For more than 75 years Canada, and other OECD member states, have used science as a building block for their societies and their economies. Science has delivered benefits to society through a process of knowledge creation, translation, mobilization, and adaptation. In the last 75 years, science has indeed contributed to economic growth, to social progress, and to our physical and mental wellbeing.

The origins of this relationship required society to support the production of science through public funding, granting the scientific community a great deal of autonomy, in exchange for the considerable but unpredictable benefits that can flow from the scientific enterprise. By trusting science’s self-governing processes, society would, in turn, benefit from the fruits of science’s labour.

Today, that relationship is under strain. Like every relationship, the tenets of trust and integrity are crucial to maintaining a healthy working relationship between science and society. This same trust and integrity contributes to a core principle of good governance: legitimacy. Legitimacy leads to a broad-based acceptance of science’s contributions. It is perhaps the most difficult yet most important good governance principle to measure.

In recent years Canadians have witnessed a proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms and even in mainstream media. In this environment, the integrity and ethics of science and scientists are increasingly questioned and rejected. By extension, some Canadians have also begun to reject the role that science plays in society.

The divorce of society from science became more pronounced with the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic revealed the messy yet integral parts of the scientific process. It underlined that science revolves around both what we know and what we don’t know. By definition, it operates in a risky and uncertain environment. A lack of familiarity with the scientific process, such as determining how COVID-19 was spread and how newly developed vaccines could help, resulted in increased public skepticism about science at a time when reliance on scientific evidence and communication was, in fact, necessary to combat the virus.

Trust is a three-dimensional relationship that is based on integrity, dependability, and confidence. This is defined as a combination of trustfulness and trustworthiness. By comparison, scientific integrity is defined by enforcing norms and standards, rather than promoting idealized behaviours. The result leaves us with an ideal for measuring trust, and only vague notions of what scientific integrity isn’t.

Rebuilding a trusting relationship between science and society will require getting to know each other again. Now that science has pulled back the curtain on scientific uncertainty and the messiness of the process, it is time to learn from it and re-establish the good governance that goes with it.

Recognizing this imperative, the Institute on Governance led a two-year, collaborative research initiative with federal science and innovation departments and agencies called Government Science and Innovation in the New Normal (GSINN). It is in-depth examination of the evolving relationship between government science and innovation, and society. The first of ten papers has been released. Entitled Trust, Integrity and Science Ethics, it analyzes the relationship between public trust, the integrity of government science, and the key challenges that are re-shaping this relationship.

If Canada hopes to rise to the challenge of a future pandemic, understanding and reinforcing the science-trust-society relationship will be key.

To know more about GSINN or to read the full paper, please visit the GSINN initiative home page.

Rhonda Moore
Executive Director
Science and Innovation

There was literally no one like her.

Her Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, was the head of state of 15 realms, and head of a Commonwealth of 56 nations whose successive leaders regarded her with singular respect. She was raised at the knee of people to whom Queen Victoria was Granny, married to the grandnephew of the last two Russian tsars, and the sovereign of 15 British prime ministers starting with Winston Churchill. The final survivor of an age that is gone, one can only stand in awe of the sheer historical sweep of her life.

Her heritage did not always serve her perfectly. In an egalitarian world her inherited rank struck more than a few as anachronistic. And the standards of comportment she learned from her earliest days were sometimes ill-suited to an age when stalwart rectitude became less admired. Yet insiders attested to her warmth and humour, most recently observed in a wry exchange with an animated bear about the actual contents of her infamous purse.

And almost everyone – even reluctant Labour prime ministers – came to admire her commitment to duty and a life of service, and the grace and dignity with which she discharged those duties. At 21 she vowed her life to the service of her people, and she remained true to that vow for 75 years, tirelessly doing what her governments asked of her even if she privately winced. It is no small thing to serve decades of public life with nary a slip of the tongue.

Most of us observed the discharge of the Queen’s duties in ceremonial terms, from state banquets to ribbon cuttings to attending less than mesmerizing public entertainments. Perhaps less conspicuous was her critical constitutional role and the significant contribution this hereditary sovereign made to democracy.

As a constitutional monarch the Queen was often described as a figurehead, someone who rubber stamped the decisions of others. But this misses the rich texture of the role Elizabeth II played in her nation’s government, a role attested to in academic studies like Lord Hennessy’s The Hidden Wiring and the discreet but telling recollections of successive prime ministers, who knew they could confide in her and benefit from her singular experience without the slightest fear of indiscretion. Never once did Elizabeth II fail to do what the constitution, written or unwritten, asked of her. And to her people she was a focal point for their love of their country and its traditions.

Part of the genius of the Westminster system is its separation of formal state authority from the day-to-day decision making of government. The monarchy is a key element of that system, providing continuity and gravitas to the state and its institutions – a continuity now on full display as Britain observes the seamless transition of both prime minister and monarch within just a few days. In her person the Queen bore ten centuries of state authority and, through her own awareness of her institutional role, compelled prime ministers to recognize that they were not heads of state but simply ministers of the Crown. Of course she could never precisely replicate that role in Canada, where most of her duties were discharged by Governors General, but the same constitutional structure prevails here, and most of our prime ministers have attested to their high regard for her as a public servant and Canada’s head of state.

The Queen was also head of the Church of England, a responsibility that, like all her responsibilities, she evidently took very much to heart. Her faith was important to her and seems to have anchored her choices in life. And so it is perhaps all the more fitting that we say, for the last time for at least three generations, God save the Queen.

Karl Salgo
Executive Director
Public Governance

Aurele Theriault, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Institute on Governance (IOG), is pleased to announce the appointment of David McLaughlin as the Institute’s new President and CEO.

“We are very pleased that David has joined our team to bring vital new leadership rooted in his extensive federal and provincial governance experience and record of public policy accomplishment” said Theriault. “The IOG’s long and trusted record of promoting good governance practices in Canada’s public institutions combined with David’s leadership experiences will serve us well to better position the Institute to serve government at all levels as well as environmental, social and governance minded companies and organizations across Canada.”

McLaughlin brings over thirty years of governance experience serving most recently as Clerk of the Executive Council, Cabinet Secretary, Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Head of the Public Service in the Government of Manitoba. His full biography can be found here.

“Good governance is essential to public trust in our public institutions and democracy” said McLaughlin.  “I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the IOG and its dedicated team at this crucial moment in Canadian public life”, McLaughlin continued. “I can’t think of a more important need at this time in Canada.”

McLaughlin was chosen following an extensive search process over six months, supported by an independent executive search firm overseen by Sarah Paquet, Vice-Chair of the IOG Board of Directors.

“We attracted a number of strong candidates and were well supported by the professional team at Boyden’s Executive Search to find the right candidate to lead the Institute at this time” said Paquet.

The Institute on Governance is an independent, not-for-profit think tank based in Ottawa whose mission is advancing better governance in the public interest nationally and internationally.

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This is our third post in our series on Future of Work. With contribution from Ryan Androsoff, Associate at the Institute on Governance and CEO of Think Digital.

The society-wide experiment with large-scale work-from-home – and now increasingly hybrid – work arrangements benefits have focused on greater work-life flexibility, a more inclusive and diverse workforce, and reductions in commuting time.

That last one also has had an important societal benefit of reducing carbon emissions through reductions in commuter traffic (for a real life example, see this innovative dashboard from the Government of California that uses real-time data to quantify the reduction in carbon emissions by State employees who are teleworking).

There is, however, an important organizational benefit to having a distributed workforce that has not been talked about as much – disaster resilience.

This is a particularly important point for government organizations who are often entrusted with protecting the safety and security of our most vulnerable. Reliance on having access to a specific physical location to be able to do one’s job as a public servant means that critical services might not be able to be provided to the public during a time of crisis, when they are needed most.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a wake-up call for organizations – they needed to be able to still operate even when they couldn’t be together physically. Thankfully, this particular crisis took place during a time when the technology available to us meant that with the right focus and effort we were able to quickly change how our organizations worked so that they could weather the proverbial storm.

But with the rush to a back-to-the-office posture by some government organizations, are we at risk of trading away one of the great organizational resiliency gifts that the pandemic gave us?

In Ottawa, we recently saw a real-life, non-pandemic example of the benefits of a distributed workforce.

For much of this past February, downtown Ottawa was effectively shut down by the presence of the so-called “Freedom Convoy”. Large trucks and other vehicles blocked the streets of the downtown core of the nation’s capital for weeks on end, impacting both private and public transit in and out of the area. Many downtown retail businesses closed due to the disruptions, and many large employers with downtown offices (including the federal government) encouraged their employees to avoid coming into the office unless absolutely necessary. Police action in the later part of the month to disperse the convoy occupation of the downtown core turned that “encouragement” to a “requirement”.

Amidst all of this something important went largely unremarked upon – namely that the Government of Canada continued operations mostly unaffected.

This was of course because the federal government was already in a work-from-home posture for the past two years due to the pandemic and had the tools and processes in place to allow for the work of public servants to take place in a distributed way.

As a thought exercise, imagine what would have happened if a similar scenario had taken place two years earlier?

Given the large number of headquarters for federal departments located in downtown Ottawa and the pre-COVID requirement for public servants to have access to government office buildings to do their job, the short answer is that likely the work of government would have largely ground to a halt.

In fact, during this crisis the one government institution that did have to suspend its operations temporarily was the House of Commons (somewhat ironically during a debate on the emergency measures that they had put in place to address the ongoing protest). This is perhaps unsurprising since Parliament has stubbornly refused throughout the pandemic to evolve its operations to a fully distributed model and still relies on physical access to the Parliamentary precinct to be able to carry on its work.

The reality is that we will continue to face disasters, of both the natural and human-made variety.

In times of disaster citizens rely on government institutions more than ever to be able to serve Canadians. As governments consider their Future of Work posture, it is critical that they do not forget that government is made up of human beings, not desks inside of buildings.

Government still needs to be able to function even if public servants can’t access a government building.

Moving back to reliance once again on access to a specific physical location will not serve governments or Canadians well and will all but guarantee future institutional failures that are expensive both financially and reputationally.

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In the coming months, the IOG, in partnership with a team of proven experts, will be contributing ideas, learnings and services to help organizations and their leaders work through the issues that arise in scaling up remote work or hybrid work environments.

With contribution from IOG Fellow Dr. Sara Filbee. This article is second in a series considering the importance of societal infrastructure

Once we have agreed on what is essential for our collective wellbeing and interests, we need to determine how we will manage and invest in it.

This is a complex discussion as societal infrastructure spans private and public sectors as well as civil society. However, regardless of who is the ‘owner’, we all have a stake in it being accessible, inclusive, resilient and sustainable. Canadians are entitled to expect leaders in all sectors to play their part.

Sadly, on any one of these markers, we have significant work to do.

From a public sector perspective, the determination of how much we should invest has been constrained (at least in the public discourse) by two numbers from the public accounts – debt and deficit.

There is insufficient regular accounting for the health and sufficiency of our societal infrastructure – our collective assets. If we were running a company, we would be considered negligent and incompetent to base our decisions on two numbers from the financial statements. Countries are significantly more complex and such focus is accordingly even more problematic.

Such a narrow focus has led to what I describe as a propensity to define “strategic” by success in cutting costs in the public sector and a failure to invest sufficiently in the health of our infrastructure.

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The consequences are that we currently face an infrastructure gap that, depending on who you listen to, ranges from the billions to a trillion – and this is just the regular bricks and mortar physical assets. Not included are the investments required to meet the challenges of the climate emergency such as recently experienced across Canada nor to address the deficits that the Covid pandemic has exposed and indeed made worse. Much of our social infrastructure and community gathering places are run by small enterprises or civil society, often with limited fiscal capacity and ability to withstand the shock of the pandemic.

All sectors have a role to play and are subject to fiscal pressures which can prevent necessary investment.

Several decades of neoliberal orthodoxy, which prescribed privatization in order to capitalize on the real or perceived efficiencies and effectiveness of the private sector have led to the privatization of a significant proportion of our utilities and other similar essential assets. Here the risk is that in the drive to make publicly run infrastructure saleable in the marketplace, deals may not always have been carefully enough structured to ensure adequate incentives and assurances of the necessary levels of investment and maintenance for the long term, let alone for a future requiring a rethink about how we can sustainably coexist on this planet.

On the digital front, after several decades of short-term focus, governments are hampered by legacy systems and, often, a lack of investment in redundancy for the infrastructure that is in place.

Cyber-attacks increasingly pose a significant danger to the health and safety of citizens. Digital infrastructure is for the most part operated by large private sector (public) companies which are subject to shareholder pressures for short term profit maximization rather than their contribution to the public good or sustainability. Also unaddressed is the highly energy intensive nature of our digital technologies at a time when we are increasingly reminded of the need to reduce our environmental footprint – and quickly.

One small example of the unanticipated consequences of the delivery of essential services by the private sector was demonstrated during Hurricane Dorian in Atlantic Canada in 2019. There, residents struggled with insufficient cellular capacity due to a lack of adequate back-up power for cellular towers.

Today, people either don’t have landlines or if they do have them, they are electrically, or battery powered and thus not available in an extended crisis. Cellular service is thus the only way for individuals to connect and access emergency services in a prolonged loss of power leaving a significant hole in our emergency communications capabilities.

These all pose significant challenges. Having inclusive, resilient, accessible and sustainable societal infrastructure is fundamental to our nation’s social and economic success. A short-term focus which neglects 21^st Century realities will not get us there.

We, and this means all of us and all sectors, need to put our shoulder to this wheel if the promise of our Nation is to be realized.

With guest contribution from David Scouler, Managing Director at CultureRx. This blog post is part of a series from the Institute on Governance and our partners which examines the Future of Work. To stay up to date, follow along on our blog, or sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive access to posts before they go live!

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The Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat.

Those words stir up memories of the drama that unfolds during the game and the anticipation of how the sporting event will turn out.  There will be winners and of course the others.

This has relevance in the unfolding drama in the workplace today and perhaps more importantly, in the future.  The unquestioned goal is keeping, attracting, and growing critical talent for organizations to achieve victory in the pursuit of their mission and purpose.  

In public service the competition is fierce and getting more so as the private sector runs the ball down the field with their transformative workplace initiatives to win the battle for best talent.

Let’s draw some parallels. 

How does a team prepare for a big game and a winning season? 

How do the athletes prepare, physically and mentally?

What is seen and heard in the locker room?  What are the coaches doing and how is that impacting individual players as well as the team?  What does practice look like? What happens if a key player gets injured? 

You get the picture.

The thrill of victory in the workplace is marked by many similar elements.  Player and team productivity, their health and strength, understanding the strategies and tactics of “the game”, and the ability to stay focused on winning.

What constitutes winning? Building trust with the public and serving the customer effectively in the ways in which they wish to be served.

Today’s competition with the private sector is well underway and we see companies poaching key talent and providing a workplace culture that is very attractive and designed to treat employees in the ways that they wish to be treated – trusted with autonomy and celebrated with the achievement of the most meaningful results.  That looks a lot like a path to victory however the game is still being played.

Public service departments and agencies need to ask the question:

Are we up for the competition and if so, how are we preparing to win?

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With contribution from IOG Fellow Dr. Sara Filbee.

We are living in uncertain and challenging times in which sustainability and resilience are more important than ever before.

COVID-19 has shown us the gaps and fragilities – the antithesis of sustainability and resilience – in our society.

Reports on the climate emergency increasingly call for immediate and significant action. Putin’s declaration of war on Ukraine has irretrievably shattered the global order which has been the foundation of our economy and political relationships. In all of this, we need to take a critical (and I would suggest urgent) look at who we are as Canadians, who we want to become and what it will take to get us there.

And if we want something different, something better, we need to change our conversations and be prepared to challenge what we have previously taken for granted.

One area ripe for re-examination is our societal infrastructure, the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities needed for the operation of our country. While I am hopeful that the much-needed debate is happening in the back rooms of the Nation, these issues affect all sectors and all Canadians and thus are worthy of a broader discussion. The pandemic showed us that our infrastructure is insufficiently resilient – particularly as it serves the vulnerable in our society. Climate change and global political shocks will further challenge these structures.

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Before considering how we resource and invest in infrastructure, we must first define it.

The usual focus is on bricks-and-mortar such as the ports and airports, roads, highways, and bridges that connect us and the hospitals, health care facilities, universities, and schools on which we all depend. Infrastructure, however, involves much more and what is now necessary for a healthy, inclusive, and prosperous society is different from that of 20 to 30 years ago.

Digital infrastructure is the perfect example. To state the obvious, the pace of digitization in both public and private sectors has significantly increased through COVID-19 and access is now more essential than ever for individuals to fully participate in society. Its accessibility, inclusivity, resilience and increasingly, its sustainability, are now fundamental to our prosperity and social cohesion.

While the digital economy has been a lifesaver for many, the lack of broadband particularly in remote areas as well as the digital divide which disproportionately affects our more vulnerable populations has left many behind as both employment opportunities and the delivery of public and private goods and services have moved further online. 

There has been some recognition of this including a focus on increasing broadband accessibility. However, much remains to be done and what has already begun must be accelerated.

Beyond digital infrastructure, we also need to recognize the crucial importance of the social infrastructure that supports us in coming together in community.

COVID-19 has demonstrated the importance of social capital, the networks, and relationships between people in our society, in meeting the health care challenges of the pandemic, keeping the economy going and maintaining our mental health. Community gathering places such as libraries, restaurants and bars, gyms, arenas and curling rinks, cultural presentation spaces and so on are fundamental for the social relationships and interactions these places and spaces enable.

Many have been stressed and, in some cases, lost during the pandemic.

Lastly, and just as important (actually, more important) as the physical assets, are workers.

The majority are among the lowest paid in society and often lack benefits and security of tenure. The current levels of burn out and flight from the health care sector is just one indication that our social infrastructure is badly ailing with serious implications for all. It has become almost trite to say that standing on the doorstep applauding health care and other essential workers is easy to do – but we need to do much more.

If the moral imperative to make sure that all are able to participate fully in our society does not drive us, then sheer practicality should.

We can have the most up to date and beautiful buildings and yet, with no one to operate them, we are no further ahead.

None of this suggests an easy answer and we would be naïve to expect one. We do need however to re-examine what we consider to be the essential societal infrastructure needed for us to be the healthy, prosperous and inclusive country that we aspire to be. Only then can we start to discuss how it should be provided, resourced and maintained.

With contribution from John Penhale. This blog post is the first in a series from the Institute on Governance and our partners which examines the Future of Work. To stay up to date, follow along on our blog, or sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive access to posts before they go live!

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It’s been just over 2 years since the first cases of COVID-19 were appearing in North America.

At that time, some organizations were experimenting with telework, yet office space was still the primary focus of organizational structure.

In the federal government, along with a lot of other employers, employees were sent to work from home to slow the spread of the virus.

A lot of work has happened since then and working from home has rapidly become the new normal. Few could have anticipated the long-lasting, fundamentals changes organizations have felt as a result of the pandemic.

Return to the office has been a point of discussion since the offices were closed.  A lot of discussions have taken place about how to balance the new realities and priorities of today’s workers.  

The resulting default position for most is a hybrid workplace – a vague mid-point between the traditional office space and remote work. 

The hybrid workplace is a comfortable solution to an intractable problem.  Fully remote workers have a lot of flexibility, and it is difficult to “track them” in a traditional sense. 

Workers have too many work profiles and too many issues, constraints or wishes about what they would like. It is a daunting prospect to try to respond to all of this variation without having a detailed understanding of those (and other) variables that affect employees, management, and those the organizations serve.

This all leads to the hybrid workplace as the organizational response, but leaves us with an important question: 

Is the hybrid workplace really an answer? 

Some employees are thriving, and some are not.

Employees are suddenly liberated in ways they never expected. Organizations are learning work can happen at any time, in any place.  

What difference does it make if you are sitting in a room in a house in Ottawa, a cottage in P.E.I., looking at the beach in Florida, or anywhere in between? 

The answer is effectively nothing – except if you are expected to go to a specific building in a specific city on some expected schedule that may mean nothing to the employee. 

If an employee has a desire to relocate to another location but wants to continue working, it comes down to a simple question: Can the employee work remotely from a location that precludes physical entry to a site or does the employee change their employer to facilitate that opportunity? 

Once talented employees start to look at the second alternative, most hybrid workplans in the world will fail in a primordial requirement for organizations – finding, developing, and retaining talent. 

An employee, followed by more employees, will start to leave. 

Organizations will be either beneficiaries of new talent or donators of talent that organizations will find difficult to replace.

Keep in mind this outcome, all other things being equal, is a losing proposition for the hybrid workplace.

So, is it a simple fix of not enforcing the “return to office” for some workers in a hybrid environment? 

Likely it isn’t, as there are many factors that could be at play for employees not interested in physical office presence. Given management’s oversight role and responsibility for productivity and prudence, new tools are needed to manage.

Clearly, a laissez-faire approach may seem to be the only viable alternative: either employees are able to work remotely, or they can leave the employer and work where they have that opportunity.

Hybrid seems to be the only solution and not a solution at the same time.

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This blog post is the first in a series from the Institute on Governance and our partners which examines the Future of Work. To stay up to date, follow along on our blog, or sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive access to posts before they go live!

Canada’s best athletes returned to Canada from the Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, more than half way around the world. 

Demonstrating greatness, they delivered gold, silver, bronze medals and personal bests in many of the events while proudly wearing the iconic maple leaf.  Regrettably, back at home, Canada’s good governance performance was far from any personal bests or medal standing.

Canadian athletes are the epitome of excellence, discipline, hard work and resilience – devoting their lives to perfecting their talent through personal sacrifice, financial strain, rigorous training and often-through injuries. 

In addition to high performance training, athletes had to practice resilience on a new level by adapting to public health restrictions, finding alternative ways to train and prepare for international competition.  Athletes embraced vaccinations, mask mandates, self-isolation protocols, and testing during their journey to the Olympics to represent Canada.

By contrast, Canadians and their governments seem to have lost a sense of team, resilience, civility, duty as well as individual and collective responsibility.  

From local, provincial and federal governments – and their elected leaders – there was a fundamental breakdown in coordination and application of the rule of law.  If good governance were an Olympic sport, Canada would be at risk of not qualifying to compete during the almost three weeks that protestors occupied downtown Ottawa and blocked trade and traffic at our borders. 

Canadian athletes are true professionals and committed to excellence and doing their best in they sports they have chosen. 

With the recent revocation of the Emergencies Act, Canadians and their governments would do well to take a page our of our athletes Olympic training approaches – shake off a bad performance and get back to mental, physical and personal excellence, team, and wear the maple leaf with pride.