Transcription
Steve : Many Canadians might be hard-pressed to know what it means to be the “clerk of the privy council.” Well, Michael Wernick had that job, and his new book does much more than explain that the clerk is the top job in the federal civil service. The book is called: “Governing Canada: A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics.” Michael Wernick spent almost four decades in Canada’s public service, working at the highest levels with three different prime ministers. And he joins us now from the nation’s capital for this insider’s view. Michael Wernick, it’s good to have you on TVO Tonight. How are you doing?
Michel Wernick : Merci de m'avoir invité.
Steve : Not at all. How would you characterize — let’s start very generally here — how would you characterize what the role of a prime minister ideally should be?
Michel Wernick : Well, as I go through in the book a little bit of what prime ministers do all day and what ministers do all day, I do unpack that a little bit. So I don’t want to give away everything that’s in the book, Steve. But it’s a job that involves wearing several hats. The one that I focus on the most is chairing cabinet. You are the prime, you’re the first minister, it’s your cabinet, and driving the process of cabinet to take decisions on behalf of all of us is really one of the things that I focus on. But there are other aspects to being the prime minister. You’re first minister in the federation dealing with premiers and other levels of government. You’re the head of government for Canada, and a lot of the prime minister’s time is involved in international relationships with other leaders and international organizations. You’re the chair of your caucus, and what prime ministers often do is tend to their team. They have a hundred or more MPs and there’s a lot of caucus relations and bringing that team along and developing it. So, you know, there are different aspects to being a prime minister. If you’re overextended from the day you start to the day you leave and the mindful management of your time is really one of the key skills.
Steve : I want to follow up with one word that you just used there that I note over the years that political people use, but if I can use this expression, don’t take it the wrong way, but normal people don’t talk this way. You said politicians or the prime minister in particular takes a decision as opposed to makes a decision, which is I think what the rest of us do. Why is there that distinction in politics?
Michel Wernick : It’s just Ottawa vocabulary that I’ve been steeped in. Maybe a distinction without a difference. I mean, I think it does go to the point that the purpose of governing is to make or take decisions on our behalf. These are the people, 38 million of us, and we give about 35 of them in cabinet and about 338 of them in parliament a mandate to decide on legislation, policies, regulation, negotiations and so on. And it’s not there to be a campus debating club or somebody’s perfect model of government, it’s there to take decisions and advance the country.
Steve : D'accord. Permettez-moi de revenir à mon sujet. Encore une fois, d'après votre expérience, est-ce que nous voulons idéalement un Premier ministre qui retrousse ses manches et dirige les ministères et qui a vraiment la main sur la barre, ou est-il préférable d'avoir un Premier ministre qui soit plutôt une sorte de porte-parole du gouvernement et qui donne une idée du type de gouvernement qu'il ou elle souhaite diriger ?
Michel Wernick : Well, I think the government — the face of the government is always the prime minister. It is the focal point of accountability and question period is the one recognizable name for most voters, you are the brand, the reputation, the image, and the most effective spokesperson for the government and that’s a lot of what prime ministers have to be good at. What I try to shed light on in the book is apart from those two-minute clips in question period you might see on the news every night, the prime minister is very busy doing other things. And moving things through cabinet and government is one of the important ones. It takes place away from the cameras, away from the spotlight, but it’s fundamentally important to our democracy.
Steve : One of the things you wrote that surprised me a little bit was that you said prime ministers ought to be feared from time to time by their cabinet ministers. How come?
Michel Wernick : I think — it’s probably true of corporate CEOs and the heads of law firms and so on. I think to move a team along, you want to feel that there are consequences for underperformance or for behavior and that there will be sanctions. So I think it’s important to be liked and respected, you know, to run a team effectively. But I think you want other people to worry a little bit about what you think about them.
Steve : How common a phenomenon is it that the longer a prime minister is in office, the more he or she surrounds himself or herself with sycophants and/or yes people who tell them what they want to hear as opposed to what they need to hear?
Michel Wernick : I think it’s a risk that you’re in a comfort zone of people that you trust and you’re used to working with, and what I say in the book is if your default will be to stay with the same circle probably longer than you should, but you and I know some of the political history, and previous prime ministers have made substantial changes. Prime Minister Harper went through several chiefs of staff and many, many members of his inner team. Certainly Brian Mulroney did. He didn’t finish with the staff that he started with. Pierre Trudeau, and so on. I think what I suggest is that once in a while you pause and take a look at both the processes that you’re using and the people that you’re working with and just mindfully think about it from time to time because each mandate is going to present new challenges in a new context.
Steve : Le regretté Bill Davis avait l'habitude de dire, et il l'a d'ailleurs dit à Brian Mulroney lorsque ce dernier était en grande difficulté, que les gens qui vous font avancer dans cette voie ne sont pas ceux qui vous y maintiendront. Pensez-vous que c'est le cas?
Michel Wernick : Well, I certainly make the distinction that the people that are good at winning elections are not necessarily going to transfer in and be as effective at governing. There are people who are very good at the business of elections. Some of them come into government and find themselves in the prime minister’s office or the offices of cabinet ministers. A lot of them do take to governing. But some of them don’t. So I do want to draw a line between the skill-set of winning elections, which I know nothing about, and the skill-set of governing and getting decisions on behalf of the country.
Steve : Let me put you in a really squeamish position right now, which is to say, the current prime minister has had the same chief of staff since day one and he’s now in year six. Should he be thinking about changing that position?
Michel Wernick : Il devrait réfléchir à l’équipe qu’il souhaite utiliser lors de son troisième mandat, et cela concerne toute l’équipe.
Steve : Cela signifie-t-il qu’il devrait changer Katie Telford ?
Michel Wernick : That’s really up to the prime minister.
Steve : Yes, it is. All right. Let’s talk about politics and partisanship here. And I want to ask you about — and I know you get asked this all the time about the independence of the civil service. Because of course there was that moment in 2015 when Justin Trudeau first became prime minister and he went to the Foreign Affairs building, the Pearson Building, and — I mean, he got rock star treatment from public servants who are supposedly neutral, they cheered for him, they hugged him, did selfies with him and that kind of thing. How concerned were you that that kind of situation confirms what too many people already believe, which is that public servants prefer to have the Liberals in and the Conservatives out?
Michel Wernick : I found that those scenes really unfortunate and dismaying. I know where it came from. It came from the tone more than anything of the last few years of the previous government more than the substance, and the tone that ministers and their offices project to the public service has an impact on people’s morale and energy and dedication. That doesn’t make them partisan. I worked about equally for Team Red and Team Blue and, you know, public servants come in and work really hard to deliver services and programs that the government of the day has a mandate for, and it was important that — and it remains important that when there is a change of government that the incoming group feels that the public service is there to give them advice and support and help them deliver the mandate that they took to Canadians. So I was very pleased in 2015 that we went from Team Blue to Team Red in 16 calendar days with very little loss of traction.
Steve : Let me ask you about the things that get governments into trouble, and you having been there in the public service for nearly four decades, would have seen the kind of thing that trips politicians up. What does it tend to be?
Michel Wernick : Behavior. It’s usually not a policy issue, it’s not bringing in some unpopular program or law or policy — that certainly can happen. It’s not always, you know, scandal. It’s just a question of projecting being out of touch, projecting being careless with public money is particularly corrosive, any kind of sort of being arrogant or feeling entitled to the job can be a problem, and we’ve obviously seen and this is not just in politics but in other sectors, behavior, you know, personal conduct, harassment, bullying in the workplace, and so on, is a big issue. So behavior and how you project yourself to the public and whether or not you are accountable for things that happen on your watch are fundamental issues.
Steve : And let me ask you in this climate where there seems to be increasing hostility toward politicians and public figures, do you think, simply by doing their jobs the way that they do, politicians and public figures have contributed to this increased animosity?
Michel Wernick : I think it’s a complex mix. On one hand, politicians who engage in divisive rhetoric or attack opponents in a personalized way can certainly escalate hostility. But it’s also true that the anonymity of the Internet and social media has given a platform to extreme views and harassment. The escalation of political animosity isn’t just about politicians’ behavior; it’s also about the environment in which we all operate. We have to be mindful of both the individual conduct and the broader cultural context that allows this kind of hostility to thrive.
Steve : Michael Wernick, thank you so much for joining us tonight and sharing your insights from your new book. It’s been a pleasure having you on.
Michel Wernick : Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s been a pleasure.