Although nobody wants an election this spring, it’s a shame Conservative Leader Stephen Harper caved in so early on the latest federal budget. The far-reaching contents really do deserve thorough debate.

The budget may have already passed into history for the media and the general public, but it will be a document on the minds of civil service managers for some time — possibly for years — because of several key elements.

Among them is the stated intention to save over the next five years almost $11 billion that will be reallocated to new priority spending. Of this, the Martin government expects that only $100 million or so will come from reduced program spending. The rest is supposed to come from new efficiencies in the way government does business.

Specifically, the government is looking for:

> More than $1 billion in efficiencies through better management of federal properties;

> $2.5 billion through an updated and improved procurement system;

> More than $3 billion through more efficient delivery of government services. Much of this will be accomplished through the creation of Service Canada, which will provide a sort of one-stop point of contact for all services to taxpayers; and,

> $4 billion in miscellaneous efficiencies.
Talk about efficiencies, of course, is nothing new in Ottawa. Actual execution of such
plans is quite another matter.

Because bureaucracies tend to be territorial and many careers are bound to be affected, the Liberals can expect a lot of push back from the civil service, which is how legislation that purports to do one thing is often co-opted into doing something quite different.

The Martin government would be wise to look at as many case studies as it can find on the national gun registry, which was supposed to be self-supporting. It, of course, became a money pit because of conflicting objectives and constant bureaucratic changes.

The creation of Service Canada, for example, will require the investment of millions of dollars in information technology and infrastructure. Plenty of things can go wrong — and probably will.

Service Canada also represents an extreme emotional threat to the bureaucracy because it will logically lead to designated performance standards and greater accountability. Canada’s system of government was designed and established long before Canadians won the right to sue their own government in 1953, or gain access to routine government information in 1983.

To this day, a culture of unaccountability and secrecy dominates the bureaucracy.

Martin, of course, is no stranger to battling bureaucracy. As finance minister, he rarely followed the advice of the Department of Finance in drawing up his budgets.

As prime minister, he is currently splitting up the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He has also humiliated the department by selecting an outsider, Jennifer Welsh, to write Canada’s first foreign affairs update in a decade.

Whether Martin is doing so because of genuine dissatisfaction with DFAIT, or to warn other departments is a matter of conjecture, but it is clear that Martin won’t be intimidated by the bureaucracy’s resistance.

In fact, his budget initiatives may already have enough critical mass that the bureaucracy may not be able to stop them. If Martin can pull it off, he will revolutionize the way Canadians are governed. If he fails?
Well, think of several gun registries.

Another risk he faces is the media. No matter how successful an initiative is, it must be widely reported to be a political success.

So far, the media, with its fixation on personalities and infighting, have yet to acknowledge, or possibly even notice.
IE