Transcript
All right, Hurley Burleights, welcome back! We’re very pleased today with our special guest, Michael Wernick. After a very long career—a lifetime career—in the public service, Michael culminated with being the Clerk of the Privy Council. For those of you who don’t follow these things that closely, that’s the number one job in the public service of Canada; that’s the top public servant in Canada. Don’t be dissuaded by the term “Clerk.”
After retiring, he subsequently wrote a book called Governing Canada: A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics. As somebody with a BA undergrad, I can tell you that if you’re taking political science because you want to be a political science professor, keep doing it—go ahead and enjoy your degree. If you’re taking political science because you want to understand how the government works, drop it right now and pick up this book. Read this book, and you’ll have everything that you need—and all the things that you will never learn in your political science courses about how the government works.
Michael Wernick, we’re really pleased to have you here. Thanks for coming. How are you?
Thanks, David, and thanks for that very generous introduction. That means a lot coming from you.
Well, I thought it was pretty interesting. It left me with lots of questions. I hope you don’t mind; I’m not going to sort of ask you to rehash the book because I am actually assuming that people who listen to this podcast will read this book. So, I just want to leapfrog off some of the things that are in there to talk to you about. But I want to start off with a little bit about you. How did you end up in the public service? What’s your path to that career?
I could have probably ended up on other paths—probably at law school or living in Toronto or other places. Life is full of all kinds of choices and accidents along the way. The short version is I was studying economics at the University of Toronto, and I had a strong pull towards applied and policy sorts of courses. I hung out at the School of Policy Studies at U of T. I was very influenced by a course I took that was full of guest lecturers—ex-ministers, deputy ministers, and so on—who would tell their stories. It gave me a real interest in thinking about going into public service. I was also kind of tired of going to the Robarts Library and working on academic things. I was headed towards a Ph.D., but I bailed out, thinking, “Well, let me go work for a couple of years and see how it is and maybe not live on a student’s TA ship.”
I applied for a couple of things, one in the Ontario government and one in the federal government. It was the federal government that asked me for an interview back in the spring of 1981 and basically offered me a job at the Department of Finance—an institution you know very well. So, I started there, writing briefing notes in the Social Policy Division of the Department of Finance, and literally, one thing led to another. Thirty-eight years later, I left the institution.
Had you ever considered the private sector, or were you drawn to policy right from the beginning?
I think when I was in high school, I was headed for law school. I think my vision, if I had one, was two years of poli-sci and economics, then apply for law school. I could have seen myself in law and maybe even in partisan politics. But it was really grad school that turned me towards the public sector, and I just always found the work stimulating, the people interesting. It was close—you know, a proximity to government and politics without some of the risks and hazards. There’s a tradecraft to the public service, which is probably for another book, but I really enjoyed it and took some real satisfaction and meaning out of supporting ministers and helping our democracy move along.
You and I share something in common, which is that we have both been advisors. When you’re an advisor, there’s a lot of freedom—you’re not going to be accountable for the decision, you don’t have all the pressures that the decision-maker has, etc. But you also aren’t making the decision; you give your advice, you walk out of the room, and that person remaining in the room makes the decision about what to do. Over the years, did you find that frustrating? Did you ever wish you were the decider, as George W. Bush would say?
No, I had a lot of respect for the ministers, the cabinet tables, and the prime ministers who had that final accountability. I think I was very comfortable with the role of helping them come to decisions, making sure that they had as much information as possible and the different considerations. I was very aware, though, that a lot of the things we were considering had consequences—they made a difference in people’s lives. When you change immigration policy or child care policy or jobs policies, these could ripple through families and communities for years to come. So, I was certainly conscious that a lot of the decision-making—not all of it, of course—was very meaningful to people. I developed a sense somewhere mid-career about that kind of synergy between advisors and decision-makers that you’re well aware of.
But surely there were times, Michael, when you were looking at people and thinking, “This person knows way less than I do about this, and they’re making a terrible decision.”
Well, I mean, not all of my advice was taken. Part of the—some of my advice was wrong. I freely—I misjudged all kinds of—
Oh no, we never admit that! I’m sorry, go on.
No, no—well, let me start with that. I made mistakes and underestimated risks. We’re all—one of the things I try to get across in the book is that this is a business of human beings, and human beings have go-to behaviors and styles of learning and taking decisions. The thing about governing, the way it feels, is that there’s never perfect information, and there’s never enough time. Whether you’re a minister or at the cabinet table, it’s a business of “close enough.” You know, we have to make a decision here with imperfect information, an estimate of how this is going to go, and move on because the next thing’s coming along. The cabinet table, in a year, might have about 150 to 200 decisions to take in a very limited period of time. So, I hope I get across a little bit of how government feels, which is kind of rushed and pressed, and you always wish you had more time and more information—but you won’t.
Just one last thing on the public service—how attractive is it to young people? And I guess I think about the financial issues. I mean, something like the Department of Justice, which you said in the book is a good law firm full of good lawyers—good lawyers in Toronto make a lot of money. How do you attract those kinds of minds to the public service?
Well, it’s a big topic. I’ve always spent a lot of time around universities, recruitment, outreach, and trying to convince people to come in, make a career, or spend part of their career. It doesn’t have to be a lifelong thing—getting a lot of people to come in, spend some time, lend their expertise, and then go back to their other work. We need to do more of that. We’ve never been short of young people who have a sense of serving their country and making a difference. It’s actually made a bit of a comeback since 9/11 and since the pandemic. The public institutions and public service matter; the extreme fetish for the private sector seems to have peaked. A lot of what the public sector does is interesting and important work. It’s some of the best science around, some of the most interesting law, some of the most interesting financial analysis. If you’re into cryptography, computer science, and algorithms, in many professions, you can offer in the public sector a path of meaningful work combined with public service.
What I would take out of your question, though, is that we often don’t pay competitively in some professions. We stick people in bad buildings with bad technology and say, “Make the best of it.” The private sector model—and people admonish the public sector to be more like the private sector—spends a lot of time on training and learning and development, making sure that people have good IT, and so on. I’d like the public sector to be more like the private sector and to be more competitive in some professions and some niches. We should have more flexible compensation arrangements.
It’s not a bad bargain in the sense that there are defined benefit pensions and coverages, which a lot of self-employed people don’t have. You know, and then there’s a degree of job security in some sense. But, in a lot of places, it is a sacrifice of foregone income. To get back to ministers, I mean, it’s a problem for prime ministers and campaign teams as well to convince people to take a, you know, a walk of life that they have a career in and progress. A lot of people coming into politics, you know, they take a pay cut in order to serve their country. For some of them, it is the best job they’ll ever have. But, you know, it’s quite a variety. However, the call to serve your country and make a difference, I think, is a common motivator for a lot of public servants, for the kind of people that go into political staff offices, and for the overwhelming bulk of the politicians themselves. You know, serving your country and making a difference really is the big recruiting draw, not any of the other issues.
I would have always thought that government was the place you would go to make a difference. You know, Paul, who Martin had a life in business before and had worked in the NGO sector as well, always said to me, “You can do more good in one day in government than you can in years and years outside of it.” And so, I always thought of it that way. Then, you know, Catherine McKenna said that she was leaving the government in order to be able to focus more on climate change, and I was like, “My God, where can you do more for climate change than in the government of Canada?” So I’m, again, just sort of asking whether people see government these days as a place to go to make positive change in society or whether they think there’s better places to do that than in government right now.
I think there are many ways to make a difference. And, you know, I have a lot of respect for people that do it as advocates, you know, in other walks of life. I mean, it still remains the fact that there are hundreds of associations and hundreds of paid lobbyists and advocates, NGOs, journalists, and pundits all trying to exert some influence on the 30 or 40 people that’ll be sworn into cabinet later today. So, obviously, they make a difference. You know, they are the ones. You know, there are 38 million Canadians, and only one in a million gets to be a minister. One of the things I try to get across in the book is that everybody in that room matters because you have a chance not only to push your own initiatives but to comment and weigh in on everybody else’s. You can add ambition, throw cold water, speak out for your region, and bring consideration. So, every minister matters. The fact that it all happens behind closed doors, away from public sight, I think has led to a lot of misconceptions about cabinet government. But, in fact, there are real opportunities. There are frustrations that come with it too. I mean, I’m not denying your question. It’s a slog, and you always win some, lose some. And it’s a wearying kind of life. A lot of people find that after four, five, six years, they don’t want to pay the price anymore.
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How collective is decision-making? If I am the Minister of Public Works, how much of a say am I going to get in fiscal policy? Well, yeah, most important issues of our time involve clusters of ministers. So, climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, negotiating trade with Donald Trump, what to do about China—these are multi-minister issues. A relatively straightforward thing, like wanting to legalize cannabis, brought at least four ministers into play, and so on. Defense procurement would bring the procurement minister, the defense minister, and just about every other minister with a regional economic lens into the discussion. So, there are lots of issues where ministers can make a difference. Some have particular roles and do have more influence. The Minister of Finance has the final say on resource allocation and tax matters. The Prime Minister has the final say on a wide range of issues. You know, he or she is the prime, is the first. There is this kind of trope that the Prime Minister is all-powerful and the rest of the ministers are blindly obedient sheep. It’s just not the case. You have a zone of influence, and effective ministers use it. You know, sometimes they have a big impact; sometimes it’s a lot of small decisions along the way. Whether you’re an advocate for your part of the country, like being the voice of Southern Nova Scotia, or you bring your life experience as a former refugee, former soldier, or whatever, every minister brings something to those discussions and can nudge government along on many occasions.
But, as you said, a big part of your book is talking about the lack of time in government and how you never have enough time to do all the things that you want. So, I presume your answer to my question is going to be no. But do ministers get to sit around and talk and debate issues that are outside of their area of jurisdiction? Or, if you’re a minister—and I’m actually asking Michael because I don’t know, and I’m not trying to suggest this government is different than any other—I’m just trying to figure out: when something goes to cabinet, is it already cooked up with the relevant minister and the PMO, and it’s presented to cabinet effectively for ratification? Or do they come and say, “Here’s what we’re thinking about; what do you think?”
It’s a bit of both, and in between. No two cabinet meetings are exactly the same. It’s a really good question. One of the things the Prime Minister will do is set up the sort of due diligence system of cabinet committees. In setting them up, you send signals about how you want issues to be considered. You put particular groups together, and there’s a lot of working through. I describe it as due diligence: you work the politics, you work the public policy, you work the implementation issues. You can bring issues to a point where they’ve largely been worked through, and they can come to the cabinet table and basically be approved and ratified with minimal discussion. That’s sometimes misinterpreted as cabinet doesn’t matter. Those committee discussions or meetings offline between a cluster of ministers—a minister will come and talk to the Minister of Finance or talk to colleagues or go to the Wednesday morning BC caucus, and so on. There’s also the interaction with caucus MPs. So, there’s a lot of deliberation, discussion, and back-and-forth. When things come to cabinet, there are probably only one or two items that you can fit in for a more deliberative discussion. I mean, it’s simple arithmetic: if every minister weighs in for three minutes, you’ve used up almost 90 minutes, right? But big issues, you know, they can even spill over into more than one meeting. I mean, something as complicated as carbon pricing or medical assistance in dying, which was a very personal issue for a lot of people, took more than one meeting to work its way through. Or your cabinet’s keeping an eye on something like the trade negotiations on NAFTA and giving feedback to the lead minister, and so on.
So, um, you know, sometimes the transactional items can go through very quickly. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t, you know, careful attention to them at the committee stage. But if you’re a minister, I guess you’re telling me you’ve got to pick your spots. If you’re going to wade into something that isn’t in your area, you’re not going to do that on every issue. Yeah, you can wear out your welcome on every issue. I think that’s probably true of anybody who participates in a board or, you know, a committee or meetings. You know, that guy who talks too much about every issue and doesn’t come to the point loses influence, and that’s true at the cabinet table, right?
Right. Uh, can I talk to you about DIAND, Indian and Northern Affairs? You spent eight years there. Yes, I was, uh, from early 2006 until the summer of 2014, and it went through a couple of name changes along the way. So, yeah, I know, and I’ve got the current one wrong, and it’s two departments and all that, but, unfortunately, I still know it as DIAND. But, um, where would you say we are after, uh, five or six years of the Trudeau government, which has this as a stated priority? Where do you think we are on this path to what is now called reconciliation?
It feels choppy. It’s a big issue. Um, I mean, you have to sort of zoom back a little bit and see the trajectory that, you know, every government makes a difference along the way. Um, we can talk about, uh, Mr. Chrétien’s contributions—very newsworthy this week. You know, Mr. Martin made a huge difference; Mr. Harper made a huge difference. Each Prime Minister will try to, uh, come to the importance of Indigenous issues and tries to make a difference, and that’s what I’ve seen all of them try to do. They had their own sense about how to go about it. So, I mean, the current government can speak for itself. I think their commitment is quite sincere about trying to make a difference, and this is even before the shocking events of 2020 and the, you know, the discovery of the graves and so on. And they made a very significant financial commitment. You know, over the course of four budgets, I think it will come out to about 20 billion dollars in net new expenditures on infrastructure and services, which will clearly make a difference. I certainly could have used some of that money when I was at the department in leaner times. What they haven’t been as successful at is some of the structural, you know, issues underneath, in terms of, you know, governance and economic development and some of, you know, the long drivers, you know, that would make a difference.
One of the things that’s missed by people in the Indigenous space is we tend to focus on on-reserve First Nations communities, and only a few of them, you know, at that. And I think one of the more interesting things about the next 10 years is the urban Indigenous populations that are growing up in Ottawa and Montreal and Edmonton and Winnipeg. We’ll see in the census data next year that about half of Indigenous Canada lives in our cities and towns, and how, you know, reconciliation is going to work its way through those communities as well.
So, we can agree, I think, that the government appears very sincere in its efforts, despite the odd symbolic error along the way. But—and you’re right—a lot of money and progress we can see. I mean, they got trashed for boil water advisories in the election for not having eliminated all of them, but they eliminated a hell of a lot of them, and various other things. Yet, Indigenous leadership and the Indigenous population seem unimpressed with this government. What’s the disconnect?
Well, I mean, I think that’s about the complex world of Indigenous politics. I think there’s a natural tension between the government as the Crown and as the funder and, you know, Indigenous leadership across the community. There’s always a divide in Indigenous politics between, you know, pragmatists and fundamentalists. Some people want to work with the government of the day, and some people find being oppositional more productive. I could say the same thing about provincial premiers, I guess. And it’s a very diverse leadership; you know, you’re talking about 600 communities and about 50, you know, regional organizations and about 80 tribal councils. It’s constantly changing, turning over, as is, you know, politics on the other side of the table, so to speak.
So, um, I remember Stephen Harper, um, you know, at the Crown-First Nations Gathering of January 2012, when there was a very solid, positive relationship with First Nations organizations, with National Chief Atleo. There was a gathering, and so on, and it all deteriorated very quickly over the next couple of years. So, you know, there’s kind of an ebb and flow to these things. A lot of it has to do with personality and politics, as it does in non-Indigenous issues.
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In the months and years ahead, it has set sensible spending and earning targets for 2022 and is on the way to achieving them. Last week’s Q3 reporting was a day of good news. There will be more. When Paul Martin was doing Kelowna, the Kelowna Accord, he talked to me a lot about the importance of the process of getting there—not just the results and the content of the accord, but the, you know, pretty extended, deliberative, consultative process (fed-prov-Indigenous) that led to it. Um, is that partly what we’re lacking right now—bringing along consensus? Or is that not possible in this circumstance? Or, well, yeah, it’s one of these irresolvable questions between, sort of, results and relationships.
You, I think, need both. Um, I’d quickly say that’s true of all kinds of communities of interest and stakeholders and whatnot. Modern government doesn’t just cook up something in an office tower, announce it, and say, “Here, this is good for you.” Every community expects to be involved and engaged in decisions that affect them, and that, you know, that’s part of the art of modern governance for everybody. It’s particularly important for Indigenous peoples, given they have particular standing in our constitution. They have acknowledged Aboriginal and treaty rights, duties to consult them, which apply, and so on. So, and the, the, the Supreme Court, through over 20 decisions, has laid down doctrines of the honor of the Crown and duty to consult and so on. So, there’s a particular, um, issue, uh, about how to engage in, you know, Indigenous peoples.
At the end of the day, though, you often come to, um, you know, a place where you have to say, “Have we consulted enough? Is it time to call it and make a decision?” And that’s always a tough thing to do. You know, we’re going to go ahead. People who disagree with the results never feel they’ve been consulted enough.
Yes, and that’s true in non-Indigenous communities; it’s certainly true in Indigenous communities. And the politics of it are: if somebody says yes to a settlement or an agreement or supports a government bill, there will be somebody else who runs against them, saying, “You’re the Joey Smallwood of our, you know, of our community.” And, uh, you know, the last time I looked at the numbers, you know, the chiefs that signed agreements with the Government of Canada—almost three-quarters were defeated in the next election.
So, it takes a lot of courage to come to yes. Um, and we’ve seen that with, you know, that National Chief Atleo and other Indigenous politicians paying a very high price for taking the more pragmatic, collaborative approach. It’s easier politics to run against the Crown and against Ottawa. Again, uh, some premiers find that too, despite the best of intentions.
Sometimes things just fall into the maw of government and disappear. Mike, my example would be murdered and missing Indigenous women. What the hell happened there? I mean, I can’t believe the government didn’t want to get to the bottom of that. They’ve got no interest in protecting anybody or protecting the truth. I presume the government’s very sincere about wanting to get to the bottom of that, and yet the whole process has collapsed into nothing. How does that happen?
Uh, well, uh, there was a push to have an inquiry that the Harper government decided not to pursue. They said, “We don’t need the inquiry; we can start working on the solutions without the inquiry,” which goes to your point about the process mattering to a lot of people. There actually was an inquiry, and there is a report with a long set of recommendations. A lot of them are aimed at the courts, the policing system, the administration of justice, and so on. It was a very broad, sweeping report that had a kind of “we need to fix society as well” flavor to it.
So, you know, I haven’t checked in on it lately, but I think a lot of it has been acted on. There are real challenges, particularly in law enforcement and policing, and taking these matters seriously. But, I mean, we just saw over the last month how much media frenzy and attention can be devoted to one missing white woman in the United States, where they have the same issue of hundreds and hundreds of Indigenous women going missing. Secretary Holland is trying to make that an issue in the United States and draw attention to it. So, you know, it’s an ongoing challenge in terms of the systemic tilt in our justice system.
Alright, I’m just gonna flit around from issue to issue now because there’s so much to talk about, and hopefully, we’ll talk about the military at some point. This is all about the book. This is all about the book.
What you were involved in—the Charlottetown Accord process—[Music]. I’m in the public opinion research business, so I’ve seen a lot of what Canadians agree on, where there’s consensus, where there isn’t consensus, and how different regions and different people see the country. What did you learn about Canada through the Charlottetown Accord process?
Oh, that was one of the performative experiences of my professional and personal career. My bad joke about it is that I actually chaired the drafting committee of the Charlottetown Accord, which was sent to every Canadian household. There were 11 million copies of my work printed. I didn’t make any copyright money off of it, but Charlottetown, I think, is a warning sign about using referenda to decide complex issues. We’ve seen that in other countries, and so on. There aren’t a lot of things that lend themselves to yes or no. When you do that, all the different reasons for saying no come together.
I mean, the striking thing about Charlottetown was the no side included such diverse characters as Pierre Trudeau, Jacques Parizeau, and Preston Manning, all arguing against it but for completely different reasons. It was a much harder sell to say, “This is a good compromise that we should move on from.” If we ever get to fundamental changes in our institutions of government, like Senate reform or proportional representation, they almost inevitably will have to go to a referendum. And then you’re going to have the same phenomenon, as referendums are tilted towards rejection.
I have the same opinion about referendums and proportional representation because what Charlottetown and other things have shown me is that there are some pretty fundamental concepts about Canada that Canadians don’t agree on. We can get by day-to-day and not care; everybody can get along, and we can have a functioning country. But if you want to sit down and have a discussion about whether Canada is a compact of French and English founding peoples or whether it is a multicultural country, you’re gonna have quite a lengthy and pretty hostile debate. In Quebec, people don’t think that’s a debatable proposition, and Ukrainians in Saskatchewan don’t think it is either.
I think this is a country that could have too much democracy. Well, I think, if I can quote somebody we both know, sometimes in politics and policy, ambiguity is your best friend. A little fuzziness is what allows you to keep moving forward—you just agree to disagree. We navigated ourselves into a space in Meech Lake and Charlottetown where people were looking for great precision about the distinct society and the nature of Quebec’s relationship with the rest of the country. I sat through quite a few meetings about the Canada clause in the Charlottetown Accord, and as you rightly say, there are very different visions of this country.
I think what we learned from it is we don’t need to resolve that in order to continue to be a successful country. What’s more important is not that kind of clarity and precision, which would appeal to political scientists and op-ed writers, but to keep living together, making decisions together, and making a better country.
Yeah, thank you. Couldn’t agree more. That’s very well said.
SNC Lavalin—I have only one question. I think you’ll be pleased; I have only one question. I’ve seen other interviews you’ve done, and you’ve had more than one question. I only have one, and that is: Why were you making that call to Jody Wilson-Raybould instead of somebody from the PMO? How often does the Clerk get involved in that kind of disciplinary role in the government?
Well, I mean, that wasn’t particularly a disciplinary role. I did have a sharp conversation with this—
I mean disciplinary, not by punishment, but by trying to bring her into the consensus, right?
Well, I did have conversations with ministers from time to time where I’d reach out and say, “We need to talk,” or I had various conversations with ministers. As I said at the committee, and I don’t want to rehash all the details, we basically came to the end of the session. We were all about to take a Christmas break. There was a cabinet retreat-style meeting scheduled for Sherbrooke in the second week of January. I was doing my thing, running through lists of what’s on the table, what’s left to do heading into the last year of the government, and what some of the issues out there were. This was one of them. I was trying to find out where she was coming from with a sense of how this was likely to play out in the early part of the session.
Conversations that week led us to start thinking about how we were going to use the January cabinet retreat. It was probably the last one we were going to have. So it was in that kind of context, which, of course, disappears in hindsight.
Right, but would that normally be a call that would come from the PMO, like the Prime Minister wants you to get on board with this?
Well, I don’t have insight into who spoke to whom when. There would have been conversations from the PMO to a chief of staff, for example, as a prelude to talking to a minister. Those relationships—I have less insight into how the PMO manages ministers and ministers’ offices. I saw some of it.
So that wouldn’t have been coordinated then?
I think it was on the to-do list, frankly, of Katie and Gerry and me as we came to the end of the session. We knew it was a bubbling issue for sure that fall. It was one of a range of issues that we were trying to see how they would unfold in the new year.
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One of the things that I thought was most important in your book is the relationship between the public service and the political level, and how those two things interact, what their roles are.
So, public servants work for and support the agenda of the elected politicians. What’s the challenge function when the public service thinks the government is off on the wrong track? How does the public service deal with that, and how strongly do they challenge their political masters?
Yeah, it’s a good question, and I have been, you know, kind of accused of denigrating the policy function of the public service in some of my previous interviews, and I guess I’m not doing a good job of getting across. So let me take another go at it. I mean, a lot of the basic policy drivers of what the government is going to do and whether it’s going to do it come from democratic politics. The public service doesn’t, you know, say we should have carbon pricing, or we should legalize cannabis. You know, what they do mean a lot of those major sort of decisions come from political platforms and from governments deciding, “This is where we’re going to go,” or they have a sense of, you know, “We want to toughen our relationship with China,” or “We want to increase readiness of the Ontario economy for autonomous vehicles.”
So, it’s more of a back and forth and a dialogue. Where the public service excels is working through that dense middle ground of, “Well, how are we going to get there?” There’s costing, there are legal issues, there are intergovernmental issues. You have to pay attention to international agreements and covenants, a lot of issues around implementation. So, turning things into actionable choices—we could do this or we could do that—and turning them then into implementable laws, policies, programs, and regulations, that’s something that the public service does that outside groups don’t do. But generating, you know, what government should do, there are lots of academics and stakeholders and think tanks and pundits and opposition politicians and others that create an agenda for, you know, government moving forward.
Governments are often trying to move forward the electoral platform they just put to Canadians, and that’s entirely what they should be doing in a democracy. They’re trying to signal where they would take the country if re-elected, and that’s entirely legitimate. And then they get shocks and surprises, whether it’s a global pandemic or a financial crisis or terrorist attack, and the responsiveness to shocks and surprises is part of governing as well. You know, I always think back to an example, Michael, of the Department of Justice. When I was a consultant to the Department of Justice for a number of years in the ’90s and early 2000s, this political versus policy thing would regularly occur in that department. I’ll give you an example: tremendous political pressure to reform the Young Offenders Act, and the government feels a need to respond to that pressure because it was bringing the general criminal law system into some disrepute.
The department had a very strong view about how young offenders should be treated and fought hard against what the government was trying to do. And, like, it was a difficult process. They were not notetakers; they were like, “This is wrong, and you shouldn’t do this, and you’re sending the wrong signal, and this is bad policy.” Like, it was a real challenge function, and they disagreed, and they made it clear that they disagreed, and they didn’t make it easy to get it done. That’s their job, right? Well, up to a point. Certainly, putting your arguments and your case forward, at some point you have to yield to the democratic accountabilities of Cabinet and Parliament. There are people that are steeped in areas of public policy. People that work at the Pearson Building in Foreign Affairs have a very strong view about the Middle East or about a particular part of the world or so on. And I think it’s important to make those arguments and to test them and to go back and forth often with the political staff or with the minister. But at the end of the day, you yield and defer to who’s the accountable decision-maker. At some point, you don’t want to be seen as completely resistant and non-compliant. That’s not the role of public service, in my view, in our democracy.
We see what happens down south when people start to believe there’s a deep state, you know, operating in its own interest, pushing its own views. And I don’t think that’s the case in Canada, but some of that rhetoric has started to show up in Canada. You know, the power structure, the elite, pursuing its own view of the world. I think, at the end of the day, what’s important—I say this at the end of the book—is we get to choose the 338 people who make these decisions.
Because when you went into the corporate, when you went into the elite and the power structure, I thought you were talking about the Rogers boardroom saga for a second [Music] [Laughter]. So, how did you feel when Munir Sheikh resigned as the head of Stats Can rather than implement the census changes?
Well, I think that’s part of the compact. It’s true for ministers and staffers, and it’s certainly true for senior public servants that you can end up in a place where it’s no longer possible to do your job. And if your disagreement with the government is so fundamental, then you should resign. And I respect Munir for having made that choice.
Okay, all right. What is it that you cared about? So, you were in this job where you were one of the most powerful people in Canada, and you were one of the most senior advisors to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister has an agenda of things he cares about, Cabinet has an agenda. What did—what are the things that motivate you, Michael? What are the issues that really you care about?
Well, I came into the job conscious of being asked to help a very new, green, rookie Prime Minister and Cabinet find their way and get some traction. And I was one of the, you know, old hands of the town. So a lot of what I cared about were the governance issues that I talked about in the book, about letting, you know, helping them sort of come to their way of governing and deciding. That was important to me.
I took the role as head of the public service seriously and did use every opportunity to advocate with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Secretary of the Treasury Board for things that I thought were important to building up the capabilities of the public service and modernizing it. So, you know, I used a lot of nudge at budget meetings and other places. I pushed hard for e-Cabinet, you know, so that Cabinet now can meet securely from anywhere, you know, through secure networks and so on.
So, in terms of policy issues, I spent a lot of time in intergovernmental affairs on national unity, and I spent a lot of time on Indigenous affairs. So, I would certainly perk up for conversations around those issues. But one of the real privileges of working at PCO and being in those positions is, you know, in the course of a month, you’d be exposed to everything from agriculture to veterans to, you know, deployments in the Middle East, and I, you know, I just learned a great deal about all kinds of areas and about our country.
Right. So, what are the aspects of a good Clerk, Michael? If you were to advise Prime Ministers now picking a Clerk of the Privy Council, what are you looking for in that person? Are you looking for somebody that can run the operation? Are you looking for somebody that’s got good relations with the public service? Are you looking for somebody that’s the smartest person you’ve ever met? What do you look for?
All of the above, obviously, but [Laughter]—no, seriously, I think there are generic characteristics of the job in terms of, you know, having a degree of experience, enjoying some respect from the rest of the senior public service community, being able to adapt to the learning style and decision-making style of the Prime Minister, and so on, finding a way to deal with all kinds of diverse personalities, and so on. So, you know, there are competencies and skill sets, if I can use that kind of jargon.
But I think each pair bond is different because of the context of governing. I mean, I think helping, you know, a new government—Stephen Harper in the first days or Justin Trudeau in the first days—is quite different than helping somebody in their third mandate who is very, very clear on how they’re going to go about their job and may have a particular sort of agenda. I think, you know, we had the right Clerk for a global financial crisis, an economic meltdown. We had a different Clerk when national unity was the dominant issue.
So, um, I—you know, it may sound a bit evasive, but I think each choice is a bit of a pair-bond exercise. And, uh, they’re all going to end up in a sort of different relationship. But the core to it, I guess, is having that mutual trust and just the ability to work together and have candid conversations.
Somebody in another interview sort of described it as “keeping the PM happy.” Well, no—you and I know that’s not possible. I’ve been, uh, you know, dressed down and chewed out by every minister and every prime minister I’ve ever worked for. You tell them what they need to hear, sometimes even if it’s uncomfortable and unpleasant. But, you know, you want to have that kind of mutual respect and mutual trust, which doesn’t come automatically—it takes time to build by going through things together.
And, uh, you know, I think that, in a sense, it’s not that different from the relationship any deputy would have with the minister. I try to get that across in the book—you need to find some mutual trust and a way of working together. Ministers come in all kinds of different varieties. We’ve had, I think, 60 brand new ministers in the last 10 years. Today’s shuffle could bring that to 70. You know, they’re very diverse human beings, and the job of the deputy is to find a way to work with the minister—not the other way around, right?
Terrific. One last thing—in writing this book and thinking about all these things, putting your thoughts together, you must have reflected on things that don’t work well. What would be a priority for reform in the way our government works?
Well, I try to make it very clear in the book, this isn’t, um, you know, how things ought to be—it’s not a prescription for reform. There’s plenty of op-ed writers and political scientists who do that. I, you know, I think that what we’re going to need in government—and I would include the political system and the public service—is a degree of agility and nimbleness, and the ability to move quickly and take decisions faster, based on imperfect information. The pace of the world just seems to get faster.
Yeah, I was reading a book about Mackenzie King last month, and it’s just a foreign planet—the amount of time they had to, you know, think about things. And, you know, even in the last twenty—1990s feels like when we were sitting around for months at CMOs debating budgets—it feels like a lifetime ago in terms of the news cycle.
And, yeah, you know, this is where my sort of grumpy old man lament would be the kind of reactivity to social media and trying to win a Twitter war in the afternoon. I think that the discipline of keeping your eye on your medium and longer-term goals—you have to be good at tactics as a shield to get there. But if you try to govern through issue management one day at a time, then suddenly your mandate’s up, and what have you accomplished, right?
Sir, thank you for taking the time to do this and have this conversation with us. Thank you for your service to Canada and for your lifetime of commitment. I’m sure you’ve got another act in you, so I’ll be watching carefully for what it is. But in the meantime, thank you for sharing your time with our listeners today—very interesting, very insightful.
I’d like to thank our presenting sponsor, Telus, and our sponsor, CN Rail, and all you Hurley Burleights for listening. And, of course, thank you, Michael Werner. Take care until next week. Thanks for your interest and thanks for a great conversation. Cheers!
Wait a second—buy this book, Governing Canada: A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics. I would show you the book, but I am living in the country, in the bush, and the book hasn’t made it out here yet. There we go—there’s a copy of it. I read it online. Beautiful, there you go. There is Amazon, and UBC Press has a buy local button. Absolutely. And, as I said, it should put every political science department in the country out of business.
Take care, Michael. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you.