest that focusing solely on the political agenda of the day at the expense of the fundamentals of good management is not good enough for taxpayers.

Following our spring of scandals, we now have numerous auditor general reports showing a glaring lack of due diligence by public servants, or more specifically, public service managers and executives:

• The ArriveCan audit showed a blatant disregard for standard management practices;
• the McKinsey audit showed frequent disregard for procurement policies and contracting practices that often did not demonstrate value for money;
• various reports have shown a lack of oversight of the federal procurement strategy for Indigenous business, with few firms being audited (before the ArriveCan report) to verify that they met the terms and conditions of the strategy.

The list goes on. While many would like to believe that these management failures are limited to procurement, I have my doubts. Personal experience and feedback from multiple sources suggest that the focus on “loyalty to the agenda of the day” is not constrained to procurement.

The point here is simple. Serving the government of the day should not come down to “blind loyalty” and a desire to please the powers that be. Serving the government of the day well demands public servants, particularly public service managers, and executives to do their due diligence when advising ministers and when delivering on the government’s agenda in accordance with core values and management fundamentals. As former senior public servant, Jim Mitchell, wrote in a speech to the Department of Finance in 2004 entitled “Why Management Matters,” “bad things can happen to good people, especially when those good people allow their sense of duty to the government or the country to lead them to ignore their more practical responsibilities as managers.”

It is against this backdrop that I think the clerk’s report missed an opportunity to address the erosion of accountability, core values, and management fundamentals head-on. These things are all central to public and political confidence in the public service’s ability to do its core job of serving the government and delivering value-for-money programs and services to Canadians.

Stewarding public resources, managing taxpayer money with integrity, and being accountable for results —without wasting away billions due to weak management (or worse)—is core to the purpose and the raison d’etre of the public service itself.  Paying attention to procurement rules, Treasury Board policies, and core values should not be optional, a matter of lip service, or kicked down the road for future discussion.

So, back to why? Why did the clerk find it necessary to stand up a task force on values and ethics? Why are we seeing system-wide concerns with accountability? Why do too many public servants think discussion of values and ethics is just that, talk, and not relevant to their day jobs?

Again, while one can debate root causes, I think there are a few key trends driving the failures we are witnessing.

The first and foremost is the erosion of political accountability. Our Westminster system of parliamentary democracy is premised on ministerial accountability and responsibility for results before Parliament. If ministers don’t accept responsibility for significant program or ethical failures, why should the mid-level public service manager or executive accept responsibility for management failures? … In our brave new world,no one, apparently, is accountable for anything except taxpayers (make sure you pay your taxes).

The second is the erosion of accountability for day-to-day results. Over the course of my career, I worked in seven federal departments. Too often, managers and executives do not pay attention to the development of meaningful business plans and performance agreements that articulate what they will deliver with the taxpayer resources entrusted to them. Too many performance management agreements are fluff, and too many executives get performance pay for questionable performance.

And finally, the third key trend driving the erosion of accountability, management fundamentals, and attention to core values is that it too often doesn’t appear to matter. Failure to deliver results and value for money rarely results in meaningful consequences.

The net result is that the system incentivizes “blind loyalty” and “the desire to please” because doing what the political level wants gets rewarded. That is not to say that the political level is ordering such behaviours on specific files. With rare exceptions, mid-level executives don’t take orders from political staff. They do, however, pay attention to the priorities of the day and do their best to follow and contribute to the agenda of the duly elected government.

And that is why action is needed. We need to be loud and clear on the expectations of public servants, particularly public service managers and executives, on the need to serve the government of the day loyally but not blindly, in a manner that respects core public service values and management fundamentals. This includes the importance of stewarding public resources, and managing people well and with integrity in a manner that protects taxpayer interests while delivering value for money.

Put simply, today’s federal public service needs to get back to basics. A “back to basics” agenda would include:

1. An overhaul of mandatory training, with an emphasis on the role of the public service as an arm of the executive arm of government so that public servants serve the duly elected government of the day whether they agree with their policies or not.
2. Mandatory training for civil servants (and political staff) on the interface between civil servants, political staff, and the offices of deputy ministers and ministers, based on “Open and Accountable Government” (2015), to set clear expectations between political staff and civil servants on the line between service to the political level and the duty of a public servant to respect Treasury Board policies, the values and ethics code, and non-partisanship.
3. Mandatory training for federal executives on how to design, manage, and run rigorous promotion boards based on the merit and requirements of a position (with support and oversight from human resources), with a strict policy that without the mandatory training, the executive is not qualified to run a promotion board.
4. Mandatory completion of meaningful executive performance management agreements (PMAs), where executives who do not complete a meaningful PMA that outlines performance commitments to which they can be held accountable do not get bonus pay.
5. Development and implementation of an ethics and consequences regime that penalizes poor management and rewards good management practices and compliance with Treasury Board policies, staffing requirements, and values and ethics with performance pay and opportunities for advancement.

While certainly not exhaustive, these are the kinds of concrete measures that the system needs to deliver the message to the public service, particularly managers and mid-level executives. Namely, that public service values and ethics matter and remain as important today as 50 years ago.

In my own experience serving deputy heads, in support of ministers and political staff, when I personally found myself in the most challenging ethical situations of my career, I relied heavily on advice from Ralph Heintzman (former assistant secretary at the treasury board who helped spearhead work on values and ethics in the late 1990s/early 2000s). It was early in my career and Ralph said to me, “Scott, when you face your toughest challenges in the future, it is your understanding and appreciation of public service core values that you will rely on the most to guide you.”

Ralph was right.