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"The chain of accountability, from voters to MP, from MP to prime minister and cabinet ministers, from ministers to the heads of government departments and agencies, and from senior civil servants to front-line managers to their employees, has broken down, University of Moncton professor and Order of Canada officer Donald Savoie wrote in his Saturday Globe essay The broken chain of answerability
"No officer or officers of Parliament can repair it. They have neither the mandate nor the legitimacy to play more than a supporting role.
"The relationship among Parliament, the prime minister, ministers and public servants is in need of repair, and we are ill served by pretending that all is well.
"We should no longer tolerate court government, by which a political leader with the help of a handful of courtiers shapes and reshapes instruments of power at will. Those with the power to introduce change for the better are reluctant to do so because they enjoy being able to wield tremendous power.
Donald Savoie (University of Moncton)
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"We need to define, preferably in law, the role of the prime minister, cabinet and the public service and give public servants an administrative space of their own to manage government operations, while recognizing that the prime minister and ministers must always have the authority to override public servants in all matters not covered by statutes."
What do you think? Have things broken down, or can conventional thinking repair things? What else do you think has gone wrong in Canadian government? (Keep your lists short!)
We are pleased that Dr. Savoie was online earlier today to answer those questions.
Your questions and Dr. Savoie's answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Dr. Savoie holds a Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the Université de Moncton. His research achievements are prodigious and his influence on Canadian public policy, Canadian public administration and Canadian society has been evident for years.
Dr. Savoie has won numerous prizes and awards, including: the Trudeau Fellowships Prize (2004), elected president of the Canadian Association of Political Science (1998), made an Officer of the Order of Canada (1993), and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1992). He was also awarded the Mosher prize by the Public Administration Review (US) for the best article (co-author) in public administration (1994). He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Université Sainte-Anne (1993), Mount Allison (1997), the University of New Brunswick (2002), Dalhousie University (2003), and St. Francis Xavier University (2005). He was also awarded a Doctor of Letters from Oxford University (2000).
Dr. Savoie's best-known books include Federal-Provincial Collaboration; Breaking the Bargain: Public Servants, Ministers, and Parliament; Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics; and Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His articles have appeared in all the significant journals in political science, public policy and public administration.
Editor's Note: globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Welcome, Dr. Savoie, and thanks for joining us today to take questions about your essay in Saturday's Globe and Mail. We've got a lot of questions, so let's go straight to them.
Vivaldo Latoche, Ottawa: Dr. Savoie, you have stated very clearly that our political system is broken. My view is that when a political system like ours is broken, it is time for change.
But our political leaders will not change anything because if they do, then "power" will slip away from their hands. Will they be interested in doing it? Of course not.
So what is needed here? Do you think that what we need is a "new Constitution?" A constitution where the rules of the political game are clearly defined? And those political actors who do not abide by them are punished?
