In defence of political staff.

• Author: Brodie, Ian

The work of political staffers in Canadian politics is often maligned. This article argues that aides, or 'exempt staff', do essential work in Ottawa and other capitals. Far from being shadowy forces operating outside the law, political aides are in fact closely regulated and contribute to the democratic accountability of governments. Improving the quality of political staff will require better attention to their training and more stable career paths over longer periods of time.

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Ministers in the Government of Canada have political aides or political staffers. They are employees whose salaries and benefits are paid from government revenues, but who, are not part of the regular public service. They are hired and fired by the minister, or the prime minister, and are permitted to be explicitly political. In the federal government they are called "exempt staff" in recognition that they are exempt from the provisions of the Public Service Employment Act. They are not recruited by competitive processes. They have none of the guarantees given to public servants and they are free from the strictures of strict non-partisanship.

They are not quite the same as the parliamentary aides that members of Parliament hire to staff their offices on Parliament Hill and in their constituencies. MPs manage enormous workloads from their constituents back home and the regular business of the House of Commons. Parliament gives them a budget to hire two or three people to help and I have never met anyone who begrudges MPs their parliamentary aides. In fact, parliamentary aides are some of the hardest working people in Canada and every day they help thousands of Canadians with the CPP or OAS payments, immigration files or passport applications.

Ministers have long had the power to hire political aides to help with their ministerial and cabinet work, and to do that without following the rules governing the public service itself. Thus, these days in the federal government, most ministers are charged with a department of public servants headed by a deputy minister and they are responsible for the work of hundreds or even thousands of public servants in that department. They also have a group of political aides, headed by a chief of staff, usually numbering less than a dozen. Other than in the Prime Minister's Office, a ministerial chief of staff has the pay of an assistant deputy minister or a senior director general. This arrangement was established at the outset of Mr. Mulroney's government, although political aides existed long before 1984. Although the size of each office and the pay rate for chiefs of staff have changed over the years, the overall arrangement has been constant.

The Prime Minister's Office, where I worked, is a special case. These days, as when I left, the PMO has about 80 political staffers on the payroll. The titles of the senior staff change over time, but the roles hardly ever do. The largest branch of PMO is Tour, or Operations, which handles the onerous job of moving the PM around. Then there is Correspondence, which handles the political letters and e-mails sent to the prime minister. Speechwriting, the Press Office, Appointments and Policy--these are all venerable branches of PMO. Since 2006, the PMO has had a separate Issues Management and Strategic Planning branch.

What is the justification for ministers having political aides paid out of tax revenues? Why should not political staff be paid out of the funds of the political party in power? Quite simply, it is because the government has long recognized that ministers require something more than the expert, but non-partisan, advice of the public service to meet the demands on them. To make wise policy decisions, ministers need "a combination of sound technical and political advice" (1) The Privy Council Office and the prime minister provide the following guidance to ministers. A minister's office is:

"[T]o provide ministers ... with advisers and assistants who are not departmental public servants, who share their political commitment, and who can complement the professional, expert and non-partisan advance and support of the public service. Consequently, they contribute a particular expertise or point of view that the public service cannot provide." (2) (emphasis added) Thus, political staff are able to draft speeches, press releases and other documents that conform to the overall political direction of the government. They keep their ministers in touch with the government caucus, their opposition critics and outside groups or experts that help serve the government's political agenda. They also provide advice to the minister about pending policy matters or cabinet or parliamentary business that must be managed in accordance with the government's political environment. These are all functions that cannot and should not be assigned to non-partisan public servants. Political aides cannot do partisan work, and so must resign or take a leave of absence from the public payroll when they work on election campaigns or party events.

Providing this support to ministers is important enough that it is rightly financed from tax revenue. It cannot be dependent on the ups and downs of party fundraising, nor should such an important support for ministers be provided entirely by lightly regulated private contributions from private donors, which is the alternative to the public payroll.

There are very few systematic studies of political aides in Canada. It seems likely that the average political aide is quite young. When I was chief of staff, the average age of a political aide was probably 30, maybe younger. I would guess that not many have much professional or work experience outside of politics, but I could be wrong. Many, but not all, get started by working on local political campaigns. Some start as parliamentary aides in the Ottawa office of a backbench MP, others start in the government caucus services office or party headquarters and a number are hired into ministerial offices right out of university. Since a minister's office is pretty small, the presence of just one or two recent grads inevitably gives the place a very young feel, but I convey this portrait of the political aide anecdotally. We need some continuing, systematic research on political aides.

The rest of the scholarly literature is largely an indictment of the role of the political aide. The most recent study is Paul Thomas' report for the Oliphant Commission. He was commissioned to look into how the PMO and the Privy Council office handle the massive volume of mail sent to the prime minister. The issue was germane to the mandate of the commission. Since this part of the commission's work reviewed matters which I oversaw, I will not comment further on that aspect of...