Why Canada's civil service needs more 'plumbers' and fewer 'poets'

Donald J. Savoie has spent decades studying the inner workings of Canada’s federal bureaucracy. He’s watched Ottawa grow more centralized and more crowded with what he calls “poets,” policy thinkers and advisers, while the “plumbers,” the front-line workers delivering services to Canadians, have not been prioritized. In an interview with National Post about the concept, as discussed in his recent book Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service , Savoie explains why that imbalance matters. Savoie is Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at Université de Moncton.

Please briefly define what you mean by “plumbers and poets” when it comes to the civil service.

Thank you for the question, that’s a good one. A lot of times I’ve been interviewed about the book, and not many have caught on to the poets and the plumbers, and I think it’s key.

Poets are people mostly in Ottawa, that are part of the government who work on policy issues, who work on liaison, on coordination or dealing with media or dealing with ministers so they define policy.

Plumbers are the ones delivering services to Canadians. Plumbers are the ones you applied to for a passport, plumbers are the ones you applied to for old age pension or whatever program that you want to access; they’re the ones that deliver programs and services to Canadians. So the differences between poets to plumbers is fairly pronounced.

How much has the federal civil service grown in the last decade or so?

It’s grown by leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. In 2014 it was 340,000, in 2025 we’re up to 445,000, so you can see the difference there. It’s over 100,000 more.

How has that growth affected the ratio of plumbers to poets, and what’s the correct ratio?

The growth has clearly favoured the poets. And the reason I say that is just the sheer numbers of public servants in Ottawa — the number has grown. And it has not grown anywhere near the same amount in local and regional offices.

What’s the right number? What’s the right percentage? Frankly, it’s difficult to answer that. I would remind you that 40 years ago about 25 per cent of federal public servants were in Ottawa, and 75 per cent out in the regions, and that sounded like a proper number. So my view is that we should strive towards that.

I can tell you that in France, England, and the United States, the number of public servants in the national capital, whether in London, or Washington, or Paris, is nowhere near the percentage we have in Canada.

Is there any government, in Canada or elsewhere, getting this right?

In the U.K. for example, I’m taking a stab here, but like 75 per cent of public servants are outside of London, and the government over the past several years has made a deliberate attempt to move more and more public servants outside of London.

No country in the western world has concentrated as many employees in the national capital region as has Canada.

You are an academic, which is to some extent the domain of poets and not plumbers, should we be surprised by your position? Don’t we still need people thinking big thoughts in a country of our size?

There’s no shortage of people in Ottawa trying to think big thoughts. I think if there’s a problem it’s at the service delivery. It’s people trying to call Revenue Canada to get answers about income tax, and it’s having issues with supplying passports.

So, big thoughts, there’s thousands of them in Ottawa paid to have big thoughts. I don’t think there’s a lack of big thoughts, there’s a lack of people delivering services to Canadians.

You don’t need an army of people to come up with big thoughts.

Do you think there are any lessons in your theory for the private sector?

I think the private sector has no choice (but) to get it right, has no choice to strike a proper balance, because if a large private-sector firm doesn’t strike a proper balance, the market will tell it to strike the proper balance. The competition will tell it to strike the proper balance.

There is a natural equilibrium in the private sector that happens just because there’s competition, there’s market forces, there’s all kinds of forces that dictate how important it is to run an efficient operation; those forces are not present in the public sector.

The Carney government has announced 15 per cent budget cuts across the board. Does this address your issue?

What I can say is that I wish them well. I think a better solution would be, we have nearly 300 federal organizations, we have 100 federal government programs, I think a better solution would be for the federal government to take a strong look at all its organizations and all its programs and see which ones have long passed their best-by date. See which programs no longer resonate like they did when they were first established. I think there’s a lot of pruning of organizations and programs that could take place.

The 15 per cent cuts sends a message that every program, every organization holds the same priority, just squeeze 15 per cent. I would’ve thought a better solution was to see that we have programs that don’t fit our agenda. We have organizations that don’t serve the purpose that they were initially set up for so why don’t we look at that once we’ve cleaned that up then maybe we can look at the 15 per cent.

Are there any obvious markers as to a civil service job’s usefulness?

There are some, not many, I’ll give you an example. If you hire an auditor at Revenue Canada, every auditor you hire can generate X amount of revenue. So you hire an auditor and you can expect a return.

But for most cases, at least for poets, how do you assess the performance of a poet? That’s in the eye of the beholder. The poet can have 101 reasons why things don’t work. Fault the politicians, it’s the media, not enough resources, there’s all kinds of reasons you can grab.

You can find markers that work on the delivery side, you don’t find markers that work on the poet side.

This is the latest in a National Post series on How Canada Wins. Read earlier instalments here.

• Public sector union warns Carney against reducing government staff to cut spending
• Tens of thousands of federal public service jobs should be eliminated, think tank says

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