"But when this crisis subsides, Canada’s public servants should not go all the way back to normal. They should be empowered to continue embracing uncertainty, learning through experimentation, and continuing to work more collaboratively across sectors and jurisdictions to bring different perspectives to the table."

The COVID-19 crisis has reminded us that government matters. Alongside the crucial role of health care professionals and support staff, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced millions of Canadians to look for emergency support from government. The work of our public servants has seldom been as important.

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Governments and public services tend to work well in crises — the mission is usually clear but the environment is complex. There is considerable uncertainty: information is often incomplete and rapidly changing; while new relationships must be developed, strained ones need to be mended; citizens are demanding assistance and answers and political leaders are under tremendous pressure to make prudent and timely decisions reassuring citizens that the government is acting in their best interest.

Fast access to good data is required to inform rapid policy analysis, risk assessment and advice to political leaders on a broad range of financial challenges and myriad program responses to support front-line health responders. In this crisis, it has been equally important to tap the talent and resources of Canada’s entrepreneurs and high-tech industries in speeding up diagnostic testing and vaccine development. This is a case of “go big or go home” measures paralleled by constant monitoring to ensure that unanticipated issues and opportunities can be quickly addressed as they come up. Pandemics don’t wait for bureaucracies to catch up — business as usual isn’t going to work.

We are now seeing the best of Canada’s public servants at all levels of government:

Mass job-losses prompted the rapid design of emergency financial support legislation focused on both businesses and workers. Fast-tracked implementation of the new Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) resulting in a flood of six million applications. Close to six million claims have been processed in the past couple of weeks by staff from the CRA, Service Canada and others drafted-in from other federal departments.

16,000 Canadians on 119 flights from 65 countries have been returned home in what is said to be the largest repatriation effort in Canada’s history. The effort was led by Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and supported by hundreds of Canada’s public servants, both at home and in consular missions around the globe.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), the lead agency on public health, been working continuously with its provincial counterparts to gather data on the spread of the virus and on strategies to bring it under control and to develop responses to it. Close collaboration between PHAC and provincial disease management experts has resulted in consistent communications on the nature of the disease and risks associated with it. This has in turn paved the way for the current social distancing and quarantine practices we are becoming so familiar with. During crises, most people want to know what they can do to help. PHAC and political leaders responded by asking Canadians to “do your part to flatten the curve.”

There is global competition for personal protective equipment for front-line health workers, and a race for faster diagnostic testing options and vaccines. This has seen an unprecedented effort by public servants supporting Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and Anita Anand, Minister of Public Services and Procurement. Efforts by multiple departments have resulted in vibrant partnerships with Canadian entrepreneurs and larger enterprises.

Public servants at Indigenous Services are leading efforts to support indigenous communities; Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are focusing on the integrity of the agri-food supply chain; and the Canada Border Services Agency is enforcing travel restrictions at airports, land crossings, rail and seaports.

Staff at the Department of Finance and Treasury Board Secretariat are getting money out of the door, sorting out how we will pay for all of this and audit spending measures while at the same time looking down the road at how the Canada will manage rapidly accumulating deficits.

The department of Intergovernmental Affairs is supporting Minister Chrystia Freeland in working collaboratively with provinces and territories to ensure an integrated response to the crisis, while public servants in the Privy Council Office and a group of senior deputy ministers are supporting Freeland in her role as Deputy PM and chair of the COVID-19 oversight Cabinet Committee.

None of this is to say that all this work has been perfect. Perfect is not possible, especially in the face of a monumental crisis.

The public service doesn’t usually work like this, with good reason. The norm is a slower and cautious approach with multiple layers of scrutiny and risk assessment.

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But when this crisis subsides, Canada’s public servants should not go all the way back to normal. They should be empowered to continue embracing uncertainty, learning through experimentation, and continuing to work more collaboratively across sectors and jurisdictions to bring different perspectives to the table. Public servants want permission to innovate as much as Canadians would benefit from it.

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