The Bureaucratic Party of Canada

The Bureaucratic Party of Canada is now by far the largest, best organized, most well-financed, and most influential political party in the country. It has by far the most active members and best media connections.

Yet many Canadians still accept or perpetuate the myth that the bureaucracy is non-political, merely carrying out policy rather than creating it, while even the most brief peak in the door at a city council meeting would easily reveal they are an activist political party with simple guiding principles:

Principle One – that every public issue and challenge is to be answered with expansion and expenditure of government along with its utopia of rules.

Principle Two - that government expenditures, to be spent through and by government, must always increase regardless of whether or not there are sufficient revenues to cover them.

Principle Three  - there is no limit to the increasing of taxation, regulation, public monopolization, and the depersonalization of public services while avoiding any responsibility for outcomes and sustaining growth within the bureaucratic party organization.

Should this offer a challenge to us all? Should we just accept this bureaucracy as inevitable? Where does the passive acceptance of endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? Do policemen, academics, teachers, builders, community groups, environmentalists, artists, and doctors really need to spend half their time filling in forms? Or can we imagine another world? Is there a way to lessen all those hours spent listening to bad call-centre music and waiting, always waiting for government?

The Coming Elections

When Canadians mark their ballots in upcoming local, provincial, and federal elections, they’re engaging in what seems like a simple act of civic duty. But increasingly they’re not just selecting a representative, they’re hiring a crisis manager to get into the ring with an immense heavyweight unyielding bureaucracy.

The one thing we know about their mandate is that it will be to do things differently than the way they had been being done. Their job will be to manage and lead 360,000 workers who've all been doing things differently for the previous 4- 8- 10 years.

Imagine a scenario: the fresh federal government of whatever political stripe comes to power with a clear majority mandate — it’s democracy at work – say a majority team of 200 out of 338 parliamentary seats. This team of 200 might as well be the Greek Spartan 300. They’re tasked with not just governance but leadership over a colossal federal workforce of over 360,000 — a workforce defined by the procedures and practices of previous governments and their own policies.

Most voters believe they’re electing change. Yet, what’s hard to grasp from the outside is the Sisyphean nature of the job they're assigning. This isn't just about legislating; it's about managing people — a lot of them.

 The Composition of the Public Service

The Canadian federal public service has grown beyond anything ever imagined in the history of government. It has tripled in size in the last 25 years; growing by 100,000 in the last ten years. Adding the provincial and municipal governments plus all the near-government, contractors, agencies, boards, and commissions more than doubles that again.

Consider the breakdown of the 360,000:

- 50% of these employees probably see their roles as just jobs. To them, work is a means to an end, not a mission.

- 25% might be allies, waiting eagerly for change and a chance to innovate that they hoped for as much as the electorate.

- 20% could be incompetent. Every organization has its share but the government has unique features of unfirability, labyrinthian systems, and the Peter Principle along with public sector union protection that make even the worst slackers difficult to dismiss.

- But the final 5% are potentially of most concern. They could be ideologically opposed or simply power-hungry, enlarging their bureaucratic turf at every opportunity.

For our elected 200, this means directly managing 180,000 people who might not care much about the new mission; attempting to rally and inspire 90,000 helpers. or potential allies who are scattered and need leadership; while working with 72,000 who were part of the problem that got the last government fired; and dealing with 18,000 actively undermining gremlins in the works.

And one thing is for sure. We’re no cheerleaders. None of the elected representatives are going to get much support from us. We’re just waiting until the opposition catches one of them saying a wrong word so we can perform the moment of outrage that signals our virtue and indicates how engaged we are.

How is that possibly going to work out?

 The Real Opposition

It’s not the other political parties that present the main opposition. It's the bureaucratic behemoth. These officials, having accrued power and autonomy over years, now present a formidable challenge to any significant change. They are the unseen counterforce to Parliament – unnamed, unaccountable, unfirable, and largely unknown.

 A Nova Scotian Lesson

Such was Nova Scotia’s experience with its first NDP government. The majority agreed. The time had come. The NDP had grown to maturity and built a likable team of friendly faces. The public sector, habituated to alternating PC and Liberal leadership, resisted vehemently. The result? A governance quagmire, proving that even with a mandate, steering the public service is like sailing a cruise ship in a sea of chocolate bars.

 The Voter’s Dilemma

The tragedy is that while the electorate seeks to install leaders who can effect change, they often end up choosing based on charm or party loyalty rather than the capability to manage change in large organizations effectively. I don't think when people go out to vote they understand they are effectively hiring people to do a job. They vote for the nicest, the tallest, the most polished, or the best salesperson. Or worse, they just vote for whoever "their team" puts forward. Even the most well-educated candidates probably went to business school. But a business school is not a government school. And the candidates educated on the inside of government are like the fish who can’t conceive they are in the water.

The result? Leaders who uniquely are ill-prepared to handle the true nature of their roles face staggering armies, with little support, and an astonishing lack of commitment from the homefront that sent them to the war.

The poor people elected are uniquely ill-equipped for the new job of government. The opposition isn't the other parties or competing ideas. It's the opposition of officialdom. Now it has grown out of proportion and power from anything ever seen in history. It's fundamentally changed what democracy is and how it can work.

Our small l liberal politicians. The good guys. the nice people we've been voting for in Canada for 100 years have to hoist this in along with their supporters and parties. The job is to bring the permanent government into check, make it change from the government, systems, and ideas that were voted out, and make it perform the new mandate. It's not a job for the faint of heart.

 We Need A Rethink

What's the solution? If we want change we can’t simply change the coaches for another group of more likeable folks. We have to choose people who can make change happen and empower them to work.  If we want any change at any pace we have to accept some messy work. Democracy is an argument we have with ourselves and it is never settled. Reforms — slashing bureaucratic layers, eliminating redundant agencies, clearing out the least helpful and actively undermining bureaucrats while breaking down siloes and decentralizing power has not been done for generations. But that’s the easy part. More challenging yet, is changing the very culture of the public sector from one of entitlement and inertia to one of dynamism and accountability.

 What’s Next

Democracy as we know it is evolving. We live in the oldest and most mature democracy in history. No government has ever faced such a mountainous challenge. As bureaucratic bloat alters the landscape of governance, the role of our elected officials becomes increasingly complex and misunderstood.

It’s a Herculean task, demanding not just political acumen but profound change management skills. And it requires the kind of support for our elected representatives, all of them,  not seen in generations. As voters, it’s crucial to understand the magnitude of what we ask of those we elect. Only then can we hope to choose leaders who are truly up to the task of bringing the behemoth that the government bureaucracy has become into check.