06 Jul Curbing the power of the PMO

Talk to almost anyone in the federal civil service, and before long, they’ll bemoan the way Harper has  concentrated power in the Prime Minister’s office. If Pierre Trudeau viewed backbenchers as “nobodies,” Harper appears to lump cabinet ministers and senior civil servants in the same contemptible category.

The Toronto Star’s James Travers recently called for “a saint to roll back all the power hoarded in the PMO.” In today’s Hill Times, W.T. Stanbury, retired professor of Commerce and Business Administration at UBC, proposes seven steps for doing so. Quotes after the jump.

Travers:

Mostly for convenience, prime ministers since Pierre Trudeau have taken for themselves power that belongs, in the most profound sense, to the people. … As the prolific writer and astute public affairs analyst Donald Savoie observes, prime ministers, once safely installed, have most of the powers commoners spent hundreds of years stripping from monarchs. Surrounded by whispering courtiers and fawning supplicants, they rule beyond Parliament’s reach and oversight. Incrementally, they have turned servant into master and democracy on its head

Stanbury:

(Step 5) The public service should be formally “constitutionalized” —defining its functions, fundamental values, modes of selection, obligations to ministers and to Parliament, etc. The point is to de-politicize public servants, and to give them somewhat greater autonomy while ensuring that they can be held accountable.

(Step 6) Create a new special Commons Committee on Subordinate Legislation, chaired by an opposition member, that would have sufficient professional staff, to review proposed new or amended subordinate legislation (except certain specified purely technical items). The committee’s advice in writing would go to the Special Committee of Council before it made the regulations, etc into law. That advice would be made public as soon as the new regulations, etc become law.

Hat tip: National Newswatch