Why won’t some leaders leave? Their staff may be part of the problem

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Robert Pattillo served for two years as an aide in the government of the Hon. Gerald Regan and for two years as an aide to the Hon. Allan MacEachen in the government of Pierre Trudeau before returning to the private sector.

In February, 1978, pollsters told Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan that he was facing certain defeat in an election that could no longer be avoided. Despite the rout forecast, Mr. Regan wasn’t discouraged. Blessed with an irrepressible ego and supported by enthusiastic partisans, he believed that beating the Conservatives would be easy. That wasn’t the case. In September of that year, his Liberal government was summarily defeated. “Honest” John Buchanan held the premier’s office for the next 12 years.

It’s an old movie, but apparently not one seen by Justin Trudeau – at least not from the front row, like former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, whose catastrophic bid for re-election resembled a reenactment of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. The question for these people is: why do they do it? What is it that makes leaders confident they can defy the polls? Mr. Trudeau insists he can beat Pierre Poilievre largely because polls suggest that the Conservative Leader is relatively unpopular. In 1978, John Buchanan wasn’t particularly popular. Neither was Doug Ford before the Ontario election of 2018.

The answer lies somewhere between a leader who can’t shake off the intoxication of high office, and staff who can’t shake off the leader. As President Joe Biden proved this past summer, resignation isn’t just smart and selfless, it’s good business. And succession? That’s even better business, particularly if it helps to sustain the momentum of the administration’s best initiatives. And yet, emboldened by industrial-strength sycophants, many of whom owe their livelihood to his success, Mr. Trudeau ignores both the wisdom of a timely departure and the need for bold succession plans that might see a senior cabinet minister or qualified outsider emerge to take the Liberals into the next election.

Today, the federal government’s exempt staff is the largest in Canadian history. It’s a children’s army of grateful supplicants, many of whom have joined the government right out of university or from provincial party politics. Andrew Bevan, late of the Wynne government and now the federal Liberals’ national campaign director, is an outstanding example. So is the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Katie Telford, who, approaching a decade in the job, serves Mr. Trudeau in a multitude of ways, including approving senior staff chosen to manage the offices of every minister in the cabinet.

The Hon. John Turner – a successful justice minister and finance minister before a short stint as prime minister – often said that no exempt staff should serve a minister for longer than two years. He argued that more than a couple of gruelling years would erode an aide’s value, particularly if that aide was brought on to contribute new thinking to the government’s public policy agenda. Recognizing aides’ work as exhausting, Mr. Turner believed that new ideas required constant renewal – new staff, not more staff.

But that was then; this is now. Today, the Trudeau government contracts outside for new thinking, relying heavily on “professional and special services” assigned throughout federal departments. These are consultants embedded beside exempt staff to supplement the policy platform – organizational analysts, strategists and, increasingly, replacement parts for a weary public service that, once the envy of other Western democracies, is now a collective that prefers to work from home.

In the apparent absence of meaningful public service development or the knowledge sharing promised by private sector exchanges, it’s argued that without consultants, new public policy is handicapped by advice like that offered to Alice by the Cheshire Cat in the popular Lewis Carroll story: “If you don’t know where you want to go, then it doesn’t matter which path you take.”

Mr. Trudeau says repeatedly that he has “lots to do.” Politicians may be comfortable with ambiguous targets, but increasingly, voters are not. They get restless in the absence of the same performance proofs shareholders expect from senior executive management. It’s too glib to suggest that leaders should come with a best-before date, but there are available metrics that help answer the question, should it come up. A serious succession plan makes the inevitable transition much easier.

Mr. Trudeau clearly loves his job and appears loath to leave it even in the absence of new policy initiatives that might convince Canadians he should stay. Still, if you’re out of ideas and rely on consultants to fill the tank, the job may no longer be a good fit, regardless of the weary enthusiasm offered by the team surrounding you.