Ch 20 - The Bureaucracy Flashcards
What does the bureaucracy play a key role in?
- policymaking and implementation
What is the primary function of the bureaucracy?
- Advice decisions rather than make them
How heads each government department?
- Minister
What is the minister of a government department beholden to?
- Principle of ministerial accountability
What does the principle of ministerial accountability mean?
- Ministers takes political responsibility for the successes & failures of their department
- Resignations are rare
How are government departments structured?
- Hierarchiacally
Who is the most permanent head of a department?
- Non-partisan deputy minister
Who are ministers allowed to have?
- Exempt staff, personal, political support staff
Aside from the exempt political support staff of the minister of a department, what are the rest of the staff supposed to be?
- Expert
- Permanent
- Impartial
- Anonymous
What did canada’s public service initially operate under?
- System of political patronage
what is political patronage?
- spoils system
what did Canada’s public service system switch to in 1908?
- Merit System
What lead to an increasingly representative bureaucracy?
- Pay Equity Program and Employment Equity Act
What are Crown Corporations?
- Government-owned operations assuming the structure of private corporations
How do crown corporations operate?
- Largely independent of government
What is an example of a crown corporation?
- Canada Post
the privatization of crown corporations is a longstanding ____________ ___________.
- Political Issue
What do administrative agencies do?
- oversee, regulate, or operate a specific sector of Canada’s economy or society.
What are some examples of administrative agencies?
- Canada Revenue Agency
- Parks Canada
Who can make quasi-legislative rules and regulations?
- Regulatory Tribunals, like the immigration and refugee board
What are the Agents of Parliament?
- Designed to serve or criticize parliament
- Auditor General or Chief Electoral Officer
What is a common concern given the size of the Bureaucracy?
- Issues of control and accountability
What are the four avenues of control for the bureaucracy?
- Political executive
- Bureaucratic centrla agencies
- House of Commons
- Judiciary
What did much of the debate about bureaucratic accountability stem from?
- Sponsorship scandal of the early 2000s
