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Thursday, October 22, 2009
With Conservatives Like These.....
My, what a big bureaucracy you have Mr Harper:
As Canada's deficit mushrooms, the size of the federal public service and its shadow bureaucracy of temporary workers keeps on growing.
The Public Service Commission annual report shows the public service continued its steady growth of the past decade and added another 9,072 jobs last year -- a 4.5-per-cent increase over the year before. That included everything from full-time, permanent work to student jobs.
The growth has been fuelled by a number of factors, including the Conservatives' spending spree, plowing billions into several federal departments -- even before opening the spending floodgates with its stimulus package. The report shows significant new job growth in departments such as Defence, Public Safety, Health, and Border Services.
Perhaps time to admit the obvious. The boys have gone native on us.
Posted by Richard Anderson on October 22, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
For years I have been harping on this topic, as we have one of the largest number of people working for the government in relation to our total population of any country. Another fact is that under both Liberal and Conservative governments the public sector (service is very misleading for anyone who has had the pleasure of dealing with them) has grown. The only difference is the rate of growth.
The first problem is the creation of anything requiring, or believed to require, a government agency or bureaucracy, because the most basic nature of any such agency or bureaucracy is to seek to grow, to expand its mandate and to increase its budget. At present there are numerous duplications between federal bureaucracies, which should be eliminated. For example, each ministry has its own human resources section including sections for employment equity, official languages, staffing, staff relations, training and development etc. Yet you have the Public Service Commission, supposedly to oversee, monitor and police the same and doing exactly the same for all these different ministries. So you end up with a very large number of employees going through the same motions for the same thing.
Another troubling factor is the apparent immunity of these bureaucrats to any attempt of the elected government, whatever the party, to change direction or policies. It is a case of the tail waging the dog. So it will require a government with a strong will and with the ministers in charge willing to take on the senior bureaucrats and fire them if necessary. Since these senior bureaucrats are political appointees it can be done. Otherwise they continue to operate independently and to sabotage any government policy they do not like.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-10-22 2:47:58 PM
"The only difference is the rate of growth."
Non Alain.
The difference is that one pretend to be Conservative.
Posted by: Marc | 2009-10-22 4:06:19 PM
Marc, you seem to have missed the whole point.
When I wrote about the duplication of jobs between the Public Service Commission and all the other federal ministries/departments, I forgot to add that it is even worse. For each ministry/department also does the same between its national headquarters and its regions, and at times it is yet repeated at the local level. Of course we can find much of the same excess with provincial, municipal and district levels.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-10-22 4:36:52 PM
I repeat: Conservative is a term that describes a degree of Social Democracy.
In the case of the Harper Conservatives, a very severe degree of Social Democracy.
Other than a party name and a style of social democracy, there really is no such thing as a "conservative".
There are social democrats who tilt toward socialist values, a la Jack Layton's NDP. There are social democrats who tilt toward fascist values, a la Stephen Harper's CPC. There are centrist social democrats like Ignatieff's Liberals.
ALL want bigger government. Ironically, the Liberals may be the social democrats today who want the smallest overall government.
But just to be clear: NONE deserves to be voted for.
Posted by: John Collison | 2009-10-22 6:03:50 PM
Alain,
I'd say the biggest problem with cutting the bureaucracy are the unions. You need politicians who are willing to stand up to them (a rarity) and a public willing to support the politicians.
Posted by: Charles | 2009-10-23 7:10:23 AM
Charles, point taken, but the senior bureaucrats to whom I refer are political appointees and excluded from the union. Even with the union, there are many who are "management exclusions" therefore outside of the union. It is essentially at these levels that policies are decided and implemented, often contrary to the wishes of elected politicians.
Posted by: Alain | 2009-10-23 6:36:46 PM
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