{"id":299,"date":"2010-06-02T17:57:46","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T22:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/?p=299"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:08:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:08:18","slug":"carleton-given-15m-to-create-new-political-aide-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/2010\/carleton-given-15m-to-create-new-political-aide-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton given $15M to create new political aide program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton given $15M to create new political aide program\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

(Ottawa) \u2013  Ottawa Citizen, June 2, 2010 \u2013 By Kathryn May<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donation by Calgary CEO largest in university\u2019s history<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A Calgary businessman has given Carleton University $15 million to create a new master\u2019s program for the hundreds of ministerial aides who roam Parliament Hill and other corridors of power with no training and little accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The donation by Clayton Riddell, founder and CEO of Paramount Resources Ltd., is the single largest gift in Carleton\u2019s history. It will create Canada\u2019s first \u201cpolitical management\u201d program to improve governance with training for political staffers, campaigners and office-holders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe people who staff the corridors of political power should be as educated in the rigours of their jobs, as are public servants and journalists,\u201d said Chris Dornan, director of Carleton\u2019s Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one-year program, to be announced today, will be patterned after similar ones at Fordham University, George Washington University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. It will be housed at Carleton\u2019s faculty of public affairs. The first class of 25 students will begin in September 2011 if approved by the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea began with Preston Manning, who said he became convinced of the need for a more intensive university course after running crash courses at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy to \u201craise the level of knowledge and skill of political practitioners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manning said Carleton\u2019s president, Roseann O\u2019Reilly Runte, was keen and committees were quickly struck to examine the feasibility before making the pitch that pushed the idea through the university\u2019s channels. The big obstacle was money and, after much door-knocking, Manning was key in bringing Riddell aboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riddell has no affiliation with the school, but said in a statement he was convinced by Manning that Carleton\u2019s programs in public policy and public affairs, coupled with its Ottawa location, made it the best choice for such a program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople love to complain and criticize and it\u2019s wonderful to see people get up and do something really positive,\u201d said Runte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a transformative gift for the university, the donor and the country because, if we can make government better, then we have filled an education mission and Mr. Riddell has shown great leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manning said political staffers could learn on the job years ago, but not in today\u2019s world of 24-hour-a-day communication. A green staffer\u2019s misstep or mistake can \u201cend up on You Tube by that night,\u201d he said. Instead, he said: \u201cTrain them better and prevent the mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manning said the Conservatives\u2019 accountability act post-employment rules made the problem worse because they deterred the older, experienced political aides who should have been mentors to help train a new crop of staffers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Manning argued such a program was also needed to train would-be staffers on ethical behaviour, which should shape all their decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said ethics shouldn\u2019t be taught as a course, but \u201cpermeate\u201d the program so it\u2019s uppermost in their minds when doing their jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the program must also be \u201ccross-partisan\u201d to better orient its graduates for the \u201cmost partisan arena you can get.\u201d The various political parties also had input into the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The power and influence of ministerial aides has grown dramatically over the years, but they learn on-the-job with no training or code of conduct and a murky understanding of their roles and relationships with ministers, bureaucrats and the public. Many have argued this inexperience and lack of training are a weakness in Canada\u2019s governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aides are typically young, smart, ambitious and attracted to politics, having worked on a campaign or in a youth wing of political parties. Critics have called them \u201cloose cannons, amoral political warriors\u201d and \u201caccountability sinkholes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The uncertainty about their role is at the heart of the political furor over political aide Sebastien Togneri, who blocked the release of a sensitive report under the Access to Information Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, Jasmine MacDonnell, then the 26-year-old aide to current Labour Minister Lisa Raitt, lost her job after losing a briefing book and a tape recording of her boss, which landed in the hands of a journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dornan said the courses should prepare senior political staffers at all levels of government for what was expected of them on the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he hoped it would also tone down the rancour of today\u2019s partisan politics. The students, who will come from all political stripes, will have to work together on projects, which should promote a greater understanding of political differences than they learn coming through the ranks of political parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe hope they will see their opponents as honourable combatants in the forum of contestation and debate that is healthy, and you can put yourself in the shoes of your opponents,\u201d Dornan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liane Benoit did the last major study on political aides for the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal and has long pressed for a code of conduct for staffers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said a program to professionalize political aides was a step in the right direction, but their role was still fuzzy and ill-defined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe problem is that it\u2019s up to Parliament, not a university, to define this role,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The curriculum will be built around courses on Canada\u2019s institutions and governance, communications, campaign management, turning public policy ideas into legislation, as well as the sometimes thorny and murky relationships between staffers and ministers, public servants and the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When completed, graduates should be equipped to work as senior ministerial aides, legislative assistants, strategists, campaign managers, government advisers and policy liaison officers for NGOs and other organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Ottawa) \u2013  Ottawa Citizen, June 2, 2010 \u2013 By Kathryn May Donation by Calgary CEO largest in university\u2019s history A Calgary businessman has given Carleton University $15 million to create a new master\u2019s program for the hundreds of ministerial aides who roam Parliament Hill and other corridors of power with no training and little accountability. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/politicalmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}