Donner l'heure juste

La semaine dernière, les Canadiens et Canadiennes ont vu les titres criards à propos de Élections Canada autorisant les femmes musulmanes portant le niqab/le voile ou la burqa à voter sans montrer leur visage au directeur du scrutin. Nous avons vu les politiciens de l’ensemble des principaux partis et plusieurs chroniqueurs faire des reproches à Élections Canada et exiger que Marc Maynard, le président général des élections, comparaisse devant un comité parlementaire pour expliquer pourquoi il permettait ce genre de vote. Après tous ces titres et gesticulations, on penserait que M. Maynard, un fonctionnaire de carrière, avait agi de bon gré en jugeant que les femmes musulmanes qui portaient le voile ou une burqa pouvaient voter sans montrer leur visage. Mais, M. Maynard faisait tout simplement son travail de fonctionnaire – il conseillait les autorités en toute conscience, informant les politiciens de ce que la loi disait en réalité. Le Parlement a amendé la Loi électorale au printemps et ces amendements permettent de voter sans avoir à montrer son visage. En fait, on a dit aux politiciens qu’il en était ainsi et que cela ne modifiait pas la loi. De même, depuis de nombreuses années à présent, on peut voter par correspondance. Vous êtes-vous jamais demandé comment on montre son visage en passant par le système postal ?

Plusieurs commentaires affichés par des Canadiens sur des sites Web demandent pourquoi un fonctionnaire ignorerait les désirs de « ses boss ». Bien, la réponse est très simple…le fait de faire observer la loi du pays surpasse toujours les desirata des « boss ».

Speaking Truth to Power

In the last week, Canadians have seen screaming headlines about Elections Canada allowing Muslim women with niqab/veils or wearing burka’s to vote without showing their face to the returning officer. We have seen politicians from most of the major parties and some columnists castigate Elections Canada and demand that the Marc Maynard, the Chief Electoral Officer appear in front of a parliamentary committee and answer why he would allow this kind of voting. After all the headlines and posturing, one would think that Mr. Maynard, a career civil servant, was acting of his own volition in ruling that Muslim women who wore veils or a burka be allowed to vote without showing their face. But Mr. Maynard was only doing his job as a civil servant – he was speaking truth to power, telling politicians what the law actually said. The Elections Act was amended by Parliament in the spring and those amendments allow for voting without showing one’s face. In fact, the politicians were told that was the case and did not amend the law. As well, for many, many years now, one could vote by mail. Wonder how one shows their face via the postal system?

A number of comments posted by Canadians in some websites are asking why a public servant would disregard the wishes of “his bosses”. Well, the answer is very simple….upholding the law of the land trumps the wishes of the “bosses” every time.

L’accès à l’information et la transparence

Pour la troisième année consécutive, l’Association canadienne des journaux a conduit un sondage concernant la capacité des gens d’accéder à l’information de divers bureaux gouvernementaux – aux paliers municipal, provincial et fédéral. À nouveau cette année, elle a trouvé un nombre important de cas où les employés publics ne sont pas communicatifs à propos de l’information et, parfois même, se montrent obstructionnistes.

Dans une démocratie qui épouse les principes de la transparence et l’ouverture d’esprit, il semblerait primordial que le public ait le droit de savoir. C’est le fondement de notre société démocratique. Franchement, un citoyen ne devrait pas avoir à remplir une demande d’accès à l’information pour obtenir de simples renseignements. C’est le devoir de tous les fonctionnaires de fournir rapidement et dans les meilleurs délais ces renseignements au public. Même si les renseignements en question ne donnent pas une bonne impression du gouvernement, ils ne doivent pas être dissimulés. Ce n’est qu’avec toute l’information que les citoyens peuvent tenir responsable le gouvernement. Ce n’est qu’avec toute l’information – la bonne, la mauvaise et la laide – que les organismes peuvent tirer des leçons, s’améliorer et innover.

D’après les résultats du sondage de cette année, nous avons visiblement bien du chemin à faire au Canada. Néanmoins, les fonctionnaires doivent se garder de ne pas fournir leurs recommandations par écrit. Trop souvent, les discussions ou rapports verbaux remplacent la note documentaire traditionnelle. Le dossier historique des aboutissants et des tenants des décisions gouvernementales est important pour comprendre le contexte d’une décision. Nous ne devrions pas craindre de les documenter. Et vous, qu’avez-vous à dire à ce sujet ?

All aBoard

I along with three other people, including Senator Hugh Segal, were appointed to the Board of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (www.ices.on.ca). Since its inception in 1992, ICES has played a key role in providing unique scientific insights to help policymakers, managers, planners, practitioners and other researchers shape the future direction of the Ontario health care system. Their unbiased, evidence-based knowledge and recommendations, profiled in atlases, investigative reports, and peer-reviewed journals, are used to guide decision-making and inform changes in health care delivery.

Given my interest in Health Care - from both my work in the scientific field (my first degree was in Biology - Human Genetics) and my work at the Ontario Ministry of Finance, this appointment is a natural fit. I'm looking forward to my fisrt Board meeting next week and will let you know about any interesting developments. In a future blog I might even relate my past research on osteporosis using beagles to public management & administration (might be a stretch, but I'll find some link!)

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Well, it is a few days after the end of the 2007 IPAC Annual Conference in friendly Winnipeg, Manitoba. As promised here is my post on the last day of the conference.

The day started out early again with a meeting of the Board of the IPAC Endowment Fund at 7:30 am. Maria-David Evans (DM in Alberta) was chosen as the President of the Endowment Fund and I was appointed Secretary/Treasurer. For those of you who don’t know (that would probably be most of you) the Endowment Fund is a registered charity that is utilized to fund the Pierre de Celles award, the Student Thought Leadership award and now the annual Galimberti lecture. With our new site we will be adding more about the Fund and be asking IPACers to donate to continue with these endeavors and a number of new ideas.

The 3rd day of the conference started with a re-cap of the previous days activities by the MC (me again, just in case you have not read the previous posts). After that erudite compilation of the events, the session heard from Gilles Paquet on “Accountability in a Fishbowl”. Gilles is my former dean when I was at the University of Ottawa @ the Faculty of Administration (now called the Telfer School of Management). He is also a prolific writer and commentator on television. What a speech – if you were not there you missed a very provocative, thought-provoking view of the ills that have gripped some of our accountability mechanisms, with the over reliance on rules, rules and more rules. In no way could I do justice to the arguments put forward by Prof Paquet. The talk left the room quite energized.

Following this performance, Maurice Boisvert, president of the Institute of Public Administration of Quebec invited delegates to the 2008 IPAC Conference that will take place in Quebec City. It will be the 60th annual IPAC conference (the first was held in Quebec City), the 100th anniversary of the Public Service Commission of Canada and the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City!! There will be a lot to celebrate….book early!

The next session featured a panel on “Building Trustworthy, Accountable and Responsive Government”. The panel was moderated by David Zussman (also from the University of Ottawa and an IPAC Board member) and featured Peter Aucoin, Ruth Hubbard, Howard Pawley and Vice Chief Glen Pratt.

Then it was time for the closing banquet and the announcement of the winners of the 2007 IPAC Awards for Innovative Management that are sponsored by KPMG and IBM Canada. The audience tensed up as the moment arrived….the BRONZE award went to LearnNow BC (BC Education)…..the SILVER went to Nunavut Community Skills Information System (Nunavut Education)…..and the GOLD went to……wait for it……Provincial Wait Times Information System (Cancer Care Ontario). Congratulations to all the participants and to the three winning entries!! You can see a list of all the submissions by going to the awards page of this website and the press release is on the Media page. The presentations from the top three can be found on the Winnipeg conference website.

After lunch, Jacques Bourgault, Professor at UQAM and a past IPAC president gave the inaugural Galimberti lecture. The topic was the evolving role of Deputy Ministers. We will soon be posting the full speech by Prof Bourgault, so watch for it – it was a tour de force.

Sadly, we then turned to the closing remarks. We had a number of speakers addressing the delegates: Debra Woodgate, Carol Layton, Lloyd Axworthy and Jules Lavalee. And, Paul Thomas gave an insightful synopsis of the conference.

Then the MC took the stage…..see you next year in Quebec City!

I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank Debra Woodgate and her team for putting on an incredible conference. Putting on a conference of this magnitude and scope takes an incredible amount of time, energy, planning and caffeine! As a green conference it was great going to the cybercafé and down loading the presentations on the memory stick (you can go to the Conference Website as well) as opposed to lugging home the equivalent of a couple of trees of paper home. The sessions were informative and varied, the social activities were wonderful, the food was great, the organization was superb, the volunteers were friendly and helpful and I think that I speak for all the delegates when I say…..Job well done!

To Debra, Christina, Heather, Nick (my bodyguard!), Diana, Angie, Cheryl, Troy, Matt, Melanie, John, Joan, Kim, and everyone on the different committees and volunteers…thank you!

Another Great Day at 2007 IPAC Annual Meeting

Today got off to an energizing start with a New Professionals Breakfast at 7:00 am. Yes, you read that right - 7:00 am. The session was organized by New Professionals and provided them an opportunity to meet and discuss issues with senior public servants, otherwise known as "experienced" public servants. The session was a two-way learning experience and there was lots of discussion on key questions such as how does one acquire political acumen, how do you deal with requests from on-high that don't really make sense, and what is the best piece of advice that someone gave you as you progressed in your career.

We then moved on to the Opening Remarks from the illustrious MC (me!) who tried his best to recap the previous day's activities and then introduced the 2 keynote speakers for the first plenary sessions on "Service Delivery in a Networked Public Sector". The delegates heard from Alan Latourelle, CEO of Parks Canada and Beth Bell, partner IBM Global Business Services. The presentation by Beth was quite interesting as it addressed IBM's own transformation and how they applied those experiences to their advisory services including for Service Canada and Service BC.

The concurrent sessions on public service delivery were all well attended. The adjudicated paper session on Horizontal Policy was so well attended that the session had to be moved to bigger meeting room.

The keynote speaker in the afternoon, Chief Ovide Mercredi spoke with passion about the issues that affect the aboriginal community and the way that successive governments have ignored the promises made in signed treaties. The afternoon concurrent sessions on challenges and opportunities in a networked age were also very well attended.

The presentations of the finalists for the 2007 IPAC Award for Innovative Management featured 3 incredibly innovative and creative initiatives. The theme for this year's award is "New Service Breakthroughs with Technology". The award is co-sponsored by KPMG and IBM, Canada. The 3 finalists are LearnNow BC, from BC Education, the Provincial Wait Times Information Systems fronm Cancer Care Ontario and the Nunavut Community Skills Information System from Nunavut Education. You can read the backgrounders on the finalists on our website. The Gold, Silver and Bronze award winners will be announced at the Wednesday Luncheon.

The highlight of the day was the President's reception and Banquet. We were honoured to have the Lt. Governor of Manitoba, the Honourable John Harvard and Her Honour Lenore Berscheid attend the Banquet. Other distinguished guests included Paul Vogt, Manitoba's top civil servant, Howard Pawley, former Premier of Manitoba and Lloyd Axworthy, President of the University of Winnipeg. The meal was extraordinary!! After the meal, the awards part of the evening began with the Parenteau award for the best French language article in CPA in 2006 go to Lise Prefontaine and the Hodgetts award for the best English language article in CPA in 2006 going to Ian Clark and David Trick.

Carol Layton then announced that our highest award, the Vanier Medal was awarded to the late Joe Galimberti. Carol Galimberti and Tony Galimberti received the award on behalf of her husband and his father.

The formal part of the evening continued with a speech by Carol Layton on her last year and an introduction of IPAC's new president, Louis Borgeat. Louis then had the opportunity to toast Carol and to highlight his priorities for the next year. Look for an article by Louis in October's issue of PSM.

Once again, the Manitoba organizing committee went above and beyond the call of duty. It was another fantastic day of thought provoking presentations, discussions and networking. Kudos to Manitoba!!

It's close to 1:00 am now and as don't seem to have as much energy as I did when I was younger it is time for me to sign-off. Don't miss my final post on Wednesday night/early Thursday on the last day of the conference.