What’s up with Canada, anyway? A year ago, our usually placid dominion was shaken by a three-week-long protest of trucks in the capital, followed by a summer of mayhem at airports and passport offices. A federal bill aimed to restrict firearms in the fall, and several provincial governments announced they would not enforce it. In the winter, one province, Alberta, passed a sovereignty act aiming to repel federal incursions on its jurisdiction under the Constitution. And these are only a few examples of last year’s turmoil.

What’s going on in the capital? Two recent books address, not the specific issues, but how governance works at the federal level in Canada. Their authors present foils to one another. Preston Manning, a retired populist politician from Alberta, and Michael Wernick, a long-time federal public servant, both help readers piece together “how Ottawa works,” the role of the bureaucracy, and the outsized role of the prime minister in shaping it.

The Redtape Letters

Preston Manning is a well-known political leader who served as a member of Parliament from 1993 to 2003. Manning founded the populist Reform Party in 1987, hoping to represent the Canadian West and advocate for smaller government in federal politics. By 1997, he was leader of the Official Opposition to Jean Chrétien’s Liberal majority government. Twenty years after leaving politics, Manning is still considered a key figure in Canadian conservatism.

The Redtape Letters: Confidential Letters from Redtape, Leader of the Bureaucratic Party of Canada, to Party Members might be seen as the latest installment in his life’s mission. A slim, satirical volume, the book offers twelve letters “compiled” by Manning. Their inspiration is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, in which a senior devil offers advice to his junior devil nephew on practical means to advance evil in the world. Offered monthly from June 2022 to June 2023, Redtape’s brief missives instruct federal bureaucrats on ways to ensure the Bureaucratic Party of Canada “is and remains the most powerful political party in the country.”

Redtape is certain of his mission, leading 325,000 public servants across the country. His party is “now by far the largest, best organized, and most influential political party in the country.” It is political, despite being unelected to govern. The leader offers proven techniques to grow its ranks further while appearing to advance the goals of the elected party.

The first ten letters outline the party platform, advocating for such things as use of “our language, Bureaucratese” (Letter 2), or multiplying layers of bureaucracy to diffuse responsibility (Letter 3). The fiscal platform is—what else?—to promote government spending, taxing, and borrowing (Letter 6). Increasing regulation (Letter 7) and publicly owned enterprises (Letter 8) are crucial, especially in the resource sector. Beyond traditional resources, Redtape opines, “’the environment’ is the greatest natural resource sector of all and our aim must be to gain full control of it by wrapping it in green tape—all in the name of fighting climate change.”

Two letters are reserved for senior bureaucrats. Letter 9 describes a plan to thoroughly depersonalize services, reducing each Canadian to a single numeric ID. Letter 3 addresses the “Training of Ministers and Prime Ministers,” the senior bureaucrat’s “unenviable responsibility” to “show these political transients the washrooms closet to their new offices and everything else they need to know to stay out of administrative or political trouble.”

The platform, as it turns out, is not universally accepted. In his tenth letter, Redtape decries “an odious minority” who “cling to outmoded views of what it means to be a ‘civil servant.’” Letter 11 tips his hand, outlining measures to rid the Bureaucratic Party constitution of elements that would “impede the establishment of the authoritative Bureaucratic State.”

The book is a quick, fun read, with sparks of wisdom to which we will return. But first, some might ask what Preston Manning knows about bureaucracy anyway. The book’s cover states he has encountered a real-world illustration of every tactic—either from his own experience or that of his father, who was premier of Alberta from 1943 to 1968. Manning himself only ever served in opposition, though. He never governed and was no civil servant. Could his portrait be overdrawn?

Governing Canada

Enter Michael Wernick, who possesses the years in Canada’s public service that Manning lacks. With thirty-eight years served, he reached the summit in 2016, when the newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed him Clerk of the Privy Council. Literally the “note-taker and guardian of all Cabinet’s paperwork,” the clerk is both secretary to the cabinet and head of the non-partisan public service. Overall, Wernick served five ministers as deputy minister and four prime ministers—both Conservative and Liberal—in various roles at the Privy Council Office before his abrupt retirement in 2019.

Wernick’s book appeared exactly one year before Manning’s, on October 25, 2021. Governing Canada: A Guide to the Tradecraft of Politics offers a practitioner’s account of how our country’s governance works from the perspective of the “desk in the corner” by the cabinet table. The desk is reserved for the Clerk of the Privy Council—a role, Wernick reminds, “that goes back eight centuries to English kings.” He wrote the book to fill a gap, he states. Primers produced by academic or government sources may be useful, but such material “is a bit too safe, doesn’t quite capture why things are the way they are, and doesn’t delve into the real tradecraft that determines success.”

The term “tradecraft” typically refers to espionage and secrecy. The choice is puzzling at first, as the book never divulges any name or confidence. And still, a conspiratorial aura pervades it: Wernick takes readers “into the rooms where the discussions take place and where decisions are forged.” He shares direct advice that he would give a new prime minister, minister, and deputy minister—offering it in the second person, making readers privy to secrets.

An interview with Maclean’s reveals the book’s inspiration: Nicolo Machiavelli, whose Prince offered second-person advice to the ruler of Florence. It was the model Wernick said he needed to begin. Like Machiavelli too, what clearly interests Wernick is power and its exercise—how it is exercised, not how it ought to be. Following a brief—generally useful—primer on the structures of governance in Canada, he devotes over a third of the volume to advising the prime minister. About one quarter is directed at ministers, while a scant fifteen percent advises deputies—other senior public servants like Wernick was himself.

Speaking of deputies, Wernick casually dismisses critiques like Manning’s, “a caricature of the deputy ministers as belonging to some sort of permanent priesthood, enduring while ministers come and go.” Quite the opposite, he insists: each deputy knows that he or she is appointed at pleasure and that the position could be revoked at any time. Expendability sharpens the mind. As he reminds a minister: “your deputy is highly motivated to see you succeed, or at least to keep you out of trouble.” For their part, deputies should regard their minister as a development project, serving as a kind of executive coach. Redtape would approve.

Wernick’s advice to the prime minister is exhaustive. He reminds us of the prime minister’s “daunting array of roles”—member of Parliament for the constituency; leader of the political party; head of government in international affairs; first minister of the federation; chair of the cabinet; leader of the party caucus; and minister responsible for the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister’s Office. Prime ministers should meet provincial and territorial premiers as rarely as possible together (they only gang up), and cabinet ministers as little as possible one-on-one (unless “to give encouragement or a kick in the pants”).

A frequent musing concerns time—in Wernick’s view, the sole finite resource in governing. In a statement worthy of Manning’s Bureaucratic Party Leader:

A government can spend money it doesn’t have on hand by borrowing. It can replenish or augment its political capital. It can put more people to work on problems. And it can add more processes of consultation and deliberation. What it cannot do is add to the 168 hours in a week or change the fact that it will have only so many weeks to use before the buzzer goes and it is time to face the voters again.

Much of the advice strays into more banal regions of executive coaching. Some will be useful to those interested in the finer points of manipulation: keeping others off balance appears to be integral to the tradecraft. Images of prey and predator recur. A minister’s political staff will be “constantly scanning for political danger, and opportunity, and the only ones who will be looking to enhance your standing in the pack.” Wernick asks the prime minister: Is he fit in the polls and fund-raising, or will political opponents “be smelling blood and coming in for the kill?”

Successive surveys confirm that morale within the public service remains low, with middle managers addressing constant human resource complaints.

Thankfully for citizens, we learn that the best means to enhance one’s power is to govern with sufficient competence to ensure re-election. One should also take care to avoid ethical gaffes or vote-killing displays of attitude. “I once heard issues of arrogance and entitlement described as the ‘kryptonite’ of governing,” Wernick confides. An effective leader will keep the eye on a loftier prize. He reminds the prime minister: “managing the short-term challenges is just a shield, one that lets you aim higher and bend the curve—of history.”

The prime minister as a bender of history is the central figure in Canada’s political universe. The book reveals further sources of his power: the prime minister bestows or withholds key offices, including the monarch’s representative in Canada. The prime minister selects cabinet ministers, managing them as a “portfolio of assets.” He holds a “double key” to the budget with the finance minister. His office selects ministers’ staffers—or makes “a very strong suggestion that you will be brave to refuse.” In recent years, ministers receive published mandate letters containing the prime minister’s instructions. Each year, the governor general reads out the prime minister’s Speech from the Throne, setting out the government’s agenda for the year.

No metaphor is too exalted. “Think of a solar system with the prime minister at the centre,” Wernick counsels. “The difference is that in this solar system, you can move from the outer to the inner circles, and vice versa.” Prime ministers should avoid cultivating courtiers, he advises, who seek only to curry favour. Yet those hailing from further flung regions might be forgiven for seeing everyone in Wernick’s solar system as a courtier. With its ever-shifting pairs of ministers and deputies, and its triangles of staffers, civil servants, and elected officials, the National Capital Region resembles a royal court. The prime minister, a role not mentioned in the Constitution itself, becomes a de facto monarch.

Where to Now?

Sadly, the chief utility of Wernick’s book is that it accurately explains how Canada is governed. Please the prime minister and the benefits flow. Cross the prime minister and you lose. But who wins? Wernick’s book should be set in context of the events of 2019 that preceded it, which remind less of Redtape than of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s ill-fated fixer of the Wolf Hall trilogy.

There is an art to successfully navigating dynamics with Parliament, Wernick states in his book. One needs to respect Parliament’s “theatre of answerability” when hauled before a committee to present a bill or justify a decision. It is performance theatre: “Boring and forgettable is just fine.”

In the event, two dustups with a parliamentary committee led to the former clerk’s fall. In Spring 2019, the Committee on Justice and Human Rights wished to learn the truth behind allegations that the clerk had pressured the former attorney general, who was later ejected from the cabinet. At issue was her decision not to defer criminal prosecution of a large Quebec company charged with fraud. The prime minister found that decision troubling, as the clerk impressed on her repeatedly. The attorney general—who understood her role and ethical obligations differently from those at the centre—was unmoved. As further details emerged, it became clear: the first Indigenous Justice Minister and Clerk of the Privy Council inhabited different political universes.

Much political kryptonite was detonated on the government side—this time by the clerk too. To contain the wreckage, Prime Minister Trudeau’s chief of staff resigned and Wernick retired. Shaken but undeterred, their leader was entrusted to new handlers.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer predicts that Canada’s public service will grow further, to over 400,000 in the next five years. Successive surveys confirm that morale within it remains low, with middle managers—who are clearly not Wernick’s concern—addressing constant human resource complaints. Service quality has plunged in almost all areas. Western disaffection has once again peaked, due to federal hostility to its main economic engine, the oil and gas sector.

As for the men and women at the centre, a recent bold act was to creatively reimagine Canadian law to justify the Prime Minister’s declaration of a public order emergency in February 2022. He chose Valentine’s Day to crush the Trucker Convoy, which intelligence agencies have since confirmed was a spontaneous popular movement to protest federal COVID-19 measures.

Satire is the appropriate genre to treat such a government, which reflects no one’s tradition of good government. And returns us to Redtape. Manning’s inspiration was not Machiavelli, but C.S. Lewis—a choice allowing him to entertain not simply how Canada is governed, but how it ought to be.

In the book’s twelfth letter, a new author, Notape, has been freshly elected to lead the Bureaucratic Party and sends a conciliatory message to fellow civil servants. The first action will be to establish “a genuine ‘service commitment’ on the part of our members in our dealings with Canadians, and to humanize and personalize our relations with Canadians, whom we are dedicated to serve.” The next action will be to review and reform Redtape’s policies, which had diminished the status and reputation of the civil service.

We came to be known by the common people as “bureaucrats”—cold, self-serving functionaries dedicated solely to the advancement of our own interests and more feared for the influence we wielded than respected for the services provided.

Through satire and its concluding restoration, Manning’s book offers an imaginative path out of Wernick’s bleak universe. An election of the public service leadership won’t happen—as Manning himself knows. But merely imagining it can help shake the spell of inevitability that Redtape—arguably also Wernick—seeks to cast. The course of future history remains open.

Ours is a deferential country. It would take hard work by many hands to dispel the authoritarian cast our governance has taken. But through popular resistance, a decisive electoral mandate, a federal governing party insisting on less intrusive government, and a successful push from provinces to decentralize, a turn to collegial, citizen-focused governance is possible.