The Historical Relationship Between Parliamentarians and Public Servants in Canada

Abstract

The bargain between public servants and politicians - where public servants provide policy advice and implementation of government priorities in exchange for anonymity and job security - is breaking. Public servants are more frequently being named publicly by politicians when issues arise, and are facing increased pressure from politicians to defend their priorities rather than simply implement them. But how often have the threats to public servants’ anonymity and non-partisanship led to outright politicization, where they become the focus of partisan political debates, and has this changed over time?

We look at historical records of debates in parliament to determine how often politicians discuss public servants and what issues these debates focused on. This was done by examining Hansard transcripts. References to public servants by elected officials in Parliament were counted to determine if there was any shift in frequency of debate of public servants in Parliament over time. Topics discussed in years with the highest frequency of references to public servants, 1918 and 1992, were counted to see how the debate around public servants had shifted. We hypothesized that discussion of public servants by politicians would increase over time, that government members would discuss public servants more, and that servants would be discussed more frequently by politicians with an ideological proclivity for smaller government. Results indicated no increase over time in discussion of public servants, no apparent variance in discussion of public servants according to ideology, and that opposition members consistently bring up public servants in parliament more frequently.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Brendan Boyd