Transcript
Transcript: Governance in Turbulent Times: Canada in a Comparative Perspective, with Jonathan Craft and Evert Lindquist
[00:00:00 Video opens with Evert Lindquist and Jonathan Craft seated in comfortable chairs. They are seen from different camera angles throughout the video, including full screen views of each speaker.]
Taki Sarantakis: Welcome, once again, to the Canada School of Public Service. My name is Taki Sarantakis. For 10 more minutes, I continue to be the President of the Canada School of Public Service. Today we have yet another treat for you. We are discussing a book. And the book is an outgrowth of a project that we had here earlier. Dr. Jonathan Kraft was one of our Jocelyne Bourgon Visiting Scholars, and as part of his tenure at the school, he convened a series of roundtables with his fellow academics. And the product of that is the book that we're going to discuss. So, we have Professor Jonathan Craft, [from] the University of Toronto, and we also have Professor Evert Lindquist from the University of Victoria. Welcome, gentlemen.
Jonathan Craft: Thanks for having me.
Evert Lindquist: It's great to be here.
Taki Sarantakis: So, the book we're talking about is called Governance in Turbulent Times: Canada in a Comparative Perspective. Now, when most of us think about turbulence, we think about airplanes. So, I am going to be talking about turbulence and using that as a little bit of [an] analogy as we go through, so I hope you don't mind. So, you're both distinguished academics, and distinguished academics love definitions. So, let's get the definitions out of the way. What's turbulence in your context?
[00:01:39 Text on screen: Jonathan Craft, Associate Professor, University of Toronto;
Co-author, Governance in Turbulent Times.]
Jonathan Craft: Turbulence is really a great example of the metaphor of an aircraft or turbulent seas. It's an upheaval. It's trying to deal with unexpected jostling of a system, where demands and events are really compelling a response that's strained.
And so, I think there's a long list of attempts by academics, our colleagues, to provide definitions. And one of the great things about the book that was produced is a recognition that there are actually many forms and types of turbulence. So, I think that the aircraft analogy's a really apt one, but just a sense that there's a disruption and a bumpiness, whether we're talking seas, or airplanes, or governance.
[00:02:26 Text on screen: Evert Lindquist, Professor of Public Administrations, University of Victoria; Co-author, Governance in Turbulent Times.]
Evert Lindquist: What I would add to that is that turbulence has the connotation that there's multiple crises, multiple things going on. And so, a lot of the disturbances are amplified and reinforcing in unpredictable ways.
And there's also the idea that, over time, it's not just one crisis that has come along, but there are ongoing crises and turbulences that are sort of befuddling the system, that are not anticipated and are difficult to anticipate going down the road.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, taking the airline or airplane analogy and carrying it forward into the Canadian political and administrative context, I think it's a pretty good analogy to say that in turbulence, your success or lack thereof of navigating through the turbulence, comes as a function of the pilot and as a function of the actual physical airplane.
So, to turn that into an analogy for us, let's call the pilot the actors. What are some of the actors in our political system and our administrative system that are going through turbulence?
Jonathan Craft: Evert, you want to start?
Evert Lindquist: Well, all of the leaders of our many governments in Canada. So, this is just not a challenge that's confronting the Government of Canada, but we're in a federation. So, they're all the provincial and territorial leaders, but more interestingly on a number of issues, they're all the municipal leaders in Canada and, of course, in Indigenous leadership.
So, one of the things that's really interesting when you talk about how countries and jurisdictions respond to turbulence, we don't have a unitary state here. We have a federation and it's complicated and it's asymmetrical. And that's one of the things that our book was trying to come to grips with, that as we collectively confront turbulence and try to figure out where to go, how does turbulence manifest itself in different parts of the system and different parts of the bureaucracy?
Taki Sarantakis: So, Jonathan, are some of our pilots or our political actors or bureaucratic actors, are they experiencing more turbulence than others?
Jonathan Craft: I would just add that I think one of the takeaways for me in engaging with the concept of turbulence and looking at how it washes through Canadian politics and public administration, and public policy issues is we're all pilots. Everybody's being affected by turbulence. You can't escape it.
Certainly the Prime Minister, the senior ranks of the public service, municipal leaders, Indigenous leaders, all of the leaders are, of course, being compelled to grapple with these issues of turbulence, but so are everyday Canadians. And so are the rank and file public servants who are all of a sudden dealing with COVID, both as a professional public servant, but also as a mom, as a sister, as a small business owner, as a whatever they may be. So, I think the notion that turbulence is confined to the elite-level actors isn't necessarily accurate.
But also I think what's important is that we're all subject to turbulence, but in some ways maybe we're also contributors to turbulence. I think trying to put your finger on what exactly helps us mitigate or manage turbulence is certainly a theme throughout the book.
But also recognizing that many are contributors to turbulence just by the way we engage with social media, or engage in economic disruption, or the different ways in which public servants are doing the work that they're doing can create turbulence in other parts of the system.
So, I think, to use your analogy, it's almost like we're on a plane and everybody's steering it together.
Taki Sarantakis: Now let's turn a little bit to the plane. And in our analogy, I think the best analogy for the plane is our public institutions.
So, as we know, we have a parliamentary system; we have a federated country; we have a professional public service; we have democratically elected leaders; we have question period; we have budgets, and on and on and on and on and on. We have dozens and dozens of institutions that constitute this airplane called Canada as it is going through turbulence.
It strikes me that a lot of our institutions are being challenged by this turbulence. Is that what you see?
Evert Lindquist: The short answer is yes. I think that we, and our colleagues that are contributors to the collection, also point out that Canada's been through turbulences before.
So, you don't have to go back too far in history to think about World War II; the 1970s; the economic turbulence; the constitutional struggles; the National Energy Program; the referenda, and so on. So, huge, huge debates.
And also, a lot of unsureness about where things were going. Another metaphor, and not just the plane metaphor, is the idea that the ground is moving. It's not an earthquake. The ground is moving and it's continuing to move. So, one of the things about this is, how do we mentally stabilize how we're viewing this situation, because a lot of things that we used to take for granted, we can't take for granted.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, Jonathan, if I extrapolate from one of the things that Evert kind of said, I heard Evert say a little bit, "It was always thus". He said more than that, but he also said it was always thus. Is today's always thus the same as yesterday's always thus, or are we going through something that feels maybe a little bit more different than what our parents did and what our grandparents did?
Jonathan Craft: There's certainly been a lot of conversation around concepts like polycrisis and that the qualitative nature of the challenges and the turbulence we're facing are greater in scale or scope or magnitude. But I think that the historical context is really important because I think if you look back and if you were to ask your grandparents or older folks who've been around, those moments were quite turbulent for them. And I think that we are certainly in a period where there are multiple forms of turbulence.
And this is what I was trying to get at with the definitional piece, is that some of them are crisis-driven, some of them are slow burning, some of them are self-inflicted or we're creating ourselves. And I think a piece of this is not just necessarily whether the turbulence itself is different, but I think the bigger question is what's our capacity to be able to address that, mitigate that?
In the book, one of the concepts in a chapter is managing through versus managing to. And later in the conclusion, we talk about managing down and managing out, this ability to respond effectively. I think a lot of the analysis in the book was comparative, but also diachronic or historical in a sense of trying to really recognize are our public service institutions, public sector institutions still resilient enough? Are the cultures and repertoires and practices that are in place still effective? Because I think the type of turbulence can vary, but so too does the ability to respond to it and the capacity of our institutions and our actors to go back to them to be able to rise to the occasion is certainly something where I think there are important questions being asked.
And what's crucial here, I think, is we're not alone. Certainly the Canadian experience, what motivated this book, was in part a recognition that, of course, there's tremendous turbulence, and more so once we started writing the book, but is a recognition that we're not alone. Others with our similar system of government or with different systems are trying to respond.
And so, the comparative analysis over time and jurisdictionally really helps to try and draw out how resilient our institutions, how our practices managing and keeping up with the turbulence, given that it is multifaceted. It's hard to put your finger on because it's not one form of turbulence.
I think to end on this question, I would just say there is a sense, at least my view would be, and I think some of our colleagues eloquently captured this, which is the notion of the speed of things. So, it's the speed at which the turbulence is popping up and is creating pressures on the system to respond and the efficacy or the speed of the system to be able to marshal its resources to respond, that those are strained.
Taki Sarantakis: And I'm glad you went there because that seems, to me, to be the key differentiating feature of our time and the time before where, for a lot of our predecessors in this country and on this planet, there was a lot of turbulence, but it was almost like a once in a generation turbulence, or maybe a twice in a generation turbulence.
As we discuss, we sit here today in 2026. We've lived through the fall of the Soviet Union. We've lived through the rise of China. We've lived through the internet. We've lived through digital. We have lived through 9/11. Now we're living through AI. We have lived through social media. Each and every one of those in isolation could be thought of as a generational epoch that defines a generation. Yet many of the people that are listening to this are living through all of these. And so, the speed is something that is really, really salient here.
So, I close off this part by reading a quote from your book: "If there is a safe prediction to make, it is that more turbulence awaits policymakers and Canadians". The question, of course, is what kinds of turbulence, how will it play out? And, perhaps most importantly, how well Canada's public sector leaders, institutions, and reforms can anticipate and respond to it?
Now, we know that government is known for many, many things. Bureaucracy and bureaucrats are known for many, many things. It's a little troubling if I read your quote. We're not known for speed. We are not known for rapid adjustment. We are not known for taking our institutions and changing them to update the environment that we live in. In fact, many of the institutions that continue to drive our collective existence, depending on how you count, they even predate Confederation.
So, if we think of this in computer terms, the operating system of our institutions, is it still right for the eras that we live in?
Evert Lindquist: Well, that's a very good question. And a lot of the book explores different vantage points from which to answer that.
One of the things that I'd point out in response to this question, but also your previous one is, when you have a lot of turbulence and turbulences, as Jonathan said, and things are happening very fast, it's difficult for the operating system that you're referring to, to take stock.
And so, governments can't all have the right solutions. It's a bit of a crapshoot in that regard. You've got to move fast; you've got to be agile. You've got to think about the short-term and the long-term, but it's not always going to be the right strategy. The question is, what have we learned at different points in time?
And that requires a system that is self-reflective, willing to reach out to different constituencies, experts, critics, to find out what's working and what isn't. And what I would add to that, and this comes from the crisis literature, is that there's the whole notion of meaning-making. When you go through these turbulences, great wars, global financial crisis, 9/11, you've moved into a different plane of action, and your institutions have changed.
And the question is, have we recognized that? Have we captured that? And are we in a position to say, this is who we now are. We're working differently, and maybe we've actually been working differently, and we've got to do better in order to move forward, because you can't change the operating system readily in a country like Canada.
Taki Sarantakis: So, Jonathan, I want to build on that notion. One of the chapters in the book said something to the effect of – and this is going to sound cartoonish, but it's not meant to be – it said something like we need more thoughtful bureaucracy. We need bureaucracy that in a sense is actually slower. We need it to be more reflective. We need it to step away from the reactions of the ping-pong ball flying left, right, up and down and sideways, and take a step back and do some of the things that your colleague Evert was just talking about.
Do we do that well? Do we do that at all, from what you've seen?
Jonathan Craft: Yes, that's a chapter that was written by Christopher Cooper and Dennis [inaudible] And one of the great things is bringing a bunch of our colleagues together, international colleagues with Canadian colleagues, was the benefit of comparison and thoughtful reflection on what's happening.
And certainly this notion of the pace and the speed, the practitioners, the public servants who came to the roundtables – because it wasn't just academics, it was a series of public servants as well – who talked to us about what their lives were like, what turbulence was like for them, how their roles in the institutions were managing and confronting these various forms of turbulence. And I think it was clear that certainly there are just extraordinary pressures, particularly on the senior ranks, pressures of time, pressures of resources. The scarcity is a real thing.
And so, a call for slower bureaucracy, or slowing down and finding spaces to reflect, to have thoughtful, forward-looking, long-term strategic agendas, to be paying attention to the questions of stewardship, the collection is replete with examples of different ways in which there's a need to protect that space and time for thoughtfulness. And it's tough to do that when you're staring down the barrel of an urgent crisis, or multiple urgent forms of turbulence.
And so, I think there are pockets of the public service and there are folks who do it well, but it's not easy to do. And I think that if I was to try and tie this thread together with a previous question, the operating system, the Canadian institutional context, is actually remarkably resilient. If you look and think about all of those examples that we've provided, we're still here. And so, I think that there is an immeasurable amount of capacity, of goodwill, and of varying repertoires and skills that can be brought to bear to deal with any numbers of types of turbulence. But the challenge is that we are often grappling with a series of paradoxes, and this is where we landed in the book because you ask yourself, "Well, what do you do about all these? And how do we deal with the system and the operating system, if you want to call it that?" And I think that there is a paradoxical need to be quick to respond to a COVID; to respond to a tariff; a policy change from our biggest trading partner; to a geopolitical event.
But there's paradoxically a need to be slower, not just in thoughtful, measured consideration of public servants who are giving advice, but of careful engagement with affected communities; of careful and thoughtful, slow engagement with provinces and territories and Indigenous communities or municipal orders on policy issues that are not necessarily turbulent today, but might very well be turbulent tomorrow.
And so, I think that the paradox of trying to do the slow with the quick is just one of the paradoxes that we identified. And I think that each public servant who's watching this, whether they're senior or junior, has to think about what space they can create to reflect and to try and engage in that type of slower work.
Evert Lindquist: Yes, and what we also land on there is the idea that it is an overdetermined situation, and it looks like it's going to be that way for the foreseeable future. But part of the paradox is understanding that you can't do everything at once. And that even Prime Ministers and premiers need to find ways to reach out, to communicate with other groups on a regular basis, despite the time constraints. And so, it gets to the idea of slow thinking. To ask senior leaders, both political leaders and public servants, to be slow is just not in the cards.
So, how's that going to happen? Probably not with the Royal Commission but reaching out to others that are not at the steering wheel or in the cockpit and finding repertoires to do that. One of our feelings in this book, and I think with a number of our colleagues, is we don't think that governments are very good at doing that now. And that this is a good time to institute new repertoires to encourage slower thinking and more reflective thinking in different ways.
Taki Sarantakis: Now this leads me nicely to my second of three quotes that I'm going to read from your book. One of the reactions in times of turbulence is you say, "You're in charge. Let's centralize power." And we've seen this around the world. People are electing variants of, let's call them, strong leaders, where people are looking for a centralized source of authority to guide us through the turbulence.
But you guys write, and this is my second quote: "The strategic state literature does not take for granted that central authorities are well positioned to orchestrate other players. On the contrary, it assumes that the capacity to orchestrate is severely challenged. This is a key feature of the literature."
Evert, I'm going to come to you because you just indirectly made that point, which is we shouldn't necessarily assume that the people at the wheel have all of the answers, or that they can do it by themselves.
Evert Lindquist: That's correct. And so, that's when the conundrums or paradoxes that we're looking at. In crisis, in turbulence, there is a reflex to centralize. Even Prime Ministers can't do everything no matter how capable they are.
Taki Sarantakis: Really?
Evert Lindquist: And central agencies can't do everything.
Taki Sarantakis: Really?
Evert Lindquist: Yes. So, the question is also how to centralize in the ways that are important in these contexts, but also to decentralize.
One of the reasons to decentralize is to have other people, other really good, smart people, both political leaders and public servants working on things. Dealing with the constituencies, that Jonathan mentioned earlier, because that could be where the next turbulence comes from, and we have to be ready for that.
But it's also working with outsiders, with other levels of government, and also with experts outside of government, because some of the answers are not going to come from government for a variety of reasons. But that means having the repertoires, and also the trust, to push some things out. And to know that you're doing that while you're managing to the core priorities that the moment demands.
Jonathan Craft: I think that's right. And we have a bit of a predilection in Canada where we want to talk about centralization, and we're concerned about concentrations of power. And I think that that's important. And certainly we're not alone in that regard. As you said, [our] colleagues pointed out that that's one of those tensions. And so, I think, in moments of crisis, we see centralization, but also we look to leaders in turbulent moments.
And so, there's questions of accountability, particularly in a federal system and a multi-level governance context like Canada's, where you also want to have some sense that there's somebody who's steering the plane in some shape or form. But the problem is that flight can't happen on its own. That you do require, particularly in today's governing context, other players, as Evert has pointed out.
And so, there is, again, this tension or this paradox between how you centralize or when you centralize or why you're centralizing and how you use that to coordinate. A big theme that comes through in the book is really questions of managing the volume and the number of things that are happening at the same time across a variety of different institutions within the public service, within the broader public sector. Crown corporations, for example, there's a whole chapter on that.
And so, I think that the challenge is really about the calibration and appreciation for the types of leadership that you need to know when to intervene and when you need to rely on or use relational resources and power that are located and dispersed. To think that someone individually in a Prime Minister's office is going to be able to address the types and nature of turbulence today, I think is naive, frankly. And I think the question then becomes, "How do our public sector institutions and actors understand the different levers, and how can they pull on those levers to try and address these types of challenges?"
And that's what the collection is really trying to grapple with, to understand and appreciate that there are the overlapping needs for centralization and decentralization at the same time, which are playing out across a number of different policy functions.
This is the other key point, that centralization and decentralization look very different when you're talking about, let's say for example, monitoring and evaluation, as a chapter looks at in the text, or administrative burdens, as another chapter looks at, versus let's say federalism or Indigenous relation.
So, there's a qualitative difference to the facets in which our governance systems are trying to respond. So, I think that that's the complexity, that's the challenge.
Taki Sarantakis: Now let's move on a little bit. We're, a little bit, going back to the beginning about the notion of the state. And one of the fathers of the theory of the state; one of the fathers of public administration; one of the fathers of sociology, Max Weber.
You talk in your book a few different times about the Neo-Weberian State. So, that presupposes that we've left something and we're moving on to something else. First, why don't I ask one of you to tell us what the Weberian State is, and then I'm going to ask the other one to tell us what we're moving towards, which is the Neo-Weberian State.
Jonathan Craft: We could play rock, paper, scissors?
Evert Lindquist: Sure. Well, okay. So, the Weberian State is the classic Platonic form of what a bureaucracy looks like. So, it's merit-based. Everyone has their roles, their assigned duties and responsibilities, and there's a chain of command that goes to the deputy minister in this case, or the political leader.
Taki Sarantakis: And there are org charts and hierarchies and...
Evert Lindquist: Right. And what I would add to it, before Jonathan tells you what the Neo-Weberian State is, is with the arrival of the new public management and the major reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of European scholars noticed that even though their countries were trying to adopt some of the OED new public management rhetoric, that a lot of their that state institutions were not moving in the way that New Zealand and Australia and even parts of the United States were moving.
And so, they came up with the idea of the New Weberian State, at that time it wasn't Neo, to sort of explain why their states remained more or less in the form that they had been before. But Geert Bouckaert has taken it further and now talks about the Neo-Weberian State.
Jonathan Craft: Yes, I think you'll have to read the book, I could say to all these questions.
Taki Sarantakis: You've got to give people incentive to read the book.
Jonathan Craft: Well, yes, absolutely. I think your question of, "Is the operating system still working?" is what the Neo-Weberian State was all about. The new public management and the success of cottage industry of public management reform literature really talks a lot about that traditional public administration was under stress. Let's reform it. Let's adopt management practices. Let's adopt private sector techniques and reorganize things.
And then the governance push came through, and that was really just recognizing that states aren't doing it all themselves. That there's an international network, loose or tight, however you want to look at it, and that these questions of governance were really about this broader process and that the state's part of it, but that they're not really the be-all end-all.
And I think the Neo-Weberian State is really reflecting on and responding to 30 years of new public management and managerialism and the governance literature to say, the state's still here and it's really important and goes back to your question of actors, goes back to your question on centralization, because the Neo-Weberian State is really about hierarchies and it's trying to understand that there are different sets of hierarchies and that the state has a fundamental role in steering and managing and is still a useful contributor to governance and that we need the state. And that we shouldn't forget about the state.
And so, our use of that concept and that literature is really to say Canada is not a perfect exemplar of the Neo-Weberian State, but that it raises really fundamental questions about what the role of the state should be in our global world, in our complex systems of governance.
And so, when we talk about federalism, when you talk even about the decentralized federal public service, notions of hierarchies and how the state intervenes and where others are counted on and we use nonprofit agencies or municipalities or others to deliver services and respond to turbulence, the Neo-Weberian State is really trying to say the state's still here, but that its role should look new or newer, and we should be mindful of these challenges.
Evert Lindquist: What I would add to that is that Geert Bouckaert's notion, the Neo-Weberian State is another ideal type or a Platonic form, where it's a state hierarchy, as Jonathan said. It's agile, it's fully digitally enabled. It is well aware and monitors the views of citizens and various experts and constituencies. And it's coherent. So, even if you have a complicated state apparatus, it's still coherent and coordinated.
Well, you contrast that with Canada, where we have a federation, lots of divided responsibilities, tons of municipal and Indigenous governments, and the asymmetry that's inherent in our federation, it doesn't look like the Neo-Weberian State. But Bouckaert was thinking about this because of all the turbulence, and what it would take to navigate it.
So, when you have that out there, as a North Star of sorts, you look back at the Canadian Federation and you say, we have a lot of work to be done. We have a lot of leadership and balancing and monitoring to be able to move this jurisdiction forward under these circumstances.
Jonathan Craft: I want to just add really quickly that in trying to structure the collection to confront these issues at the roundtables, we very much adopted a perspective that grapples with these macro-level considerations of the state, and the state within systems of governance, and those big questions of paradigms and philosophies of how we think about governance in the state down to those more mezzo-level considerations of the various different vantage points we get from looking at the different functions that public services undertake, and then a third part that looked at questions of reform to try and stitch those two together.
So, I think that talking about governance is complicated, understanding governance is complicated, because it's operating at that very high level, but then washing again through these more functional approaches, raising really important questions about reform.
Taki Sarantakis: So, now we'll move into the last part of our conversation. And the last part of our conversation really will focus on most of the viewers in this session, and probably most of the readers of your book, which is the public service. And for most of our history in Canada, we have been very, very proud of our public service. We have seen it as a net positive contributor to Canadian society. We have looked to it for leadership in times of trouble. We have looked to it for ideas, policy. We have looked to it for service delivery.
A lot of people now look at it and say, "It might have been that. Not sure it is that anymore." And I want to quote something that you guys wrote because I think it asks the question. And here's the quote: "Given the internal turbulence, i.e., shifting government priorities, and external turbulence, e.g., international economic crisis, pandemic, or war, the Canadian Public Service leaders have faced in recent years, it is crucial to examine whether public servants in the Canadian federal public service remain poised to lead."
Talk to us a little bit about that.
Evert Lindquist: There are a lot of different responsibilities in these times. So, when there's a series of crises and multiple turbulences, we value leadership that rises to the occasion and builds confidence and sets new things in motion. But that generates its own turbulence, particularly if you're trying to restructure the public service, re-identify new priorities, and continue to deal with uncertainty that turbulence brings.
So, part of our discussion that Jonathan mentioned earlier about where we do enumerate in the final chapter, a whole series of paradoxes and tensions, is to encourage leaders to become comfortable with the notion of paradox. And there's a literature on that, the literature about transformation, and I think a big question that the whole collection invites is, "Are we in a transformational moment?" It's easy to say transformation, but as you well know, it's hard to do. We have a system at the federal level that's complicated with scores and scores of departments and agencies.
So, there's a significant number of challenges here, where you have leaders managing to new priorities, but also having to do downsizing. They're unsure about what the external environment to Canada is going to bring week to week, so it requires developing. And everyone's seeking certainty, but maybe certainty's not there. So, that has a different demand for leadership and a clarity of thinking.
And so, there is this notion that we introduced towards the end to stimulate discussion about that fundamental state of leadership, which you find in the organizational transformation literature, but it's not something that we really talk about, say, at the national level. What does that mean for Canada? What does that mean for the Public Service of Canada? Are we having a discussion, even following COVID, for example, about what we became out of COVID?
Right now, we're just coming out of this first round of encounters with the second Trump administration. Where are we at right now? We've set a whole bunch of things in motion. There's a lot of support there, a lot of public servants that are interested in moving forward and doing the right things for the country. But are we having that discussion about where we are at collectively?
Taki Sarantakis: And that's interesting. Before I get to you, Jonathan, you mentioned COVID, and you mentioned Trump. In COVID, it's no secret we're one of the few major countries in the world that hasn't systematically looked back at what we did well and what we could have done better during COVID, so we've lost or are losing that moment to learn those lessons.
Also, you mentioned President Trump. This is not his first administration, it's his second administration, divided by 4 years. Did we learn what we should have learned to help us navigate the turbulence of this period?
Jonathan, I'm going to rephrase your quote, if you don't mind. Is the federal public service, from your vantage point, is it fit to purpose? Is it fit to help Canada and Canadians, as it stands today, navigate the turbulence ahead?
Jonathan Craft: Yes, I think it is. We are just so blessed to have a public service that has a lot of the fundamentals in place. Can it do better? Of course.
Fit for purpose is not a moment in time. It's an ongoing relationship that requires investment, introspection, adjustment, calibration. The turbulence literature also – and a couple of the chapters in our collection point out – turbulence can be an opportunity.
So, to your point of needing to do a stock take on COVID, or to be more retrospective or analytical on the state of the public service, you've heard me on these issues before. I think the public service is uniquely positioned to be able to respond. That's one of the Neo-Weberian State's key points is that we are going to need a public service to respond to whatever type of turbulence we're going to face and the multiplicity of turbulences.
The question is really, what can we do to strengthen it? What do we need to do to protect what's working now? And how can we equip public service leaders and frontline staff to actually do the work that they need to do? And so, the chapter on administrative burdens, for example, or the chapter on reform highlight a lot of different ways in which there are significant opportunities for us to invest in capacity, different types of capacity, or to rethink the way the public service is organized or how it operates, as we've been saying today.
And I think that's one of the key takeaways from the book is that, look, we need to step back and ask ourselves what public service do we need, and do we want? And others are having this moment as well, where there's not only a need to do that, but to be able to then develop strategies and communicate those to the public and to others to say, "Here are the changes that we need to make." But yes, the public service is fit for purpose, but can it do more? Yes. Can it do better? Absolutely. And are we going to need it to do more and do better? Probably.
Taki Sarantakis: Evert, last word to you.
Evert Lindquist: Well, along with what Jonathan's just said, we also need to take time to communicate what's been accomplished, for better or for worse.
So, we have a public service right now that is going through expenditure reviews, and the public really doesn't know it. The effects of this are leaching out into the press here and there. So, the reviews have been announced, and there's one that's really biting right now with the current government, but there were reviews before that.
So, I think that that's not top of mind for politicians to communicate the stress that the public service is under; how priorities are being moved forward in different ways; and then, where we're at. One way to do that is by engaging others to be involved in those reviews. It's not something that you can do all the time if you're a really busy public service.
So, this is an example of transformative thinking. You've got all these paradoxes, all these demands, we've got to think of new ways to do all of these things and draw on the larger set of resources that are out there.
What I would also add to what Jonathan said earlier is that we know that there's a huge constituency for change within the public service. It's not that public servants are just exemplars of the Weberian clerks that are just trying to come in for 9-to-5 jobs. They want to make a difference for Canadians. They're prepared to pivot and move in new directions. But as they're called upon to do that, Canadians also need to know what they've been doing and what's been accomplished.
Jonathan Craft: Can I just— I know you wanted, every time, the last word.
Taki Sarantakis: I said you had the last word.
Jonathan Craft: But I just wanted to go back to your metaphor of the plane. Because when I show up to fly home, or I go to Pearson to fly somewhere, I want to know that that plane has had its maintenance. That somebody's taken a look at it; that the systems in the cockpit are all working; that everything has been done to ensure it's going to take me to where I have to go. And so, I think that that's the point that we need to think about is who's on that plane, but also the type of headwinds it's going to run into and make sure that it's serviceable.
Taki Sarantakis: Professor Jonathan Craft, Professor Evert Lindquist, Governance in Turbulent Times. Thank you so much.
Evert Lindquist: Thank you.
Jonathan Craft: Thanks.
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