Hill Times is reporting that the Prime Minister’s Office has “streamlined” by merging its two main previously separate branches, the policy analysis unit and the public relations and lobbying unit known rather ambiguously as “stakeholder relations.” (It’s worth asking who is awarded “stakes” in the Canadian Prime Minister, and I’m sure you can guess the answer.) An unofficial spokesman, Conservative activist and lobbyist Yaroslav Baran, says the purpose is to “ensure that policy is crafted in a well-thought out manner.”
I can’t imagine how that will be the case. As I understand it (and the PMO essentially operates in secret, providing almost no public explanations or accounts), one branch provides policy advice, and the other communicates with lobbyists, business groups, and other supporters. Why exactly is it more efficient, or less “confusing” as Baran puts it, to push these together? It seems much more likely that serious policy analysis is going to be thrown out the window entirely, if it hasn’t already been, in favour of emphasizing relations with “stakeholders.” Again, Hill Times does not elaborate on who owns shares in the PMO, and again, you can probably guess yourself.
In theory, the Prime Minister of Canada has two different offices. The Prime Minister’s Office provides advice on policy from a political perspective, and the Privy Council Office provides advice on policy from a bureaucratic perspective. That’s it: they’re both advisory units. Under Trudeau, the PMO began picking up additional power, both taking over much of the policy advice function from the civil service and also becoming a propaganda arm of the government in power. Harper, who claims to hate Trudeau’s policies but is actually a secret acolyte of the man with respect to how government should be run, is now completing that transformation.
With the civil service marginalized and the Prime Minister’s Office turned into a “stakeholder relations” shop, where does the government turn for trusted analysis? Or does it see the need to turn anywhere for such a thing?
Incidentally, the Hill Times reports that the appointment of Rachel Curran to head the merged office proves that the PMO is not “an old boy’s club.” Well, maybe. Harper’s Chief of Staff is a man, as usual. By my count, men outnumber women in the PMO 57 to 47, and most of the latter occupy junior and administrative positions.
Original Article
Source: sixth Estate
I can’t imagine how that will be the case. As I understand it (and the PMO essentially operates in secret, providing almost no public explanations or accounts), one branch provides policy advice, and the other communicates with lobbyists, business groups, and other supporters. Why exactly is it more efficient, or less “confusing” as Baran puts it, to push these together? It seems much more likely that serious policy analysis is going to be thrown out the window entirely, if it hasn’t already been, in favour of emphasizing relations with “stakeholders.” Again, Hill Times does not elaborate on who owns shares in the PMO, and again, you can probably guess yourself.
In theory, the Prime Minister of Canada has two different offices. The Prime Minister’s Office provides advice on policy from a political perspective, and the Privy Council Office provides advice on policy from a bureaucratic perspective. That’s it: they’re both advisory units. Under Trudeau, the PMO began picking up additional power, both taking over much of the policy advice function from the civil service and also becoming a propaganda arm of the government in power. Harper, who claims to hate Trudeau’s policies but is actually a secret acolyte of the man with respect to how government should be run, is now completing that transformation.
With the civil service marginalized and the Prime Minister’s Office turned into a “stakeholder relations” shop, where does the government turn for trusted analysis? Or does it see the need to turn anywhere for such a thing?
Incidentally, the Hill Times reports that the appointment of Rachel Curran to head the merged office proves that the PMO is not “an old boy’s club.” Well, maybe. Harper’s Chief of Staff is a man, as usual. By my count, men outnumber women in the PMO 57 to 47, and most of the latter occupy junior and administrative positions.
Original Article
Source: sixth Estate
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