'Cabinet government, as we knew it, is dead,' says author Savoie

Britain and Canada going through exactly the same adjustments with 'court government,' says Donald Savoie in highly-anticipated new book about government.

By Simon Doyle

Canada is not so unfortunate as to be the only Parliamentary system with an unprecedented centralization of power in the executive, amounting to a "court" and "king" style of government. When Donald Savoie, author of a new book on "court government," looked to the U.K., he found a mirror image of the Canadian experience.

His new book, Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom, compares Canada and the U.K., and finds that court government is not unique to Canada or specific prime ministers. It's been institutionalized as Parliamentary governments instinctively, and gradually, adopt practices that help them hold onto power.

In court government, the "king," or the prime minister, does not rely on the Cabinet and the public service in the way that he or she once did to formulate policy. Instead, decisions are made in consultation with small group "courtiers." The power resides not in Cabinet, but in the king's court, made up of a few key Cabinet ministers, advisers, friends, and lobbyists.

Responding to political pressures, the public service has become increasingly politicized, and two distinct policy processes have developed: one for the prime minister and his court, and another, slow and an elaborately-consultative one for the public service.

The policy process is so slow and elaborate for initiatives outside the court that it leads to low morale in the public service. Officials have to deal with endless meetings trying to find compromises, and too many voices of agreement and disagreement inside and outside of government. The result is frustration for those who want to get things done and satisfaction for the unproductive, and the risks of losing the best workers in the public service. Simply offering more competitive pay is not the solution, Prof. Savoie says.

Prof. Savoie, author of the well-read book on court government, Governing From the Centre, and a more recent book on the public service, Breaking the Bargain, discussed his new book with The Hill Times by phone last week.


What information popped out at you in the course of your research that surprised you or that affected your argument?

"The thing that surprised me the most, and it was quite surprising, is the extent to which Britain and Canada are going through exactly the same adjustment, the same concerns. What you see in Canada you really see in Britain: The domination of the Prime Minister's Office, people asking fundamental questions about Parliament, what's happened and how can it can play a more vibrant role, and values in society. It was like looking at a mirror, and I didn't expect that."


Is there any more collective Cabinet decision making?

"No. I think Cabinet decision making is dead, and you can see it in so many ways. I mean key decisions are taken by the prime minister in consultation with a few of the key ministers. I mean the minister of finance is always involved. But no, Cabinet decision making as we knew it up until the [Lester B.] Pearson era doesn't exist.

"It doesn't exist in the mother of Parliament. It doesn't exist in the U.K. That started under [British prime minister] James Callaghan, but certainly under Tony Blair. Instead of focus-group Cabinet ministers, they label it 'sofa government,' meaning that the prime minister sits for tea with a couple of key advisers on the sofa and strike a decision. Cabinet government, as we knew it, is dead."


If there is no longer collective Cabinet decision making, what purpose do full Cabinet meetings serve or the Cabinet committees?

"It still serves a purpose, and it serves two purposes. One, it enables sharing views, sharing information. The Prime Minister can lead a discussion. It's the one occasion a week when ministers can get a sense of the whole of government.

"But it also gives the Prime Minister, and I say this quite seriously, a good focus group. The Prime Minister has representation from all regions, and some of them are seasoned and veteran politicians. So it provides him with a good sounding board. When he gets advice from his courtiers he can always test it in Cabinet."


You write that senior public servants now "are hired on the basis of their ability to navigate the policy process, to network, to make things happen and to manage." Did it use to be that they were valued more for their policy expertise?

"If you wanted one of the leading authorities in the sector or in the field you would look to the department. A deputy minister would serve in a department, become an expert in agriculture, fish, industry, or human resources, and roll through the ranks, become a deputy minister, and have an intimate knowledge of that sector. I think that's much less evident today. [Senior] public servants are not hired for those reasons. They're as much hired to manage crises, to manage political demands, to manage process, as they are because of their intimate knowledge of any sector."


How has the rise of court government changed lobbying? Are courtiers lobbied?

"Of course. Not only that, I think it's fairly obvious that under every government there is a select few lobbyists who are part of the court. They're tight with the king, the prime minister, and they manage the war room on behalf of the leader, who then became prime minister, and they're part of the court. They have access to the king, and if you have access to the king, if you're a member of the court, it's quite a selling feature for the [lobby] firm."


In your book you write about the negative impacts of the Access to Information Act, how it has created an oral culture in government, and you quote Globe and Mail columnist Hugh Winsor, who has written that the act "chews up resources," creates "information fishermen" and when used by MPs it is an "affront to Parliament." Surely access to information is good for transparency but are you saying that's not worth the impact it's had on administration and decision-making processes?

"I'm not saying that for a moment. In fact access to information is here to stay. It is part of the modern effort of government. In the U.K. they came at it much later, four or five years ago, and they're going through the same learning process as we did in Canada. So, is access to information bad? Not at all. Did it have unintended consequences? Absolutely."


Some, including Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion, have called this federal government the most secretive in Canadian history. Do you think that's accurate?

"I think governments by nature want to be secretive. Is this one the most secretive? I'm not sure I would agree with that. I think it was the British prime minister [Clement Attlee,] who defeated [Winston] Churchill in 1945, who said that a government that cannot keep a secret cannot survive. I think that's true of all governments."


Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently made a 20-year defence strategy announcement that had no policy framework except for a speech. It seemed to backfire because the story of the day was not the announcement, it was that there was an announcement with no strategy. Is this a good example of what you call 'policy by announcement'?

"That's a very good example. Frankly we see more and more of that, and when this came out and hit the media I thought of exactly that: it's policy by announcement, and here are the consequences ...

"We see it in Britain as well. It's not just a Canadian phenomenon. If you go back 30 years ago, you know who would have made a major policy announcement on national defence? It would have been the minister of National Defence. In Britain, as well as here in Canada, we have adopted the style that only the king can make major policy announcements."


We're seeing a very high level of control from the centre in the current government, which you point out has been in past governments and in Britain. Is it sustainable? Or are cracks appearing? It seems to me that one of the narratives developing about this government is this characterization as overly controlled and stage-managed by the PMO.

"The very instinct of government is to control things, to control the flow of information. That's the instinct of every government. It's not just a Harper phenomenon. But it has become much more difficult to control the flow of information now. Why? Because of access to information, because of new media, and you know, there was no Hill Times 20 years ago. It's become much more difficult, yet the normal reaction of government is, 'Well, we need to control this information.'"


But it's becoming increasingly difficult to do that, and it's showing. So maybe they need a new approach, I'm not saying less controlling, necessarily, but maybe they need to be more honest about things.

"Yes, and you and I would think that, and firmly believe that, and have every logical reason to believe that. But my point is that if you sit in government, it doesn't always look like that. You look outside and if you look at The Hill Times and The Globe and Mail, and if you're the Harper government, that's the enemy. How do you manage it? Be more honest, sure, but I think Harper would say, 'Well, we tried being more honest and it doesn't work, because media will never allow us to be more honest and admit to certain faults and say, that's a learning experience' ..."


Some of your big remedies for reform are statutory, such as defining in statutes the role of the Prime Minister, defining in statute a "distinct personality for the public service" and the right to speak truth to power, establishing a distinction between senior civil servants serving the centre from civil servants who serve the public, and even defining the prime minister's powers in the Constitution. Why do you propose making statutory, even constitutional changes?

"Because I don't think anything else is going to work. I think we've tried everything else. We've had as many royal commissions to reform government as you can imagine, and we've been tinkering at the edges ...

"Much of the rules of the game are through constitutional conventions, and we've played with these constitutional conventions, we've adjusted them to meet the circumstances of the day so often that they're totally disjointed. They don't work. They don't work in Britain and they don't work here. I'm suggesting that one way is to get a sense of what is the role of the prime minister. Can't we have that in law? The role of the public service: can't we define that?

"If the civil service is to serve the government of the day, I have no issue with that. I have no issue with the government having the legal authority to direct the work of the civil service. But I think the civil service needs some protection when they've been asked to speak truth to power, when they've been asked to do something that's not quite appropriate. If you don't define that in law, how are you going to make it stick?"


It seems like one solution to the concentration of power in the centre is to restore power to Parliament, which can be done by giving MPs more resources for scrutiny of the estimates and spending, and through electoral reform, which would ensure minority governments, and probably coalition governments. As University of Toronto Professor Peter Russell has pointed out, the past couple of minority governments have revived Parliament. Although there may be more acrimony, a lot of work is getting done. There's compromise, and there's less power in the hands of the executive. So do you think Parliament can be empowered to limit the executive as opposed to making these statutory changes?

"I start from the premise that Parliament is the most vital democratic institution that we have in this country, as in Great Britain. The one institution in this country that links St. John's, Newfoundland [and Labrador] to Victoria [ B.C.] is Parliament. There's no other institution that can do that and that has the political authority to do that.

"Then I go the second conclusion, and it's not just me, is the Carolyn Bennetts of the world, it's the Deborah Greys of this world, and everybody who's written that Parliament is not working. Canadians are not happy with Parliament and Parliamentarians are not happy with their own institution. So we have a problem ...

"How do we fix that problem? Give Parliamentarians more resources? Absolutely. But is that going to be enough? Not at all. We've had the experience of giving Parliamentarians more resources of late. In Great Britain it's again a mirror image of the kind of experiences we've gone through. In Great Britain, 25 years ago, they started to equip Members of Parliament with more staff, and I met with a member of Parliament who told me that when he was first elected he shared a secretary. Now he has three staff working for him. Two of them are in his community. They don't work at Westminster, and I asked him, is that true for most MPs? He said absolutely.

"Thirty years ago the constituency didn't matter in Great Britain.... A lot of the senior ministers did not live, were not born or raised or worked in the riding they represented, which is much less so now. The constituency has become extremely, extremely important. The point he was making is that the interest of MPs has shifted away from Parliament to their ridings. They become glorified ombudsmen, if you like, and I'm suggesting that's a problem. We have to make Parliament resonate again as a national forum ..."


But do you think minority governments are more effective at making Parliament resonate again?

"I quarrel with that a bit, because we now have a Parliament in Ottawa that for all intents and purposes is dysfunctional. We have two or three committees in Parliament that do not work, and that's a function of a minority Parliament."


Except that there is work going on. The media tend to focus on the dysfunction, when there are many other committees that are doing important work, and there are compromises around legislation, three budgets passed, and budgets that probably would have looked a lot different if it was a majority government ... At the same time, Parliament only has so much power to limit the executive?

"Parliament has one terribly important instrument to limit the work of the executive, and that's the estimates and the budget process, and it has failed miserably. It has failed so miserably that essentially it has given up its responsibility to hold the government to account. It's turned that over to the media and officers of Parliament.

"You look at the work of committees in terms of the estimates process, and it has literally collapsed. When I talk about the collapse of accountability, I would start there. The estimates process reminds me of Communist Russia, when the workers pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them. The estimates process is a charade, and if there is one area where we need to improve, in terms of holding the government to account, it's in that area."


You also say that we should have better public access and oversight of the spending estimates and administrative overhead costs in the public service. You note, for example, that spending is listed in broad categories without many details. Can you give me a better idea of how this service would work?

"Essentially we only have two votes [on the estimates] for each department. We've put everything into two votes. For example, the gun registry was a mess literally because of the estimates process. The sponsorship program was lost in the vote at supply and services. It was lost in a sea, and even the auditor general never picked it up. It was a journalist, Daniel Leblanc at The Globe and Mail, who picked it up. Those things should have been flagged in the estimates process. They weren't. Why? Because everything was grouped into one."


Any reaction from Parliamentarians or senior officials to your book?

"The comments I've been getting have been fairly positive. I appreciate that of course, but I also recognize that there are people out there who haven't called me and who probably don't agree with the book. I wouldn't think, for example, that the Prime Minister's Office is keen on the book, but some ministers are, some line department people are, quite a few. So, the people who have called me have been quite positive ... I did hear from the Privy Council Office [but] I'm still waiting for a call from the Prime Minister's Office!"


Any key message for Parliamentarians?

"My key message to Parliamentarians is that their work is vitally important, but they're missing the broader picture. I think the reason Canadians are turning away from politics is that there's far too much partisan bickering. It doesn't sell outside of Ottawa. People look to their MPs for something deeper and more substantial than partisan shots, and that is all they're seeing.

"Secondly, your work as ombudsmen, which is what a lot of MPs do, is probably, at the end of the day, not as important as they imagine. Some will profoundly disagree with me on that, but there's a whole machinery of government, public service, that is there precisely to deliver services. If that is not working, don't try to deal with individual cases as an ombudsman, deal with the machinery."

sdoyle@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2008/june/2/savoie/&c=2