Courageous Conversations

Detail from "The Dance Screen (the Scream Too)" by James Hart. Part of the permanent collection at the Audain Art Gallery, Whistler, British Columbia.

On March 21, the government I currently work for introduced a bundle of legislation called the "Fixing the Hydro Mess Act." They picked the name themselves, perhaps not seeing how it might backfire.

My team was responsible for the part that overhauls the Ontario Energy Board. When he announced the bill, the Minister called the OEB "broken," which I imagine for the people working there must have stung.

And now my team and I are meeting with the senior staff at the OEB to tell them what we need to work on to bring about the changes the government wants to make.

Our conversations are civil and professional, although there are occasional misunderstandings. 

My team and I will think we're talking about one thing. The OEB folks will think we're talking about something else. When we become aware of our mistake, we go back to the beginning and start again.

We don't joke around. And I was sorry, the moment I said it, when I invoked the "crumble into dust" scenes from the end of Infinity War as an image for the government's intentions for the OEB. 

I was worried the reference to pop culture -- and 50% obliteration -- was inappropriate.

But then the OEB lawyer and designated bad cop in the discussions brightened and said, "We'll know in two weeks!"

Maybe she didn't quite hear what I said. Doesn't matter. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen





  

Power

On March 2, I wrote that it is never a good sign when public servants pop into public view. Without hazarding a direct guess about the fate of Michael Wernick, I wondered, based on the experience of fourth-wall-breaking senior Ontario bureaucrat Steve Orsini, if things would go well. They did not. 

Wernick recently announced his early retirement because his role in shoring up the Trudeau Liberals in the SNC-L affair cost him the trust of the Conservative caucus.

It says something that bureaucrats, the non-political players in government, so cleave to principle and trust that they resign when they feel either has been compromised. Used to be only politicians needed to do that.

On the other side of the disappearing divide between the political and public servant role in government is the most principled politician in the world right now: a woman standing up to hate, xenophobia and easy access to automatic weapons.  

Obviously I'm worried about her, too.

What You Can't See

I celebrated the first anniversary of my job at the Ministry of Energy Etc. by attending something called the Fortis Energy Exchange.

Like oxygen, people care about electricity only when it's not there. This absence of interest enables huge energy sector companies - like Fortis - to be completely obscure.  

The event was fully paid for by Fortis, set in a swanky venue with very nice food and fine swag at the table for participants who had to be invited to attend, but otherwise paid nothing for the pleasure. Every big name in the business and people from all over North America and the Caribbean were there. Panels covered weighty topics and the gentleman in the photo above, Thomas Kuhn, spoke for the best part of an hour about the energy sector of the future.

I'd been asked by my boss to attend but wasn't very clear on what, exactly, the Fortis Energy Exchange was. So I asked the people at the table with me - two guys named Bill, one from Winnipeg and one from Montreal, and a woman named Christine from up north who worked with a First Nations partnership - if they knew what it was about. They did not.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Iceberg

March of the 50 Storey Towers seen from the Allan Gardens:
The corner of Dundas and Jarvis. 

About a year ago, I started at the Ministry of Energy (now the Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines). I mentioned at the time that my first task was to reform the Ontario Energy Board, the agency that decides, among other things, what rates local utilities can charge their customers.

Over the past year, my team and I have supported the work of the panel appointed to review the OEB. We saw them talk to hundreds of people interested in their enquiry and then saw them disbanded in what no one but me calls the "June 29 Massacre" - the day when dozens of Orders in Council were rescinded by the new government, casualties of which included the Chief Science Officer, the Premier's Special Advisor on Climate Change John Godfrey and each of the members of the OEB panel. 

The panel was reconstituted in August with a streamlined mandate, downsized budget and shortened timeline. Thanks to my team, the Panel made its deadline and handed in its homework to the Minister, as requested, at the end of October, 2018.

The report of the OEB Modernization Review Panel saw public release this week. 

The government is carefully considering its contents.

After the hubbub that always accompanies a release of a controversial document, my team and I enjoyed a relatively quiet March break week. 

The quiet will be over soon.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

26 cm of snow almost gone.

What Really Happened

This busy and hard to read diagram is the fullest expression of the infographic below. You can find a legible list here.

Both the chart above and the infographic below illustrate the idea that there at least 24 and as many as 180 mental errors humans make when they attempt to comprehend the world around them.

Although I can't begin to sort out my mixed feelings about the illustration (in this grotesque appropriation of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Man" the two white guys nestled under Anthropomorphized God's left arm are Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky) the idea of cognitive bias does help me sort out the mixed feelings I have about SNC-Lavalin. 

You can find a legible version here.

Both Jody Wilson-Raybould and Gerald Butts brought their cognitive biases to the three meetings at issue. These pale in comparison to the biases brought by the story-tellers who have been generating column inches and/or making political hay about the matter ever since the story broke.

I will admit that my own cognitive bias makes me skeptical of the claim that, even though there are 180 ways to get it wrong, there is still a world out there as it "really" is.

I am biased to believe that humans can choose to make or break their world simply by how they react to it. Sometimes their reactions will take a better thing and make it somehow worse. Like electing Donald Trump the President of the United States. Though some people think that's working out just fine.

In any event, whatever you may think of SNC-L, of Ms. Wilson-Raybould or of the Prime Minister, please don't think that any of this makes Andrew Scheer a better person.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Public Servants in the News

Accomplished doberman holds both ball and dachshund in her mouth.

A successful public servant is one you never hear about. People lionized within the halls of the bureaucracy for their skill, their experience and their long tenure are anonymous outside. This is as it should be. Attention belongs to the politicians.

So it's never a good sign when a public servant's name makes the news.

Take Steve Orsini, the Ontario government's most senior public servant, the Secretary of Cabinet. He's been in public service almost thirty years, a respected smooth operator whose signal accomplishment in a career full of same was the seamless implementation of the harmonized sales tax in Ontario. No mean feat.

But then he got his name in the news as part of the hiring panel that sought to bring in a candidate for OPP Commissioner so under-qualified that they had to change the job description and *poof* Steve Orsini was gone.

Other public servants - less admired than Steve Orsini - who have had their cover blown are the Clerk and Sergeant at Arms of the BC Legislature, Craig James and Gary Lenz. After being frog marched out of the Legislature in November last year, they have been accused of profligate spending of the public dime for their personal benefit. 

The most senior public servant in all of Canada went public recently, weighing in with testimony about the SNC-Lavalin kerfuffle. What happens to him remains to be seen.

Finally, Tony Dean, a former Ontario Secretary of Cabinet, shared his perspective on the role of the public service and the Doug Ford government in a purportedly public publication but which is really read only by public servants, so he should be OK. 

What's With the Puppies?

Pictured below are the droves of public servants who lined up for hours on Tuesday this past week to play with and pat three not-quite-full-grown dogs: a doberman, a dachshund and a pointer. 

 

The event started at 11:30. This is the line up at 11:30.
Note the First Nations artwork on the wall.

This all happened in the soon-to-be renovated 900 Bay Street, the early-70's edifice which exemplifies the aesthetic of grand public buildings that's long since been lost to austerity. All of the people in these shots - and the thousands of others currently working in the Queen's Park complex - are on April 1 this year slated to be moved to other premises for the duration of the renovation.

The local bargaining unit thought it might be fun for its members to allay moving-related stress levels by hanging out with some puppies. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen