Jeff Patch: Civil service suffers from 'sycophantic culture'

The New Brunswick public service is in need of a cultural shake up as too many bureaucrats are shying away from giving ministers their best advice or owe their jobs to political parties, according to a retired civil servant.

​Jeff Patch, who joined the civil service in 1981, said he observed an influx of partisans inside the bureaucracy, starting in the 1990s and continuing with subsequent premiers.

Patch, who is now retired and works as a college instructor, said there is a decline in the notion of a neutral public servant and bureaucrats are now more willing to bend to the wishes of their political masters.

• Opinion: Political problems plague New Brunswick public service

Those who move up through the system and those who are given greater responsibility and are moved to what would be more favourable positions, are more likely those who would go with the flow rather than those who would give feedback that is not consistent with what a minister would want to hear,” Patch said.

The retired bureaucrat said he decided to speak out now in the hope of influencing how the incoming Liberal government of Premier Brian Gallant names senior civil servants.

Patch said it isn’t just the high-profile patronage positions, such as former Tory energy minister Margaret-Ann Blaney being given the job of president and chief executive officer of Efficiency New Brunswick. He called Blaney's appointment the tip of an iceberg.

​He said there are other positions, which are away from the public glare, that are being hired by politicians or by political staff, such as executive assistants.

“I should make it quite clear that the civil service is full of very professional, qualified people who want to do the right thing on behalf of the people of New Brunswick,” he said.

“But there are a number of people who have been appointed or reclassified into positions or otherwise hired, not in my belief on the basis of merit, but on the basis on who they know, how they are linked or in return for favours.”

Deputy Premier Stephen Horsman said on Tuesday that he agrees with the “spirit” of Patch’s comments.

Horsman said the former Progressive Conservative government made several deputy minister-level appointments to people connected to the party.

The deputy premier said he believes those in civil service jobs should be hired based on “merit and competence.”

​“We need to have people who are capable of doing their job and doing the job properly and not just filling a chair based on a political party,” Horsman said.

There are eight deputy ministers, or presidents of Crown corporations, who have already left the public service or are expected to leave because they are deemed to be political appointees.

These individuals include people, such as Roger Clinch, Daniel Allain, who worked inside the Office of the Premier, as well as others such as Greg Lutes and Nancy McKay, who worked in other parts of the bureaucracy.

When Alward took power in 2010, there were five Liberal-appointed deputy ministers who were also terminated.

One of the deputy minister positions that opened up in 2010 was at the Department of Justice and Office of Attorney General. This had been a position that had been previously held by politically connected civil servants.

Alward, however, named Judith Keating as the department’s acting deputy minister as he started a consultation process for a full-time replacement.

These consultations were to have included two senior New Brunswick judges, Canadian Bar Association – New Brunswick division; l'Association des juristes d’expression française du Nouveau-Brunswick and the New Brunswick Law Society.

Keating eventually became the permanent deputy minister of justice.

Curbing patronage

Following the controversial appointment of Blaney to Efficiency New Brunswick, the legislature passed new laws aimed at reducing patronage.

Gallant has promised that all chief executive officers of Crown corporations should be hired based on merit.

I don’t want to give people the impression that I am saying the whole civil service is full of this. I think one of these is unethical and too many.- Jeff Patch

When Daniel Allain, a former Alward campaign strategist, left his job as president of NB Liquor to take a senior position within the premier’s office, the Crown corporation conducted a public recruitment search to find his replacement.

Patch said there are models that could be adopted so the public can be confident that senior positions inside the bureaucracy are also filled with people based on merit and not partisan connections.

He pointed to the U.K. Civil Service Commission that adds a level of independence to the hiring process and it is legislated that recruitment must be based on merit and hiring must be fair and open.

Patch said the civil service functions best when there is a “healthy tension” between the civil servants and politicians.

But he said too many professional civil servants are now worried that a decision to raise questions directly to a minister could be a “career limiting” move.

He stopped short of estimating how many people inside the civil service are political.

“I don’t want to give people the impression that I am saying the whole civil service is full of this. I think one of these is unethical and too many,” Patch said.

"But when you see one occasionally every few years growing to a handful growing to something more than a handful — again being subjective and anecdotal — then the system is wrong and it is being corrupted. ... It is being corrupted more than it was in the past."