From Witchcraft to Proposed Twenty-First Century Reforms: The Ongoing Saga of Training and Development in Canadian Government

[In the federal government of Canada] … up to ten or fifteen years ago, the use of the title personnel officer or training officer would have been sufficient to have one tried for witchcraft.1 a

^aNote: (a) In Canada the terms, “Civil Service” and “Public Service,” are used synonymously. (b) Values are defined in this article as enduring beliefs that influence the choices we make from available means and ends.

—Commissioner Sylvain Cloutier of the federal Civil Service Commission, June 19, 1965. (Comment attributed to CH Bland, Chairman of the Public Service Commission of Canada)

Acknowledgments

The authors of this article wish to thank our colleagues, Professors J. E. Hodgetts (Toronto, Queen's), A. Paul Pross (Dalhousie), and Bruce MacFarlane (Carleton) for their many useful comments on the manuscript. However, all errors of omission or commission are entirely our responsibility.

Notes

^aNote: (a) In Canada the terms, “Civil Service” and “Public Service,” are used synonymously. (b) Values are defined in this article as enduring beliefs that influence the choices we make from available means and ends.

^bThis “pervasiveness” of efficiency in our thinking was recently explored by a prominent Canadian academic in a series of public lectures. See the 2001 Massey Lectures by Ref.4

^cThe phrase, “jobbing in” to describe the phenomenon was first used by critic W. L. Grant, in his campaign to model the Canadian bureaucracy after his conception of the British career public service. See Ref.9a

^dIt was Promethean in the sense that it presented itself as a search for conquest of the North American environment through science and technology. As for its eschatological morality, the following quotation should suffice to illustrate the point: We shall never fully realize either the visions of Christianity or the dreams of democracy until the principles of scientific management have permeated every nook and cranny of the working world.

^eFor a flavor of this resistance into the late 1950s to 1960s we quote an internal archival file of the Civil Service Commission at the conclusion of an Officers Conference in May, 1957: … it is necessary to counter the belief that the program (that is staff development and training) is designed primarily to develop people for promotion. It must be quite clear that the program is designed to improve performance on the job, to improve morale, and thirdly, in order of importance to prepare people for the possibility of promotion.

^fThis commission is commonly referred to as the Glassco Royal Commission, after its chairman, John Glassco.

^gThe first woman Commissioner of the Public Service, Ms. Ruth E. Addison, made a number of speeches and publications to publicize government policy on recruitment. See for example Ref.14

^hThe Treasury Board is responsible for overall policy direction while the Public Service Commission conducts central training courses and programs, and provides advice and assistance to departments. In addition individual departments are delegated to provide programs to meet their own needs.

ⁱSee the statement of John Edwards, the senior public servant in charge of the task force: [The principles to be put forth are to be based] … on gamble: that we can do better than a conventional royal commission, that we know the problems, we are capable of finding the solutions, and perhaps most important, we will be around to inculcate the changes into the public service. See Ref.19

^jThe Ottawa Citizen, Sunday, July 28, 2002, 1–2. The tongue-in-cheek pronouncement is in Rhodes, R.A.W. The New Governance: Governing Without Government; Economic and Social Research Council/The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (Joint Seminar Series), 1995, referred to in, Peachment, Allan. Education for a Democratic Intellect or Training for Puzzle Solvers? Public Administration Education and Training in Australia.

^kIn Greek mythology, Sisyphus, a former King of Corinth, received an everlasting punishment from Hades, the god of death. The god ordered Sisyphus to roll a huge stone to the top of a high hill. Sisyphus, however, had a task which was eternal: each time he reached the top of the hill with the stone, it rolled back down. Training and development of core ethical values and guiding ethical conduct is an eternal task.

^lJanice Gross Stein (2001) makes this point well when she wrote: Efficiency is only part of a much larger public discussion between citizens and their governments. Efficiency is not an end, but a means to achieve valued ends. It is not a goal, but an instrument to achieve other goals. It is not a value, but a way to achieve other values. It is part of the story but never the whole. When it is used as an end in itself, as a value in its own right, and as the overriding goal of public life, it becomes a cult.

^mThe philosophical debate between Friedrich and Finer took place over a seven to eight year period, and there were many interveners on both sides. We supply here a sample of publications in the friendly academic exchanges: See Ref.29

ⁿThere were a proliferation of Canadian court cases focusing primarily on political rights vs. political activities of public servants under the parliamentary tradition. See for example Ref.39