Party Politics and the Canadian Federal Public Service
| Date | 01 March 1974 |
| Author | C.LLOYD BROWN‐JOHN |
| Published date | 01 March 1974 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1974.tb00167.x |
Party Politics and the Canadian Federal
Public Service
C.
LLOYD
BRO
WN-J
OHN
Dr.Brown-John
is
Associate Professor
in
the
Department
of
Political Science
OJ
the
University
of
Windror, Ontario.
In
1967
Canadian federal public servants
were
granted the right to parti-
cipate actively in party politics. Since that year, sixty-four public servants
have applied for leave of absence in order to stand as candidates either
in federal
or
provincial elections. This paper reports preliminary findings
on this Canadian federal experience during the
first
five years of operation
of the political activity provisions of the
1967
Public Service Employment
Act.‘
to
to
Generally the term ‘political rights for public servants’ denotes the rights
vote, to campaign, to join a political party, to contribute money, and
seek nomination and stand as
a
candidate. The Canadian federal
service, until
1967,
had been
a
distance in arrears not only of some Cana-
dian provinces, but also of other seniqr Commonwealth states.
A
1968
United States Commission noted
:2
Canadian restrictions of the political activities of civil servants have
been stricter than those found in other. Commonwealth nations
of
comparable development such
as
Australia and
New
Zealand, and are
presently far stricter than the regulations in Great Britain.
. .
This was true, of course, and reflected the apparent lack
of
urgency in
the extension
of
such rights until about
1966.
It is possible that the former
Prime Minister Lester Pearson (he and numerous
of
his colleagues were
ex-bureaucrats) saw his case
as
exemplary of the advantages andlor
deficiencies
of
the existing process should a public servant really be intent
on becoming a politician. At the least, he might have been sympathetic.
BACKGROUXD
Very
briefly, the background to the
1967
federal legislative changes can
be attributed to two categories
of
trends internal and external to the federal
government. First, the internal trends originated with
two
reports, the
1958
Report on
Personnel Administration in tbe Public Servicc
and the
1965
79
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
Refort
of
the Preparatory Committee
on
Collective Bargaining.3
The
1958
Report recommended that public servants be permitted
partisan political activity in any civic or municipal election and further,
that they lie permitted to act
as
electoral officials if no other suitable
appointee outside the service was available (frequently, this would be
the case in Arctic communitie~).~ A revised Civil Service Act in
19616
did not significantly grasp the spirit of the
1958
Report. Although the
1961
Act rejected partisan activity it did accept the principle that allegations
of a violation of the Act should be subject to an inquiry procedure. Essen-
tially this is the way the federal law remained until
1967.
Meanwhile, in another area (collective bargaining) new ideas were
emerging. Collective bargaining is not essential to this discussion, beyond
a very important occupational categorization scheme which emerged
from the Preparatory Committee Report.e This categorization has been
opcrationalizcd in virtually every aspect of the public service structure.
Table
I
lists the six occupational categories and, for general information,
the total numbers of employees in all categories over two years. The six
Categories have been sub-dividcd into approximately seventy-four occupa-
tional
groups
and these have been the basic units for collective bargaining
purposes. The six categories, however, are the only groups which need
be dwelt upon in this review. Incidently, this
1965
Report was the basis
for the
1967
Public Service Staff Relations Act.’
Bricfly, the six occupational categories may be defined
as
follows:8
Executive Category
:
Positions to which senior responsibilities
for
government functions are assigned.
Scien/ijc
and Professional
:
Positions requiring a highly developed or
specialized body of knowledge acquired through university education
or extensive post-secondary school training.
Administrative and Foreign Service
:
Positions involving administration
and direction of government programmes, including internal manage-
ment. Requirement for analytical and organizational skills with super-
visory potential.
Technical:
Positions requiring specialized techniques but does not
normally require university education.
Administrative Support:
Positions involving the preparation, transcribing
or
transferring of records and reports manually or by machine. Includes
direct application of rules and regulations.
Operational Category:
Positions of manual and related
work
of an un-
skilled or semi-skilled nature.
Essentially, the trends external to the federal government were those
which stemmed from legislative patterns existing elsewhere. For example,
in
1947
the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
(CCF)
Government
of the province of Saskatchewan extended broad political rights
to
its
employees.e The
1947
Act was reflective of
a
Government’s concern for
80
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