It should come as no surprise that Mark Carney’s government — the most corporate one we’ve seen in some time — is reaching into the private sector for executives to help get its major national projects off the ground.
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we → come → ground
All of those who have complained for years that Ottawa should be run more like a business are certainly seeing those wishes fulfilled now, under a prime minister who’s increasingly been cast as CEO of Canada Inc.
If Carney’s government is serious about increasing the traffic between the private and public sectors, it may first have to reckon with a law Stephen Harper now admits he got partly wrong.
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he → complain → law
The Accountability Act, now 20 years old, did a lot to curb enthusiasm in the corporate sector for doing a stint in government because of the strict fence it erected between public and private employment.
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it → do → employment
Under the act, designated public office holders, from ministers to staff to public servants, were made subject to a five-year ban on dealing with Ottawa afterward — and that law is still in place.
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law → designate → place
“We may have been somewhat zealous in making it a five-year lobbying ban.
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it → make → ?
For instance, some of my former staffers wondered why they were barred from lobbying the Liberal government after ours was defeated in 2015,” Harper writes in his newly released memoir.
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Harper → wonder → memoir
Leaving aside how this landed with Conservatives, it is simply true that the five-year ban has been making a lot of people reluctant to put a pause on their private careers to do some public service.
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lot → leave → service
The Major Projects Office, as my colleague Ryan Tumilty reported this week, has found a bit of a workaround, seconding 41 people from banks, railways and energy firms under a program called the Build Canada Exchange, originally known as Interchange Canada when it was set up in 1971.
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it → report → 1971
As the story explained, “participants in the program, who usually earn more in the private sector than they could be paid in the public service, continue to draw salaries from their employers, who are partially reimbursed by the government.”
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who → explain → government
In fact, this isn’t a 1970s-era idea — it goes back farther than that, to the Second World War, when C.D. Howe drafted influential magnates of industry to help him manage Canada’s war effort.
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him → go → effort
They were called “dollar-a-year men.”
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They → call → ?
The connection to Howe seems significant.
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connection → seem → Howe
Just a few weeks ago, when I was interviewing Finance Minister François Philippe Champagne, he told me that no book has helped guide him more in his current job than “C.D. Howe: A Biography,” by Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn, published 1979.
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book → interview → Bothwell
He believes the parallels are there between where he finds himself today and where Howe was back in the mid-20th century.
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Howe → believe → century
So can we call the Build Canada Exchange this century’s version of the dollar-a-year men (and women nowadays)?
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we → call → men
Populists on the left and right of the political spectrum are going to have some trouble with all this injection of corporate power into the halls of government.
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Populists → go → government
At a Commons committee meeting last week, Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs said, “There are two worlds: one where Canadians follow the rules and count every dollar but cannot get ahead, and another where political and business insiders get a seat at the big table and make up their own rules.”
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insiders → say → rules
Dominic LeBlanc, who’s in charge of the Major Projects Office, accused critics of looking for a “gotcha” moment, and in a statement through a spokesperson to the Star this week asserted, “This is Canada working: experienced professionals stepping up to serve their country, putting their expertise to work to help build a stronger Canada.”
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professionals → ’ → Canada
The two men have a long history, but until this week, that relationship was not something that Carney openly boasted about.
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Carney → have → that
The two men have a long history, but until this week, that relationship was not something that Carney openly boasted about.
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Carney → have → that
Carney has made no secret of the fact that he consults with Harper from time to time and even asked him to be the keynote at the big investment summit in Toronto in September — another bridge-building exercise between government and corporate Canada.
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he → make → government
Perhaps Carney might want to consult with Harper on where the Accountability Act needs to be tweaked, to take account of the fact that we’re not living in 2006 anymore.
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we → want → 2006
That was when Harper rode to power on a backlash against what Conservatives saw as Liberal Ottawa getting too cosy with business interests (a result of the sponsorship scandal that dominated the end of the Jean Chretien-Paul Martin era).
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that → ride → era
Inside the Major Projects Office, with its 41 borrowed executives and analysts, Carney is already doing a workaround — not around the Accountability Act itself, but around the spirit of some measures that drove it.
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that → borrow → it
Harper has himself now admitted that perhaps that was overly “zealous.”
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that → admit → ?
So maybe it’s time to dust off the act for amendment and make it more possible for people in all kinds of industries — not just major-project ones — to do some work with government without a five-year sentence for it.
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people → ’ → it
The Aporia
