Donald Savoie says Canada needs more plumbers. He’s not speaking about the skilled trades people who work on our pipes and heating systems, although we probably need more of those too. Savoie, the distinguished thinker and professor at Université de Moncton, is referring to the people who deliver front-line federal government services. The women and men who work at the passport offices, the people who process old age pensions and answer the phones at the CRA. Before asking how he can justify hiring even more people for a public service that’s exploded in size – by more than a hundred thousand in the last ten years – Savoie is also suggesting we need fewer poets – the policy wonks and advisers, many of whom work unseen in Ottawa. Savoie says we have too many poets and not enough plumbers. In his recent book, “Speaking Truth to Canadians about Their Public Service” Donald Savoie exposes a ratio that’s badly out of whack: about three quarters of civil servants are engaged in deep thinking in Ottawa, while only a quarter are doing the heavy lifting on the front lines, serving Canadians face-to-face. That’s not the way it is in the U.K., France and the U.S. So as the Carney government moves to reduce the size and cost of government by 15 per cent, it should look to better balance the number of poets and plumbers, with clear emphasis on providing direct service to taxpayers. Trouble is the people likely to recommend who and what and where to cut in the upcoming budget, are poets. Which is why we need Mark Carney and his ministers to think and act more like plumbers.
