‘Politicians work in a fishbowl environment:’ MPs should talk about scaling back the role of officers of Parliament, says Savoie

With many layers of transparency requirements from offices of Parliament, parliamentarians and public servants operate in a ‘fishbowl environment’ and a national debate is needed on the proper role of the officers of Parliament, says Prof. Donald Savoie, one of the country’s leading experts on the machinery of government. Savoie, who recently authored a new book entitled Canada: Beyond Grudges, Grievances, and Disunity, says the accountability of parliamentarians is the responsibility of Parliament, not the officers of Parliament. The total annual budget of the officers of Parliament is about $340-million, which employs about 3,715 staffers. Savoie says the House and Senate standing committees should be empowered with adequate resources to hold MPs and Senators to account. To ensure that no party has a majority on these committees, the chair should be from the opposition, and the membership should also be configured in a way that the governing party does not have the veto power even in a majority government. Savoie said that other than the auditor general of Canada, the chief electoral officer and the official languages commissioner, Parliament should hold a debate on whether it has gone “too far” in assigning the accountability of politicians and public servants to officers of Parliament, and should it be scaled back. He added that if parliamentarians decide to curtail the role of the officers of Parliament, some of the resources from these offices should be given to standing committees to be properly staffed to do their accountability work. The following is part two of a Q&A with Prof. Savoie which has been edited for length and clarity. Each cabinet minister’s office has an army of exempt staffers, including communications specialists. These exempt staffers receive a significant amount of help from departmental staff. Why can't these ministerial staffers handle media questions by themselves? “The question you're asking me is an extremely valid one. Today, every cabinet minister has an exempt staff of 25 people. There was a time, not that long ago, that there was two or three exempt staff. You not only have communications people—an army of communications people—but you also have policy specialists in every minister’s office, so imagine what that means for government departments. Imagine what that means for public servants, public servants are kept busy feeding these ministerial offices. "That wasn't the case 40 years ago. It's become the case now and it's stress on the public service, point No. 1. Point No. 2: when you add people, you add bureaucracy; when you add bureaucracy, you slow things down. When you slow things down, you're anxious to get an answer, and when that becomes the driving force, the only one that can provide the answer is the prime minister and his staff. "Second, chiefs of staff in every ministerial offices are now appointed by the Prime Minister's Office. That was not the case 40 years ago. I don't think prime minister Trudeau would have told Allan J. MacEachen, 'Here's your chief of staff.' I don't think the chief of staff to the prime minister 40 years ago would have told John Crosbie, 'Here's who you're going to have as your chief of staff.' Now it's done all the time, everywhere. And so there's a sense in the Prime Minister's Office that, in order to keep a lid on things, in order not to have bozo sort of eruptions in social media every day, they need to have a heavy hand. Communication specialists in ministerial offices know that the final decision belongs to the Prime Minister's Office. So what we've added is a lot of conveyor belts between the Prime Minister's Office, ministers’ offices and government departments.” Cabinet ministers can’t hire their own chiefs of staff or director-level staffers. The PMO tells ministers who their chiefs of staff are going to be. So, ministers don’t really trust their most senior advisers. Some cabinet ministers see their chiefs of staff as PMO spies in their offices. What's your reaction? “Precisely, precisely, and that's the issue when, in cabinet government, if a cabinet minister cannot appoint his own staff, cabinet ministers do not appoint deputy ministers, that's the prerogative of the prime minister. When a senior cabinet minister has his own personal staff appointed by the Prime Minister's Office, when the senior cabinet minister has the deputy minister appointed by the Prime Minister's Office, what's left? "But the better question is: why have we reached that point? Are prime ministers and their staff power hungry? I used to think that was the answer. I think the answer is much more complex. I don't think it's that simple. I don't think it's because they’re power hungry. I think they've come to the conclusion that in order to manage government operations, and to manage crises, they need to have a firm hand. Imagine the guest in the House of Commons. When people blamed Trudeau for 48 hours, I thought, 'This is nuts. This is crazy.' There's no way that the prime minister—can you imagine if the prime minister decided who would be in the House of Commons as guests? …Just for the sake of the prime minister, and cabinet, and our institutions and Parliament, how do you hold the government accountable anymore? "Those are the kinds of issues that I'd like to see Canadians really engage in. But I do want to stress that the whole purpose of the book—its very essence, its very purpose—is to celebrate Canada and what it offers. That is the whole point of the book. Now our institutions are there to serve, and to make Canada a better place. And that's why we need to pay attention to our institutions because institutions are the glue that holds Canada together: its diversity, its regions, its sense of victimhood, and all that. It's our institutions that can manage those things and we need to pay attention to our institutions.” The Prime Minister's Office should let individual cabinet ministers to hire their own chiefs of staff, says Prof. Donald Savoie. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade In the book, you say that politicians should not engage in personal attacks and should dismantle their war rooms. For right or wrong reasons, that’s kind of standard practice for all parties, and that’s how they run their campaigns. Anyone who started campaigning in the last 20-odd years wouldn’t know any other way to campaign. What do you think? “Well, look, we keep debasing our institutions. And we keep debasing our politicians. The main culprit politicians. Look at the medical society, look at the legal profession, look at academia, look at your sector—journalists: there is no way that any members of those institutions or those groups would take shots at one another as much as politicians do. War rooms; I understand political campaigns, my plea is not to avoid a good debate. My plea is to avoid personal attacks.” Agreed. But one key reason for some politicians’ success in politics, like Pierre Poilievre, is that they are good at using negative campaigning and social media. “My plea is for Pierre Poilievre to go after Trudeau’s policy. I have no issue there whatsoever. My plea is for politicians not to go after one another on a personal note. That's my plea. It might be naive, but that's a luxury that academics have. We can be naive.” How realistic do you think it is for politicians to unlearn things, like negative campaigning, use of war rooms, etc., or to stop using them? “It's going to be very difficult, it's part of our political culture. They’ve imported some of it from the United States. … I'm not being naive in saying that Canada really is the best country . Really, I've thought about this long and hard, and there are some studies that make the same case as I do, it is such a beautiful country. It is the best, by far, and we need to have our institutions up to the standard that Canada is. And to have our institutions up to the standard, we need to value civility. We need to have proper debates about politics. We need to respect our politicians, we need to help our institutions. That's the challenge.” What do you make of the political rhetoric on both sides of the aisle? “I would urge them to tone it down. They may not listen to me, that's their prerogative. I would urge them to tone it down. I would urge Canadians to have a very jaundiced view of social media. It lacks editorial control. Any yahoo can go in there and start a debate—ill founded, ill thought through—and I don't see many benefits from social media. And so that's my concern. Canada is such a beautiful country, let's not ruin it by social media. Let's not ruin it by taking cheap shots, let's not ruin it by having a polarized debate about every issue. Let's meet and have a proper discussion. I read you. I read The Hill Times regularly. I know that you are subjected to some of the editorial control, you can’t take off on tangents. But what's the difference between the proper media and social media? There's a sense of values and ethics and toll in the real media that doesn't exist in the social media. And that's the concern that I have about social media. gives rise to crisis of communications. It consumes politicians, it consumes Ottawa.” You say in the book that politicians work in a “fishbowl environment”, and one key reason for that is the scrutiny requirements by the offices of 10 officers of Parliament. “I think we've overdone it with officers of Parliament. We've created—what are we up to now—11? It wasn't that long ago, there was one or two, now 11. Every morning, every politician and every public servant and I'm going to repeat myself because it's important: every morning, on the government side, every politician, every public servant goes to work with a shadow on their shoulder. Every morning, I go to work, I don't have that. I have the freedom to speak, freedom to write. If I want to go out late at night, I go out late at night. "Politicians live in a complete fishbowl, and officers of Parliament have taken the role that Parliament used to play. It used to be Parliament with the opposition that would ask fundamental questions about spending estimates, about the growth in consulting contracts, or whatever. Parliament has just given up on that role, and officers of Parliament have picked up the slack. …These are officers of Parliament, they're not Parliament. And so I think we’ve overdone it with the officers of Parliament. I would urge if we have a proper debate about our institutions to scale some of that back. I know this is controversial what I've just said, but I believe that officers of Parliament have made the job extremely difficult for public servants to go about their work. I don't think they've been a positive force in the public service.” But you don't have the same scrutiny that government MPs, cabinet ministers or the prime minister face because you don’t have the same political power, and you don’t make decisions about how to collect and spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year. So there's a difference. “There's a big difference . And look, I have no issue, quite the opposite. I think Parliament, the media, should ask fundamental questions about spending. They're not doing as well as they should at the moment. I have no problem with that. I don't think they should have that problem. Should they be held accountable for their decisions? Should they be held accountable by the media in the House of Commons for their spending decision? Absolutely. Should they be taken to task by the media by the House of Commons on a $400-billion expenditure budget? Yes, they should, no question, far more than is the case at the moment. Should we have 11 officers and their staff—remember these 11 officers of Parliament and their staff is in thousands, if you add them all up. They go to work every morning, you know why they go to work every morning? They go to work, looking for things that have gone wrong. That's what they do. They go to work, looking for things that have gone wrong, and point the finger at somebody in government for having missed some. That's what they do. Do you really think—there's about 300 organizations in the federal government—do you really think that those were the organizations and hundreds of staff are not going to make any mistake? They will. We should we should accept that. I don’t know, it’s a silly suggestion, but 10 per cent of what they do will be mistakes. Accepted.” So, in your view, which of the officers of Parliament are absolutely needed? “The auditor general and the chief electoral officer have a legitimate role to play. The official languages commissioner also has a legitimate role to play. After that, I would ask some tough questions.” So, you’re saying a parliamentary debate is needed about the role of the other eight officers of Parliament like the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, the Ethics Commissioner, the Commissioner of Lobbying, the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the Canadian Human Rights Commissioner and the Public Service Commission of Canada. You seriously think politicians will hold each other accountable without these officers of Parliament? “Absolutely. A proper committee of Parliament that looks into the work of lobbyists, a proper committee of Parliament with MPs properly staffed and resources. I will repeat: properly staffed and resources should be able to ask fundamental questions about lobbyists, their work, the ins-and-outs of how they deal with government officials. No issue. That is the role of Parliament. That is the role of a committee of the House of Commons.” In my view, there’s an inherent conflict of interest. Don’t you think MPs will take care of each other in these cases? “Well, that's why we have the opposition parties. We can’t, on the one hand, argue that they're too nasty to their colleagues, and then say . No, I think the opposition parties will—that's their role—to find fault in government operations. Just give them the resources to ask the proper questions, not to take off on personal vendettas.” When you say proper resources, you mean give more money and staff to standing committees? "You're right about that. Take the resources that we give to these officers or Parliament, and give it to the House committees.” What about when a party has a majority government, and the governing party will occupy a majority of the seats in committees? “That's a valid point. We do have committees that, by statute, by practice, by convention, they're controlled by the opposition. I'm talking about the Public Accounts Committee. There's no reason why we can’t structure committees to accommodate some of those concerns. Now, I am naive, but not hopelessly naive . I know that we're not going to get rid of the officers of Parliament. My plea is two-fold: give Parliament back its authority, give Parliament back its prestige, give Parliament back its relevance with Canadians. Give cabinet government the capacity to make decisions. "That's my concern. Let’s start looking at the public service, and that institution needs our help, needs our concern. We need to help the public service become better at what they do. We need to be constructive with our institutions, not tear them down. The whole purpose of the book is to that we have a great country, the best in the world. Let's make sure in a constructive sense that our institutions are up to it. That's the whole principle.” Do you think MPs on both sides of the aisle want to hold the government or their respective leaderships to account, or cabinet ministers really want to return back to cabinet government? I don’t see that. In a majority of cases, what I see are cheerleaders on both sides of the aisle who are interested in advancement of their own political careers. “That is the fundamental question. You went to the heart of the matter, and that's my next book coming up next April I address that issue. My plea is that the House of Commons, Parliament, really needs to rediscover its relevance, its credibility with Canadians. The question, then, is how is it going to do that? It's going to do that precisely by not being cheerleaders. Go to Britain, and I'm spending three months there—January, February, March, I'm a visiting professor at Oxford. And my purpose is to compare the British Parliament with the Canadian Parliament, and how they hold government to account. The House of Commons in Britain is much better at what we just talked about than the House of Commons in Canada—much better—but we need to borrow lessons from them. It's possible, it's doable. If all the House of Commons has become a cheerleading section, then it's not going to get the credibility it needs with Canadians. You've just explained, in a few words, my earlier point that Canadians don't have any sense of ownership in these institutions. And how do you turn that around? How do you give Canadians a sense that their Parliament works? Is to tell Canadians ‘yes, It works. And here's how it works.' We haven't done that .” Officers or Agents of Parliament, number of employees, budget : The Auditor General of Canada 793 $122,550,450 *The Chief Electoral Officer 1,040 $203-million The Commissioner of Official Languages 167 $22,570,548 The Information Commissioner of Canada 135 $11,223,587 The Privacy Commissioner of Canada 153 $21,699,392 The Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner 50 $8,333,174 The Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada 27 $5,355,002 The Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada 36 $5,738,885 The Parliamentary Budget Officer 40 $7,640,981 The Canadian Human Rights Commission 297 $37,755,613 The Public Service Commission of Canada 975 $94,296,333 *The budget and staff of the Chief Electoral Officer's office changes in election years. In election year, the budget and staff numbers go up. Source: Prof. Donald Savoie

‘Politicians work in a fishbowl environment:’ MPs should talk about scaling back the role of officers of Parliament, says Savoie

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