Savoie: In trying to adapt, the Public Service has blurred some lines

Michael Wernick’s resignation as clerk of the Privy Council earlier this week speaks to the challenge confronting senior public servants. Those who accused Wernick of being politically partisan missed the point entirely. Wernick is no more a Liberal partisan than he was a Conservative partisan when he was first appointed deputy minister by a Conservative prime minister.
Bureaucracy-bashing, which began in earnest in Anglo-American democracies in the 1980s, has had a negative and lasting im