Public servants shouldn’t hunker down and wait to outlast Carney

Published on September 25, 2026 in the Ottawa Citizen

That would be a disingenuous and losing strategy with this government.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is challenging the public service. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /POSTMEDIA

Lost in Trump’s trade war and the Ottawa bubble’s fixation on downsizing is the direct challenge that Prime Minister Mark Carney is posing to the federal public service.

With the establishment of yet another new agency, Digital Transformation Canada, in recent weeks, the prime minister has dared public servants to function in a way they haven’t before.

The permanent public service has seen governments come and go professing sweeping change from Brian Mulroney’s “pink slips and running shoes” and Paul Martin’s “politics of ambition” through to Stephen Harper’s anti-bureaucracy mindset. There may be some public servants who think they can simply hunker down. They would be wrong to adopt such a disingenuous and losing strategy with this government.

Not since Lester Pearson has there been a prime minister with such deep personal experience inside the federal public service; and, not since Mulroney has there been a prime minister with such an extensive private sector resume. The existential threat of the current moment only serves to sharpen the prime minister’s instinct as a hard driving investment banker as well as his critical assessment of public service shortcomings.

As he has made clear, the federal public service is on a war footing. In practice, this means that deputy ministers are front and centre and, if there is a feeling that improvement is needed, then work arounds in the form of new personnel or new institutions, such as Digital Transformation Canada, will be dispatched with alacrity.

Internally, the Carney government has been harshly critical of the speed of government. As Michael Sabia, clerk of the Privy Council, has repeatedly warned, advice that is a day late is, by definition, bad advice.

Much of the hated process bloat slowing government occurs because of “beige tape” — the rules, processes, approvals and reporting requirements that the federal government inflicts on itself. Doug Guzman, the prime minister’s longtime friend and hand selected deputy head of the newly mandated Defence Investment Agency, cited his frustration with the “triangle of inertia” in reference to the rules and procedures hindering innovation among different government organizations. In the absence of rigorous public service reform, beige tape will need to be shredded on a case-by-case basis. It is going to take a while.

The quantitative analyst in the prime minister meshes seamlessly with the hard driving governor of the banks of Canada and England by challenging the level of analytic rigour in Ottawa. To speak the PM’s language, public servants are refreshing their memories on the essentials of economic analysis, such as returns on investment and cost-benefit analysis.

The federal public service is learning that for this prime minister, data is the foundation of any convincing policy argument and that the focus is on international best practices.

At the root of the public service’s difficulty in framing innovative solutions is the government’s entrenched attitude towards risk. While crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, showed that the public service is still able to act decisively under conditions of imperfect information, it does so reluctantly.

Under normal conditions, the public service exhibits a deep-seated instinct to de-risk initiatives, finds it difficult to proceed under conditions of imperfect information and is sometimes unwilling to act proactively for fear of making mistakes. If it is to meet the PM’s expectations, the federal public service will need to fully confront its risk phobia.

Past failures in implementation have strengthened the prime minister’s resolve to ensure that success factors are fully understood and defined through key performance indicators — a clear upgrade on the Trudeau government’s high-level results and delivery approach. The jury remains out as to whether the Carney government’s bold plans are realized through bold execution.

The hard truth for the public service is that its reputation and more tangibly its monopoly on advice to government has been eroding for decades. The political class with whom they must work closely is sceptical of them, is increasingly connected to other sources of advice, and now has access to AI to supplement its inherent self-confidence. For its part, the public has become disillusioned by perplexing service failures and a perceived gap between the speed of government and the speed of business and life.

As Kevin Lynch and Jim Mitchell warned in their book, A New Blueprint for Government, the federal public service is at risk of becoming an “administrative state,” where the public service is merely a policy taker of the political class and is limited to implementing policies developed elsewhere.

The prime minister is pushing the federal public service hard to increase its speed, cut beige tape, raise its analytic rigour and improve implementation. In doing so, the federal public service is being pushed to transform itself in ways that will ensure its future relevance. While there are and will continue to be choppy waters ahead, now would be a perfect time to do it.