Institute of Public Administration of Canada: upholding or subverting the public interest?
Friday, 11 September 2009
By Marylynn Côté and Julie Michaud

The Institute of Public Administration of Canada recently held its national conference at the Delta Hotel in Fredericton. Some question whether the organization really seeks to uphold the public interest.Fredericton – From August 23rd to August 26th, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC) held its national conference at the Delta Hotel in Fredericton. The association of public servants, academics, and others interested in public administration advocates that “public employees should seek to serve the public interest by upholding both the letter and the spirit of the laws established by the legislature or council and of the regulations and directions made pursuant to these laws.”

The IPAC conference featured keynote speaker Brian Lee Crowley, founder of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS) and author of Fearful Symmetry: the Fall and Rise of Canada’s Founding Values (to be published in September of 2009).

This choice of keynote speaker just doesn’t make sense to the NB Public Interest Research Group Society. “IPAC claims to work in the public interest, but here they are bringing in the spokesperson for the most anti-public interest organization in the region,” says Dave Steele, one of the group’s founding members. “AIMS has notoriously advocated for the scrapping of minimum wage legislation and social services, as well as for the privatization of health care. It really makes me question the IPAC’s stated goal of serving the public interest.”

Crowley’s presentation examined the end of the baby boom and potential for labour shortages that this may cause. He predicted that Canada will no longer be able to support Employment Insurance or early retirement when labour shortages become worse. He suggested that workers might have to stay in the workforce until the age of 75. He also warned that increasing immigration would not completely solve the problem of labour shortages; as more and more countries open up their borders, Canada will have to compete for workers.

According to the AIMS publication The Developing Workforce Problem: Confronting Canadian Labour Shortages in the Coming Decades, there are three possible solutions to labour shortages. “Find more people,” “increase productivity,” and “increase labour force participation rate.” This means increase immigration, have retirees come back to work and encourage those between the ages of 15 and 19 to go to work, and increase the amount of high skilled labour at the expense of low skilled labour.

In New Brunswick, a province with chronically high unemployment rate, some workers and job hunters scoff at this idea of a looming labour shortage. It has been suggested by some that this push to bring more labour force into the market is merely a thinly veiled attempt to keep wages low, and shorten the number of years that people are dependent on pensions.

“These right wing think tanks talk about letting the market set prices, but only as long as this benefits corporate interests,” says Steele. “When demand for labour exceeds supply, wages go up and then we see the tables turn. Those who previously sang the praises of an unfettered free market suddenly want the government to step in and meddle to undermine any advantages gained by the working class.”

Also included in IPAC’s conference was a presentation of awards for Innovative Management. One of the winners was Alberta Infrastructure. According to the presenter, Alberta’s schools were falling into disrepair while school boards misused public funds. Alberta Infrastructure solved the problem by providing standardized modular schools to allow for flexibility in communities, while keeping consistent quality. By creating this type of 30 year public-private partnership (P3) with a contractor, the presenter explained that the Alberta government avoids poorly maintained schools, and the school boards keeps control of staff, ownership, and hours of the building, while maintenance is left up to the contractor.

The benefits of these P3s is an issue that is hotly contested by public interest groups which is all the more intriguing given IPAC’s commitment to serving the public interest.

One such group, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), says that this type of arrangement does not achieve the stated goals. In their primer on public-private partnerships The true cost of P3s the organization explains: “Many governments see P3s as a way to provide new infrastructure without the full costs appearing on the government’s books. Through these schemes, politicians can announce new facilities or infrastructure, but put off paying the full cost until much later. Unfortunately, such buy-now, pay-later schemes can lock the public into complex, decades-long contracts that are all too often not in the public’s interest.”

In one example, the CCPA notes that Calgary’s P3 school Hamptons Elementary, began facing problems soon after construction. The resulting maintenance costs had to be paid by the school district. The organization states that provincial governments have often had to pull out of P3 projects after realizing the true cost. One such example occurred in PEI when the province decided against building a P3 hospital as it would cost more than a publicly run hospital.