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For anyone who cares about the condition of our federal public service, this is a very depressing story. It seems to confirm the widely reported slide of too many senior public service leaders from their traditional and proper role as non-partisan professionals to a new and improper role as partisan cheerleaders for the current political administration.

The finance incident is therefore overdue to be addressed, publicly, by the leaders of the public service, such as the clerk of the Privy Council, the official head of the public service; or the secretary of the Treasury Board, whose rules and policies were breached.

Action may already have been taken internally. But when a national news agency reports an incident so contrary to public service values, a public statement is needed to clear the air, and reassure Canadians – and public servants themselves – that Canada’s public service is still a non-partisan institution, in practice as well as in policy.

In the absence of a public course correction, we would be forced to conclude that the top leaders of the public service condone this kind of partisan behaviour by the most senior executives of the public service.

As reported by CP, the Finance ADM’s actions appear to constitute a violation not only of the general standards of conduct for public servants, but even of specific public service rules, such as those laid down in the Communications Policy and the Values and Ethics Code. The reason why the government of Canada has such policies is precisely to ensure that public servants don’t stray into this kind of partisan and unprofessional behaviour. In fact, the reported action seems, prima facie, to fall into one of the definitions of a “wrongdoing” in the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act: i.e. “a serious breach of a code of conduct,” such as the Values and Ethics Code (s.8(e)). Any conscientious public servant could thus make a “disclosure” about it, and prompt consideration of this case by the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner.