Canada is the country most directly affected by the USA’s rapid reshaping of the global order, and is facing an unprecedented trade and security shock.
Their Prime Minister Mark Carney, who addressed the Australian Parliament earlier this month, has taken the lead in outlining a vision for a new world. A vision which sees ‘middle powers’ with common democratic values, such as Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, working more closely together to assert themselves and shape a just and resilient global order.
The current global situation has huge implications for public servants, and a recent ANZSOG Forum unpacked what Canada’s message about dealing with global turmoil means for the governments of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
The online event, held jointly with the Forum of Federations and chaired by ANZSOG Dean and CEO, Professor Caron Beaton-Wells, brought together representatives from the three nations
Taki Sarantakis, President, Canada School of Public Service
Professor Janine O’Flynn, Director of the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy
Iain Rennie, CNZM, Secretary and Chief Executive to the Treasury NZ
Speakers talked of a ‘rupture’ to the global order, which happening alongside social and technological transformation, made the overdue reinvention of the public sector even more important.
This rupture is characterised by geopolitical fragmentation, economic coercion, weakened multilateralism, and heightened strategic competition, all of which change the role of middle powers.
The panel identified key challenges for the modern public sector including: responding at speed, operating under fiscal constraint, and addressing growing public distrust of institutions.
Effective public sector leaders must add ‘sense-making’ to their toolkit and be able to speak honestly about uncertainty, articulate underlying dynamics, and provide coherence through values and purpose.
Nostalgia is not a strategy
Forum of Federations President and CEO, Rupak Chattopadhyay introduced the panel by saying that Canada was at ‘another existential crisis in our history, both internally, but also in terms of foreign interference that we've had to deal with’.
“It’s not a smooth transition, but a fundamental break from traditional assumptions about a stable, rule-based order.
“For Westminster democracies, middle powers like ours. This tests the resilience, the agility, and the legitimacy of our institutions all at once.”
Mr Sarantakis said that the post-World War II liberal economic order – which had treated middle powers very well – had ended, but that no one was quite sure what the world was moving into.
“All three of us have a very good public service historically, but the state is going to be challenged to do different things going forward. The state is going to have to work at kind of a speed that historically our Westminster systems are not used to outside of wartime,” he said.
Professor O’Flynn said that Prime Minister Carney’s speeches had resonated across Australia and that she was struck by his view that ‘nostalgia is not a strategy’.
“In Australia we do look back a lot to our past as a sort of golden age of public administration, in a way that wasn't necessarily a true reflection of what happened,” she said.
She said that public servants needed to build their ‘sense-making’ capacity as a way to grapple with the complexity of the current moment and give the public an understanding of the dynamics at play.
“Stop pretending that things are okay, and to really speak truth to the dynamics that are shaping our world, and how that pushes us towards thinking about, ideas of collaboration and partnering.
“It’s the importance of humility in the face of complexity. That we don't have all of the answers, we don't necessarily know where we're going, but if we can at least speak that truth of uncertainty, it can help us to learn.”
Mr Rennie compared the current moment for Aotearoa New Zealand to the 1970s, when it lost access to UK trade overnight, potentially crippling its economy.
“My fundamental point is around resilience and optimism. The UK now takes less than 5 per cent of our exports because since the early 1970s we've looked outward and built a whole lot of relationships,” he said.
He said that the fundamental difference now was the role of technology, and the greater interdependence between nations, which was speeding up the rate of change.
“That, for me, is fundamentally the public sector administration challenge. The pace of change we might have delivered in the 1990s won't necessarily work in the 2020s.”
Serving the public under financial and trust constraints
Despite efforts in Australia’s federal government to build more capacity in-house, the dominant mood in governments is of resource constraints, and a range of demographic pressures squeezing budgets. This environment is complicated by a post-COVID drop in trust of government organisations.
Mr Rennie said that one of the challenges for public servants was that there was no national consensus around some difficult societal conversations.
“People actually still are more trustful of leaders that they can connect with, leaders who display strong values, leaders who can acknowledge things which don't go right,” he said.
“These pressures are telling us to be more visible and transparent as organisations, so that the communities and stakeholders that we serve can trust us. At the same time, we have to meld that with a model where public servants have been somewhat invisible, as part of the bargain between politicians and public servants.”
“One of the challenges now is how do we continue to serve the government of the day, in a way that they can trust and, at the same time, have a sufficient projection of who we are as institutions to build that bedrock of trust in the community. “
Professor O’Flynn said that public servants needed skills to grapple with and explain complexity rather than make futile attempts to tame it.
“Humility and empathy are some of the pathways for leaders in the public service to carry us through periods of great instability, where there is cynicism and negativity towards the role of the state and its actions.”
Mr Sarantakis said that the first role of the State remained to protect its citizens.
“But what that means now is different. Protecting your citizens now is, working at a rate of speed that we've never seen before and being ready to do something completely different tomorrow to what you've been doing yesterday,” he said.
“I am convinced that societies around the world will need their public service in the coming decade, more than any time outside of wartime in the last century. And it seems to me that, unfortunately, capacities of states around the Western world have declined and it's critical that we rebuild those capabilities quickly.
“Unfortunately, it's a little bit like trying to rebuild the airplane as you're going through the turbulence. But the turbulence is coming, and we will be judged - not on our intents – but on the outcomes and how well we help civil society meet those dangers ahead.”
The Canada’s Message online event was held on Friday 13 March, more information is available here.