Reporting and insights. | Understand government better.
By Kathryn May. Sign up to start getting it. 
Have a question? Email us at functionary@irpp.org. 

Hi all,

I’m not off on March break, but did just return from a U.K. theatre tour, where, eerily, every production I saw echoed the state of the world today. So, no real break from the weight of the news — just a different stage. Art imitates life, right?

So, let’s dig in closer to home.

 Carney (left) and Justin Trudeau on Sunday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Today:

Mark Carney the bureaucrat: He knows how government works.

The PS photo from 2005: If you look closely….

Transition do’s and don’ts: Do say yes. Don’t be attached.

Not now: The public service’s internal priorities will have to wait.

AFTER THE WIN

The transition begins

The Trudeau era is over. After a landslide leadership win, Mark Carney is poised to become the next prime minister. He’s moving fast — mapping out his transition, assembling a cabinet, staff and preparing to put his stamp on government. Marco Mendicino becomes his interim chief of staff.

Same party, so the transition should be smoother — but Carney promises a very different government, and Donald Trump is the wild card. Managing the transition of a newly elected party from opposition to government is considered a pivotal moment and one of the public service’s biggest challenges. Public servants spend months preparing with briefing books and binders. Transitions are tense, chaotic, and stressful.

Chaos is the new PS normal. From the day Carney takes the job, dealing with Donald Trump, his trade war and his threats of annexation and tariffs, which are on, off and back on, eclipses everything. Trump has now doubled the tariffs on Canada’s steel and aluminum, putting them at 50 per cent starting today.

The “Trump Death Star.” This will be the defining challenge, sidelining the many of the internal priorities of the public service until after the election, said Michael Wernick, former clerk of the Privy Council and now Jarislowsky chair of public administration at University of Ottawa.

Bring on the election. For bureaucrats, a snap election would bring clarity. They’d know who’s in charge and what direction to prepare for, rather than navigating months of political limbo through the spring and summer and possibly the fall, said Wernick.

DON’T FORGET
Mark Carney was once a bureaucrat
Back in 2006, when the Harper government took power, Carney was among the cadre of deputy ministers and associate deputy ministers managing the transition.

Remember this photo? He’s in it. See him?

This is the 2005 team of deputy ministers and associate deputy ministers who helped plan and manage the transitions to the Harper government. The photo was taken a few months before the election.

Carney is in the back row to the right of the gent in red, Senator Peter Harder. Black jacket, white shirt. More on this later.

As senior associate deputy minister of Finance, many colleagues saw him as a rising star, pegging him as a future Finance deputy minister and even a contender for the top job, Clerk of the Privy Council.

Carney’s PS roots. After a private-sector career at Goldman Sachs, Carney was appointed deputy governor at the Bank of Canada in 2003. Next came a stint as Finance’s senior associate deputy minister from 2004 to 2007. Then he was named governor of the Bank of Canada during the 2008 global financial crisis financial crisis. That is where he stayed until 2013.

He knows how government works, which should make for a smoother transition. He’s reportedly tapped Janice Charette — a two-time PCO clerk and a highly experienced hand — to lead his transition team. (Charette is also a new board member at the IRPP, which is home to Policy Options and The Functionary. She's also in that 2005 photo, by the way.)

Now, Carney-the-PM is shifting the government’s agenda from Trudeau’s social-policy focus to one that will aim to grow Canada’s economy. It’s a major pivot, not a partisan shift. It’s a fundamental change in priorities that public servants handling the transition must be sensitive to.

“We will have the prime minister, minister, and deputy minister of Finance all in one,” quipped a former colleague. We could see another highly centralized government, with everything run out of PMO, PCO and Finance. Departments like Finance and ISED will take centre stage. Others, such as Health and Indigenous Services, may play a smaller role.

Those who worked with Carney during his time in public service describe him as sharp, outspoken, even prickly, but unafraid to push back — especially at deputy- minister breakfasts hosted by then-clerk Kevin Lynch, himself a former Finance deputy. “He wasn’t a DM who fell into line. He was an old-school truth-to-power kind of guy.”

Where’s Waldo? Where’s Carney? Ok, back to the 2005 photo with Carney. In January, we ran that photo plus one of the transition team for the Trudeau government in 2015. We challenged Functionary readers to name as many of these bureaucrats as they could. We knew it might be tough. We even offered a bag of coffee to whoever got the most right.

But …. Crickets. Not a single guess.

Admittedly, even we couldn’t identify everyone, either. But what does that say about public servants? That they don’t recognize their top bosses or a prime minister contender? Or that the public service has changed so dramatically since then?

PS built for a different era. The public service grew more than 40 per cent under the Trudeau government, with 80,000 employees hired in the past five years.

None of today’s deputy ministers held top jobs for the 2015 transition. Only a couple were in government during the Harper era.

That means today’s senior public service is largely unfamiliar with how a Conservative government operates after nearly a decade of Liberal rule. They’ve managed growth and lots of spending — but not the fiscal restraint and the new approach any new government will bring.

Hundreds of public servants tuned in to a recent leadership summit at the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, where a panel of senior bureaucrats talked about the dos and don’ts and pitfalls of transitions. Chatham House rules applied.

TRANSITION HOW-TOS

The go-to guy is David Zussman

The gold standard on transitions is David Zussman. He wrote the book Off and Running and led former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s transition teams after elections in 1993, in 1997 and 2000.

                                   A must-read for public servants.

Here are a few do’s and don’ts from seasoned bureaucrats who’ve weathered many a transition:

This is a test of impartiality and neutrality. Many public servants have only worked for a Trudeau government and this will be their first transition. A new government, especially under a new party, may want to undo, change or scrap policies, programs and your pet projects. Don’t be attached to the programs you worked on — it’s not your role.

Zussman argues deputy ministers must ensure employees are prepared for these shifts and get “past the mindset that they have formed over the last decade and to think in different terms.”

Time for the PS to shine. Be well-prepared, do your homework, know the platform, and show you’re a committed, non-partisan public service that can be relied upon. That builds trust. Have some “early wins” ready for them. Don’t say things can’t be done.

Keep it professional. Don’t greet a new government like an overeager puppy. Don’t try to be their best friend or badmouth the outgoing one. Your role is simple: work with them, understand and implement their agenda, and recognize the legitimacy of their agenda. (They are elected. Public servants aren’t.) If you can’t live with that, it’s time to move on and leave.

Let them lead. Some incoming governments have been watching, planning, and know the system better than public servants assume. Treating them like rookies can backfire — especially if they’ve seen the bureaucracy in committee, dodging questions. “Let them lead the dance,” said one bureaucrat. They know what they want, and the public service’s job isn’t to teach them “government 101” but to deliver.

Expect skepticism. New coach, new game. One former deputy minister likened a newly elected government to a new coach who comes in because the previous leadership was seen as not delivering. So, expect the new government to be skeptical that the public service is up to the job and can execute its agenda. This skepticism is justified. Acknowledge and adapt to it. Demonstrate you can work under the new leadership and deliver its priorities.

Don’t assume you know what the new government's relationship with stakeholders will be.

Don’t recycle the last government’s or minister’s contact list of stakeholders to call. That could backfire.

Be cautious.

Let the incoming team define its own relationships without speaking for the stakeholders.

FOR LATER

Public service’s full in-basket and no time to spare

Big issues include: organizing First Ministers Conferences, triaging the Trudeau government’s last-minute announcements — reforming the RCMP, launching a high-speed rail network, and revamping the CBC mandate.

On top of that, the public service has internal priorities of its own — longstanding issues that will take a backseat for now but won’t disappear.

Sooner or later, the government will have to address them: the Black employees’ lawsuit, employment equity and DEI, an upcoming report on PS productivity, union demands for remote work, using AI, new collective bargaining rounds, the pension-plan surplus debate, executive pay, and a full-scale review of spending.

And as one deputy put it: Don’t take it personally. Expect scrutiny, skepticism — maybe even some yelling. But stay professional, set boundaries, and prove the public service can deliver.

So who else was in that 2005 photo? Here’s our best guess, with a little bit of help of seasoned insider who keeps close tabs on who’s who:

Front row, left to right: Verna Bruce, Helene Gosselin, Suzanne Hurtubise, Michelle Chartrand, Munir Sheikh, Claire Morris, Michael Horgan, Monique Boudreau, Oryssia Lennie Donna Miller.

Second Row, L to R: Jack Stagg, Ivan Fellegi, Linda Lizotte MacPherson, Susan Peterson d’Aquino, Yaprak Baltacioğlu, Carole Swan, Nicole Jauvin, Richard Fadden.

Third row: ??, Will McDowell, Cassie Doyle, Christiane Ouimet, Alan Nymark, Francois Guimot

Fourth Row, L to R: Louis Levesque, Marie-Lucie Morin, Charles-Antoine St-Jean, Alain Jolicoeur, Michelle d’Auray, John Adama, Michael Wernick.

Fifth Row: Rob Fonberg, Ian Bennett, Jim Lahey, Suzanne Tining, ???, Janice Charette, Michel Dorais, Larry Murray, ????.

Back row, L to R: Morris Rosenberg, Peter Harder, Mark Carney, Paul Boothe, Robert Greenhill, Samy Watson.

On a scale of zero to 10, how was today?

To start getting the newsletter, sign up here.
The Functionary archive is here. 

A bit about me. I cover and analyze the federal public service for Policy Options as the Accenture Fellow on the Future of the Public Service. I've been reporting on the public service for 25 years. My work has appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and iPolitics, and has earned a National Newspaper Award. My full bio. X: @kathryn_may. 

Report an error       Report a tip