Canadian Public Administration

This article focuses on Quebec's most recent reform in the regionalization of health care to understand why the government chose to transform the regional boards into agencies. This case study used interviews and documentary analysis. Rooted in a political science perspective, the conceptual framework is inspired by the work of John Kingdon (1995) and draws on the four variables that influence the choice of policy: ideas, interests, institutions and events. Results of the case study suggest that Quebec's Commission of Study for Health and Social Services (the Clair Commission) in 2000 and the 2002 pre-electoral environment put the issue on the agenda. In 2003, the newly elected Liberal government passed Bill 25 – An Act Respecting Local Health and Social Services Network Development Agencies, which represented a political compromise: originally slated for eradication, the regional tier survived but in a new form. The element that sparked reform was the change in government following the elections. Different inquiry reports spread the reform's ideas, while interest groups articulated contrasting visions on the transformation. Above all, regional institutions showed great resilience in the face of change. From a historical perspective, this regionalization policy is a step backward: the regional tier is now stronger from a managerial and technocratic point of view, but it is politically and democratically weakened. This suggests a government intention, at that time, to maintain the regional level as a means of retaining centralized control over Quebec's health-care system.

In 2007, a survey was conducted to measure the levels of workplace engagement for British Columbian civil servants. Following the Heskett et al. model of the "service profit chain" (1994, 2002), the government's primary concerns were the increasing attrition rates and their effects on service delivery. Essentially, the model demonstrated that employees who were more engaged were more committed to their work and more likely to stay within the civil service and that this culminated in improved customer service. Under the joint rubrics of absenteeism and job satisfaction, this study uses a construct of engagement (i.e., job satisfaction) to test whether different levels of engagement have any effect on the amount of sick time (absenteeism) an employee incurs. Specifically, the author looks at whether there is any correlation between the amount of sick time used and an individual's level of engagement and proposes that there is an inverse negative relationship: as job engagement increases, sick time used decreases. Testing the old adage "A happy employee is a healthy employee," this research demonstrates that, though a more engaged employee may use less sick time, the differences in use between highly engaged employees and those not engaged are fairly marginal and that correlations are further confounded by a host of other (often missing) factors.

Governments in Canada have recently been exploring new accountability measures within intergovernmental relations. Public reporting has become the preferred mechanism in a range of policy areas, including early learning and child-care, and the authors assess its effectiveness as an accountability measure. The article is based on their experience with a community capacity-building project that considers the relationship between the public policy, funding and accountability mechanisms under the federal/provincial/territorial agreements related to child-care. The authors argue that in its current form, public reporting has not lived up to its promise of accountability to citizens. This evaluation is based on the standards that governments have set for themselves under the federal/provincial/territorial agreements, as well as guidelines set by the Public Sector Accounting Board, an independent body that develops accounting standards over time through consultation with governments.

Financial reporting by non-profit organizations deals only with accountability for propriety and regularity, and ignores output measurement. The development of output measures of a physical or index nature offers a means of relating dollar costs to output in the form of cost-efficiency or cost-effectiveness measures, but does not provide any measure of the absolute value or worthwhileness of such programs. This fundamental absolute value question should be asked of all non-profit programs and documented to the greatest possible extent in budgetary submissions, and subsequent control and audit. In public sector non-profit programs, the posing of this question requires information on consumer demand other than in aggregative and imprecise form through the political process, and much improved information on the cost side. Eliciting demand information is feasible in the case of public programs with separable benefits by the use of a variety of pricing techniques, direct or imputed, whether or not the service in question is ultimately financed on a user-pay basis. The problem of eliciting demand is more difficult in the case of public goods, but improved demand information can be obtained, ideally by an approach such as the use of a Clarke tax. The argument can be extended to encompass questions of income distribution, stabilization, regulation and tax policy. Recent developments in program evaluation in the federal government are important, but remain deficient in failing to address the question of absolute value.

The provinces of Alberta and Ontario have chosen very different methods to distribute alcoholic beverages: Alberta privatized the Alberta Liquor Control Board (ALCB) in 1993 and established a private market to sell beverage alcohol, while Ontario, in stark contrast, opted to retain and expand the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). This article examines the reasons for the divergent policy choices made by Ralph Klein and Mike Harris' Conservative governments in each province. The article draws on John Kingdon's "multiple streams decision-making model," to examine the mindsets of the key decision-makers, as well as "historical institutionalism," to organize the pertinent structural, historical and institutional variables that shaped the milieu in which decision-makers acted. Unique, province-specific political cultures, histories, institutional configurations (including the relative influence of a number of powerful actors), as well as the fact that the two liquor control boards were on opposing trajectories towards their ultimate fates, help to explain the different decisions made by each government. Endogenous preference construction in this sector, furthermore, implies that each system is able to satisfy all relevant stakeholders, including consumers.

. Provincial social welfare programs are often treated as provincial government responses to federal initiatives establishing shared-cost programs in the welfare field. In this paper, this traditional viewpoint is reversed, showing that the federal government's Canada Assistance Plan of 1966 was the result of provincial social welfare initiatives. Federal policy is shown to have been designed to accommodate as cost-sharable those programs in which provinces (particularly Alberta and Ontario) were already involved. The federal government had to make considerable additions to, and concessions concerning, the proposed program in order to retain provincial support for the new national welfare program.

. The article examines the role of science and technology in the nuclear regulatory process by focusing on Canadian efforts over the past two decades to regulate the health of Canadian uranium miners. While analysed in the general context of the political economy of the Canadian uranium industry, the article examines in particular a number of aspects of the role of science and technology in the nuclear regulatory process, including Hafele's concept of ‘hypotheticality’, the openness of the regulatory process, the relationships between causal knowledge and political evidence, the relationship between the regulators' research priorities and the lack of applied controls and monitoring technology, the degree of deference paid by domestic regulators to international standard-setting bodies, and finally the redistributive effects encouraged by a lack of appropriate science and technology priorities.The regulation of the health of Canadian uranium miners has not been an example of regulatory virtue. The excesses of scientific caution shown in the processes of handling causal knowledge and evidence, when combined with the regulators' split personality of being both regulator as well as quasi-promoter and manager of the nuclear and uranium industry, allowed only the most intermittent attention to be given to uranium workers.

Concern for privacy and confidentiality is a strategic barrier to the use of personal information for expanded Canadian health research and statistics, more effective services, and better use of resources. This article identifies such privacy concerns, seeks to explain them, and identifies various responses. Specific misgivings of privacy, advocates must be addressed, if data protection problems are not to impede an improved national health information system. It is essential that legislation, policies, and practices affecting a national health information system enshrine the existence of a clear, functional separation between research and/or statistical and administrative uses of personal data. Ensuring true informed consent for secondary uses of personal information is a potential blockage to a strengthened health information system in Canada, since so much of the relevant data originates in unrelated transactional situations. The National Council on Health Information should actively promote the enactment of general data protection legislation for the public sector in the eight provinces without such laws in effect, since the existence of sound data protection, including an ombudsperson to promote implementation, will facilitate the development of an advanced health information system under controlled conditions.

The Canadian Health System. By lee sodekstrom. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada. 1978. Pp. 271. $19.95 (cloth); $9.95 (paper). Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy. By malcolm g. taylor. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. 1978. Pp. 473. $18.95 (cloth) $7.95 (paper). The Health Care Business. By ake blomqvist. Vancouver: The Fraser Institute. 1979. Pp. 185. $5.95 (paper).

This article considers a coalition model of governance as an innovative approach to public management. In general, the coalition governance model adopts key principles of new public management and inherits criticisms similar to those levelled against the new managerialism. Looking at a case study of parent child coalitions in Manitoba, this article explores some benefits and consequences of implementing and utilizing coalition governance as a model for social policy. It finds that the attempt to increase child-centred programming across the province required innovative adjustments to the management of this social policy issue, as well as a restructuring of the overarching policy structure. Innovative public management and the implementation of a coalition governance approach helped transform early childhood development in Manitoba from a private and personal family concern to a public policy issue. It has increased citizen engagement and has also increased government access to a previously inaccessible segment of society. Although these innovations resolved some key concerns, additional criticisms remain as yet unaddressed.

This article examines the relationship between government regulation and interest group activity of two paramedical groups in Ontario: chiropractors and physioptherapists. These disciplines occupy positions vis-à-vis the provincial medical insurance plan opposite to those which their relationships with the medical profession would suggest. It will be argued that the employment of sophisticated pressure group tactics can be highly effective as a surrogate for medical recognition. This, in conjunction with the difficulties inherent in the exercise of lay judgment in the development of public policy toward the professions, can lead to controversial policy outputs. It will also become apparent that a close and legitimate association with the medical profession is not necessarily of benefit in the pursuit of professional recognition.

Prompted by fiscal deficits and guided by recommendations of provincial review commissions, a number of provinces are restructuring their health care systems to iniprove resource management. British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia have published comprehensive plans for health care reforms. The plans reveal a diversity of management approaches, including devolved structures in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia, strongly centralized, technocratic structures in Manitoba, and variations on these in the other provinces. Though impossible to judge a priori which approaches are most likely to improve management, a number of limitations can be observed in the newly created institutions that decrease the chances of achieving the stated goals. The changes represent a potential watershed in medicare's history as the provinces embark down divergent paths for planning and managing health care resources. They will provide an interesting natural experiment regarding the effectiveness of the alternative approaches to organizing health care systems as well as challenge some of medicare's principles and the concept of a national system.

Sommaire: Le nombre de professionnels salariés croict de façon réguliere sur le marche du travail. Pourtant, selon certains auteurs, les grandes organisations bureaucratiques n'auraient pas suffisamment pris en compte les aspirations et valeurs des travailleurs intellectuels. II existerait, dans le secteur public, un malaise generalise et constaté, y compris le sentiment de nombreux professionnels que leur organisation ne les valorise pas vraiment. Pour satisfaire leurs aspirations, il s'agirait de mettre en place des pratiques de gestion des ressources humaines innovatrices favorisant une meilleure atmosphère de travail, une nouvelle forme de pensée oú l'integrite professionnelle et les finalites organisationnelles seraient maintenues et valorisées.

Research in the field of emergency management indicates that pre-disaster mitigation can significantly reduce the costs of post-disaster reconstruction and recovery. Yet, it is often difficult for disaster mitigation advocates to garner the support of policy- and decision-makers, who tend to focus on other community concerns. Interest in disaster mitigation tends to be highest during the period immediately following a major disaster, when public attention focuses on vulnerabilities that must be addressed through policy. The “focusing event” of 11 September 2001 highlighted the vulnerability of a large urban area to disaster, in this case human-induced. The event had a significant impact on federal emergency management in Canada and the United States and shaped the nature of mitigation policy in the following year.Sommaire: La recherche dans le domaine de la gestion des mesures d'urgence indique que les plans de protection contre les catastrophes peuvent grandement réduire les coûts de reconstruction et de rétablissement entraînés par me catastrophe. Cependant, il est souvent difficile pour les défenseurs de l'atténuation des effets de catastrophes d'obtenir le soutien des décideurs et responsables de l'élaboration de politiques qui ont tendance à se concentrer sur d'autres préoccupations communautaires. L'intérét portéà l'atténuation des effets de catastrophes a tendance àêtre à son paroxysme immédiatement après une catastrophe majeure, lorsque l'attention du public est fixée sur les vulnérabilités qu'il faut traiter par le biais d'une politique.L'événement marquant des attentats du 11 septembre 2001 a montré la vul-nérabilité d'une vaste zone urbaine à une catastrophe, causée dans ce cas par l'homme. Cet événement a eu un impact important sur la gestion des mesures d'urgence au Canada et aux États-Unis et a déterminé la nature de la politique d'atténuation des effets de catastrophes pendant l'année qui a suivi.

Chester Samuel Walters died suddenly but peacefully on Wednesday, December 10, 1958. He had fulfilled a hope, long cherished, of leading an active life to the last. On the afternoon preceding the day of his death he had been in his office. That night he suffered a heart attack. By morning, life had slipped away.

Given the current interest in various forms of a prices review board, it may be instructive to consider the case of the Board of Commerce of Canada, appointed to serve a similar purpose in 1919. During its fifteen months of operation, the board's efforts to limit price increases were largely ineffective. Factors limiting the board's effectiveness included the less-than-wholehearted support of the federal government for a program of price and profit controls, the sympathies of the board members for the interests of the business community, staff shortages caused by a feud with the Civil Service Commission, and international developments which affected the performance of the Canadian economy. Sommaire. Etant donné que l'on envisage actuellement, sous des formes variées, la création dune commission de contrôle des prix, il pourrait être intéressant de reconsidérer le cas du Conseil du commerce du Canada, nommé en 1919, dans le même but. Au cours de ses quinze mois d'existence, les efforts du Conseil en vue de limiter les augmentations de prix ont généralement échoué. Parmi les facteurs qui ont nui à son efficacité, on peut citer le manque d'enthousiasme du gouvernement fédéral pour un programme de contrôle des prix et des bénéfices, les sympathies de ses membres pour les intérêts du monde des affaires, le manque de personnel dûà une querelle avec la Commission de la fonction publique et les développements internationaux qui eurent une influence sur le comportement de l'économie canadienne.

Federalism poses special problems for the regulatory activities of the state. In Canada, federal and provincial governments have frequently disagreed over which could best exercise such controls, keeping in mind not only the public interest but also the needs of the private parties involved. The business of insurance is a case in point. The decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council confirmed that the provinces had important powers to regulate the writing of insurance. Yet Ottawa argued that protection of policyholders and considerations of economy and efficiency required uniform national standards. The provinces pointed instead to the greater simplicity and responsiveness of local control as well as to the steadily diminishing sphere of constitutional authority possessed by the central government. This conflict came to a head between 1927 and 1934 when the Insurance Superintendents of Ontario and Quebec led the resistance to the activities of the federal Insurance Department. Support for the provincial bureaucrats came from reciprocal and mutual insurers, while the joint-stock life insurance companies backed Ottawa. Indeed, these private interests used the federal-provincial conflict to seek special favours from the regulatory agencies. The dispute ended because politicians concluded that little was to be gained from the continuation of bureaucratic competition.

Sommaire. Même si la constitution canadienne n'a pas été amendée depuis la seconde guerre mondiale, la structure du fédéralisme canadien a été profondément transformée au cours des ans par les différents accords fiscaux conclus entre le gouvernement fédéral et les provinces. Contrairement à ce que l'on a cru au début des années 50, cette transformation s'est faite dans le sens d'une plus grande décentralisation. En effet, le “défi” fédéral de l'après-guerre a consistéà trouver un équilibre entre les exigences fiscales centralisatrices d'un Etat moderne et les pressions des provinces pour une plus grande déentralisation fiscale. L'article décrit comment les arrangements et les mécanismes mis au point pour assurer un partage équitable des ressources fiscales entre les deux ordres de gouvernement et une égalisation des capacités financières des provinces ont rendu cette décntralisation possible. L'auteur conclut que le maintien du fédéralisme exige des réajustements continuels entre des forces de centralisation et de décentralisation dont l'importance relative varie constamment. En ce sens, on peut dire du fédéralisme qu'il est un compromis toujours en train de se renouveler.

Existing research in the field of Canadian public administration reveals relatively little about the presumed linkage between royal commissions and mass-level attitudes on the one hand, and government policy-making on the other. Focusing on the case of federal royal commission and task force recommendations in the fields of cultural and economic nationalism, this paper questions the extent to which such recommendations coincide with the results of national public opinion surveys and with federal public policy decisions. In general, mass-level attitudes are found to parallel nationalist commission proposals but to be somewhat divided. The relatively continentalist orientation of elite attitudes seems to better explain federal policy initiatives in the period 1951 through 1987.Sommaire: Au Canada, les recherches dont on dispose dans le domaine de l'administration publique révèlent bien peu sur le lien qui est censé exister entre les commissions royales et l'attitude de la population dune part, et les décisions du gouvernement en matière de politiques d'autre part. Dans cet article, I'auteur s'appuie surtout sur les recommandations de la commission royale d'enquête et du groupe de travail dans le secteur du nationalisme économique et culturel pour se demander jusqu‘à quel point ces recommandations correspondent aux résultats des sondages d'opinion effectués auprès du public et aux décisions prises par le gouvernement fédéral en matière de politique publique. En général, on se rend compte que les opinions de la population sont identiques aux propositions nationa-listes que formule la commission, bien qu'elles soient légèrement partagées. Les tendances relativement “continentales” de l’élite semblent mieux expliquer les mesures prises par le gouvernement fédéral de 1951 à 1987.

Marver Bernstein has suggested that there is a cyclical pattern to the life of a regulatory agency and that after a initial honeymoon public support for the agency falls away, leaving the agency subject to capture by the industry supposedly being regulated. This thesis is applied to the Board of Broadcast Governors, 1958–68. After a brief examination of the history of the Board, its purpose and powers and the concept of independence in the Canadian regulatory process, the author examines five examples of alleged capture: the Canadian content regulations, the development and structuring of the CTV network. the extension of the second television stations, the delay in the introduction of cable TV and the introduction of colour television. The conclusion is drawn that the Board, while it of necessity kept the interests of the private sector in broadcasting in mind, was not the captive of the industry but rather a victim of indifferent ministerial support, vacillating and at times unknown government policies, uncertain financial commitments, inadequate legislation and a schizophrenic public. Finally, it is suggested that a conflict resolution model would provide another useful analytical approach to the study of the Board's activity.

This issue of Canadian Public Administration marks two landmarks. It is the 50th anniversary issue of the Journal, and it is the last issue to be published by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. For this issue, we have not produced a “special issue” in the sense of commissioning particular articles. Instead, we have brought together a number of articles that were already in the “pipeline” but that the editors thought made a particular contribution to public administration in Canada. This introductory article, or editor's review, is a retrospective analysis of the content of the Journal. It would appear that while there has been a slight shift towards public policy and a greater concern with provincial and local administration, cpa has maintained an enduring interest in its core areas of administrative theory and political and legal institutions. The content is also compared with findings of the content of other journals and also other analyses of cpa. This review is followed by commentaries by former editors and associate editors on their experiences with the Journal.

The Canadian federal system has recently emerged from a period of intense stress and change. Some of these changes have been structural and formal, such as the patriation of the constitution in April of 1982. Others have occurred as the result of persistent demands of active daily political interchange. Prominent among the new structures are intergovernmental affairs agencies, dedicated in the main to managing contacts between the various orders of government. The provincial government in Saskatchewan became involved in this process, creating several agencies designed to manage intergovernmental contact during the 1970s and 1980s.

A number of observers have suggested that there is a decline in the level of “traditional” federalism research undertaken in Canada. They contend that scholarly interest has shifted away from areas like fiscal federalism and the division of powers to newer areas of interest like social movements, identity politics and citizenship issues. An interdisciplinary review of a number of Canadian journals reveals, however, that studies in traditional areas of federalism are not in decline and continue to dominate the field in English-language federalism scholarship. At the same time, the authors did not find a robust literature on federalism-related issues in French for the forty-year period under review. Sommaire: Un certain nombre d'observateurs semblent indiquer que le niveau de la recherche entreprise au Canada sur le féléralisme « traditionnel » a baissé. Us prétendent que les intelleduels se sont détournés des domaines comme le fédéralisme fiscal et la répartition des compétences pour s'orienter vers de nouveaux centres d'intérêt comme les mouvements sociaux, la politique identitaire et les questions relatives à la citoyenneté. Une étude interdisciplinaire d'un grand nombre de revues canadiennes révèle cependant que les études portant sur les secteurs traditionnels du fédéralisme ne sont pas en baisse et que ces secteurs continuent à faire l'objet de la majorité des bourses d'études en langue anglaise sur le fédéralisme. Par contre, nous n'avons pas parallèlement trouvé d'études importantes en langue française sur les questions liées au fédéralisme au cours de la période de 40 ans que nous avons étudiée.

This paper investigates the implications for public policy in general and merger sections of the Combines Act in particular of the hypothesis that bureaus, when carrying out their administrative duties, attempt to maximize their private utility functions rather than the social utility function expressed in the legislation. The analytical procedure, given alternative utility goals of power, prestige, convenience, and security and the appropriate constraints, is to predict the behaviour of the Combines Branch (from 1960–71) and to test these predictions against actual Branch behaviour. The evidence on the Branch's behaviour (all cases prosecuted and discontinued) suggests that its conduct can be better explained by security maximization than by any alternative private or altruistic goal. However, it is not clear that this was a bad thing for public policy because it can be argued that the Branch's behaviour brought public policy in this area closer to the social welfare function implied in the legislation than would have been the case if the government had successfully maximized its private utility function. Sommaire. L'auteur de cet exposé enquête sur les implications, pour la politique publique en général et les articles sur le fusionnement de la loi sur les coalitions en particulier, de l'hypothèse suivant laquelle es bureaux, dans l'exercice de leurs responsabilités administratives, essaient de maximiser leurs fonctions privées plutôt que leur fonction sociale, telle qu'elle est indiquée dans la législation. La procédure analytique, étant donné le choix des buts: pouvoirs, prestige, commodité et sécurité, avec Ies limites appropriées, consiste à prédire le comportement du service chargé des coalitions (de 1965 à 1971) et à vérifier ces prédictions à la lumière de son comportement réel. Les faits relatifs au comportement de ce service (tous les cas amenés en justice et ceux qui ont été abondonnés) indiquent qu'il s'explique plus par une maximisation de la sécurité que par tout autre motif privé ou altruiste. Il ne semble pas cependant que cela ait été néfaste à la politique publique parce que l'on peut argumenter que le comportement du service a fait jouer à la politique publique un rôle plus orienté vers le bien-être social, comme cela était sous-entendu dam la législation, que ce n'aurait été le cas si le gouvernement avait maximisé avec succès sa fonction privée.

This is the first of three articles on the Economic Council of Canada. It attempts to cover the establishment, structure, and functioning of the Council between 1963 and 1974 in a consistent and comprehensive manner. It also deals with the approaches and influence of three chairmen of the Council. The ‘primary tasks’ of the agency influence the selection of its senior personnel. Each chairman has influenced the performance of the Council in a manner consistent with his previous research and policy-making experiences. Given the lack of clarity in defining the Council's role at its establishment, this study of career development within the system has been most helpful in deducing the primary roles performed by the Council.

Although we have fairly good knowledge of the impact of official bilingualism at the federal level and of official unilingualism in Quebec on language practice in government, we know less about whether these changes in language policies have led to shifts in language practice in civil-society organizations. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism carried out an extensive investigation of language practices in the private sector and in voluntary associations. Using the royal commission's work on associations representing the general interests of business, this article examines language practices of these associations three decades after the royal commission's studies were published. The authors argue that the cordiality found between French and English in general business associations in the late 1960s continues to be the rule in these types of associations today. This cordiality, however, is rooted in a change in linguistic relations. Federal-level associations tend to have accommodated institutional bilingualism but retain English as their language of work. Quebec-based associations have moved to conform to official unilingualism. Moreover, the number of non-francophones in positions of authority in the Quebec groups has diminished, with executive structures now being dominated by francophones.

It is ten years since the Glassco Commission called for a drastic reduction in the numbers and in the scope of the administrative controls exercised on the departments of the federal government by the Treasury Board. But the Glassco slogan ‘Let the managers manage’ is not subtle enough to cope with the delicate question of how to give the maximum managerial freedom to departments while retaining for the Treasury Board enough supervision to satisfy the constitutional principle that the Cabinet is collectively responsible for the policies and administration of each department. The Treasury Board is trying to solve the problem by working out guidelines and audit mechanisms to take the place of rules and regulations in administrative life.

It does not appear, at this time, that the average citizen's position vis-á-vis federal administrative agencies has been improved under the Federal Court Act (1970). For one thing, as might be expected, the Act does not require boards, beyond the rules of natural justice, to conduct their hearings according to certain minimum standards of procedure. In addition, it attempts to prohibit a role Canaidan courts have claimed to review the decisions of boards and commissions that are administrative in nature. Of course, in non-discretionary matters the prerogative writs are still available, although original jurisdiction in their issuance has been given exclusively to the itinerant Trial Division of the Federal Court. Under the Act, the Federal Court of Appeal is given original jurisdiction to review and set aside judicial or quasi-judicial decisions on certain grounds. But two of the grounds are substantially similar to those on which the prerogative remedies are issued. The final ground must await judicial interpretation for clarification. Its loose wording permits numerous possibilities for construction. If given a broad interpretation, certain expert and impartial boards will be, in effect, superseded in much of their decision-making power by the Court of Appeal. Sommaire. A l'heure actuelle, il ne semble pas que la position du citoyen moyen face aux agences administratives fédérates ait été améliorée par la Loi sur les tribunaux fédéraux (1970). Tout d'abord, comme on pourrait s'y attendre, la Loi n'oblige pas les conseils à observer des normes minimales de procédure dans la tenue des audiences en dehors du respect des règies de la justice humaine. Par ailleurs, elle cherch à priver les tribunaux canadiens d'un rôle qu'ils avaient assumé: la révision des décisions des conseils et commissions de caractère administratif. Bien sûr, dans les questions non-discrétionnaires, les recours à l'ordonnance émise en vertu de la prérogative royale existent toujours mais c'est uniquement à la section itinérante du tribunal fédéral que revient la juridiction originale pour leur émission. En vertu de cette Loi, la Cour d'appel fédérale détient la juridiction originale pour réviser et casser les décisions judiciaires ou quasi-judiciaires pour certains motifs. Deux des motifs ressemblent beaucoup à ceux qui permettent les recours en vertu de la prérogative royale. Le motif d'appel en dernier ressort ne pourra être éclairci qu'après interprétation judiciaire. Le texte est rédigé de façon si vague qu'il se prête à de nombreuses interprétations. S'il est pris dans un sens général, certains tribunaux experts et impartiaux verront en effect leurs décisions dépendre en grande partie de la Cour d'appel.

Pressure groups, defined as organizations whose members act together to influence public policy in order to promote their common interests, are assumed to be integral to the functioning of the Canadian policy system, now and in the past. Successful interaction between Canadian governments and pressure groups has been typified by consultation and the search for accommodation and consensus. This pattern appears to be changing. The number of pressure groups is increasing with the trend to complexity in Canadian social and economic systems, the pull of information technology, and the influence of government policy. The emergent pattern sees pressure groups exposed to heightened public scrutiny and increasingly dependent upon supportive public opinion. Change is attributed to increased competitiveness resulting from the proliferation of groups, government modification of policy systems, and the popularization of pressure-group activity through the mass media. For public officials the changed climate of pressure group-government relations will reduce the capacity of government agencies to determine the nature of their relations with pressure groups, and increase the complexity, and uncertainty, of the public servant's decision environment. To meet these changes public officials should not depend on the development of new policy machinery, as some suggest, but on better use of existing communications devices.

Since 1973, important changes have been brought about in the powers of the Office of the Auditor General. The balance of our system of parliamentary government is undermined by these changes. This paper argues that the Auditor General's value-for-money campaign has taken the oag over the line between audit and trespass on government policy. The Office's new powers have their legal basis in the new Auditor General Act of 1977, which says that the oag can review value-for-money studies of programs. Another term for these studies is ‘effectiveness evaluations. The powers acquired in the act made the creation of the new central agency, the Office of the Comptroller General, inevitable. Among this agency's responsibilities is the duty to ensure that each of government's programs is reviewed for value-for-money, to satisfy the requirements of the Auditor General. The two agencies thus exist in a situation of mutual obligation and legitimation. The paper further argues that value-for-money audit is not an objective review technique, but involves a great deal of judgment in each of its stages of application. It is not fitting, therefore, that reports generated under its procedures should be reviewed externally, by an officer without any electoral base. This implies that government requires some form of legitimation to govern quite outside normal conceptions of parliamentary government. Next, it is argued that the techniques of classic program evaluation are themselves biased toward demonstrations of program failure. As the post of Auditor General of Canada fell vacant in September, 1980, and a new Auditor General will be appointed, the government should take the opportunity to review the responsibilities and privileges of the Office.

Sommaire: Malgré I'abondance des écrits sur la haute fonction publique, une question aussi simple que le taux de satisfaction des ministres envers leurs hauts fonctionnaires n'a guère été traitke. Afin de contribuer à combler cette lacune, une série dentrevues auprès de 20 ministres de I'ancien gouvernement du Parti qutéebAcois a été conduite. Il a été demandéà ces anciens ministres s'ils avaient été satisfaits de leurs sous-ministres, et pourquoi. Au total, ils se sont déclarés satisfaits dans 43 cas et insatisfaits dans 10 cas, ce qui donne un taux de satisfaction de 81%. L'objectif du texte est dexpliquer ce taux de satisfaction. Il met en lumière les qualités que les ministres recherchent chez leurs hauts fonctionnaires, les causes des con flits et les raisons pour lesquelles la grande majorité des relations se vivent dans I'harmonie. La conclusion dégage les enseignements généraux pour une meilleure comprèhension de la relation entre le ministre et son haut fonctionnaire. Abstract: In spite of the abundance of literature dealing with the senior civil service, an issue as simple as the ministers' satisfaction rate regarding their senior civil servants has not been dealt with at all. A series of interviews with twenty ministers of the former Parti Québécois government was conducted in order to fill this gap. These former ministers were asked whether they had been satisfied with their deputy ministers and why. Overall, they said they had been satisfied in forty-three cases and dissatisfied in ten cases, which yields a satisfaction rate of 81 per cent. The purpose of the paper is tb explain this satisfaction rate. It highlights the qualities the ministers are looking for in their senior civil servants, the causes of conflict, and the reasons why the overwhelming majority of relationships are harmonious. The conclusion states the general principles for a better understanding of the relationship between the minister and his senior civil servant.

The degree to which leaders can influence organizational outcomes has long been a matter of controversy in the theoretical and empirical literature. This issue is especially complex in government organizations where both political and administrative leaders can influence policy and its implementation. The power of administrators may potentially exceed that of their political “masters,” particularly in municipal government in Canada where the typical structure combines a weak mayor, non-partisan elections and a chief administrative officer (cao).

There has been a continued loss of wetlands in Ontario as pressurcs from conflicting land uses escalate. This paper examines the manner in which the Ontario Municipal Board has treated the issue of wetlands protcction in hearings on land-use disputes in the provinw. Bastul on a review of nine wetlands caws dating from 1980 to 1993, the decision-making process of the Ontario Municipal Board was examined with regard to wetlands prokxtion. Analysis of the cases revealed a number of issues: the lack of relevant information at hearings; the role of policy and legislation in thc decision-making process; the use of negotiation and mediation in the hearing process; and the significance of private property rights versus the public interest in wetlands protection. This paper dismsses these issues in the context of the role of the Ontario Municipal Board in the planning and management of wetlands in Ontario.

Since the era of reform triggered by the Committee on Government Productivity during the early 1970s, there has been surprisingly little writing about public service reform in Ontario. This article surveys developments since the early 1980s, reviewing the changes that occurred during the Davis, Peterson, and Rae governments pertaining to the structure and integrity of the public service, human resource development, relocation, accountability regimes, reorganization and restraint initiatives, to name only a few. We review the rise and fall of the Tomorrow Project, and how the Rae government developed an interest in public management issues as part of its policy and restraint agendas. As a frame for our analysis, we invoke the metaphor of “streams, springs, and stones” to convey not only the breadth and complexity of public service reform but also its enduring themes and issues.

This paper surveys the rapidly increasing demands imposed on government and discusses organizational and administrative innovations in the structure of government over the past ten years designed to assist ministers in satisfying such demands. The paper discusses the importance of developing means whereby ministers can give shape and direction to the activities of government and outlines changes that have taken place in the over-all machinery of the government as well as the structure and procedures of the cabinet. The paper goes on to look at the personnel resources available to the federal government and the way in which they have been utilized to complement not only the administrative but also the policy needs of government. The importance of intergovernmental relations in the modern federal state is also discussed.

As federal policy-makers revise and update the Bank Act, any change should be seen in the context of public policy towards financial institutions in Canada. Rather than being condemned to repeat history, both policy-makers and potential bank entrepreneurs would be well advised to re-examine the Report of the Inquiry into the Collapse of the CCB and Northland Bank (August 1986), chaired by the Honourable Willard Z. Estey. Public policy for financial institutiions faces the challenge of reconciling competing interests. Since 1867, Canada has experienced a nationally controlled banking system that is highly stable (i.e., few bankruptcies) and that has enabled in-flows of capital needed for national economic development. The Canadian Commercial Bank failure raised a fundamental challenge to the government's policy agenda. When asked what the government's position should be, the three officials recommended the rescue package. All three participants from the political side advised against it. Future policy must learn the lessons from this important and atypical moment in Canadian financial history.

The 1982 assumption of power by the Conservative party in Saskatchewan provides material for an unusually interesting case study of the impact of a government transition on the public service, given the differences in ideology between the outgoing NDP and the incoming PC'S, the long tenure of the previous government and the lack of executive experience in the new administration. This article examines the two parties' views of the public service and crown corporations, the electoral campaign leading up to the transition, as well as the nature of the transition with respect to dismissals and structural changes in the bureaucracy. Reasons for these changes are assessed. It is argued that the political imperative - that is, the need to demonstrate that the new government is in control, and the related need to establish leverage over the bureaucracy — were the primary motives for the Devine government's actions. The 1982 Saskatchewan transition may mark the beginning of a trend away from the tradition of a neutral career public service in Canada.

This article traces debates about federal employment equity policy in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, focusing specifically on the role of data and statistics in policy-making. The authors interpret policy-makers' extensive use of evidence-based policy instruments in the implementation of employment equity as an attempt to offer a technical solution to the deeply politicized problem of workplace discrimination. By exploring policy debates from the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (the Abella Commission) (1984) to the passage of the reformed Employment Equity Act in 1995, the authors show how recourse to evidence-based deliberation failed to contain political conflict, because the meaning and use of statistical data became the object of political struggle among the main policy stakeholders. The article concludes by considering the implications of this case study for the broader comparative debate on the role of evidence-based methods in policy-making.

This study is an update of the 1985 survey. The main object of the study was to review existing police recruitment and selection policies across Canada between 1985 and 1987; identify systemic barriers, if any, faced by visible minorities in entering police forces; and to make recommendations in order to increase the representation of such minority persons in Canadian police departments.Fourteen police departments, representing all regions of Canada including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), the Quebec Police Force (QPF) and others were included in the study.The findings indicated that (a) there has been some improvement in the hiring of visible minority police officers since the 1985 study; (b) policy makers in pertinent jurisdictions need to amend police legislation to bring the statutes in compliance with the Charter of Rights and the human rights laws with respect to police uniform requirements, age and height standards; (c) police organizations need to review their selection policies with regard to job interviews, psychological tests and the like in order to avoid possible adverse impact on minorities; and (d) police organizations not collecting data on visible minorities should be required to do so.Sommaire: Constituant une mise à jour d'une enquête effectuée en 1985, cette étude a pour but principal de réviser les politiques qui ont été appliquées au Canada entre 1985 et 1987 pour recruter et sélectionner des policiers. L'objectif poursuivi est de voir si les minorités visibles se heurtent systématiquement à des barrières lorsqu'elles veulent entrer dans la police et de formuler des recommandations pour que ces dernières soient mieux représentées dans les services de la police au Canada.Cette étude a touché quatorze corps de la police, représentant toutes les régions du Canada, dont la Gendarmerie royale du Canada (GRC), la Police provinciale de l'Ontario (OPP) et la Sûreté du Québec (SQ).Les conclusions de l'étude sont les suivantes: a) depuis 1985, un léger progrès a été accompli en ce qui concerne l'embauche d'officiers de police venant des minorités visibles; b) les décideurs dans chacune des juridictions sous étude doivent modifier les règlements en vigueur en ce qui concerne les uniformes, l'âge et la taille des policiers de façon à les rendre compatibles avec la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés et les diverses chartes provinciales; c) les corps de police doivent réviser leurs règles de sélection, en ce qui concerne les entrevues et les tests psychologiques, ou autres, pour éviter tout effet pervers sur les minorités; et d) les corps de police qui ne rassemblent pas de données sur les minorités visibles devraient être tenus de le faire.