Government Restructuring and Career Public Services

Joseph Garcea is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan.

This important book presents a thorough examination of the factors that
have provided the impetus for government restructuring and changes in
the nature and operation of career public service at the national,
provincial, and territorial levels in Canada. The two chapters that make
up Part 1 give a general overview of trends in public-sector reforms in
various countries, including Canada. One chapter focuses on the factors
that produce reforms and the general nature of such reforms around the
world, while the other focuses on the changing roles and relationships
involving Canadian governments and public-sector unions at the federal
and provincial levels.

Each of the 13 chapters in Part 2 is a case study of the
interrelationships of restructuring and career public service at the
federal, provincial, and territorial levels. Individually, these
chapters serve as useful records of the machinations of governments in
relation to their public services. Collectively, they provide an
interesting comparative overview of the various jurisdictions and how
they have dealt with the configuration, composition, and coordination of
their respective public services in light of financial constraints in
recent decades.

The three chapters in Part 3 address the forms and functions of public
services and their relationships with the governments in the Canadian
polity. Collectively, they point to a continuation of current trends:
smaller public services, a shift from lifelong career public service
toward highly unstructured career paths both within and outside the
public services, decentralization or privatization of private service
functions, and delegation and devolution between levels of government
based on the increasingly important principle of subsidiarity. A
recurring theme of these chapters is the need for governments and public
services to be highly flexible and adaptive to changing socioeconomic
and political contexts.

In the concluding chapter, academics are implored to explain the true
nature of public service to their students so that they may make better
career choices. Academics are also encouraged to devote more attention
to the unfinished research agenda for all orders of
government—including local ones—with respect to such important
topics as recruitment systems, classification systems, employment
equity, training and development, managing the merit systems, exit
programs, interchange programs, compensation and benefit regimes, and
union–management relations.

The book will be of particular interest to politicians, public
servants, academics, and others concerned with the response of
governments and their public services to changing socioeconomic and
political trends.