Value for Many: The Institute of Public Administration of Canada, 1947-1997

R. Matt Bray is a professor of history at Laurentian University and the
co-editor of At the End of the Shift: Mines and Single-Industry Towns in
Northern Ontario.

Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Institute of Public
Administration of Canada, this brief narrative traces, in six compact
chapters, the organizational history of IPAC from its origin in 1947.
While the author was specifically “asked not to write an intellectual
history of IPAC,” a seventh chapter, which sketches the “dialectic
of ideas and circumstances that have affected the Canadian environment
of public administration from 1867 to the present day,” provides an
essential, if tantalizingly brief, backdrop to the organization’s
evolution. To do full justice to IPAC’s historical development, this
sociointellectual dimension needs to be more fully explored and
integrated into the main organizational narrative.

Still, given the limitations of space (the English and French versions
are published back-to-back so that the text is about 160 pages in
length), the IPAC subject parameters, and his own role in the
association, Wilson has written a readable and generally balanced
account that acknowledges both the strengths (annual conferences,
research endeavors, publications) and deficiencies of the association.
Somewhat ironically, in view of the expertise of its members and the
objectives of IPAC, it has been faced by a series of recurring
organizational and administrative challenges, including the scope of its
audience (inclusive or exclusive, elitist or more democratic); academic
versus civil service (theory versus practice) tensions; regional as
opposed to national imperatives; private versus public funding
alternatives and their ethical implications; and bilingualism in policy
and in practice. Befitting its theoretical focus, IPAC often responded
to these issues by establishing committees of investigation and review,
which developed new structures and delineated new mission statements. In
this respect, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada itself
offers a fascinating case study in organizational behavior.