Debates of October 30, 2024 (day 35)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, what is being done to address the issue of micromanagement and burdensome approvals processes in the public service? This question is for the Minister of the public service. Thank you.

Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Minister of Finance.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would be more than happy to encourage every public servant to take the opportunity to use, whether it's the red tape reduction working group firstly, which @email -- always happy to get that in when I can. But to submit if there's a specific process that is burdensome. Obviously it's the frontline workers who know that best. If they're running into a process, running into a program, running into something internally or even outward facing that is red tape-esq, then raising it specifically to the attention of this group is really quite important.

There's -- you know, beyond that, Mr. Speaker, there's certainly a number of management courses, too, from the perspective of ensuring that managers are not micromanaging. There's a lot of management courses out there. We are rolling out new training in this area and can certainly go back and ensure that this is one of the modules that we have in there, is that we want to empower the public service and not micromanage them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And the Minister led perfectly into my next question which was going to ask, Mr. Speaker, what are we doing to empower staff in the public service to contribute meaningfully to decision-making? So it sounds like we're on the right track, and I'd be curious to hear from the Minister what we're doing in that regard. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I do want to give another shout out, as I have on more than one occasion, that when we first put out the Restoring Balance initiative, we went to the public service and the public service responded. We had over 900 public servants respond directly with over 1800 suggestions, many of which were directly involved in the planning of how to develop and build up the main estimates within that context, a number of decisions -- or suggestions around efficiencies, department amalgamations, even fleet management came up in the course of there. So those processes and those kind of linkages shouldn't have to wait for a special initiative. It certainly would be my hope that public servants see the pathways to put those ideas forward. But, again, you know, there are opportunities, whether it's through the red tape, whether it's through town halls that I conduct periodically to put ideas like that forward, and hopefully people continue to see that. But, again, we also do need to take, you know, some responsibility within our management. Every manager should be encouraging that from their direct reports and so on and so forth up the chain so that there's always that continuous opportunity for learning as an organization. So, again, happy to ensure that when we do our development training that we are emphasizing that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I certainly like what I'm hearing from the Minister today. This is exactly the kind of thing I hope to see. I mean, it's -- it's not lost on me that despite what the Minister is saying, I'm still hearing from people, you know, about these issues so we've got work to do in some areas. I know that there's a difference between different departments and different teams, but it's an issue that I want us to be focusing on.

Mr. Speaker, a lot of what we're talking about here is the concept of flattening hierarchy in the system. I'm wondering if that's a concept the Minister's familiar with and is something that she's looking at as the Minister for the public service, what we can do within the public service to flatten out our hierarchies, empower staff, create better efficiency in the public service, and empower our staff. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have to acknowledge I have become a bit of a generalist in this job, not an expert. So I'm not going to purport to be an expert in flattening hierarchies. I certainly will commit to take that back to the Department of Finance. We -- you know, things have come up here over this last session,b looking at Indigenous hiring, looking at empowering public servants, and looking at morale. And so I've already asked that the department and I sit down and take all those under consideration as soon as session's over. I'm going to add flattening hierarchy to that list. Thank you.

Minister of Finance. Final supplementary. Oral questions. Member from Monfwi.