NOTE to SUPPORTERS
April 16, 2004
WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Does the prime minister really need almost a thousand people to run his errands?
The sweeping green lawns and soaring stone Peace Tower of Parliament Hill leave a lasting and pleasant impression. But how many people remember the rather nondescript office buildings across Wellington Street?
Well, according to a news story last week, there is a plan to set aside the entire city block across from Parliament Hill for the ever-growing staff of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and Privy Council Office (PCO).
It now takes a whole city block to accommodate the people who control the prime minister's contact with the public, Parliament and civil service. There are over a hundred staffers in the PMO, and over 800 in the PCO, currently spread out around town.
Understand, these are just the central co-ordinators. They are the pinnacle, the brain trust, the crème de la crème. Beneath them is a mountain of 37 cabinet ministers, 47 federal departments and major agencies, and 283,000 public servants.
The boss of the PCO is Alex Himelfarb. A couple years ago his office reported to then-prime minister Chretien on what Canadians think about the federal government.
The report was blunt. The PCO concluded that Canadians see public institutions as "remote, self-serving, inaccessible, non-responsive, occasionally inept, excessively adversarial and increasingly irrelevant."
As for parliamentary democracy, the PCO concluded that it had been taken over by the cabinet, which now exercises a "virtual monopoly" on power.
All the same, said the PCO bureaucrats, ordinary MPs are too short-sighted to develop a grasp of policy, so the powers of the prime minister (and by implication of the bureaucracy) should not be weakened.
In other words, Canadians already hold government in contempt because it doesn't work, but for heaven's sake don't change it.
Himelfarb is probably the most politically powerful man in Canada--equal and in many ways superior to Paul Martin--yet not one voter in a hundred thousand knows he exists.
We might just want to bear this in mind as Paul Martin heads toward the next election promising (or perhaps more accurately, threatening) to take more control of health care delivery, bestowing more money as long as the provinces do what he says.
In a few innocent minds such talk probably still prompts images of Paul Martin and kindly souls like Alex Himelfarb poring over aging Aunt Martha's chart and getting concerned about how long it's taking your local hospital to fix her hip.
However, the PCO report suggests that this impression of Ottawa is wearing thin.
Before the January Throne Speech, Martin (or Alex Himelfarb, or someone) had the PCO set up eight focus groups across the country to test all the new Martinite buzz words ("building a 21st century economy," "asserting Canada's role in the world," "creating a new partnership with municipalities," etc.) to see if they turned people on.
They didn't. Nobody knew what they meant. The only thing that got people really enthused was the idea of spending more on health care.
If Martin just promised us that it would work for him. But no, he also wants to interfere more in how provinces spend it, which is none of Ottawa's constitutional concern.
Martin, who sounded strangely frantic even before he needed to be, is getting more shrill by the week.
Steve Harper just has to make two promises--to increase health transfers to the provinces, and to cut taxes. That's it. He'd win.
And if anyone asks how he proposes to afford doing that, he just has to point across Wellington Street, to Alex Himelfarb and his 800 PCO tinkers and fix-its, co-ordinating their 47 departments and major agencies, and their quarter-million "remote, self-serving, inaccessible, non-responsive, occasionally inept, excessively adversarial and increasingly irrelevant" employees.
Martin thinks the country needs these people. It doesn't. We could get rid of half of them and never notice the difference.
- Link Byfield, Chairman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
203, 10441 - 178 Street
Edmonton, AB T5S 1R5
Phone: 780-481-7844
Fax: 780-481-9983
contact@citizenscentre.com
April 16, 2004
WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Does the prime minister really need almost a thousand people to run his errands?
The sweeping green lawns and soaring stone Peace Tower of Parliament Hill leave a lasting and pleasant impression. But how many people remember the rather nondescript office buildings across Wellington Street?
Well, according to a news story last week, there is a plan to set aside the entire city block across from Parliament Hill for the ever-growing staff of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and Privy Council Office (PCO).
It now takes a whole city block to accommodate the people who control the prime minister's contact with the public, Parliament and civil service. There are over a hundred staffers in the PMO, and over 800 in the PCO, currently spread out around town.
Understand, these are just the central co-ordinators. They are the pinnacle, the brain trust, the crème de la crème. Beneath them is a mountain of 37 cabinet ministers, 47 federal departments and major agencies, and 283,000 public servants.
The boss of the PCO is Alex Himelfarb. A couple years ago his office reported to then-prime minister Chretien on what Canadians think about the federal government.
The report was blunt. The PCO concluded that Canadians see public institutions as "remote, self-serving, inaccessible, non-responsive, occasionally inept, excessively adversarial and increasingly irrelevant."
As for parliamentary democracy, the PCO concluded that it had been taken over by the cabinet, which now exercises a "virtual monopoly" on power.
All the same, said the PCO bureaucrats, ordinary MPs are too short-sighted to develop a grasp of policy, so the powers of the prime minister (and by implication of the bureaucracy) should not be weakened.
In other words, Canadians already hold government in contempt because it doesn't work, but for heaven's sake don't change it.
Himelfarb is probably the most politically powerful man in Canada--equal and in many ways superior to Paul Martin--yet not one voter in a hundred thousand knows he exists.
We might just want to bear this in mind as Paul Martin heads toward the next election promising (or perhaps more accurately, threatening) to take more control of health care delivery, bestowing more money as long as the provinces do what he says.
In a few innocent minds such talk probably still prompts images of Paul Martin and kindly souls like Alex Himelfarb poring over aging Aunt Martha's chart and getting concerned about how long it's taking your local hospital to fix her hip.
However, the PCO report suggests that this impression of Ottawa is wearing thin.
Before the January Throne Speech, Martin (or Alex Himelfarb, or someone) had the PCO set up eight focus groups across the country to test all the new Martinite buzz words ("building a 21st century economy," "asserting Canada's role in the world," "creating a new partnership with municipalities," etc.) to see if they turned people on.
They didn't. Nobody knew what they meant. The only thing that got people really enthused was the idea of spending more on health care.
If Martin just promised us that it would work for him. But no, he also wants to interfere more in how provinces spend it, which is none of Ottawa's constitutional concern.
Martin, who sounded strangely frantic even before he needed to be, is getting more shrill by the week.
Steve Harper just has to make two promises--to increase health transfers to the provinces, and to cut taxes. That's it. He'd win.
And if anyone asks how he proposes to afford doing that, he just has to point across Wellington Street, to Alex Himelfarb and his 800 PCO tinkers and fix-its, co-ordinating their 47 departments and major agencies, and their quarter-million "remote, self-serving, inaccessible, non-responsive, occasionally inept, excessively adversarial and increasingly irrelevant" employees.
Martin thinks the country needs these people. It doesn't. We could get rid of half of them and never notice the difference.
- Link Byfield, Chairman
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy
203, 10441 - 178 Street
Edmonton, AB T5S 1R5
Phone: 780-481-7844
Fax: 780-481-9983
contact@citizenscentre.com