Future of Work – Hybrid Workplaces

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!


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.


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!

The Emergencies Act: The End of the Affair?

The declaration of a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act was revoked a mere 48 hours after it was approved by the House of Commons and even before the Senate could vote to express its opposition or support. Thus, Canada’s national emergency ended just 10 days after it was declared.

So far, so good.

The most important things about the use of an emergency power are that it be infrequent, narrowly focused, and short-lived. As the IOG recently noted, the Emergencies Act includes significant accountability and oversight safeguards to help ensure that this is so – safeguards that were absent from its parent legislation, the War Measures Act.


Missed our previous blog on the Emergencies Act?


First among these safeguards is the need for “reasonable grounds” for declaring an emergency. Both national emergency and each specific type of emergency are defined in the Act, which gives content to this provision. It dovetails with a requirement that the government specify what the emergency is and what measures it expects to need to address it.

These requirements were duly fulfilled when the proclamation was set out in the Canada Gazette on February 15. In delineating the emergency, the government citied the blockades and threats of serious violence for political objectives, adverse effects on the economy and relations with trading partners, breakdowns in the distribution chain, and the general potential for increased levels of unrest and violence. 

The anticipated temporary measures included measures to regulate or prohibit public assembly under specified circumstances, measures to authorize and potentially commandeer essential services (the infamous tow truck initiative), authorization of the RCMP to enforce municipal and provincial laws, authorities for fine and imprisonment, and, inevitably, “other temporary measures…that are not yet known”.

Whether the cited conditions met the criteria of emergency, and whether the cited initiatives were both necessary and unachievable without the declaration will be contested in Parliament, the courts, and in the public realm for a long time to come.

As also required, the government consulted with provinces on its intention to invoke the Act.

This is not the same as giving the provinces a veto, as the government made apparent, but it did steer clear of emergency initiatives in provinces that didn’t want them.

In keeping with a further critical safeguard, the declaration was put before Parliament for debate and a vote within seven days. This was no formality in a minority House, as we may infer from the decision to make the vote a matter of confidence.  As already noted, the emergency didn’t last long enough to permit a vote in the Senate.

Since Parliament can revoke the declaration before the 30-day default period, Jagmeet Singh’s promise to keep the government’s feet to the fire regarding the ongoing need for the declaration was presumably not idle, and in fairness the government did keep Canadians reasonably informed of how it was using its powers.

Does the reasonable grounds requirement provide a basis for judicial review?

Both the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Government of Alberta evidently believe so, although it remains to be seen what becomes of the legal proceedings that they launched.  Would the courts enter into a substantive assessment of whether an emergency existed within the meaning of the legislation? Or would their focus be procedural, deferring to the political process on assessing the situation on the ground? Again, we’ll have to wait and see what if anything happens in the courts.

That said, since the Charter and other rights documents are not meant to be suspended by the declaration, it’s clear that alleged violations would be a matter for the courts. So presumably would any claims for compensation for loss as provided in the Act.  

The short duration of this emergency did not enable the operation of the renewal provisions or of an ongoing all-party Parliamentary Review Committee to scrutinize and report on actions undertaken in the name of emergency.

However, within 60 days of the end of the emergency the government will be required to hold an inquiry “into the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the measures taken for dealing with the emergency”. The Act doesn’t give parameters for this inquiry, but it is to be hoped that it will be public and impartial. This inquiry would have a year from the emergency’s end to report, so we may not get to the bottom of matters until then, if ever.

Does what we have seen enable us to say the Emergencies Act safeguards worked?

We can at least say the formalities were respected and that there was energetic scrutiny in Parliament and more broadly. On the core question of whether a declaration was necessary or overreach, it is hard to imagine such a mix of operational and values considerations being settled any other way than politically.

Leaders who invoke emergency powers should follow the example of Cincinnatus, the Roman leader who, given the status of dictator to defend his country in a military crisis, set it aside immediately following a speedy victory and returned to his humble farm.

Whether Canada’s contemporary leaders merit comparison with this ancient precedent is still too early to tell.


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REACTION – Team Canada Arrives Home

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.

REFLECTION – Co-Management Defined

With contribution from Sam Wells.

The process of reconciliation between the Government of Canada and Indigenous peoples has been characterized by a series of patchwork initiatives that have lacked integration.

While some of these initiatives may have carried positive impacts, institutional frameworks are necessary to ensure that reconciliation can be advanced in a manner that is consistent and equitable. One such institutional framework that offers strong potential is that of co-management.

In the broadest sense, co-management refers to the joint management of resources between two parties, often the State and a local community. In the context of reconciliation, co-management could refer to the collaborative management of resources between the Government of Canada and localized Indigenous communities.

Co-management bodies are often formally structured as councils or boards that provide equal membership and weight to all stakeholders.

Take, for example, the network of co-management authorities that work together under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act in the Northwest Territories.

Environmental Assessments and land and water regulation are entirely managed by co-management structures with 50% of the representatives appointed by government and the other 50% either appointed or chosen by Indigenous organizations according to the land claim agreement that applies.

Co-management bodies can also feature a Chairperson that is jointly appointed by all members of the board via a defined procedure that gives everyone a voice.

Generally, the appointment of the Chair would require unanimous approval from all board members, and the individual appointed to the position would need to possess strong facilitation skills and a degree of neutrality.


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Co-management can be an effective tool to advance reconciliation with respect to land, water and resource development issues. It recognizes Indigenous authority through their representatives in the management of resources and lands in the decision-making process.  The powers of a co-management body must be clearly defined ideally in a statute. This has been federally in a number of instances to implement modern treaties particularly in northern Canada.

Co-management also allows for assessing traditional Indigenous by informing decision-making related to both renewable and non-renewable resource development.  Such knowledge is being recognized and applied in responding to remediating contaminated sites as well as pipeline proposals.

Decision-making that is based on traditional knowledge helps ensure that resources are effectively utilized with stewardship towards future generations.

Co-management ultimately provides an institutionalized approach to resource management that is both consistent and equitable, thus advancing reconciliation. The use of co-management bodies is much more effective in reconciling Indigenous, public and private rights than traditional federal or provincial regulatory authorities that rely solely on consultations to inform decision-making. 

Federal and provincial governments should adopting co-management structures as part of advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples across Canada.


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Canadian flags on poles on the side of a building in Ottawa.

REACTION: A Governance Lens on the Emergencies Act

When the Emergencies Act was invoked on February 14th, this was the first-ever invocation of that legislation since its enactment in 1988.

The Emergencies Act is the modernized offspring of the much sterner War Measures Act (WMA), which saw Canada through two world wars and the 1970 October Crisis. When we compare the two acts, we find that many of the differences reflect evolving standards for core principles of democratic governance, particularly those relating to accountability and the conditions for the legitimate exercise of state power.

Both acts were grounded it in the authority of the federal government to legislate for the peace, order, and good government of Canada.

“…no amount of process will legitimize what citizens regard as a bogus “emergency”.”

During its time, the WMA served some useful purposes, including management of a modern wartime economy in the 1940s. It also made possible some of the ugliest incidents in Canadian history, including the dispossession and internment of Canadians during both world wars on the sole basis of their ethnicity, and the arrest of hundreds of innocent citizens in 1970.

In the aftermath of the October Crisis, which included a Royal Commission into activities of the RCMP, it became clear just how out of step the WMA was with contemporary standards of public governance – particularly in the absence of controls to ensure that the exercise of extraordinary powers was legitimately necessary as well as mechanisms to provide oversight and accountability.

The Emergencies Act was intended to address these concerns, while expanding the range of emergencies beyond war to international emergencies, public welfare emergencies, and public order emergencies.

Legitimate state action in a democratic society has both procedural and substantive elements. Following accepted processes is critical, but since emergency legislation essentially legalizes what is normally illegal and overrides jurisdictional boundaries, no amount of process will legitimize what citizens regard as a bogus “emergency”. The first test for legitimate use of the Emergencies Act is that it be rare.

On the critical question of whether an emergency actually exists, the contrast between the original WMA and the Emergencies Act is stark. Section 2 of the original act, under the heading “Evidence of War”, stated that a proclamation by the King or the Governor in Council (i.e., the Cabinet) “shall be conclusive evidence that war, invasion, or insurrection, real or apprehended, exists.”

 In other words, the only test for the existence of a crisis was the government’s say so.

By contrast, the Emergencies Act authorizes the declaration of an emergency where the government believes “on reasonable grounds” that an emergency as defined under the act exists and provides a statement of what constitutes the emergency and what measures are expected to be necessary to address it. The measures must be temporary, with a default 30-day sunset (120 days in the case of war), and the requirement of reasonable grounds applies to any extension.

As for process requirements, at their heart these relate to the rule of law, which in Canada is no longer simply a matter of Parliamentary enactment. The first emergency powers listed in 1914 were “censorship and the control and suppression of publications…” and “arrest, detention, exclusion, and deportation”. Arguably, our political culture at the time was more attuned to public order than to an expansive understanding of individual rights. All that has changed with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The preamble to the Emergencies Act states explicitly that the temporary measures enacted under its authority would be subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights and must “have regard to” the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “particularly with respect to those fundamental rights that are not to be limited or abridged even in a national emergency”. The legal import of this preamble might be debated but the political and moral expectations are clear.

Another, increasingly critical aspect of legitimacy is what we call voice – the expectation that power shouldn’t be exercised without giving stakeholders a meaningful say.  It is a matter of voice as much as the rule of law that Parliament must approve the government’s declaration within seven days.

There is also the requirement that the provinces be consulted.

In formal terms a right to be consulted is not a right of veto, but we have learned from Charter jurisprudence that it can entail important procedural requirements, and in the context of Canadian federalism it is a powerful moral, or at least political, force.

The Emergencies Act is also marked by significantly heightened standards of oversight and accountability.

The requirements for parliamentary supervision and debate are particularly critical.

The renewal requirements – which include reviewing each of the orders made under the declaration for continued necessity as well as going back to Parliament – create a significant break on possible abuses, especially in a minority House. Even where the government has a majority, the renewal requirements create opportunities for parliamentary scrutiny, and possibly judicial review.  

The requirement that the responsible minister pay reasonable compensation to anyone who suffers loss, injury, or damage as a result of actions conducted under the declaration may also be regarded as a significant accountability measure that will almost inevitably be brought into play.

Perhaps the most significant oversight mechanism is the provision for establishing an all-party Parliamentary Review Committee to scrutinize the exercise of authorities under a declaration.

While such a committee would conduct business in camera, it would report to Parliament every 60 days through the course of the emergency. There is also the requirement, admittedly without specified parameters, that within 60 days of the end of the emergency the government cause an inquiry to be held “into the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the measures taken for dealing with the emergency”. Such an inquiry would report to Parliament within a year of the emergency’s end.

Since this is the first time a government has invoked the Emergencies Act, it remains to be seen just how effectively most of the safeguards described here will work and how robust a role parliamentarians and the courts will play.

The very fact of their inclusion in the legislation is a testament to a positive evolution in Canadian governance over the course of the 20th century.

Inside the House of Commons

REACTION: The Accountability of Leaders

With contribution from Karl Salgo.

If your head is still reeling from the speedy ouster and (interim) replacement of Conservative Party of Canada Leader Erin O’Toole, you’re not alone.

While the Prime Minister may be thankful to the Conservatives for yet another seemingly gratuitous gift, he and the other party leaders are probably also thanking the heavens that such a thing could not happen to them.

The ouster took place under CPC caucus rules arising from the 2014 Reform Act, which received strong all-party support at the time of its enactment and applies to all parties to this day.

Breaking party ranks on a parliamentary vote is a rarity in Canadian politics and there have been multiple proposals to give MPs a greater degree of independence. The Reform Act was an attempt to re-empower individual MPs, who were widely perceived to be groaning under strict party discipline from their respective House Leadership.

In its watered-down final form, the Reform Act required each party caucus in a newly elected Parliament to vote on four questions regarding whether caucus:

(1) determines its own membership, (2) chooses its own chair, (3) can trigger a leadership review, and (4) can choose an interim leader.

The last two were obviously in play in the Conservative caucus this week. It should be noted that the capacity of caucus to oust a leader is not novel in the Westminster system, as Margaret Thatcher knew only too well, and as Boris Johnson presumably knows to his great anxiety.

What’s interesting here in Canada is that, since 2015, only the CPC caucus has given itself these powers.

The Liberal caucus has actually been coy about the votes themselves, citing caucus secrecy, and we can’t be sure that they’ve always been held, legal requirement notwithstanding.

It’s easy to see why leaders might not be crazy about their caucus taking on these kinds of powers, although they haven’t altered voting habits to any discernible degree. But accountability is a core requirement of democratic government, and there’s no such thing as too much accountability, is there?

Or is there?


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The Reform Act was passed in the wake of a significant number of other initiatives in the early 2000s to improve accountability across various fronts, in both the public and private sectors. In the Government of Canada, the most comprehensive was the Federal Accountability Act, which among other things created a host of new laws on the behaviour of public officials, elected or otherwise.

Perhaps the immediate question as we commiserate (or not) with Mr. O’Toole is whether accountability might not require something from those who hold others to account.

Is there not arguably an implied need for those to whom account is rendered to exercise some form of due process, even if it be within the confines of their own judgment? If accountability is to mean anything, should evidence not be weighed equitably, prudently, and without regard to conflicting interests?  

Of course, in politics the electorate is famously always right, and there would be both impracticality and irony in a bottomless cycle of accountability for accountability.

Perhaps there are instances in which we might think twice about adding to the list of accountabilities – as I’m sure Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh would be prepared to tell you.

REACTION: Convoy of Confusion

During the last weekend of January 2022, a convoy descended on Ottawa to protest mandatory vaccinations for truck drivers travelling across the Canada – United States Border.

The most troubling aspect of the “Truckers Convoy” for Canada and its democratic institutions is the potentially long-lasting effects of declining confidence in public institutions ability to respond to health and safety challenges and civil disobedience under the rule of law.

The Ottawa Police services are working to reassure the public that there have been no fatalities, injuries, or significant damage to property.

However, residents continue to be “under siege” and downtown business, already burdened with the stress of the pandemic, are forced to close.

Emerging evidence of foreign money and coordinated blockades disrupting trade and public services to citizens are creating a highly flammable environment.

With no visible end in sight, provincial and federal politicians continue to take to the microphone with calls of both support and condemnation of the actions of the protestors.

The public remains dissatisfied – why?

What we are seeing is a visible lack of coordination among law enforcement agencies and their elected leaders.  Public trust comes with public confidence.

As a public, we assume enforcement agencies are preparing their operational plans and understand why details of such plans are not public.

We also assume that all orders of government are working together to ensure a peaceful and permanent end to this occupation.

However, public officials at any level of government have not referred to any semblance of a plan. Further troubling is that the Ottawa Police Service seems to be on their own with no obvious evidence of others standing by to assist in a coordinated fashion. Seven days in, there is a growing unease that these assumptions may be misplaced.

It remains unclear whether, when and how the occupation will end. 

The mayor points to the police. The police are now signalling the situation is escalating in its complexity to resolve with each passing day.

With no sense of ‘what comes next’, growing anxiety among citizens and the business, community is beginning to erode trust in our institutions.

With an already growing erosion of public trust in western democracies, what are the operational leaders doing to assure the public that there is an end in sight?

Without a public plan, we must ask ourselves – what is happening in the background?

To re-establish trust and confidence, there needs to be a sense of organization and structure among public officials.  This could involve the mayor asking the Chief of Police to work with federal and provincial law enforcement agencies to establish an inter-agency working group. The working group would help ensure information, planning and coordination among these agencies was clear, efficient, and timely.  The details of such need not be communicated but the request to ‘organize’ should be.

The mayor could also call on the other levels of government to support the inter-agency working group by forming an ad-hoc intergovernmental committee involving himself, and relevant federal and provincial ministers. 

Typically, this body would ensure elected officials both receive the same information at the same time as well keep their internal decision-making processes engaged as necessary as the issue evolves.

Next, there needs to be one official spokesperson. Support spokespersons can be designated from each level of government to speak on specific aspects, but it needs to be coordinated.

It’s important for elected leaders to know who’s on first and who gets to speak to what and on what issues.  For the most part, this often results in a boring talking point that “I am aware of the issue and my officials are monitoring closely and we have assured local law enforcement that we are ready to support as circumstances warrant.”

Daily briefings to the media and public would be coordinated. In this scenario, the Prime Minster would repeat this message and possibly refer all matters to his appointed Minister who would coordinate with the mayor and provincial representative.

Plans can change with circumstances but with the right systems in place intelligent adjustments can be made and communicated effectively.  This is essential in maintaining public trust.

While the underlying issues that gave rise to the protest will likely require significant debate and policy discussions among the politicians over the medium to longer term, the respect for the rule of law and dealing with civil disobedience need to be handled lawfully by the enforcement community guided by an informed plan with an engaged elected leadership. 

At the end of the day, this is an issue of public trust.

Transparency and clear accountability are two defining factors of good governance, which ultimately contributes to this trust.

Regardless of what comes next, officials need to prepare the public for enforcement actions that are necessary and legitimate.  Failure to do so will further undermine trust in government, as well as trust in our democracy, and give the protestors an even greater advantage.

More than ever, our society needs strong leaders to make hard choices under even tougher circumstances. Our Leadership and Learning Courses can help you prepare for those decisions.

REACTION: Graham Flack named Treasury Board Secretary

The Treasury Board got a new Secretary.

Graham Flack comes to Treasury Board via Employment and Social Development Canada, where he’d been Deputy Minister since 2018. Flack was previously DM of Canadian Heritage, following a career that included several senior positions in the Privy Council Office, and is widely considered one of the more thoughtful members of the senior public service.

He will need to put that thoughtfulness to use to support the many demands the Prime Minister has made of Treasury Board President Mona Fortier in his December 2021 mandate letter. Many of these expectations – and many more challenges besides – relate to the governance issues under TB’s purview.

Treasury Board has several key responsibilities, including its roles as the government’s management board and as the employer for most of the public service.

In those capacities, it has a lead role for both how the government operates and how the public service does its job. You can’t effect vast change in a rapidly evolving landscape with a static public service.

The good news begins with what sounds like a positive tone with public sector unions, as Minister Fortier is called upon to negotiate with unions in good faith and to work with them on a coordinated plan for the future of work within the public service.

This would include a Public Service Skills Strategy, among other efforts to modernize the public service for the 21st century. What that workforce will look like is not specified, although there will be heavy emphasis on diversity and inclusion as well as improved data, IT, and digital capacity. This meshes well with the Clerk of the Privy Council’s recent report on the public service, which called for precisely such a skills strategy, as well as “flexible and equitable” post-pandemic work arrangements.

All this is fine and needful, but it doesn’t amount to much more than a start on public service reform and the broader matter of better public sector governance for the 21st century.

First, we might ask what is meant by flexible and equitable work arrangements.

So far, TB has opted against a one size fits all approach, leaving individual organizations to sort out what works for their mandates and needs. That is at least a little shrewd, since TB would hardly want to own a definitive model at this point in the game.

But this is the Government of Canada we’re talking about: TB will certainly keep a close eye on what is going on and won’t hesitate to intervene if it doesn’t like what it sees.

Frankly, the country’s industrial age, hierarchical, and rules bound work force needs a lot more than the capacity to work virtually. The normative mindset of the public service is still defined by the culture of compliance that was denounced by, of all people, the late Auditor General Michael Ferguson.

Ferguson wasn’t against compliance – what accountant is? He was referring to a culture of sticking to the blame-avoiding safe harbor of following rules rather than innovating and taking rational risks. This culture was epitomized by the Federal Accountability Act, which addressed a host of behavioral problems that didn’t exist, and which the Trudeau government has never lifted a finger to dismantle.

It is a culture reinforced by inadequate performance metrics and the fact that public servants are not accountable for results, nor could they be given the limited trust and authority that’s given to most of them.

Remote working arrangements may help to push long-overdue changes, like faster, flattened decision making and performance assessment that turns more on genuine productivity as opposed to just showing up and participating in processes.

Significant governance changes are also needed to fully unleash the capacity of digital technology to meet evolving citizen expectations.

Politicians and public servants have been talking about improved horizontality and “whole-of-government” approaches for decades, but we still struggle to dismantle or work around the silos of the classic Westminster system.

This is not to be dismissive of the rules around reporting and accounting to Parliament, or the broader principle of ministerial responsibility. And digital and data governance raise privacy and security issues that aren’t easy to address. While successive governments have made progress, including through the appointment in multiple departments of chief data officers, there is a long way to go.

In practice, horizontality has been approached largely through a more powerful center. And the impact of 24/7 media and a hostile twitter mob have gotten in the way of efforts to be more open with information and less hierarchical in decision making.

The bottom line is that for government to evolve it needs to be less self-regarding and more focused on the citizens it is supposed to serve.

It’s a tall order, Mr. Flack, and we wish you and Minister Fortier the very best.

Government of Canada office building

REACTION: 2021 Mandate Letters

Governing Liberal Style

In late December 2021, the Prime Minister’s Office released the collection of ministerial Mandate Letters. These documents outline departmental and ministerial priorities for the mandate ahead.

The letters reflect the government that produced them. There is no shortage of ambition, even audacity.

The prime minister has remained true to the focus of his election campaign and Throne Speech, focusing on pandemic management and recovery, reconciliation and social equity issues, climate change and the environment, and improved access to housing.

The mandate letters set out an agenda that is heavily oriented towards social rather than economic policy; even the equity the government seeks to deliver is more social than economic.

Spending to Fix

A good portion of the economic policy in the letters relates to transitioning a net-zero emissions economy – albeit with a respectable measure of pro-innovation and technology initiatives in the mix.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance is admonished to keep an eye on the government’s fiscal health. There are few measures to significantly raise revenues and even fewer to reduce expenditures.

This is not an austerity agenda: many initiatives explicitly call for additional spending and even those that don’t will in many cases require it. Presumably a day of fiscal reckoning will come, but this is not that day.

A Reworked Rewind

Even aside from the fiscal mindset, we see multiple inversions of a conservative agenda, at least as manifest by the previous government.  Net-zero has plainly supplanted the ambition to become an “energy superpower”.  Law-and-order, pro-gun policies have yielded to “justice strategies” aimed at removing cultural and gender biases in the police and courts, increased funding for the Court Challenges Program, and confiscation of guns where “red flags” arise.

Efforts to keep the public service, and its scientists, focused on operations and implementation have yielded to a supposedly science and data driven approach to analysis by a diverse, digitalized workforce that benefits from flexible and equitable working arrangements.

A Renewed Public Service Relationship

While directed at their political leaders, these mandate letters direct Deputy Ministers, Assistant Deputy Ministers, Directors General, and the rest of the public service in, well – their direction. Coupled with fiscal updates, these are the marching orders of the public service.

However, how do you implement vast change, in a changing landscape, with a static public service? 

You don’t. 

The public service must constantly renew itself – a notion which has been evoked in throne speeches for years to help Canadians enjoy a quality of life envied by other countries.

Surely, there are nods to this within the letters. Striking a cooperative tone is a start, as is the recent report by the Clerk of the Privy Council [HYPERLINK] and its focus on the future of work.

Digital efficacy, replacing systems, improved service capacity – all of these remain components of a renewed public service.

But is this enough? Is it a complete vision of a 21st century public service? Arguably, it misses the mark. 

To meet the challenges of declining trust in government and colliding forces of globalization and disruption, a responsive public service requires structural changes that are far more reaching than outlined in this batch of letters.

Our Problem or Theirs?

Much of this agenda has been in place, with mixed success, since 2015 – but a few things seem to have gone by the wayside.

Direct links to the infamous “deliverology” approach have been quietly dropped. Not much remains of the democratic reform agenda – although the Intergovernmental Affairs Minister is tasked with some open-ended efforts to improve the electoral system.

The enhancement of Canada’s parliamentary democracy looks to be limited to better digital connectedness by parliamentarians, renewal of the perennial promise of more free votes, and undisclosed updates to the Parliament of Canada Act to reflect the Senate’s non-partisan role.

Overall, the government appears more concerned with the democratic shortcomings of others than of itself.

NEWS: IOG Welcomes Owen Charters to Board of Directors

Ottawa, ON – The Institute on Governance is proud to announce the addition of Owen Charters to our Board of Directors. Owen Charters is CEO of BGC Canada (formerly Boys & Girls Clubs), the country’s largest child- and youth-focused charity. Former Chair of Imagine Canada and the Human Resources Council on the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector, Owen is also faculty for the Social Sector Leadership MBA at York University’s Schulich School of Business.

The Institute on Governance is excited to have Owen serve as a strategic voice on our Board of Governors. His commitment to people, passion for nonprofit sector work, and dedication to colleagues will serve the IOG as we move towards our future.

Presently, the Board of Governors of the Institute on Governance is comprised of:

Aurèle Thériault, Chair – Co-President, Interlocus Group.

Sarah Paquet, Vice-Chair – Director and CEO at FINTRAC.

Aneeta Bains – Partner, Public Sector at IBM Canada.

Brian Bost – Partner, Advisory Services, KPMG.

Malcolm Brown – Senior Strategic Advisor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Julie Di Lorenzo – President, Diamante Urban Corp.

Martine Durier-Copp, M.A., M.Mus., PhD. (she/her/elle) – Academic Dean, NSCAD University

Shingai ManjengwaChief Executive Officer of Fireside Analytics Inc.

Colin McKayHead, Public Policy and Government Relations, Google Canada.

Owen ChartersCEO of BGC Canada.

The Institute on Governance is a Canadian non-for-profit focused on working to advance governance through research, learning, advisory services, and more. Over our three decades, we have worked with federal, provincial, municipal, and Indigenous governments, and not-for-profit organizations. Our networks have taken us to three dozen countries worldwide, including with recent projects in Iraq, and Botswana. Today, we are focused on the 21st century challenges to good governance that governments and their citizens face.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Nick McRoberts

Marketing and Communications Business Partner

nmcroberts@iog.ca