April 28, 2005

Ottawa's top public servants were advised that the policy allowing political staff to parachute into senior positions in the public service should be scrapped, new documents show.

Yet the program has just recorded its busiest year since the sweeping defeat of the Conservative government in 1993, according to statistics compiled by the Public Service Commission (PSC).

The 90 applications are more than double the annual average of 39 requests since the commission began tracking the program in 1987.

Only the 113 applications in 1993-94, following the election in which Kim Campbell's Tory government was reduced to a mere two seats in the House of Commons, were higher than last year's figures.

Successful applicants are placed on a waiting list for one year to be hired "in priority to all other persons" for jobs that meet their described areas of interest.

Of the 90 political aides who applied for "priority consideration" in the past year, 71 have been approved so far and 16 rejected. In the past year, 38 aides were placed in government jobs. Most received mid-level jobs in the $61,000 to $74,000 salary range.

One of the most high-profile examples of political aides crossing over into the public service is Pierre Tremblay, who in 1999 left his job as chief of staff to then-public works minister Alfonso Gagliano to take over from Chuck Guite as executive director of the federal sponsorship program.

As part of a sweeping study of governance issues requested in 2002 by Alex Himelfarb, the Clerk of the Privy Council, a report was prepared for the powerful committee of deputy ministers on ways to reduce cynicism and mistrust of public institutions.

In the report to deputy ministers from the federal government's Canadian Centre for Management Development, the senior mandarins were urged to consider a comprehensive statement on what constitutes a professional, non-partisan public service, mandatory "public ethics" training for all federal managers and executives and "terminating the staffing provision that gives 'priority consideration' to political exempt staff to enter the public service after three years."

The report was obtained by CanWest News Service through the Access to Information Act.

The program continues to attract negative attention and was linked to the sponsorship scandal in a recent report by Professor Denis Saint-Martin of the Universite de Montreal called The Groupaction Affair: a case of the politicization of the federal public service? In the report, Prof. Saint-Martin called for the priority-consideration program to be "abolished."

Last year, then-PSC president Scott Serson urged MPs studying the Public Service Modernization Act to give the PSC the power to reject placements that were deemed too political, such as a staff person who moves directly from a minister's office into the same government department.

"In some cases, such an appointment could be perceived as impairing the political impartiality of the public service," Mr. Serson told MPs. However, his recommendation was ignored by the committee studying the bill.

Conservative MP Paul Forseth said Canadians applying for government jobs will be upset to see how often this avenue is used to bypass the normal hiring process.

"I really don't like it," he said. "I guess in the past, the argument was that it wasn't used all that much, but I would say probably it's time for it to go. Certainly there shouldn't be any barrier to political staff, but if the competition process is truly open and truly based on merit, then the talent will land on its own feet without any additional affirmative action."

Mr. Forseth said he suspects Prime Minister Paul Martin has ignored the recommendation to shut down the program because he wanted to get rid of the dozens of political staff members who were loyal to Jean Chretien throughout the bitter Liberal leadership battle.

"It was trying to keep the peace. You don't want to come in and find you have a lot of senior people who have loyalties elsewhere and they're not really going to work in your interests, so you buy them off. You've got to keep peace back on the farm. The more I hear and understand, the more cynical I get," he said.

NDP MP Pat Martin described the program as "outrageous" and called on Mr. Martin to follow the advice of the public service.

"This is certainly one of the most offensive aspects of the areas in most need of reform. Everyone sees what's objectionable about exempt staff being able to slide into the public service without any deference to seniority or even merit, frankly," he said.

"It certainly speaks volumes that the incidence of those availing themselves of this opportunity has escalated in what may be seen as the twilight years of this government. It's like rats on a sinking ship.

"Even the top mandarins, the deputies of this country, have identified that this is just fundamentally wrong and yet we're seeing its use escalating and more people availing themselves of it."