Gregory Jack: Is the public service just another interest group?

Serving Canadians used to be the primary function of public servants. Increasingly, the public service and its unions look like they’re most interested in serving themselves.

By: Gregory Jack

Fearless advice. Loyal implementation.

Once upon a time, that was a mantra that mattered, one which public servants lived by, respected by both themselves and their political “masters.” It was instilled in me early in my public-service career. I was fortunate enough to begin my working life at the “centre of government,” the Privy Council Office, which is responsible for coordinating all activities across the vast federal government. My first boss, Maurie Jorre-de-St. Jorre (an anglophone from B.C.!) and Mario Laguë, the assistant secretary to the cabinet for communications and consultation (the most senior communications position in government), both stressed the relationship between service satisfaction and satisfaction with government.*

The statistical model we developed excluded the governing party because that was politics. What we were concerned with was direct services to Canadians, and how that drove satisfaction with government. Of course, the governing party matters, but even controlling for that, we found the “service satisfaction” relationship to be statistically strong 25 years ago. Today, it seems everyone has forgotten this relationship, and what the federal public service should be up to in the first place, which is serving the public.

In short, public servants recently have stopped with the fearless advice part, and they’ve totally abandoned anything to do with implementation.

According to Ipsos’ Future of Canada’s Federal Public Service study, just 34 per cent of Canadians say the federal government is effectively meeting their needs. This trails — barely — their provincial government (35 per cent) and their municipal government (36 per cent). It’s especially bleak among the youngest generation (18-34), where only 29 per cent say the federal government is effectively meeting their needs. Close to half of Canadians (49 per cent) say they have used federal public services in the last year, but only one in five (22 per cent) say they were very satisfied with the experience.

By contrast, Ipsos research from other sources shows 44 per cent of Canadians say they are satisfied with their bank or financial institution, and 43 per cent say the same about tech brands like Apple and Uber. Airlines find themselves in a worse spot than government, with just 26 per cent saying they are satisfied with Canada’s airlines.

Among the reasons listed for being dissatisfied with federal public services, unreasonable delay times top the list at 64 per cent. Close behind: challenges reaching a real person (54 per cent) and excessive paperwork or bureaucracy (51 per cent). At the bottom of the list is receiving services in your preferred language (six per cent).

The Official Languages Commissioner tabled his annual report recently, criticizing new language requirements for supervisors as not going far enough, because public servants may not be able to work in their language of choice. In addition to creating recruitment problems and confining those qualified to a small central region of the country where French is widely spoken, this once again demonstrates that the public service increasingly puts the interests of its members ahead of serving Canadians.

Part of this is due to the excessive oversight agencies — including, yes, that Official Languages Commissioner. Fifty nine per cent of Canadians agree that there are too many oversight agencies in the federal government, and not enough agencies focused on delivering services to Canadians. Fewer than one in 10 (nine per cent) disagree. Imagine if our oversight agencies were more focused on evaluating how Canadians were receiving services, instead of how well the federal government was complying with internal mandates? I don’t think Canadians want another oversight agency, but maybe, since we have one for so many other things, we should add a Commissioner of Effective Services to the Public?

It's not that Canadians don’t believe in rules and oversight. Four in 10 (38 per cent) agree that, even though government rules and processes may slow things down, they ensure fairness. Just 25 per cent disagree. Fairness is a noble Canadian value, and one that we apply in the place of positive outcomes all the time. See our health-care system, where we’d prefer everyone to wait longer than to contemplate any other system besides the broken one we have.

Overall, numbers on service satisfaction tell a compelling story. I bet the correlation we found when I worked at PCO between government service and government satisfaction still exists today.

But Canadians don’t need the numbers to tell them what their own eyes — and experiences — tell them. Passport processing delays. Access to Information Requests — which journalists and the public rely on to understand what’s happening inside government — routinely blowing by their legislated deadlines, if they’re responded to at all. Reaching a human is nearly impossible. Somehow CRA added 14,000 employees between 2019 and 2023, and service has gotten worse. It has since started reducing its headcount. One of The Line editors recounted his own personal experience a few weeks ago about why we need to do something about this problem.

Perhaps this is because the public service has stopped serving the public and become, effectively, a group most interested in serving itself. PSAC, the largest public-service union, has spent the last several years dying on the hill of working from home. PSAC insists it’s a right. It must have become one when other Canadians weren’t looking, because most of us know that our employer gets to determine the place and hours of work (both within reason). Not in Ottawa. And now we have federal departments tracking where employees log in, despite clear rules about being in the office three days a week (four for executives).

I know, COVID happened — and many who could were forced to work from home. It’s admirable we adapted so well to a crisis.

But if someone told any public servant in 2019 that they could work from home one day a week forever they would have been ecstatic. We quickly forget.

Canadians are in fact split on whether public servants should be allowed to work from home. Forty one per cent say they should be, and 29 per cent say they shouldn’t be, with the remaining holding no opinion. This misses the point, as do all the arguments about productivity, work-life balance and the like. Both government and the unions are arguing amongst themselves about the wrong thing — I think most Canadians would agree that what matters is whether they can get the services they pay for and should expect, where, when and how they reasonably expect them.

I doubt Canadians care if those services are delivered by a public servant at home or not. One can argue that certain services need to be delivered in person — my colleague Mike will shed some light on this in a few weeks in a piece about digital service delivery — but the point is that Canadians have lost faith in their public services.

To the unions and the government — stop, both of you. The work from home debate playing out in the media is why everyone hates Ottawa, and why Canadians feel like the public service has long ceased serving them.

A few weeks ago in these pages I wrote about the appointment of a new clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Sabia, and the immense challenge Mr. Sabia is facing as the new head of the public service, alongside the two other hats he wears. Our Future of Canada’s Federal Public Service study is a cry from Canadians that they are not getting the public services they both feel they need and deserve. Reform and improvement are necessary, urgent even, for the public service to get back to the business of serving the public. Over to you, Mr. Sabia.

Gregory Jack is a senior vice president of public affairs at Ipsos in Canada. Previously, he was a senior public servant in the federal and Alberta governments.

Some results from this column are drawn from Ipsos’ new Future of Canada’s Federal Public Service study. Click here for more information.

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* Maurie died from cancer in 2006 just before Stephen Harper’s government took power, and Mario, by then director of communications to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, died in 2010 in a tragic motorcycle accident. Both were outstanding public servants, people and mentors, and I often wonder how the public service would be different today had both survived and continued to contribute to public life.

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