When many people think of civil servants, they picture Sir Humphrey Appleby, the permanent secretary for the department of administrative affairs (a fictional department of the British government) in the hit 1980s sitcom Yes Minister. Sir Humphrey was portrayed as an expert manipulator who excelled at playing puppet-master to a rather dim-witted minister.

While Yes Minister was great comedy, the truth is that relations between professional civil servants and their political masters are much more complex. Stakeholders looking to work with government would do well to understand these dynamics and how they can affect their interests.

Canada’s professional civil service has a long and proud tradition. As the country moved into the 20th century, federal and provincial governments began creating independent public service commissions designed to eradicate widespread political patronage and to provide governments with a professional public service. The adoption of a merit-based staffing system, managed by independent commissions, has shaped the identity of the public service over the last century.

Yet these politically independent civil servants are not the only ones shaping policy advice to ministers. In Canada, all federal and most provincial ministers have what are known as “political staff." Political staff are appointed directly by their ministers. The political staff to an individual minister are known in government circles as the “minister's office." In Ontario, each minister can have anywhere from six to 30 political staff at their disposal working on everything from policy and communications to operations and stakeholder outreach.

Ian Brodie, my former political science professor, former H+K colleague and chief of staff to former prime minister Stephen Harper, describes minister's offices as “the nexus where the public service and politics meet." He also states that, “they are the place where political judgments are applied to bureaucratic recommendations, where political desires meet practical realities and where executive decision-making confronts the art of practical execution."

Effective governance requires minister’s offices and civil servants to work closely together in an atmosphere of trust and open communication. The relationship between a minister's top political aide, or chief of staff, with their deputy minister, the top civil servant in a ministry, is especially critical. During my time at Queen’s Park I served as chief of staff to three different ministers and worked with five different deputy ministers. As chief of staff I would communicate with the deputy minister and his or her team several times throughout the day. These interactions could be informal like picking up the phone or strolling down the hall to chit-chat, or formal briefings around a boardroom table aided by PowerPoint presentations and briefing notes. In fact, every meeting that a minister has with his or her top civil servants usually involves hours of advance work between the deputy minister's team and the minister’s office with the aim of reaching alignment on the recommended approach before options are presented to the minister. Most of the time this works well. Sometimes it does not.

I remember a situation where a volunteer-based not-for-profit group was seeking disclosure of certain records through a freedom of information request. Due to the volume of records the organization was requesting, ministry civil servants insisted on charging a fee that, while reasonable for most stakeholder groups, would have been cost-prohibitive for this small organization. A major newspaper became aware of this situation and splashed an embarrassing headline across its front page. The minister I worked for at the time saw the article and intervened, ordering officials to release the records gratis. This led to a souring of relations between our team and the ministry that lasted until both the deputy minister and minister changed portfolios.

On the flip side, when political staff and the civil service get along well, great things can happen. A good example is the relationship between my last boss, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Dr. Eric Hoskins and his deputy minister, Dr. Bob Bell. The two are like yin and yang. While they don’t always agree, they and their teams have established a level of trust and mutual respect that has enabled them to introduce some of the most far-reaching reforms to Ontario’s health system in a generation.

Politicians who want to get things done need to respect the vital role these professionals play.

Deputy ministers and their teams need to know that they can speak truth to power anytime without repercussions. We saw under the Harper government what can happen when civil servants are afraid to speak out. That being said, it is the minister who is elected by citizens and must keep his or her ear to the ground and be attune to political realities. The smartest and most successful civil servants understand this.
Stakeholders who want to successfully navigate the labyrinth of government decision-making need to attune themselves to how these two sides of government interact with each other.

Omar Khan spent over a decade working at Queen’s Park as a political adviser to several cabinet ministers. He now works as vice-president, public affairs, at Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Toronto.

Khan: Political staff and civil servants — the yin and yang of effective government

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