David McLaughlin is president and CEO of the Institute on Governance. He is a former clerk of the Executive Council and cabinet secretary in Manitoba.

“By almost any objective measure, the public service has not adapted to meet the heightened demands of citizens when it comes to service delivery.”

This isn’t a quote from last week’s damning report on the ArriveCan app scandal by the Auditor-General, but it could have been. It’s from a December report to the Clerk of the Privy Council – Canada’s top public servant – on values and ethics in the public service.

The ArriveCan scandal was a failure of public servants, not politicians. While ministers are still accountable to Parliament for this failing, the public service was responsible for the fiasco.

Commenting on the Auditor-General’s report, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said he would cut back on consulting contracts by the federal government: “Public servants do the work more accountably and they do it more affordably.”

As positive as this may be, the Clerk’s report shows it will take far more than swapping consultants back for public servants to fix what ails the federal public service. ArriveCan........

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