My friend, Shauna Sylvester is running for a position on the board of Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC). If you are a MEC member I hope you’ll consider voting for her.
Eligible voters can vote here.
You can read Shauna’s bio and read/listen to her statement about why she is running and what she will stand for here.
So the Liberals are getting lambasted for letting the Conservative Budget stand. (click on the second video)
Old Conservatives are refusing to testify (usually not a good sign) and New Conservatives have been (allegedly) caught trying to bribe an independent MP (a terribly sign).
The NDP can’t seem to get any traction.
The Bloc is still losing ground.
The Green’s still can’t get into a nationally televised debate.
Nobody is going anywhere – at least not right now.
A few months ago some of you may remember a post I wrote about my grandfather’s involvement in the Gouzenko affair.
In 1946 – suspected of being a communist – Israel Halperin was held without charge for weeks by the RCMP and interrogated by judges who then wanted to use this information to build a case against him. This clear violation of Habeas Corpus – he was denied access to a lawyer – is a cautionary tale of how post 9-11 policies that placed some Canadians in legal limbo is neither unique nor unprecedented.
I only raise this again because the Queen’s Alumni Review has written the most detailed story to date about the incident (he was a professor at Queen’s at the time of his arrest) which can be found here.
Other than his obituary it is the first instance of the story being covered in over 50 years (as far as I know).
Last week the Clerk of the Privy Council gave a speech this speech in Vancouver. There is much in the speech that is promising, and some that remains problematic.
That said, I want to key in on the last part of the Clerk’s speech. Myth number 8: “The Public Service is out of touch with Canadians — they’re from Venus, we’re from Mars.”
In this piece the Clerk touches on the traditional critiques of how the public service is out of touch. He goes out of his way to outline how the geographic, linguistic and ethnic, are or have been addressed. In addition he outlines why – through outreach – the culture gap between private and public sector can be overcome.
We can debate if these concerns have been sufficiently addressed, and if not, how they should be. I think it would be hard to argue with the notion that enormous progress has been made on this front in the past few decades. However, none of them represent the differences that concern me most. One which I do not think we can resolve and so requires further thought.
Today, public service employees are members of a union, enjoy life long job security, are eligible for a generous pension plan, and, by and large (particularly in the more senior ranks) live in Ottawa – a city shaped by and dominated by, the public service.
There was a time when the first three traits meant that employment experience of a public servant – such as one’s notions about: job security, opportunity, the expectations of their employer, and relationship with their boss and peers – was not dissimilar to that of many other Canadians.
Today however, this is less and less the case. Fewer and fewer Canadians are unionized, enjoy job security, or a pension.
Simply put, there is a culture gap.
A public servant’s career, life choices and opportunities are shaped by a system that is far removed from that experienced by the vast majority of Canadians. This, in a city where your average public servant comes into contact with non-public servants less and less. I’m not saying this shouldn’t be the case. What I am saying is that the capacity of a institution to make policy for a public it resembles less and less, and whose experience is increasingly far removed from its own, is troubling and worthy of further exploration. It’s a culture gap I think is on few people’s radar – even the clerk’s.
An annual tradition I’ve come to enjoy is putting up this post. The people at the Gordon foundation are wonderful and those I’ve talked to about this program have had very positive things to say. While our government may be running a shoddy foreign policy there are no shortage of interesting discussions or opportunities for Canadians. The new CIC fellowships, the dialogue over at Canada’s World, are but two of the numerous new ways to write, think, talk or act on international issues…
Anyway, back to the Gordon Foundation:
The Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation has put out its call for applications for the 2008 Global Youth Fellowship program. The Fellowships are targeted towards emerging Canadian leaders who demonstrate potential to enhance Canada’s role on the world stage. The Fellowships will provide successful candidates with a cash award of $20,000 as well as other forms of support.
To be eligible for consideration, applicants must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents between 24 – 35 years of age with previous international experience – paid or volunteer. They also need to demonstrate a sustained commitment to international issues through studies, career choices and volunteer activities.
Application Deadline: Thursday, April 10, 2008 by 5:00 p.m. EST
More information about the Fellowship programme, including application forms, guidelines and information on current and past Fellows, can be found on their website.
The current mania around a spring election has started to fade, especially with Dion beginning to say the Liberals might not bring down the government over the budget.
There are good strategic reasons for this.
If, as it would appear. the economy is beginning to worsen, then the Liberals have every reason to delay. Governing parties tend to do worse when the economy is poor, so if things are getting worse, better to wait and trigger an election later when the pain of a shrinking economy is more apparent.
This alone, would be a good reason to wait. But there is another related reason to wait for the fall, and it has to do with the American election.
South of the border the Democrats will also be pounding away on the fact that the economy has run aground – in their case, they’ll blame George Bush and the Republican Party. The Liberals will stand to benefit from this in two important ways. First, the general theme of “a bad economy” will be everywhere in the press – as both the Canadian and American media will be talking about it. Canadians will simply not be able to escape the issue and the framing.
But better still, the simple fact that there is a US election means that a significant amount of media “oxygen” will be sucked up by this giant event south of the border. Like it or not, Canadians get a chunk of their media from the United States. This will make it harder for the Conservatives to implement a communication strategy to combat the issue of the poor economy – particularly as the Democratic Party is working extra time to get it in the media. In a real sense the liberals will working with the wind at their backs – benefiting from the messaging out of the US – while knowing that it will be harder for the Conservatives to create a counter-narrative.
This Tuesday, February 19th, the Globe and Mail will be hosting an online discussion/Q&A with myself, Lloyd Axworthy and Jack Granatstein. In the lead up to this event each of us was asked to write an opinion piece outlining what our vision for Canada’s role in the world.
This discussion will not be like the Globe’s regular one-hour live discussions. Rather, it’s a question-and-answer session. If you are interested in submitting a question, please submit it before 5 p.m. EST today. Answers will be posted no later than 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday. You can submit questions on Tuesday, or in advance, here.
Axworthy’s opinion piece was published on Saturday and can be read here. Granatstein’s was published today and can be read here. My own piece can be read here.
This event was organized by the Globe and Mail and Canada’s World – a national citizens’ dialogue on international policy. You may also be interested in checking out this poll, conducted by the Environics institute.
Why is it that we continue to see the Afghanistan mission through the lens of peacekeeping, as opposed to peacebuilding? This fact seems to underlie and shape the entire debate – forcing us to ask the wrong questions and driving all our political parties to poorly thought out solutions.
Take, for example, the new Liberal position that insists on a non-combat role. As Rosie Dimanno points out in a recent Toronto Star article the number of Canadian troops killed in combat in Afghanistan last year was 0. 12 were killed by improvised explosive and 11 by roadside bombs and land mines. In addition there have been deaths from accidents. But there has not been a single combat death since Sept 3. 2006. One is forced to ask… why insist on a non-combat role? It is because this is what we’d like the mission to entail? Or because this is what the mission does entail. Although we may wish it, we are not peacekeeping. Our troops are not positioning themselves between enemy combatants in an effort to prevent them from fighting. This is peacebuilding – we are one of the combatants and we should not pretend otherwise.
The risks of pretending we are peacekeeping however, are significant. As she points out:
If Liberals are trying to spare Canadian lives – by venturing passively, ducking into calmer territory and promoting reconstruction in the absence of a secure environment – an anti-combat insistence is utterly without merit.
But it might get Canadian troops killed. An enemy that knows troops won’t fight back, can’t fight back because of political handcuffs slapped on half a world away, is an enemy given a blood-embossed invitation to attack at will.
Her article may be alarmist, but its central argument is correct. As General Lewis Mackenzie confirms, denying our troops the capacity to take advanced actions to protect themselves – or the NGO’s and aid workers attempting to rebuild Afghanistan – is sheer folly. Our polticians owe it to both the public and our military to be honest about what this mission requires of us.
Which brings us to a second distortion. In a peacekeeping mission one would want to know other countries are participating. A broader coalition means more countries are fostering international pressure to end the conflict and bring their peacekeepers home. Again, however, we are not in a peacekeeping mission. Either we believe an unstable Afghanistan is a threat to our national interest or we don’t. If it is a threat, why does it matter what our NATO allies think? Did we, prior to the second world war, wait to see who else signed up before committing to action? Of course not. The cause was important enough for us to commit ourselves. Nor, after 1943, did we say “we’ve done our part, time for someone else to step up.”And yet this is precisely how we are presently framing the issue.
As a result our national debate over Afghanistan actually undermines our efforts to solicit support. Our politicians end up treating Afghanistan as a duty – something, like peacekeeping, we do to maintain for humanitarian reasons, or to buttress our reputation within NATO or the United States. Not once in the last few months has Afghanistan been described as an imperative. But few, if any countries, are willing to put their soldiers in harms way out of a vague sense of obligation to an international body. Countries – and Canada should be among this list – should put their soldiers in harms way with enourmous trepidation, and usually only when they believe vital national interests are at stake. By telling our allies “it’s someone else’s turn” we risk conveying that we really don’t believe this mission is vital. If it were, we’d be asking them to work along side us, not replace us.
At present, it appears the majority of our allies don’t believe a stable Afghanistan is essential to global peace and security. This is either because it isn’t, or because we’ve failed to convince them. This is a difficult assessment to make and I’d be foolish to claim that I know the answer with complete certainty. That said, I suspect – as Paul Wells points out – our diplomat efforts to make the case have been weak at best.
Canada must decide for itself if we think a stable Afghanistan is critical to the stability of the international system and thus, in turn, our national interest. Sadly, I’ve heard little of this in the discussion among the political parties. And yet addressing this underlying question would not only be the more honest approach, it might cause the “are we in” or “are we out” debate to simply disappear.
So I’m a little swamped with some writing this evening – more on that soon though.
In the meantime Etienne Laliberte emailed me this hilarious youtube video of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major being played with electric guitar. Turns out there is an whole online youtube sub-culture dedicated to this – fantastic!
I have to tell you, these guys are real guitar heroes. It’s amazing to listen to. Long live remix culture.
My favourite:
A close runner up:
Perhaps the biggest problem for Public Sector Renewal is the enourmous expectation problem created by the internet.
Many of today’s Gen Yers have access to a dizzying array of free online tools. Tools this online generations has grown up and used to organize and make more efficient their personal lives.
These range from the banal, such as Facebook (connect and find people), Evite and Socialzr (organize and send invites to parties), or Google Docs (manage version control and share essays across platforms) to the more sophisticated, such as Basecamp (manage school projects), del.icio.us (share research with friends), WordPress (share your thoughts) or TikiWiki (enable collaboration).
It isn’t hard to imagine how these tools can be used professionally. I’ve talked about the potential for a facebook-like application, but software similar to Evite and socialzr can help set up meetings, google docs and wiki’s can facilitate collaborative policy development, and basecamp is as effective at managing professional projects as it is school projects. A work blog can keep your colleagues up to date on your research and thinking as effectively as your personal blog keeps your friends up to date on your comings and goings.
And remember – these tools are not only free but people like using them.
However, as generation Y enters the work force – and, in particular the public service – it is confronted with a nasty reality. Their managers, Director Generals, ADMs and DMs aren’t familiar with these software programs and don’t grasp the full potential of the internet. More importantly, in the public service’s risk averse culture doing something new and different is frequently perceived as dangerous. And so, our intrepid new hires are literally being told – don’t be efficient.
This is remarkable. For perhaps the first time in the history of work a generation is finding that the tools they use to organize life at home allows them to be more productive than the tools they can use to organize life at work.
Take for example my friend who wanted to use survey monkey to send out a questionnaire asking 10 public servants across their department about potential dates and times when they would be free to meet. The survey took 5 seconds to complete and would quickly identify the optimal date for such a meeting. However, her manager let her know very quickly that this was unacceptable. It was more important that each person be emailed – or better, called – individually, a process that gobbled up hours if not days. Time after time I hear stories of young people who, after doing what they do at home, quickly feel the full weight of the department descending on their cubicle. I won’t even mention an acquaintance who related a story of trying to set up a wiki (not even on accessible to the public!).
The larger point here is that it’s going to be hard to retain people when they feel like they have to work with two hands tied behind their back (because of the nature of the job public servants already work with one hand behind their back). Today’s best and brightest want the freedom to work quickly and efficiently – and why not? – this is what ambitious go getters do. Those that notice that their work lags too far behind what they can do on their own will find greener pastures to accomplish their aims.
Don’t believe me? Forget all the applications I mentioned above. Think about something as simple as Google. This simple application has created the expectation among Gen Yers (and even Xers and boomers) that information should be accessible and easily found. When was the last time you could easily find what you were looking for on a government webpage?
Public Service Sector Renewal’s biggest challenge is fighting the freedom that the internet is giving people. The freedom to accomplish tasks faster, to work more quickly and to be more effective – the only rub, is no one can control what anyone is doing because you can’t keep track of it all. There is simply too much going on. So, in short, in order to meet the expectations created by the internet the public service may have to learn to trust its employees.
Can it do this?
I don’t know.
eaves.ca 