(Ottawa) – The Hill Times, Monday, June 14, 2010 – By: Kristen Shane
A political staffer has to navigate a world of divided loyalties in staying morally upright while protecting the party and the minister. It’s like hand-to-hand combat.
A proposed new graduate degree program in political management at Carleton University will be a welcome forum to help political staffers navigate a profession with no rulebook, say experienced political observers.
Carleton University recently announced that it plans to accept its first 20 to 25 students to the program in September 2011, thanks to a $15-million commitment by Calgary oil tycoon Clayton Riddell, the largest donation in the university’s history.
Students will be able to com- plete the degree after two semesters of full-time coursework and a 10-week internship.
Admitted for their breadth of experience and enthusiasm for politics, students with a goal of becoming political staffers will be thrown together, no matter their political hue, to learn about how public policy ideas become law, how to effectively communicate to the public, interact with politicians and public servants and do damage control when the need arises.
“If we can equip a cadre of pro- fessionalized political staff mem-bers with a set of understandings and skills, such that they are much better prepared for what’s going to confront them in the political realm, such that they don’t commit rudimentary errors, that in itself will be a step towards sounder and more informed public policy- making,” says Prof. Chris Dornan, a journalism instructor and director of the Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs at Carleton, who has steered the new degree program through its gestation period.
It doesn’t take long for Prof. Dornan to think of examples of “rudimentary errors” staffers have made recently.
For instance, he cautions future staffers against letting an MP3 recorder with a private conversation between them and their minister get into the hands of a journalist and then failing to pick it up when the journalist tells the staffer they have the recording.
Prof. Dornan doesn’t fault political staffers. “They’re well- educated and they’re very enthusiastic and they’re drawn to it out of passion and conviction. But they have degrees in things like politi- cal science or history,” he said. “It doesn’t prepare you to walk into a minister’s office and be able to do what the minister and the political apparatus expects of you.”
Degrees in public administration are meant to make public servants. Degrees in political science sharpen a student’s knowledge of grand, abstract ideas of the exercise of political authority.There is no formal university education available now in Canada that focuses on the practi- cal political skills that future political staffers need, said Prof. Dornan.
The closest alternatives are likely short-term courses offered by Parliament itself, or Parlia- mentary internships.
“People in the trenches, the political staff, do learn,” he said, “they learn on the job. But they just learn in bits and pieces and often they learn by trial and error.” Joe Jordan, a former Ontario Liberal MP, Cabinet staffer, and now lobbyist, knows what it’s like. “Talk about being thrown in the deep end of the pool,” recalled Mr. Jordan of his first days on the Hill. Mr. Jordan is in favour of the pro- posed Carleton program.
“There [are] these assumptions that people that work in government understand government,”he said by phone from his O’Connor Street office with the Capital Hill Group consultancy firm. “I’m of the view that some of those assumptions have to be examined a little more closely.”
A political staffer has to navigate a world of divided loyalties in stay- ing morally upright while protect- ing their party and their minister.
“You’re dancing around that playground, and there’s no rule- book,”said Mr. Jordan.
The need for one is perhaps more acute now than 20 years ago, said Prof. Dornan.
The Lobbying Act bars key government decision-makers such as ministers, associate deputy ministers and all exempt staff from lobbying the federal government for five years after they leave their jobs. That’s had the effect of hollowing out the ranks of mid-career political staffers who might normally mentor young, green recruits, said Prof. Dornan.
Moreover, the days of cross- party note-swapping among staff- ers are long gone.
“Essentially, they’ve been told: ‘You’re not allowed to speak to the opposition in any capacity whatsoever,’”he said.
That leaves staffers with fewer and fewer resources to draw upon for advice and guidance.
What makes matters worse is that in an environment where there is little formal training or human resources to tap, political staffers are increasingly being given more power.
“Ministerial offices always had an important role to play in the politics of government, but were quite marginalized on the policy side. That changed under [former prime minister Brian] Mulroney and it has not reverted,”said Donald Savoie, author, University of Moncton professor, and Canada Research Chair in public administration and governance.”
Arriving on Parliament Hill, having worked in a constituency office in Moose Jaw or Moncton,having no knowledge of how Otta- wa works, I think is fraught with risk,” said Prof. Savoie, by phone from Moncton, N.B.
A degree program to help staffers understand how govern- ment works, how decisions are made, and the different roles of ministerial staff and public ser- vants is a good thing, he said.
”I think Ottawa is the right place, given that…you’ll need the kind of resources that are avail- able on Parliament Hill,” he said. “I think that Carleton is the right place, given its long history in public administration.”
Prof. Dornan, and other Carleton faculty on the curriculum design committee “know the sys- tem,”said Prof. Savoie.They include Elly Alboim, a principal with the Earnscliffe Strategy Group political consultancy firm, and former Hill journalist; and William Cross, politi- cal scientist and Bell Chair in Cana- dian Parliamentary democracy.
Although these faculty may teach the occasional class, Prof. Dornan said he expects the uni- versity to advertise for many of the three tenured staff and vari- ous adjunct faculty positions to be drawn from senior ranks of yes- terday and today’s political land- scape. It’s too early to name names. They’re subject to hiring commit- tee decisions, said Prof. Dornan.
But already, some well-known figures in Canadian politics are aligning themselves with the pro- gram. Video testimonials on Car- leton’s website include Transport Minister John Baird (Ottawa West- Nepean, Ont.); Scott Reid, former Liberal strategist and deputy chief of staff to former prime minister Paul Martin; and Jodi White, a Car- leton graduate and member of the program’s curriculum design com- mittee who was chief of staff to for- mer prime minister Kim Campbell.
In the shadow of the PeaceTower, Mr. Baird asserted: “Carleton’s new program will be a great benefit to young people when they’re making a career choice on how to best equip themselves for a career on the politi- cal side of government.”
But for all the good it may do, Queen’s University professor emeritus Ned Franks says a gradu- ate degree program isn’t going to fix the murkiness surrounding the roles and responsibilities of exempt staff, a problem at the root cause of recurring political staffers’ gaffes.
There are no clear rules governing their authority and accountability, leading them to sometimes overstep their bounds into the bureaucratic realm, said Prof. Franks, for instance by vet- ting what can and cannot be released through the Access to Information Act.
“I think it can only be fixed once the legislative framework is clear, and it’s not. It’s a statutory black hole at this point in time,” he said.
But a political management program, “is better than nothing for sure.”