{"id":607,"date":"2026-04-12T05:32:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T05:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/607\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T05:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T05:32:39","slug":"mark-carneys-strategy-for-the-public-service-becomes-clearer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/607\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Carney\u2019s strategy for the public service becomes clearer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on Friday.Darren Calabrese\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

The thing about Mark Carney\u2019s<\/a> government is that he\u2019s not subtle about what he\u2019s interested in \u2013 and what he\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

When his cabinet was sworn in, the Prime Minister issued a single mandate letter for all his ministers containing just seven priorities wrapped relentlessly around economic development and sovereignty.<\/p>\n

And the way Mr. Carney has gone about tackling that tight to-do list seems revealing of interest \u2013 and lack thereof \u2013 in another way. He hasn\u2019t charged the existing structures of the federal public service with executing on his biggest projects but has instead stood up a suite of specialized new agencies, each led by a heavy hitter from the private sector, to make big things happen fast. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a public-service overhaul, it\u2019s a workaround. <\/p>\n

So how did Mr. Carney arrive at the conclusion that the federal bureaucracy could not be made to work efficiently and decisively enough for this urgent moment? If he\u2019s right, why does it function at a glacial pace in the first place? And what happens when you force that lumbering beast to move faster \u2013 does that mean you\u2019ve solved a problem, or created a dozen more you just can\u2019t see yet? <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t repeat mistakes when shrinking public service, warns Jocelyne Bourgon in new book<\/a><\/p>\n

Right about now, Mr. Carney\u2019s public-service strategy is moving from conceptual purgatory to concrete reality. <\/p>\n

In November, his much-hyped first budget pledged to trim $60-billion in spending over five years, but the budget contained only broad-strokes targets, like a cliffhanger movie trailer. The government promised to reveal more when departments released their formal spending plans, and those details have just now started to emerge<\/a>. <\/p>\n

At the same time, the Major Projects Office<\/a> \u2013 the signature example of those purpose-built agencies Mr. Carney has created \u2013 will soon have to show its work to the rest of the class. An Ottawa-Alberta pipeline agreement will not meet<\/a> its April 1 deadline, but when and if it lands, it will be the first from-the-ground-up venture shepherded by the MPO, which has otherwise been accelerating projects already in the works.<\/p>\n

Recent history around this sort of thing is not encouraging. The Canada Infrastructure Bank was, similarly, created in 2017 outside the bureaucratic apparatus, with tentacles in the private sector. The CIB was heavily criticized<\/a> in its first few years for failing to move money out the door. It\u2019s now far more active but has never lived up to its promise of using public dollars to (ahem) catalyze multiples of private money.<\/p>\n

The three new Carney government parallel-bureaucracy creations are the MPO, headed by Dawn Farrell, formerly an energy company executive; Build Canada Homes run by Ana Bail\u00e3o, most recently of the real estate development company Dream Unlimited; and the Defence Investment Agency under Doug Guzman, until recently deputy chair of the Royal Bank of Canada.<\/p>\n

One person with deep knowledge of the public service and these structures in particular said that each of these agencies is being incubated within an existing government body, with the intention to spin them off on their own once they\u2019re established. <\/p>\n

That arrangement essentially loans structure, staffing and resources from within the public service to hit the ground running, they said. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.<\/p>\n

Still, the fact that Mr. Carney chose to tackle his priorities this way reveals his dissatisfaction with the status quo and skepticism that these things could be done otherwise, they said. It\u2019s clear that this government\u2019s preferred delivery timeline is yesterday, the source said. <\/p>\n

Another source with extensive insider knowledge of the public service explained that things move slowly because it\u2019s like working in a fishbowl. Every dollar spent entails endless paperwork before the fact, and then the Auditor-General and various ombudspeople scrutinizing everything afterward. Missing a paragraph of translation on a website can spark an entire investigation, they underlined. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just on run-of-the-mill issues where nothing big goes wrong. The endless scandal buffet of ArriveCan has given rise to a new level of paranoia, the source said. The Globe is not naming the individual because they were not authorized to discuss the issue.<\/p>\n

To Donald Savoie, author of multiple books on public administration, this amounts to oversight overkill. He points out how many more eyes are squinting critically at Canadian bureaucrats than at their international counterparts. Canada has nine officers of Parliament, he said, including the AG, the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Official Languages Commissioner, while Australia has just four. <\/p>\n

Mr. Savoie figured that Mr. Carney\u2019s bureaucratic experience as senior associate deputy minister in Finance before becoming governor of the Bank of Canada gave him insight into the bottlenecks and how time-consuming it would be to clear out the plumbing, as opposed to just building a new set of pipes to get things flowing. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think at this point, he\u2019s right \u2013 he has to have a sense of urgency,\u201d said Mr. Savoie. \u201cWhat\u2019s happening to the Canadian economy in light of Donald Trump and the tariffs, you can\u2019t sit back and wait for the system to cough up answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opinion: Canada should measure productivity in government<\/a><\/p>\n

To the second source, Mr. Carney\u2019s approach to the public service mirrors his government\u2019s Building Canada Act, which allows major projects to bypass certain laws and regulations. In both cases, the government has sought a workaround to a system they evidently don\u2019t think is functional, rather than fixing what\u2019s wrong with it, the source said.<\/p>\n

Fundamental repairs require hard choices and time, they pointed out, and given the moment, it makes sense that the Prime Minister is pursuing expediency rather than overhaul. But they hope the workaround doesn\u2019t become a permanent approach, so that no one ever does a real fix. <\/p>\n

A third source with in-depth knowledge of the public service said those specialized agencies are not the biggest clue on the Prime Minister\u2019s approach to the bureaucracy. <\/p>\n

To them, the real hint is him appointing Michael Sabia as Clerk of the Privy Council and the country\u2019s top bureaucrat. Over his career in the public and private sector, Mr. Sabia has acquired a reputation as an agent of transformation, this source said, meaning you don\u2019t bring him in unless you expect dishes to get broken. The Globe is not identifying the source because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that the world is spinning much faster now than the bureaucracy is built for, the third source said, but other than a few high-profile outsiders, it\u2019s still the core public service executing on the Carney government\u2019s wish list. <\/p>\n

The ultimate results of this experiment (all of these sources agree that it\u2019s too soon to tell) are a litmus test of the broader promise of Mr. Carney\u2019s leadership of Canada. <\/p>\n

The subtext has always been that things will get fixed, and we will weather the storm because he is here and because he says so. It\u2019s essentially an argument that leadership matters and that any problem can be fixed with sufficient smarts, will and effort. Canadians have evidently found that idea persuasive and comforting.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s supposed to apply to the acute Trump damage, and to Canada\u2019s chronic conditions \u2013 housing, provincial barriers, international trade, sluggish economic productivity \u2013 that had been neglected for decades. <\/p>\n

Now, Mr. Carney may be right, and the bureaucracy can be forced to be more nimble and effective through relentless focus, an injection of outside talent and the occasional loud crack of a whip. Or perhaps he doesn\u2019t yet know what he doesn\u2019t know, and in a few years, my kind will be feasting on another ArriveCan<\/a>-style trough of malfeasance. <\/p>\n

That the federal bureaucracy is too slow, scared and scrutinized to respond effectively to a world gone mad seems beyond debate. <\/p>\n

It will be fascinating to find out if the Prime Minister is correct that simply demanding better is the way to fix that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on Friday.Darren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[135,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mark-carney","8":"tag-dei","9":"tag-mark-carney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}