{"id":252016,"date":"2025-10-31T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/252016\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:35:09","slug":"ottawas-bureaucracy-has-too-many-managers-who-are-busy-managing-their-own-bloat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/252016\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa\u2019s bureaucracy has too many managers who are busy managing their own bloat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Since 2015, Canada\u2019s federal work force has grown by more than 100,000, and executives have multiplied faster than anyone else.Justin Tang\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Eugene Lang is acting director at the School of Policy Studies, Queen\u2019s University.<\/p>\n

Brigid Waddingham is a graduate student at the School of Policy Studies.<\/p>\n

Changes are coming to Canada\u2019s public service. Finance Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne said Wednesday<\/a> that the upcoming budget would cut the bureaucracy to a \u201csustainable level,\u201d suggesting that Ottawa wants to go further than the staffing cap it had previously announced. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney is taking heat for appointing two private sector executives to lead new federal agencies \u2013 the Major Projects Office and the Defence Investment Agency \u2013 both with annual compensation to the tune of almost $600,000. These are alleged by some to be exorbitant salaries and an affront to taxpayer value for money.<\/p>\n

Criticism about the two private-sector executives misses the point. Mr. Carney\u2019s experiment in hiring people from outside the career federal public service into top government jobs is not new. And the high salaries should not be a surprise. <\/p>\n

Hiring from the private sector has been tried before and has rarely worked. The culture, values and incentives of the public service are so radically different from those of the private sector that business executives who do enter government almost invariably get frustrated and do not last long.<\/p>\n

Opinion: Carney\u2019s inner circle of aging white guys has the experience the Trudeau team lacked<\/a><\/p>\n

If Ottawa is serious about returning the public service to sustainable levels, it must look at both the size of the work force and its structure. The experiment in hiring from the private sector is worth repeating, if for no other reason than to send a message to Ottawa\u2019s bloated executive ranks that the Prime Minister is looking for a different approach to management \u2013 one focused on efficiency and results. Any credible effort to cut the bureaucracy must start with its executive class.<\/p>\n

Since 2015, Canada\u2019s federal work force has grown by more than 100,000<\/a>. Executives have multiplied faster than anyone else. By the Treasury Board Secretariat\u2019s count, executive positions have increased 52 per cent, well above the 43-per-cent growth of the non-executive ranks. The number of assistant deputy minister (ADM) positions \u2013 roughly equivalent to a vice-president in a corporation \u2013 has climbed nearly 50 per cent, while senior ADM roles are up almost 79 per cent.<\/p>\n

Take Transport Canada as an example. Its ADM cadre has doubled, from five people in 2015 to 10 this year. At the vaunted Privy Council Office \u2013 the Prime Minister\u2019s department and once the preserve of a small number of Ottawa\u2019s bureaucratic elite \u2013 senior assistant deputy minister jobs have increased 267 per cent since 2015, from three to 11 positions. Meanwhile at Public Services and Procurement Canada, those same positions have surged by an astonishing 300 per cent in the last decade, up from two to eight. <\/p>\n

Seventy years ago, British historian C. Northcote Parkinson coined \u201cParkinson\u2019s Law,\u201d which helps explain this staggering growth of the public service and its executive class. Observing the expansion of the British Colonial Office, which occurred alongside the decline of the British Empire, Parkinson pointed out that the ranks of the public service tend to grow regardless of the volume of work to be done. He attributed this to two claims: \u201cAn official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals\u201d and \u201cOfficials make work for each other,\u201d in other words, there is a natural tendency to multiply subordinates to sustain the rise of officials, which in turn creates demand for more and more officials. As Parkinson put it, \u201cFar more people have taken far longer to produce the same result. No one has been idle. All have done their best.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ottawa\u2019s bureaucracy is well aware of the problem, even if it hasn\u2019t done much to fix it. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, recent attempts at work-force reduction have targeted term and casual employees, while the share of permanent positions, such as those occupied by executives, has reached a decade high<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A report by the Public Service Management Advisory Committee could have been<\/a> lifted directly from Parkinson\u2019s playbook: \u201cNew [executive] jobs at all levels are created, in many cases without a significant change in the organization\u2019s mandate.\u201d The result is \u201cdilution and duplication\u201d leading to \u201cunnecessary layers of decision-making and unclear accountabilities. It slows down productivity and creates workplace conflicts.\u201d Former clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick has raised concerns that Ottawa\u2019s \u201cpyramid of executives\u201d are slowing decision making and impeding communication.<\/p>\n

Businesspeople will recognize the pathology. When companies multiply vice-presidents, decisions slow, accountability blurs and egos multiply faster than outcomes. But in the private sector, profit and loss eventually impose discipline. In government, the taxpayer funds the experiment until someone yells \u201cenough is enough.\u201d <\/p>\n

None of this is to deny the need for competent, appropriately compensated public service executives. But competence does not scale infinitely. Beyond a certain point, multiplying executives does not produce efficiency or better public service outcomes: it leads to duplication of effort, if not paralysis. Each new layer solves the problems created by the existence of the last. <\/p>\n

Parkinson saw it in the British Admiralty, whose officials almost doubled while the fleet shrank by two-thirds. When Alessandro Natta, Secretary of the Italian Communist Party, complained of bureaucratic bloat in 1986 to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet president responded: \u201cParkinson\u2019s Law works everywhere.\u201d Ottawa is no exception. <\/p>\n

If Mr. Carney is serious about discipline, results and efficiency in government, he will have to be the one to say \u201cenough is enough.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Since 2015, Canada\u2019s federal work force has grown by more than 100,000, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,43,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,41,39,42,40,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-252016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}