Transcript
Transcript: Reflections by Munir Sheikh
[00:00:00 Opening video: A series of images of people walking along busy urban streets; a Canadian flag flying on the side of a building; an aerial view of Parliament Hill and downtown Ottawa; the interior of a library; a view of Earth from space. Text on screen: Leadership; Policy; Governance; Innovation.]
Narrator: Public servants, thought leaders, and experts from across Canada are reflecting on the ideas shaping public service, leadership, policy, governance, innovation, and beyond.
[00:00:16 Title page: Review and Reflections. CSPS logo. Text on screen: Produced by the Canada School of Public Service.]
Narrator: This is the Review and Reflection Series, produced by the Canada School of Public Service.
[00:00:25 The screen fades to Munir Sheikh.]
Narrator: Dr. Sheikh began his public service career in 1972, as an economist with the Economic Council of Canada. After a brief stint with the National Energy Board between 1976 and 1978, he joined the Department of Finance and rose to the rank of Senior Assistant Deputy Minister in 2000. Between 2001 and 2006, he held senior positions with Health Canada, the Privy Council Office, and Human Resources and Social Development Canada. He finished his public service career as Chief Statistician of Canada in 2010.
Taki Sarantakis: Dr. Sheikh, how are you?
[00:01:01 Text appears onscreen that reads "Munir Sheikh Former Chief Statistician of Canada".]
Munir Sheikh (Former Chief Statistician of Canada): I'm good, thank you.
Taki Sarantakis: Tell me what you were doing in July 2010. What was your job?
Munir Sheikh: In 2010, this big event happened in my life when I went to work as the Chief Statistician of Canada and totally unexpectedly, I came home unemployed. It was a very difficult and a very strange day. That morning at around 6 a.m., I got a call from my corporate secretary at Statistics Canada, surprised to get a call at that hour in the morning, and she said, "Have you read the front-page headline in The Globe and Mail?"
[00:01:52 A July 21, 2010 article by Steven Chase from The Globe and Mail is shown with the headline "Tony Clement clears air on census" and the text:
"The Globe and Mail spoke to Industry Minister Tony Clement on Tuesday afternoon about the debate surrounding the Conservative government's decision to scrap the mandatory long-form census. A transcript of that interview follows."
"Q: I'd like to clarify things. I thought you when you talked to several days ago that you basically said to Statscan, "Look we want to do this, we ant to get rid of the mandatary long-form, and tell me what I need to do to make it so that there's no downside to that."
A: That is 100 per cent accurate. That is exactly what I said to them.
Q: Ok… But the allegation [in later stories] is that's not what Statscan said, that [chief statistician Munir Sheikh] had said that you should not do this, we advise against eliminating the mandatary long form.
A: I didn't want to get into… I have to be careful because there is advice to cabinet [rules] But that is, I would argue, not accurate." Credit: The Globe and Mail]
And I said I had not. So, she said, "You better read it and come to the office as soon as you can." So, I read the story, and the story was… and it wasn't the first time this kind of a story had appeared. The story was that it was the Chief Statistician who had personally assured the government that cancelling the long-form census was a good idea. So, I rushed to the office. At about 9:00, I called a meeting of all the assistant chief statisticians and it was concluded that what had happened… and that was the third time that a story like that had showed up in the media, that this was unacceptable. It really was going to affect the reputation and integrity of Statistics Canada and it should not happen. So, we talked about what the options were and I came to the conclusion that the only option for me, to send a clear signal that it wasn't Statistics Canada which had made that recommendation, was to resign and resign publicly so people would know that the government had done something which led me to leave my job. And so, that was what happened.
Taki Sarantakis: Did you resign because the government didn't take your advice?
Munir Sheikh: No. We, the deputy ministers, are trained for two things. One, we do our very best to provide the best possible advice to the government. And then, depending on the decision the government makes, we do our very best to implement that decision. And of course, it is the right of every elected government to make the decisions. It's not our job as public servants to do that. So, I did not resign because the government overruled our recommendation and cancelled the census.
[00:04:11 A census form from 2011 is shown.]
I resigned because the government, the Minister responsible for Statistics Canada, made it explicitly known to everybody that they were following the advice that Statistics Canada had given, and then finally, the Chief Statistician had personally assured the government that that was the right thing to do. That really reflects that Statistics Canada doesn't know good from bad which of course affects, destroys, if I can use that word, the reputation and integrity of Statistics Canada. So, it was that thing that led to my resignation.
Taki Sarantakis: You wrote a sentence or two in your resignation letter that said, "The long-form census this, but it doesn't." Do you remember that sentence?
[00:05:11 An excerpt from Dr. Sheikh's resignation letter appears on screen with highlighted text that reads: "I want to take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census. It can not."]
Munir Sheikh: Well, the sentence, I remember it. First of all, there was a bit of a challenge in writing that statement because I could not reveal what Statistics Canada's recommendation was to the Minister, I mean that is confidential information. So, I was trying to find a way to get to the point that we really couldn't have given that advice. So, I presented it as a technical, statistical issue and I said that there was a lot of discussion about this technical issue, which is whether the long-form census can be replaced by a survey, and the sentence after that was "It can not", and I think that is the sentence that caught the attention of the media and there were many stories written about that afterwards.
Taki Sarantakis: So, the government, if I understand you, was completely free to disregard your advice. Is that correct?
Munir Sheikh: Yeah, the government is totally free to totally always reject the advice of a public servant. I mean, I was in the Department of Finance for many, many years, and if I resigned because the government did not take my advice, I probably would have resigned 50 times during my stay at Finance, but that is their right. I mean, that is what they're elected to do. We just give them the advice. And so, when the government is not willing to take ownership of a bad decision and places the blame on a public servant, that is when you have to make a decision whether it's worth your while to keep doing what you're doing, and I came to the conclusion that I had spent my entire life to serve the public and to take the blame for somebody else's bad decision.
[00:07:11 An image of The Jean Talon Building, Statistics Canada's headquarters in Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa is shown.
Text reads: Credit: Copyright© Dem etri1968. CC By-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons"]
While I could live with it personally, I simply could not tolerate that such a great Canadian institution like Statistics Canada would be blamed for incompetence. That is something that I thought I could not tolerate.
Taki Sarantakis: Did you feel that your colleagues present, past, commentators… there were a lot of commentaries around this. Do you have any opinions on the people that, kind of from the cheap seats, were writing in The Globe and Mail and the National Post and things like that?
Munir Sheikh: Well, it was a very difficult decision on my part.
[00:07:57 A July 21, 2010 article by Steven Chase and Tavia Grant from The Globe and Mail is shown with the headline "Statistics Canada chief falls on sword over census". Credit: The Globe and Mail]
To quit your dream job isn't an easy thing, but when I saw the reaction to what I had done, that actually made me feel good that I had done the right thing.
[00:08:03 A July 21, 2010 article from CBC News is shown with the headline "StatsCan head quits over census dispute" above the text "Munir Sheikh, the head of Statistics Canada, resigned Wednesday over the federal government's decision to scrap the mandatory long-term census." Credit: CBC]
[00:08:08 A July 22, 2010 article by Bruce Campion-Smith and Richard J. Brennan from the Toronto Star is shown with the headline "StatsCan chief quits over census furor" and the text "StatsCan head Munir Sheikh warns that Ottawa's proposal for a voluntary census survey won't work. Credit: Toronto Star]
My mindset at the time I resigned was very negative.
[00:08:13 A July 23, 2010 article by Tavia Grant from The Globe and Mail is shown with the headline "An independent mind has always characterized Sheikh". Credit: The Globe and Mail]
I am going home, I have lost my job, it's all the government's fault.
[00:08:18 A July 27, 2010 article by John Ibbitson from The Globe and Mail is shown with the headline "Munir Sheikh shows us what integrity and leadership look like". Credit: The Globe and Mail]
I felt terrible about it, but the next day, when I started reading all the stories that people were writing, I said to myself, "Yes, of course I've lost something but I've also gained something, which is really important for me which is that people understand and agree that I did the right thing." And so, it was quite a lot. I am really quite pleased that I was, at that time, able to take the right decision, hard it was but I was able to do that, but I should mention one thing here. Even though the decision was fairly obvious, like if you really cared about your institution, there is no other option but to do what I did, but I still was a bit uncertain. Am I going to be able to survive without going to the office and doing the stuff I like? And for my family, my wife and my boys, I was talking with them and they said, "You have made the right decision, stick with it." And so, I stuck with it.
Taki Sarantakis: Now, after Statistics Canada, you've added another big thing to your public service. You're a published fiction author now. Tell us about that.
Munir Sheikh: Well, when I left as Chief Statistician, what is it that you do to provide public service? And I went back to an idea that I had many, many years ago, in 1965 actually, as I lived through the '65 war between India and Pakistan which I found was terrible. It was the time when I thought the government of a country was itself inflicting harm on the citizens of that country. And at that time, at the age of 18, I had said to myself "I have to do something about it, this is not acceptable", but I didn't know what to do. And then, after resigning from my Statistics Canada job, I got back to that mindset and said I have to do something about it. And then, I remembered a famous author once saying there are some harsh realities of life that can only be communicated effectively through fiction. So, I said "I want to communicate those harsh realities and maybe I should try my hand at fiction." And then, of course, it's hard to write fiction for someone who had been used to writing academic articles and briefing notes. It took me a long time to get the hang of it. I went to a British academy for two years to learn how to write stories. And so, it took me 14 years to write the story that I've always wanted to tell about what happened in '65 and (inaudible) afterwards.
Taki Sarantakis: What's the name of the book?
Munir Sheikh: The name of the book is Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.
[00:11:28 The cover of the book "Islamabad: A Tale of War and Love" is shown.]
And the reason it's called Islamabad is because that is the seat of power for the Government of Pakistan.
[00:11:35 An image of Munir Sheikh with multiple copies of the book is shown.]
So, it is in two parts basically, Islamabad, so here is where the power comes and affects people's life, obviously badly, and then the second part is the part about war and love. And so, the mechanism that was used by the government… during that period that I covered in the book was multiple wars which of course had a huge impact on the people of Pakistan, and the word on love, it's the love within a family, a family with a father, a mother, and two daughters, and love is the way that the family hangs together to deal with the adversity that is created because of the war. So, that's the title of the book, Islamabad: A Tale of War and Love. There's a very negative part of it which is the government basically adversely affecting the lives of its own citizens, and the citizens then have to deal with it and the only way they were able to deal with it was through the unity in the family and the love they have for each other.
Taki Sarantakis: Dr. Munir Sheikh, thank you for clarifying a big moment in Canadian public service history, and thank you, more importantly, for dedicating your life to public service.
Munir Sheikh: If I can just say one more thing, I hope people would read my book. It's available at Amazon and Indigo, you can order it, and I think the topic that I've picked up, how can bad governments destroy the lives of their citizens, if you look around the world today and count the number of countries that that is happening, you'll be shocked. So, my novel, in a sense, is a cry for people to wake up and say, "We cannot let this thing continue because it does badly affect the lives of the citizens of the world."
Taki Sarantakis: Thank you, Dr. Sheikh.
Munir Sheikh: Thank you very much.
[00:13:51 The CSPS logo appears onscreen.]
[00:13:58 The Government of Canada logo appears onscreen.]
