Here’s a simple statistic from which two tales flow: In the first five years of the Harper government, the number of information officers in the federal government grew by 16 per cent, to 4,459 from 3,855.
The two tales are these: that the increase in information officers reflects the abiding, daily preoccupation of the Harper government with controlling and disseminating information; and that under the Harper government, spending has swelled greatly, as have the number of civil servants.
Everyone with even the slightest acquaintance of this government knows of its mania for information control. Although information officers have grown in number throughout the government, all messaging (down to the finest details) is controlled in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council office, where, predictably, the number of people working on information has also grown.
Media calls, requests for information, press releases, general media strategy, requests for interviews, required answers and everything else associated with developing and disseminating the government’s “line” is co-ordinated centrally.
Such centralization raises the question why information officers have grown throughout the government, when much of their job, at least in terms of releasing information, is to make as little of it public as possible.
Part of the growth is about this overall mania about information, including minute monitoring of all commentary about the government. Part might be about the increase in new forms: social media, websites and other “new” media that are supplanting traditional media. But a lot has to do with the generalized dynamic that bureaucracies self-perpetuate and grow.
Right now, in Ottawa and Toronto, there are spending reviews under way with outside consultants (Deloitte in Ottawa; Don Drummond at Queen’s Park) helping to outline reduction options for politicians. Both governments face deficits, and both preside over bureaucracies that have grown.
These kind of reviews are absolutely necessary from time to time, because without them governments just grow, willy-nilly. It isn’t an anti-government screed to insist that programs periodically have to be reviewed, spending priorities rearranged and decisions made to stop doing things that have outgrown their usefulness.
Both the political and bureaucratic dynamics push governments to grow. There are always insistent demands from the population as a whole, and especially from particular groups within it, for more spending or tax relief (which is a tax expenditure). The media is a bullhorn for these demands, and opposition parties as a general rule always believe governments are not doing enough rather than doing too much.
Governments themselves overwhelmingly feel their re-election chances are enhanced by spending rather than retrenching. This applies quite often to conservative governments that enter office promising lower taxes, smaller government and balanced budgets, but which throughout North America, with a few exceptions, have delivered lower taxes, bigger government and large deficits.
We’ve been watching this dynamic at work in the last few weeks. Thursday, Treasury Board President Tony Clement warned of big and early spending cuts and Mr. Harper spoke of “major transformations” while in Davos, Switzerland. Yet over the last two weeks, the Prime Minister and other ministers have been travelling around Canada touting spending projects from Halifax to Saguenay to Toronto to Vancouver.
It is very hard to cut spending, except the easy way, which is to freeze or restrain increases in public service wages and pensions. This might buy temporary relief, but does not fundamentally alter the structure of government.
The only way to change spending fundamentally is what self-perpetuating bureaucracies struggle to accomplish: to deliver services in a dramatically different and lower-cost fashion, and to just plain stop doing things.
The trouble with getting out of a program is that groups have become dependent upon it. If a government ends it, political hell risks breaking loose, with the aggrieved groups in full howl, the media echoing their complaints and the opposition piling on. The big picture of overall government spending gets lost in the shouting.
It is so much easier to add programs than subtract them, so much more enticing to voters to offer than take away, so much simpler to say yes than no, so much less difficult to let spending take its course than to make hard and politically costly decisions.
Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: Jeffrey Simpson
The two tales are these: that the increase in information officers reflects the abiding, daily preoccupation of the Harper government with controlling and disseminating information; and that under the Harper government, spending has swelled greatly, as have the number of civil servants.
Everyone with even the slightest acquaintance of this government knows of its mania for information control. Although information officers have grown in number throughout the government, all messaging (down to the finest details) is controlled in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council office, where, predictably, the number of people working on information has also grown.
Media calls, requests for information, press releases, general media strategy, requests for interviews, required answers and everything else associated with developing and disseminating the government’s “line” is co-ordinated centrally.
Such centralization raises the question why information officers have grown throughout the government, when much of their job, at least in terms of releasing information, is to make as little of it public as possible.
Part of the growth is about this overall mania about information, including minute monitoring of all commentary about the government. Part might be about the increase in new forms: social media, websites and other “new” media that are supplanting traditional media. But a lot has to do with the generalized dynamic that bureaucracies self-perpetuate and grow.
Right now, in Ottawa and Toronto, there are spending reviews under way with outside consultants (Deloitte in Ottawa; Don Drummond at Queen’s Park) helping to outline reduction options for politicians. Both governments face deficits, and both preside over bureaucracies that have grown.
These kind of reviews are absolutely necessary from time to time, because without them governments just grow, willy-nilly. It isn’t an anti-government screed to insist that programs periodically have to be reviewed, spending priorities rearranged and decisions made to stop doing things that have outgrown their usefulness.
Both the political and bureaucratic dynamics push governments to grow. There are always insistent demands from the population as a whole, and especially from particular groups within it, for more spending or tax relief (which is a tax expenditure). The media is a bullhorn for these demands, and opposition parties as a general rule always believe governments are not doing enough rather than doing too much.
Governments themselves overwhelmingly feel their re-election chances are enhanced by spending rather than retrenching. This applies quite often to conservative governments that enter office promising lower taxes, smaller government and balanced budgets, but which throughout North America, with a few exceptions, have delivered lower taxes, bigger government and large deficits.
We’ve been watching this dynamic at work in the last few weeks. Thursday, Treasury Board President Tony Clement warned of big and early spending cuts and Mr. Harper spoke of “major transformations” while in Davos, Switzerland. Yet over the last two weeks, the Prime Minister and other ministers have been travelling around Canada touting spending projects from Halifax to Saguenay to Toronto to Vancouver.
It is very hard to cut spending, except the easy way, which is to freeze or restrain increases in public service wages and pensions. This might buy temporary relief, but does not fundamentally alter the structure of government.
The only way to change spending fundamentally is what self-perpetuating bureaucracies struggle to accomplish: to deliver services in a dramatically different and lower-cost fashion, and to just plain stop doing things.
The trouble with getting out of a program is that groups have become dependent upon it. If a government ends it, political hell risks breaking loose, with the aggrieved groups in full howl, the media echoing their complaints and the opposition piling on. The big picture of overall government spending gets lost in the shouting.
It is so much easier to add programs than subtract them, so much more enticing to voters to offer than take away, so much simpler to say yes than no, so much less difficult to let spending take its course than to make hard and politically costly decisions.
Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: Jeffrey Simpson
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