Gregory Jack: Mark Carney picks his man
Ottawa's adults are rejoicing at the announcement of Michael Sabia as Clerk of the Privy Council. Can he actually live up to expectations?
By: Gregory Jack
On June 11, Prime Minister Mark Carney, he the head of Canada’s self-proclaimed “new government,” appointed a new head of the public service.
The lucky individual is a man named Michael Sabia, who, like Carney, has an admirable resume of serious accomplishment. As with political leaders, heads of the federal public service can be transformational or transactional. Like his boss, and unlike his predecessor, Sabia likely aims to be transformational.
It is important to understand why the Clerk of the Privy Council is such an important position. Vested in this role are three distinct — not always complementary — roles. Head of the public service is the first, where the clerk’s task is to lead the legion of bureaucrats to enact the government’s agenda and serve Canadians. Secretary to the cabinet is the second, and original, role. The clerk — in consultation with the prime minister — sets the agenda for cabinet, shepherds policy proposals through the system, and records decisions. The third is deputy minister, and most senior advisor, to the prime minister. Few people can excel at all three. Sabia, I suspect, is being asked to be especially good at the last two.
Most prime ministers name a new clerk after taking office, and Carney has acted quickly to put his own choice in place. Stephen Harper replaced socially-minded Alex Himelfarb with economist Kevin Lynch, who like Sabia was a former deputy minister of finance, shortly after taking office. Harper kept Lynch on until Lynch — who aimed to be a transformational clerk — lost a power struggle with Harper’s chief of staff, after which time he elevated career bureaucrat Wayne Wouters to the chair.
Wouters was a transactional clerk, and lasted until shortly before Justin Trudeau won the 2015 election. Janice Charette served twice as clerk, but when Trudeau arrived in 2015, he quickly replaced her with the more ideologically aligned Michael Wernick. Including Charette’s two tenures, Trudeau had four clerks, and none of them were able to quite deliver on whatever vision Trudeau had for the country, despite all being supremely qualified. Like I said, it’s a tough job.
Now Sabia arrives at a moment of incredible ambition for a new prime minister and perilous challenge for the country. Officials at the Department of Finance must be wondering how much influence they will wield now that the most powerful politician and the most powerful public servant — both finance department alumni — are running things from the “centre”: the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office. Sabia fits Carney’s ambitious mold perfectly, and Carney has tapped a peer in scale and scope of ambition—someone just like him — to implement his economic agenda. Carney has his transformational clerk, but I wonder whether he’d have been better to find someone more transactional, who could focus on the first part of the job as head of the public service.
Canada’s public service is facing immense challenges after a decade of unconstrained growth. During COVID-19, the public service was forced to pivot forcefully to respond in real time to a crisis no one understood at the time, and deliver unprecedented aid to Canadians even as the government itself shut down the economy. On balance, it performed well, but large institutions such as the public service are not designed to act quickly. As someone once said, the ship of state turns slow but true. During COVID-19, the ship had to turn quickly, and the jolt caused some seasickness even as we largely avoided economic calamity. The cost was bloating, inertia, and a lack of focused priorities. Trudeau’s four clerks bear some responsibility for where we find ourselves today.
And now, there is a much larger challenge, ones that cannot quickly be solved with rebate cheques and bailouts funded by a ballooning deficit and debt that must at some point reach its apex. The public service is in a shambles and is looking for a messiah. Public servants I spoke to right after Sabia's appointment said they were “giddy” at his arrival. He no doubt is aware of the expectations now placed on him, and confident in his ability to deliver.
His issue may be that he tries to be the news-maker, speech-giving leader that he wants to be. Governing is hard; doing so with quiet competence, even harder. The mix of capital (economic, social, political) and the need to deliver — short term, long term, without errors — and the level of scrutiny via the opposition, the media, the provinces, and interest groups who will all take shots if they don't get their way — is unique and not for the faint of heart or thin-skinned. There are constant issues that arise, resulting in a game of whack-a-mole where it is easy to forget, when you’re up to your ass in alligators, that your objective is to drain the swamp. Carney and Sabia are up to their asses in alligators.
Right now, it’s fun for the new prime minister because he is barking orders, swinging deals, and getting his way. This won't last forever. Sabia is tasked with getting those orders executed, but like Carney, he is a man who thinks big thoughts. Canada has had a lost decade of thinking big thoughts (addressing climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, rebuilding our military, gender parity, building more houses, I could go on …) without actually delivering on most of them.
Sabia was around for most of that decade — briefly as the chair of the board of the Infrastructure Bank, briefly as deputy minister of finance, and briefly, again, as the head of Hydro Quebec. His impressive resume over the past five years reads as someone who is eager to embrace wicked problems, but who has never quite been able to stick around to solve them, as a new, more wicked challenge lured him away. What might be more wicked than delivering on Carney’s ambitious agenda to make Canada the best-performing of the G7 economies, to shepherd and direct the public service toward results delivery, while at the same time rescuing an institution that has been gouging itself on unfocused growth, quirky fads like deliverology, and emerging bloated yet adrift for more than a decade? We are about to find out.
I wish Michael Sabia luck. Like his boss, he does not lack in ambitious ideas. Canada’s public service needs wholesale reform, tough decisions, and decisive leadership to deliver a change agenda. If this proves too hard, some greater challenge may lure Sabia away just when the grueling implementation starts. I hope he sticks around to finish what he and Carney are about to start, for better or for worse.
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. He started his career at the Privy Council Office eight clerks ago.
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Sabia is one of those types who’ve been circulating in the swamp for years and has benefited enormously on a personal level while also gaining an unearned reputation as some kind of messiah. The first thing the public service (an oxymoronic term if ever there was one) needs is a good winnowing and reduction in numbers. One hopes that both his and Carneys’ tenure are short lived.
Gentler than Wells, but asks the same question about ability to implement and deliver.