DM/CDS Message: Continuing the conversation on values and ethics

March 22, 2024 - Defence Stories

For more than 20 years, the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service has helped public service employees strengthen the ethical culture of the public sector and contribute to Canadians’ confidence in the integrity of our institutions. Within the Defence Team, the Defence Ethics Programme and the Statement of Defence Ethics have been in place since 1997, the DND and Canadian Forces Code of Ethics and Values has been our foundational Code since 2012, and the renewed Canadian Armed Forces Ethos: Trusted to Serve is our foundational military ethos.

While today’s environment is more complex than ever, the core values that guide the public service—respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship, and excellence—remain just as relevant to our work today. Ensuring that we truly understand these values and are reflecting them in our behaviours, every day, takes commitment and continuous effort.

So how do we make values and ethics a real and practical part of our daily work?

We encourage you to reflect on how values and ethics can strengthen and inform your work and engage in discussions with your colleagues and leadership. Continuous conversation is critical. Open and honest dialogue helps build awareness and understanding of how we can apply values and ethics consistently and practically in our work. For newer public service employees, it is an opportunity to better understand expectations about behaviours and to learn what to do when they are faced with a difficult situation. For seasoned public service employees, it is an opportunity to share their experiences and to deepen their knowledge.

Tools like the Introduction to Ethics course and professional conduct scenario-based learning vignettes can help you and your teams discuss how values and ethics affect our conduct, collective practices, and mindsets. These discussions will build relationships and trust, while enhancing our collective understanding of values and ethics in the Defence Team. Ultimately, this will make us a stronger organization, build public trust, and improve how we serve Canadians.

Recognizing the challenges we are facing within government and in the external environment, last fall the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet announced the creation of a task team of senior officials to lead a conversation with public servants on how to renew and re-energize our collective values and ethics. The resulting Deputy Ministers’ Task Team on Values and Ethics Report to the Clerk of the Privy Council, which was released in December 2023, outlines 15 recommendations on a range of issues that will help reinvigorate the public service, bolster public trust, and increase accountability and responsibility.

To support the report and its recommendations, the Clerk has tasked all Deputy Ministers with developing values and ethics training plans, reviewing and updating codes of conduct, and perhaps most importantly, fostering conversations about values and ethics at all levels of the organization. These tasks will guide renewed values and ethics efforts. Chief Professional Conduct and Culture will lead this work, and we will be reporting back to the Clerk on our progress.

We will also continue to engage with you on key issues, like conflict of interest, social media, and emerging technologies, so that you have the knowledge, tools, and capabilities you need to make the right choices and decisions.

Bill Matthews
Deputy Minister

General Wayne Eyre
Chief of the Defence Staff