A Profile of the Public Service of Canada

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Preface to the Second Edition

In 1994, Canada produced its first national public sector profile for the Commonwealth Secretariat, but since that time major public sector reforms have continued to take place in Canada. The purpose of this update is to inform the reader about the major reforms that have continued to take place in Canada between 1995 and roughly the end of 2002. Reform has indeed been continuous and it has covered virtually all aspects of public sector management. As a result of this continuous effort to innovate and improve, Canada continues to be seen as a leading example of excellence in public administration and a distinctive Canadian approach has begun to emerge.

The determining factors which created pressure for reform have been very similar to those in many other countries: a financial crisis perhaps menacing Canada's status as a developed country; the impact of growing globalisation; the rapid development of information technology; and the increasing demands of better-informed citizens.

As a result, some key challenges quickly became obvious: the need to eliminate the deficit; how to change the role of government and get government right; the need to overhaul service delivery; how to engage citizens in the development of policies, programmes and services; the need to reduce and restructure the public service workforce and make effective use of information technology. Efforts to come to terms with these challenges are described in this volume under initiatives such as Program Review, La Relève, Service Improvement, Government on-line and Human Resource Modernisation. Other important sectors of modernisation were those of values and ethics, official languages and diversity. Finally, in recognition of the knowledge-based transformation of our societies and workplaces, increased emphasis was devoted to the development of a continuous learning policy and of learning organisations in the public sector.

One of the Clerks of the Privy Council during this period described the Canadian journey as follows:

Over a short period of time, Canada managed the most profound realignment of the role of the state since the Second World War. We eliminated the deficit over three years; downsized the scale of the Public Service of Canada as a percentage of GDP to its lowest level since 1949 over five years; modernized our service-delivery function by using modern information technologies and information management . . . a process that is ongoing; as we strengthened our policy capacity; and started to modernize our approach to human resources management.

More important, in my view, is the fact that all the reforms were implemented peacefully, without the social unrest and dislocation experienced in other parts of the world. Through it all, the Government of Canada continued to enjoy strong public support.¹

Like the first version, this profile only covers the federal public service. Given the federal nature of our country, much reform and innovation also of course occurs at the sub-national or provincial level. The reader is strongly encouraged to consult the other sources listed in the section on further reading. For example, readers could consult the volume by Bourgault, Demers and Williams on Canadian public administration prepared for the 1997 conference of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences in Quebec City. It offers an overview of the historical origins of Canada's public administration systems and of some of their distinctive features, a presentation of the particularities of the Canadian federal system and several chapters on the provinces. They should also consult the Canada report submitted to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2002 and continue to explore the Institute of Public Administration of Canada's website, where one can find descriptions of the annual Innovation Awards submissions and winners during this period.

The focus of this profile is on management reforms in the federal public sector. Following a brief section on the organisation and machinery of government, the profile describes the three business lines of the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS), the government's management board: human resource modernisation, service improvement (including Government on-line) and stewardship. To this has been added a new section on the management of the policy-making process similar to those included in country profiles produced after the first Canada profile.

The modest purpose of this profile is to present the major reforms that have occurred between 1995 and 2002 and to capture the state of the art in each area at the beginning of 2003. In order to keep the length of the report within acceptable limits, and given the existence of rich websites, the reader is often referred to them and to the further reading and key documents sections at the end of the report. A brief conclusion points to a possible future agenda for public sector management reform, at least from the perspective of the management board.

Several people have toiled over many months to make this publication possible and each and every one of them deserves to be thanked for their support and contribution. The leadership of the International Relations Office and its International Relations Advisory Committee at the Treasury Board Secretariat deserves special mention.

1. The Public Sector in the Knowledge Age. The Canadian Experience: Challenges and Opportunities Speech by Jocelyne Bourgon, President, Canadian Centre for Management Development (CCMD) at the CCMD Conference on Changing Governance and Public Sector Reform in the Americas, Ottawa, May 2, 2001.

Ralph Heintzman
Assistant Secretary,
Strategic Policy and Planning
Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada

Maurice Demers
Director,
International Relations Office
Strategic Policy and Planning
Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada

 

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