Finding Political Stability in a Changing World, Canadian Sessional Papers

The Commissioners have had it brought painfully to their notice that in the great development which has taken place in the last few years in the Dominion, the character and quality of the male candidates entering the service has declined. Having no inducements held out to them to remain in the service the better class of men stay but a short time and leave to better themselves. The Commissioners see with regret that in many parts of the Dominion able and worthy young men attracted by high emoluments have left the service. It is becoming more and more difficult to fill their places.

The Commissioners have also to point out that as far as regards the Civil Service Act the officials embraced in the terms of the Act are limited in number. At Ottawa 350 employees of the Department of the Interior are outside the terms of the Act. A very great number are also outside the provisions of the Act in the Departments of Agriculture, Marine and Fisheries, Public Works and Railways and Canals. This prevails more or less in the other departments. Only three departments in the outside service—Customs, Inland Revenue and Post Office—are included in the schedule under the Act, and while as has been pointed out, many officials in Ottawa are excluded, the same remark applies with greater force to the members of the public service employed elsewhere than at Ottawa. No Dominion Lands Agent, no Indian Agent, no officer of the Intercolonial Railway, no outside officer of the Public Works Department is under the provisions of the Act, and members of the Northwest Mounted Police, together with many other sets of officials, are excluded from its provisions. In fact, the terms of the Act only bring under review a very limited number of the members of the outside service and probably about one-half of the members employed at the seat of Government.

The Commissioners also beg to point out that in the list of passed candidates published in the Canada Gazette no attention is given to merit. The candidates are gazetted alphabetically. No doubt it has happened that the candidates who have just fluked through the examination by means of greater political influence have received appointments over the heads of more worthy and better qualified candidates.

In the matter of promotions the same patronage fear is apparent. Your Commissioners found in their rounds that a collector of customs, a city postmaster, a post office inspector and others were appointed politically. The recent appointment of a postmaster at Kingston was on the recommendation of the Patronage Committee; the last appointment to the post-mastership at Montreal, the most important in the Dominion, was given to an aged member of parliament, 67 years old.

As the almost universal practice is that no person is promoted out of his district and transferred to higher duties in another place, and that with few exceptions no person is promoted out of his class, it follows that young men, entering the public service in the several divisions to which they have been appointed, see that however hard they may work, and whatever intelligence they bring to bear upon their duties, there is no chance of getting out of the class to which they are appointed. Your Commissioners have been told and believe that promotions have been made as a matter of politics, not in every case, but in many cases, and that people have been brought in from the outside over the heads of men who have given their lifetime to the departments, to fill the few positions of any superiority in the public service. For these and other reasons your Commissioners are of opinion that the general features of the Civil Service Act cannot be regarded as satisfactory. . . .

In the previous remarks your Commissioners have pointed out that in their opinion the principles underlying the Civil Service Act are not in the public interest. In the report of the Royal Commission of 1892 the Commissioners observed that: `It is possible that public sentiment in Canada may not as yet be ripe for open competition generally, and it may not be possible as yet to eliminate altogether the power of politics in making appointments; but if the recommendations of your Commissioners be accepted and strictly adhered to, the public service at Ottawa will, they are convinced, in the course of a few years, be better for the change.’

The Commissioners at that time only took into account the public service at Ottawa. They left in their draft bill in the report the provisions of the former Act relating to the outside service. Your Commissioners regret to state that in their opinion the hopes of the members of the former Commission have not made the service any better; in fact, the Act has been so amended, reamended, and whittled down, that the public service, the Commissioners believe, not only at Ottawa but elsewhere throughout the Dominion, has fallen back during the last fifteen years.

In making these remarks the Commissioners do not wish it to be considered that any blame is to be attached in particular to either of the political parties who in turn have administered the government. It is the political element in the Act which, from time to time, has become more aggressive and which has steadily tended to deteriorate the public service. It would seem to the Commissioners that the great prosperity of the country during the last fifteen years has been such that able men, who were formerly attracted to the service of the state have now ceased to look to the rewards of that service and have turned their attention to other avocations in which they see prospects of higher emoluments, with the result that inefficient and inferior men, unable to obtain better positions in the outside world, through political operations and other means, have been brought into the service; whatever the cause the tendency is more and more to lower the standard of the Civil Service with the consequent detriment to the business of the state. . . .

Your Commissioners have found in their examinations that as a rule the salaries laid down in the Civil Service Act have been pretty constant for the last 30 years. Thirty years ago the present fiscal policy of Canada was not in existence and its introduction since has unquestionably largely increased the cost of living. Owing to the small mileage of railways and to the lack of communication, most of the necessities of life raised in the different localities were consumed locally. Butter, eggs, meats, food-stuffs and articles entering into daily consumption were produced in the locality in which they were consumed. The same characteristic feature was applicable to domestic servants employed in the household of the officials in the public service. A generation ago there were no means by which the farmers’ daughters could remove easily from the locality in which they were born, and as the supply of domestic servants was then greater than the demand, the wages paid were comparatively small. Now, through extended communication the classes of domestic servants can find wider fields, and, as a consequence, the demand is much greater than the supply, and the rates of wages have gone up by leaps and bounds. The civil servant in those days, although not in receipt of a large income, had his wants satisfied cheaply and without stint. In these days of cold storage and rapid transit, the products of the farm find their way to the motherland and distant countries, and the civil servant, rejoicing still in the same salary which was paid 30 years ago, finds his purchasing power sadly diminished, and is forced to face circumstances which are sometimes cruel in their operation, especially in the case of the younger members having families. Your Commissioners have heard from officials and from groups of officials, one after another, the most harrowing details of the privations endured by them in providing for those dependent on them. And as nothing so unfits a man for the faithful performance of his daily work as the constant worry over money matters, your Commissioners consider that in dealing with the question of salaries greater consideration should be shown to the very different circumstances existing at the present time than existed thirty years ago. . . .

In Canada there exists a system of promotion examination which is not in use in Great Britain. So far as your Commissioners can find the same process prevails now in regard to these promotion examinations, even to a greater extent of undesirability, as prevailed in 1892 when the last Commission reported. In some cases strict examinations under the regulations laid down by the Civil Service Examiners have been made when promotions were considered necessary. In others only what is absolutely legal has been required, and the examinations have been held in only one or two subjects, such as ’duties of office’. Your Commissioners consider that in many cases promotions have been forced on the several departments owing to political influence; that the officials promoted do the same work as they performed in the lower grade, and, as has been mentioned before, promotions have taken place as a rule for other causes than the necessities of the service. . . .

Without going so far as to say that the official who has been appointed through political influence and whose friends are in power is not amenable to discipline, the Commissioners have found in certain instances that officials appointed by virtue of political patronage and remaining under its aegis have taken to themselves the idea that their services are altogether beyond the control of the higher officials; that, in fact, except from observance of office hours, their country or their chief is of no consideration. That the annual increase will follow is a matter of course, for their immediate superior in his report would not say absolutely that they were disobedient. Your Commissioners are agreed that in the expansion that has occurred in Canada in recent years, which has been followed by a large increase in the ranks of the Civil Service, the later arrivals do not actively respond to regulations laid down in the government of the several departments.

An official entering the public service should be made fully to understand that when once he becomes an official any attempt to obtain or use political influence must be abandoned.

In 1879 a Treasury Board minute was promulgated to the effect that in the case of an official using political influence it would, if discovered, be tantamount to the handing in of his resignation to his superiors. It would be as well, your Commissioners consider, that this minute should again be promulgated, that each officer in the public service should be made to sign it and that officials should be given to understand that not only was it to be obeyed in the spirit, but in the letter. . . .

As a rule your Commissioners found in the outside service that politics enter into every appointment, and politicians on the spot interest themselves not only in the appointments but in subsequent promotions of officers. While at Ottawa the departments generally are administered with a good consideration for the public interest, yet in the outside service the politics of the party is of greater importance in making appointments and promotions than the public interests of the Dominion. Practically in no case is it possible to fill a vacancy in one locality by a transfer from another. Each locality is separately guarded, and as the high appointments are all political and the subordinate classes are so graded that it is difficult to get rid of the entanglement caused by multiplication of grades, and, as generally speaking the people who enter the outside service of the several departments are considered as fixed in the several branches in which they have entered, promotion in that part of the service has become almost a nullity. How to get over this troubled state of affairs has become one of the problems to which your Commissioners have given most serious attention.

In the outside service those who have the ’political pull’ use it for all it is worth; they pass by their superior officers and bring pressure to procure anything that may prove to their advantage. To get over the difficulties which constantly arise and to circumvent the politicians, the higher officials, being in constant dread of the latter, have evaded the terms of the Civil Service Act by employing officials designated as labourers or examiners or some other title, and have tried to get their several offices into good working order. . . .