Clerk’s Remarks at the Parks Canada Executive Forum

November 2, 2016

Check against delivery.

Thank you for that warm introduction, there is so much going on! The Government that we all serve is hitting its anniversary on Friday. Boy, the year goes by fast. So there's all kinds of topics we could have an exchange about. 

Some of you, I would imagine, might be going to the APEX Induction event tonight. Who's going?  Who can we congratulate?  A shout out to the newbies, congratulations!

It is a really important community within organizations and particularly across the public service. It's only a little short of 5,000 people, I think, and part of my message is always: you have an enormous imprint on your teams and organizations; far more than you think you have. You have more discretion and you have more authority and you have more impact on organizational culture by the way you go about your jobs every day. 

So be mindful of it. Be conscious of your impact on other people and how people perceive every interaction, every meeting, and how you use your time makes a difference. We can talk about that a little bit. 

When we are trying to create a workplace that's healthy and safe, we are moving with a society that is talking about and engaging on mental health issues and workplace well-being issues, and you're seeing progress across private sector and public sector organizations. There is a real commitment by the Public Service of Canada, as the largest and most complex employer in the country, to do well by that. 

It's very important in every department, agency, organization, to know your business, know your people, know the work environment, and know what you can do. As feedback to you, I would say that I'm very impressed with what the agency is doing in the field of mental health, and workplace well-being. Keep it up and share your best practices and what you learn with the rest of the Public Service. 

You are doing a lot of interesting things in innovation and just looking at how you go about your business in interacting with Canadians. So again, just a shout out and encouragement to all of you. 

Recently, at the Public Service Awards of Excellence, one of your colleagues received the Outstanding Career award. Congratulations to Jeff Anderson for a remarkable career. I am sure there are many other examples of remarkable careers in the room here. All kinds of careers people can have within the agency and across the Public Service, and some of you will probably be feted at future awards events as well. 

We are very lucky to live and work in Canada. You just have to do the tour of other countries and the issues that seem to keep going back to governance and the ability of a society to take decisions and make them stick and to live with them. It is under considerable stress. People are coping with a lot of change, and you have governance systems that are close to dysfunctional. For example, Australia's had five prime ministers in five years; Spain hasn't formed a government this year. They may be about to have their third election in a year. I can do the tour of the world, and I can tell you that it is not a happy one, and to be honest, people are not able to deal with issues around demographics, or pensions, or economic competitiveness. I could go on and on…

We still have the ability as Canadians to come together and make choices. They seem to stick and we can move forward. It has been an advantage that Canadians have had for a very long time, and we're good at it. We are also good at governance. We tackle issues and when we elect a government, minority or majority, but especially a majority, they are able to forward the agenda that they got elected on. That doesn't happen in every country. So it's a precious thing and I am becoming more aware of that. 

That being said, when a government gets elected with an incredibly ambitious agenda, that's not a bad thing. It means that there's an ambition and a determination to improve our prosperity, to find ways of keeping us safe while being a free society, and to move to a low carbon economy without completely disrupting the existing economic structure of the country. I can go on. There are a lot of big issues and a lot of ambition, but I am pretty optimistic that we will be able to make those decisions and that they will stick, in the sense that, they just won’t all get immediately unravelled by another government coming along later, and we can move forward as a country. 

We have a very, very strong professional, non-partisan Public Service, which is able to respond to what democracy gives us. We are able to give advice. We are able to provide analysis, evidence, science. It's not perfect by any means, and I know you've been talking about that a fair bit. But we do it pretty well. And as I said in the award ceremony last week, I've had the opportunity to visit a lot of countries who have their leaders to go through. There are some things some countries do better than us, and we should learn from them, but “pound for pound” there is no country that we could trade public services with and be better off tomorrow. None. 

So be proud that you’re an executive in the Public Service of the Government of Canada and be excited that you're in the Public Service at this time when we're trying to do so many things at once. It's exhausting; it's demanding; and it takes you back to workplace well-being, and resilience, and how we're not going to drive each other crazy, and how we're going to be able to get all of this work organized and done; and how we're going to have to find different work processes and approaches. We can't do this with 1995 work processes. We certainly can't do it with the 1995 technologies. So the workplace, the tools, the buildings, the work processes all have to be constantly rethought. 

But the values of the Public Service are unchanging: non-partisanship; excellence;, respect; support; being responsive; and respectful of Canadians. We must also bring into that relationship a real strong determination, which started before last year and is accelerating to come to terms with our relationship with our Indigenous Peoples and make a path of reconciliation and move forward on that. That's a big challenge, but it's also a huge opportunity. 

And the agency, I know, has been at this for a long time. Parks Canada was one of the early pioneers in how you interact with Canadians and also how you organize yourself, how you program and how you do things. So I can only say keep it up. It's very important and it's an example for other departments and other countries and other public services. Continue to experiment and be bold. 

So those are just some of the themes I wanted to speak to you about today. It's busy. There's a lot going on. It's only been a year and the first part of the mandate was a lot of engagement and consultation. It's a Government whose DNA is: we need to go and talk to people who are affected by the decisions. This is informed by a strong belief that those decisions will stick and be more legitimate if people have had a chance to have their say. Not everybody's going to get what they want, but they will have had their say. And now they're coming back like boomerangs to the Cabinet table and you're seeing the Government work their way through a whole bunch of issues. We're going to have big challenges in greening government operations. We're going to have challenges in terms of our core businesses. There's an ambition to bring a lot of new people to Canada, a lot of new people. So how are we going to marry that with protecting and conserving the important natural spaces of the country. 

So there's an urgency to getting the balance that's sustainable and sustainable development. So that's just one topic to mention. And all of those new Canadians connecting to our historic heritage and the legacy of the four centuries of European settlement here, Indigenous history, and so on. The experience of new Canadians coming to parks and historic sites and so on. There's another opportunity of course. 

We are in a period of massive generational turnover. You’re about to see the last of baby boomers like me, and we're going to welcome 560 new EXs tonight. So there’s a lot of turnover. For me it's important that that be a methodical, smooth transition, wherein we can pass on values from our previous generations to future generations, and the continuity of excellent non-partisanship continues even though we may find very different ways to work and get together. 

I am a big fan of new technology and a relentless advocate for it, but I recognize there is value for people to come together physically in windowless conference rooms, like this one, from time to time and let people talk and listen to each other. So, it's a pleasure to hear from you.

Thank you very much. Miigwetch.