Ministerial Staff: the Life and Times of Parliament’S Statutory Orphans
MINISTERIAL STAFF: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PARLIAMENT’S STATUTORY ORPHANS Liane E. Benoit Acknowledgements Much of the primary research in support of this paper was gathered through interviews with more than twenty former and current public servants, lobbyists, and ex-exempt staff. I am sincerely grateful to each of them for their time, their candour and their willingness to share with me the benefit of their experience and insights on this important subject. I would also like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Cathi Corbett,Chief Librarian at the Canada School of Public Service,without whose expertise my searching and sleuthing would have proven far more challenging. 145 146 VOLUME 1: PARLIAMENT,MINISTERS AND DEPUTY MINISTERS And lastly, my sincere thanks to C.E.S Franks, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University, for his guidance and support throughout the development of this paper and his faith that, indeed, I would someday complete it. 1 Where to Start 1.1 Introduction Of the many footfalls heard echoing through Ottawa’s corridors of power, those that often hit hardest but bear the least scrutiny belong to an elite group of young, ambitious and politically loyal operatives hired to support and advise the Ministers of the Crown. Collectively known as “exempt staff,”1 recent investigations by the Public Accounts Committee and the Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities,hereafter referred to as the “Sponsorship Inquiry”, suggest that this group of ministerial advisors can, and often do, exert a substantial degree of influence on the development,and in some cases, administration, of public policy in Canada.
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