Comments on ‘The Prime Denissmith* Minister’s Office: Catalyst 1 orcabal?’

The central purpose of the paper is to consider the recent growth of an active capacity for the critical review and initiation of policy in or near the office of the Prime Minister. What is novel in the Trudeau reforms at the centre is their departure from the traditional political and intuitive manner of assessing policy, through the introduction of a small group of managers, technocrats, and roving troubleshooters whose purported object is to raise the ‘efficiency’ and the ‘quality’ of the policy-review process taking place around the Prime Minister. The assumption behind the reforms seems to be that the volume and complexity of problems facing modern governments require an element of skill and objectivity in analysis which may not normally be available either to the professional civil service or to the Prime Minister’s purely political advisers whose first interest is the retention of power. The matter of ‘policy analysis’ in this sense seems to fall uncertainly between - or to transcend - the political neutrality of the civil servants and the loyal commitment of the partisans, requiring both heightened expertise and a heightened political loyalty.

While this conception of policy analysis arises partly - and naturally - simply out of the increased scale of government business in the last two decades, it owes its direct genesis to the practices and preachings of the American think-tanks, the systems analysts, the management consultants freshly eyeing the public sector, and the MacNamarite budget analysts who brought us PPBS, PESC and PAR in the 1960s. Such innovations have sometimes been proposed in the us, Canada, and the UK in a certain mis- sionary spirit which exaggerates the utility and novelty of the changes proposed and under-estimates their limitations and dangers. The problem, if there is one, is to find a tolerable balance between the new technical and managerial influences on the one hand, and the traditional generalist influ- ence of the civil servants and the practical political influence of the politicians on the other, I am inclined to give highest value to the two traditional sources of advice, and to regard the new source with extreme scepticism (unless its claims are made and regarded modestly, as they have been in the case of the Central Policy Review Staff in Britain). * comments were made when Mr d’Aquino’s paper was delivered.

Denis Smith is Professor of Politics, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario. These

COMMENTS ON ‘THE PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE’

There have also, of course, been important changes in housekeeping arrangements for the office since 1968 - some of which are touched upon in the paper - but it is the central theme that I wish to concentrate on in response. It is important to separate the housekeeping changes from the changes in central approach, because I do not believe the housekeeping reforms can be seriously challenged. Some members of the political opposi- tion seem to object rather glibly to the growth in the service staff of the Prime Minister, without appreciating the more fundamental changes that have also occurred alongside them; and I believe that Mr d’Aquino, too, does not always make the distinction clearly enough in his paper. He does note that the bulk of the Canadian Prime Minister’s staff - about 75 out of 91 persons - performs service rather than policy functions. But when he comes to justification and prescription, he somewhat muddIes the argu- ment. The main justification for the staff increases which he offers is that the services to the Prime Minister are at last efficient; yet he jumps from this to the proposal that further increases in staff should occur in the policy sections, whose work he has not examined in any detail. On the service side, numbers of staff should be a relatively safe guide (within reason) in judging efficiency; on the policy side, however, they cannot be.

The paper offers a useful review of recent growth in the Prime Minister’s staff. Essentially, I think its weakness is that Mr dAquino takes for granted the general success of the expanded policy organization in the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office since 1968, and on that unsatisfactory basis goes on to propose a limited extension of the office, in the co-ordination of management, policy and program review, and future planning. The pro- posals are relatively modest ones, for eight more policy staff (plus their service staffs, too), and in the interest of regularity and rationality, appar- ently sensible ones. But I doubt that the case for further elaboration of these functions can be quite so easily taken for granted as Mr d’Aquino suggests .

We do have, apparently, an open system of government by consent and persuasion, and there is an obligation on the insider to make his case fully and convincingly to the lay audience of voters and public critics. I think that Mr d’Aquino does not do this in his paper, because it is devoid of example: not, perhaps, that he cannot do it, only that he has not yet done it. I would like to read more before being confident about judging his case.

There was no question, it seems to me, of the need for co-ordination, and for some articulation of the roles of policy-making and review in the Prime Minister’s Office after 1968. The effort to regain control of the bureaucratic machine at the centre was entered into determinedly by Prime Minister Trudeau after the experience of the early 196Os, and it seemed necessary on many counts. Tom dAquino has mentioned the need; Bruce Doern and others have reviewed the case effectively. (Mr d’Aquino,

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in his concentration on the Trudeau period, probably underestimates the extent of rationalization that was already beginning to occur in the Pearson term. )

His point that, in fact, the policy role in the Trudeau office from 1968 to 1972 had little depth and was limited to trouble-shooting is important to his case. But it would be helpful to have more specific comment on the real contributions to policy of the Principal Secretary (Marc Lalonde) and the Program Secretary (Jim Davev) between 1968 and 1972. The case for the future development of policy organization in the Prime Minister’s Office rests primarily on the experience of these two officers and their staffs in these years. Yet in the paper, this case is made through general assertion rather than by the consideration of any examples. Is it possible to revic‘w some examples in detail? \Vithout them, I don’t believe that lay- men are in any position to judge the strensth of the case.

At one point, for example, Mr d’ilquino says that

... the work of Trudeau’s first Program Secretarv had an impact on the way the staff perceived its function and on the thinking of the Prime Minister himself. An appreciation of nornrs and value-oriented politics was fostered in an environ- ment in which brokerage p,)litics had always been acceptable as the rule. Emphasis was placed on problem-avoidance as much as on problem-solving, and scientifically based political analysis came to supplement raw political intuition.

This st,t of claims strikes me, in the absence of fresh evidence, as far- fetched. Wliere did this scientific capacit!i for avoiding problems demon- strate itself? In foreseeing arid reacting calmly to the October Crisis? In the govrrnmcnt’s treatment of inflation and unemployment? In the reassess- ment of Indian policy? In stonen.alling on the Riafran war? In the review of foreign invcstmcnt policy, or consumer and corporate policy, or tax policy? In an accurate judgment of the public mood before the general election of 1 9 Z ? To the extent that policy review is intended to provide thc Prime Alinister with prudent political advice on contentious issues - and to the extent that the Program Secretary actually did so (whether he did or not, we do not know) - the outward evidencc is that the process failed badly from 1968 to 1972. Policies were not made, or were not sufficiently esplaincd, or were announced and discardecl, or were per- sisted in against wide public dissatisfaction: and the electorate pronounced an unfav-ourable judgment in Novembcr 1972. Mr dilquino must make his case against this background of apparent evidence that policy review was spectacularlv insensitive and imprudent (or simply absent), and I do not think he can avoid specifics in doing so. The Prime Minister’s own decision to change his Program Secretary after the election, and the more recent conspicuous vacancy in the office, suggest that Mr Trudeau‘s own assess- ment ( a t least in retrospect) is not so positive as Mr d’iiquino’s.

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COMMENTS ON ‘THE PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE’

There is a similar need for speciEics in his discussion of other offices, in particular the regiocal desks and the foreign policy staff. The paper emphasizes the value of the regional desks, and yet notes their ‘stormy history’ and their formal abandonment after 1972. If they were so ephemeral, so subject to the political winds, can the case for their existence be so easily asserted? The reference to the role of Ivan Head, in contrast, is less dogmatic, and the conclusion is ambiguous. Is Mr d’Aquino doubtful about the value of the exercise? Was it perhaps oi~ly possible or desirable because of special circumstances that existed after 1968? What does it imply about the abilities and attitudes and status of the Department of External Affairs and its minister? Is personal diplomacy of the kind prac- tised by Mr Head chiefly valuable to the Prime Minister as one more means of enhancing his personal authority and only doubtfully related to any broader tests of utility?

The core of the paper is the series of recommendations concerning the Office’s management and policy roles. The proposals for management co-ordination are essentially housekeeping ones, and I can see no objection in principle to them. The important question here, I think, is: Do the politicians - other ministers and government backbenchers - think the change proposed is necessary and desirable?

The key recommendations are those concerning an expanded policy role, and here I have several questions. Can Mr dAquino say something more about his reasons for emphasizing the policy role of the Prime Minister’s Office rather than that of the Privy Council Office? His case is summed up in the suggestion that ‘a personally appointed staff should be able to offer the Prime Minister total commitment and a high degree of professional objectivity.’ But I wonder whether ‘total commitment’ and ‘professional objectivity’ are not usually incompatible? The question of the policy staffs independence is crucial. Who will these advisers be? What will assure their independence? What degree of independence, indeed, can be tolerable to a Prime Minister from his own staff? But without it, there is a serious question about the value to the public interest of yet more managers and futurists offering their committed advice to the Prime Minister. The modest claims made for the CPRS in Britain, its availability to other ministers through its location in the Cabinet Office, its mixture of permanent civil servants, outside experts on temporary appointment, and a few political staff, and its leadership by a vigorous public figure, all may do something to protect it against becoming too narrowly a political instru- nient of the Prime Minister. Even so, it may have been essentially that; and it may also be a passing institution. The British experience seems to suggest the wisdom of greater scepticism about policy review in Canada than Mr dAquino demonstrates.

How much more advice, organized and channelled, can a Prime Minister

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absorb? (They will all certainly differ in this capacity.) Is there quite the guarantee, as Mr dAquino suggests there will be, that mereIy by the creation of new units in his office, the political wisdom of any particular Prime Minister will be enhanced? It is probably more likely that by the time he reaches office he will not be inclined to learn many new tricks.

To put it rhetorically, the paper has a certain tone of technocratic and managerial utopianism, vintage Trudeau ’68-’72, which implies that politics is above all a matter of technique. Mr dAquino perhaps aims at a system in stable equilibrium without great disruptive tensions. But a democratic political system cannot be a ‘system’ in that sense. It is not sufficient to answer that the Prime Minister‘s Office should seek managerial efficiency for itself and let other institutions take care of the disruptive tensions. The office disposes of too much authority and too many resources for it to ignore the nature of the democratic model it must work within. While I am inclined to agree with Mr dAquino - providing he can offer the evidence - about his specific recommendations, I do so because I think the changes arc likely to be of only marginal importance.

At the same time, given such further changes in the Prime Minister’s Office, I would be even more concerned to see the urgent growth of similar policy units outside the centre of the machine, and especially as servants to the backbenchers of the governing party, to the House of Commons as a whole, and to the opposition parties as they prepare to take ofice. The recent evidence of the Pearson, Wilson, and Heath governments suggests that if we are really looking for opportunities for long-range and reformist planning which may lead to action, the obvious place to expect them is in the opposition parties as they develop their programs before taking office, rather than in the Prime Minister’s Office in midstream. That may see- a rather unfashionable source for political change, but it can be more significant than we have recently allowed. In Canada, the machinery and concern for planning at that preliminary stage are, normally, grossly inadequate. Perhaps some of our serious attention should henceforth be diverted to that undeveloped territory.

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