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Recent Changes in the Philosophy of Policy-making in Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

G. Bruce Doern
G. Bruce Doern
Affiliation:
Carleton University
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 243 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1971

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References

1 It is by no means fully operational but the 1970–1 estimates are the first occasion where PPB can be said to have begun some of its operations.

2 For an initial effort at filling this gap, see G. Bruce Doern and Peter Aucoin, eds., “The Structure of Policy-making in Canada,” to be published by Macmillan Company of Canada.

3 In addition to sources cited, this paper is based on my interviews over the past two years with over one hundred government officials, ministers, and scientists.

4 (Toronto, 1968), vii.

5 Ibid., 203.

6 See Trudeau, , The Constitution and the People of Canada (Ottawa, 1969), 2–6.Google Scholar For a critique of this strategy, see Smiley, D., “The Case against the Canadian Charter of Human Rights,” this JOURNAL, II, no. 3 (Sept. 1969), 277–91.Google Scholar

7 See transcript of press conference with Pierre E. Trudeau, National Press Building, Ottawa, April 7, 1968, pp. 18–19.

8 See Schindler, F. and Lanphier, C. M., “Social Science Research and Participatory Democracy in Canada,” Canadian Public Administration, XII, no. 4 (Winter 1969), 481–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 To date we must still draw our basic impressions of the decision-making approaches of the Diefenbaker and Pearson régimes from such works as Newman's, Peter C.The Distemper of Our Times (Toronto, 1968Google Scholar), and Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (Toronto, 1963).

10 Trudeau and his advisers frequently speak of themselves as “outsiders” both with respect to the bureaucracy and with respect even to the Liberal party. See press conference, April 7, 1968, p. 7. See also Newman, The Distemper of Our Times, 447.

11 These differences in attitude towards the bureaucracy are, in part, revealed in Lamontagne, M., “The Influence of the Politician,” Canadian Public Administration, XI, no. 3 (Fall 1968), 263–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The different attitudes of the three prime ministers towards the bureaucracy are in part reflected by the use of royal commissions and task forces. Diefenbaker's distrust caused him first to ignore the civil service in implementing his early policies, but after that he launched a series of royal commissions on such major fields as transportation, government organization, health services, and energy. This may have reflected his desire to develop information which the bureaucracy did not have, or if it had it which Mr Diefenbaker did not agree with. Royal commissions were in a sense, therefore, a source of countervailing information. Prime Minister Pearson had no such distrust of the public service and tended to launch fewer royal commissions or task forces. Prime Minister Trudeau, with a more sceptical view of the power of the public service, has also launched a series of task forces which may be interpreted as a countervailing or a competitive source of information to that provided by the bureaucracy.

12 “Transcript of the Prime Minister's Press Conference,” Ottawa, Aug. 13, 1969, p. 10.

13 see Drucker, Peter, The Age of Discontinuity (New York, 1968Google Scholar).

14 For example, the creation of a handful of assistant secretaries to service cabinet committees, and the creation of the Science Secretariat, and the special Planning Secretariat.

15 Office of the Prime Minister, “Notes for Remarks by the Prime Minister at the Harrison Liberal Conference,” Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia, Nov. 21, 1969, pp. 3–4.

16 Ibid., 7.

17 See To Know and Be Known, the Report of the Task Force on Government Information, vols. I and II, especially vol. II, 15–24.

18 Can. H. of C. Debates, March 5, 1970, pp. 4423–4.

19 The prime minister's program secretary, James Davey, Special Assistant Gordon Gibson, and Regional Desk Adviser Pierre Levasseur are among the major advisers with a business background. Davey is a physicist and computer expert and is clearly the adviser with the most explicit cybernetic and systems ideology. Ivan Head, Tim Porteous, and Michel Vennat have legal backgrounds, as does the prime minister's principal secretary, Marc Lalonde. Press Secretary Roméo LeBlanc and former Special Assistant Roger Rolland, have had careers in the communications field. The prime minister's cadre of communications advisers also includes, albeit on an unofficial basis, Fernand Cadieux, who had been involved in the planning of Expo 67 and in Trudeau's leadership campaign, and the guru of communications theory, Dr Marshall McLuhan.

20 Trudeau, Federalism and the French Canadians, XXIII. This philosophy is undergoing an interesting test in the present debate about the appropriate role of that “counterweight extraordinaire,” the auditor general!

21 It is worth observing at this point that political scientists tend, at times, to imply that the older “mechanistic,” process-oriented models and the newer cybernetic “goal seeking” models are polar types. Trudeau's philosophy seems to imply complementarity rather than polarity. In terms of policy-making structures there does seem to be much complementarity. Both models seem to call for confrontation and conflict, either between structures (for example, the Economic Council “prodding” the Department of Finance) or between kinds of information (for example, in the PPB system one program competing against another as to which is the best way to achieve a given goal).

22 See especially Deutsch, K., The Nerves of Government (London, 1966Google Scholar).

23 See Hamilton, Andrew, “Nixon's White House Staff: Heyday of the Planners,” Science, CLXVII (Feb. 27, 1970), 1232–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Symposium on the American Presidency,” Public Administration Review, XXIX, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1969), 441–500.

24 Can. H. of C. Debates, 27th Parliament, p. 2849.

25 Science Council of Canada, First Annual Report (Ottawa, 1967), 26.Google Scholar

26 For a broader analysis, see Doern, G. B., “Scientists and the Making of Science Policies,” unpublished PHD dissertation, Queen's University, Kingston, Nov. 1969.Google Scholar

27 (Ottawa, 1968).

28 Senate of Canada, Proceedings… on Science Policy, 28th Parliament, no. 8 (Nov. 6 and 7, 1970), p. 946Google Scholar, and Science Council of Canada, Report No. 4, pp. 13–18.

29 Senate of Canada, Proceedings… on Science Policy, 945.

30 Ibid., 946 (emphasis added).

31 Science Council of Canada, Report No. 4, 35.

32 Ibid.

33 Senate of Canada, Proceedings… on Science Policy, 1277.

34 Ibid.

35 The literature on PPB is legion. See, for example, Wildavsky, Aaron B., The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston, 1964)Google Scholar; Milward, R. E., “P.P.B.S.: Problems of Implementation,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners, March 1968, p. 88Google Scholar; “Planning-Pro-gramming-Budgeting System: A Symposium,” Public Administration Review, XXVI, no. 4 (Dec. 1966); “Symposium on PPBS Re-examined,” ibid., XXVII, no. 1 (March 1967), 243–310.

36 See Macdonald, Bruce A., “SIMPAC,” address to Senior Officers Course, March 15, 1967.Google Scholar

37 Government of Canada, Planning Programming Budgeting Guide (rev. ed., Ottawa, Sept. 1969), 8Google Scholar (hereafter referred to as PPB Guide).

38 Yeomans, D. R., “Programming, Planning and Budgeting in the Federal Government of Canada,” address to twenty-sixth Annual Spring Conference, the Personnel Association of Toronto, Inc., April 5, 1968, pp. 1–9.Google Scholar

39 Treasury Board, News Release, Jan. 26, 1967, p. 2.

40 Text of an address delivered to the Ontario Institute of Chartered Accountants, Waterloo, Ontario, June 3, 1968, p. 3.

41 PPB Guide, 8.

42 Treasury Board, Program Forecast and Estimates Manual, (revisions 5, 6, and 7, Aug. 1969), chap. 1.

43 “Mixed Scanning: A ‘Third’ Approach to Decision-Making,” Public Administration Review, XXVII (Dec. 1967), 385–92. See also Etzioni's, The Active Society: A Theory of Societal and Political Processes (New York, 1968),Google Scholar chaps. 11 and 12. Etzioni is, of course, relating his “mixed-scanning” model to earlier models suggested by such writers as Simon, Lindblom and Dror.

44 “Mixed Scanning,” 386.

45 Ibid., 387.

46 Ibid., 388.

47 Ibid., 385.

48 For criticisms of the PPB's applicability to social programs in the United States, see Gross, B. M., “The New Systems Budgeting,” and Wildavsky, A., “Rescuing Policy Analysis from PPBS,” Public Administration Review, XXIX (March/April 1969), 113–37 and 189–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The related problems of application such as attitudes of senior officials, lack of analytical skills, and inter-professional conflict are treated in the above articles and also in Edwin L. Harper et al., “Implementation and Use of PPB in Sixteen Federal Agencies,” ibid., XXIX, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1969), 623–32. My interviews tend to confirm somewhat similar difficulties in the Canadian application. The early attempts to produce the kind of information the Treasury Board wants have been highly frustrating for all concerned. In some departments there has been outright resistance.

49 Hon. C. M. Drury, News Release on the Tabling of the 1970–1 Estimates (n.d.), 3.

50 Johnson, A. W., “PPB and Decision-Making in the Government of Canada,” a talk delivered to the Fiftieth Anniversary Conference of the Society of Industrial Accountants, June 18, 1970.Google Scholar

51 Somewhat as Peter Drucker has argued in the United States in The Age of Discontinuity.

52 Skolnikoff, Eugene B., “The Difficult Political Choices of Science,” World Politics XX, no. 3 (April 1968), 543.Google Scholar

53 A Liberal backbencher has recently called for just such a conceptualization. See Roberts, John, “The Politics of Planning,” Canadian Forum XLIV, no. 590 (March 1970), 276–8.Google Scholar

54 The prime minister's “confrontation” tactics have been a frequent theme of late for Robert Stanfield's criticisms. See Can. H. of C. Debates, Jan. 26, 1970, pp. 2817–23, and March 5, 1970, pp. 4418–23.

55 Drury, News Release on the Tabling of the 1970–1 Estimates, pp. 4–5. For departments like External Affairs the sense of conflict and lost status goes beyond strictly budgetary matters. See Duffy, Robert, “Has Ottawa Austerity Shaken the Right People out of the Foreign Service?” Globe and Mail, Jan. 29, 1970.Google Scholar