What Unites Us, Defines Us: Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service

Transcript: What It Means to Be a Public Servant

[00:00:00 CSPS title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:00:05 Clerk John Hannaford appears on stage at a lectern, addressing the audience. The view quickly changes to John Hannaford full screen. Text on screen: John Hannaford, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet.]

John Hannaford: This is the second day, obviously, of a symposium that I think has been really quite inspiring to me. There has been a depth to this conversation which is, I think, reflective of an appetite for us to grapple with some of the core issues that we are confronting as a community and some of the things that define us as a profession. And that, in and of itself, I think is, as I say, it is inspiring to me personally. It's inspiring of the vibrancy of this group. It's inspiring in the sense that I think we are grappling with things that matter, and that's to the strength of us, as an institution, and the future of this body.

I want to start by saying, though, that we are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people, and the importance of statements like this link us back to the discussions we've been having. Values and ethics are rooted in the respect for people, and respect for people is rooted in the work that we are doing towards reconciliation. Wherever you are today, whether it's in the National Capital Region, or across Canada, or abroad, I encourage you to learn the history of the area you find yourselves and to learn from the Indigenous peoples.

As has been evident from the conversations we've been having, we learn enormously from those around us. About a year ago, we launched this dialogue on values and ethics. And I was struck by the enthusiasm with which public servants entered into this dialogue. I enjoyed engaging with public servants at all levels and getting a new perspective on what we're doing on behalf of Canadians.

Many of the conversations have really centred around the theme of what it is to be a public servant. You're all going to have different answers to that question based on your own experiences, the job you do, the institution you serve, and the way that you serve Canadians. For my own part, the service of democracy is one of the most inspiring aspects of the work that we perform together. We are a central pillar of our democratic system, and the democratic system is a central pillar of our society. So, we make a very direct contribution to something that is really fundamental to the society that we serve.

And I want every public servant across our organization to feel proud, not just of their individual achievements or the achievements of their team or department, but in being a public servant. And I must say I found it enormously gratifying to watch the words flash up on the screen earlier. Service should be enormously prominent, as should be pride, and I hope this conversation reinforces that pride in who we are.

Our work is essential to our democracy, as it is for our country and to Canadians as well. We defend the system's integrity and credibility, and we respect the democratic will of the Canadian people. This is a profoundly important role to play.

Each of us is part of something bigger. For me, that realization crystallized very early on in my career. As a newly minted lawyer, I was given an opportunity in 1995 to play a role in a dispute that we were having with Spain on our east coast fisheries. That dispute found its way in front of the International Court of Justice, and I was part of a small team that was asked to present our defence in that context. And I realized, as I was working on our presentation of Canada's case, that this really wasn't about me. It was about Canada. The consequences that we would have, as a result of our success or failure, would be felt by our country. It would relate to our waters and our relationship with an ally. The work I was doing really wasn't about me. It was about our country.

And that same feeling has followed me throughout my career as I was given the responsibility of being a deputy minister and leading an institution of public servants who impressed me daily with the quality of the work they did and their commitment and the depth of their expertise. It's followed me when I've had the opportunity to travel with prime ministers to areas near conflict zones where you see our people in uniform, who serve and sacrifice for the ideals that our country holds dear.

We're all part of something bigger. When a Canadian asks for help with their tax return, signs up for online programs and goes through [05:17 inaudible], the experience they have shapes their perception of the public service and the government. Public servants who work at a call centre, create web content or review applications identifying eligibility requirements for a program are part of something bigger. Those who work with the public are not the only ones involved. Everyone who works behind the scenes to support our institutions—I'm thinking of, for example, human resources, administration and information technology, who contribute to our success.

When public servants, at every level, deliver excellence and demonstrate integrity, and exercise sound stewardship of the taxpayer dollars, that builds trust and confidence. It's not just what we do, it's how we do it. And as we face an operating environment that's ever changing and increasingly complex, these conversations about how we do our work, how we embrace our core values, how we adapt to continue to deliver excellence in the future, are essential.

So, how should we proceed? Well, guided by shared purpose, with a strong understanding of who we are as an organization, and that's what our Code of Values and Ethics provides. A professional, nonpartisan public service is an essential part of our democracy. We provide the government with options and then put the government's decisions into practice in the service of Canada. Our advice is based on science, evidence, knowledge, and experience. We are honest and forthright about challenges and provide solid options to address them. Ultimately, it's up to ministers to make decisions on behalf of our country and, whatever our personal beliefs, we have a professional duty to support our democracy by serving our clients, the government, and Canadians to the best of our ability. We do this with courage, with candour, with transparency and openness, and with respect.

I talked about respect earlier, how it is a big part of reconciliation, learning and listening to Indigenous peoples. Respecting their knowledge, their stories, their identities, and their experiences. As we discussed yesterday afternoon, we also bring our values to life by making meaningful progress on the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion, and by making our workplaces accessible to all, by promoting a healthy culture. Our ability to innovate and solve problems comes from teamwork, which happens when people feel valued and included.

We need to have candid conversations about mental health and safe work spaces, as well as seek out different points of view, reflect on them, and communicate the decisions made and their rationale. We also need to be agile and resilient in the face of change. The reality of our work and the world we live in is that change is constant. Whether this change is as global as a pandemic or as local as a change in priorities, we must accept it and empower ourselves to succeed. There are many things we can prepare for; we can analyze trends and predict different scenarios for a year or five years ahead.

We need to be comfortable with the unknown unknowns. There will always be surprises, and it's up to us to respond effectively. We've seen extraordinary examples of this, including our responses during the COVID pandemic and to the wildfires across the country. Manage risks, adapt to new circumstances, and make the most of opportunities to innovate.

Now, we know that there is a fixed election date in October of 2025, and as a professional and nonpartisan public service, we support democracy and carry out the business of government. For those of you who have joined the public service in recent years, you will not have had the experience of our role during an electoral period, and I strongly encourage leaders across our system to discuss that role during the election time. I encourage us all to embrace our role. The public service offers continuity for Canadians and for the duly elected government. It is the strength of our system.

Now, in all we do, we must strive for excellence, and achieving excellence is no easy feat. We are, after all, only human. Sometimes we can feel like we're hitting roadblocks. It can be hard if our advice doesn't make it to the final cut. But take this to heart. Our service matters, our work matters, at every level and in every part of the country. Ultimately, I hope you come to see yourselves as I see you, part of an essential whole, contributing to an organization that has great meaning and profound purpose.

An organization whose core principles have stood the test of time. An organization that will continue to evolve to meet the current and future needs of Canadians. This is why this conference is so important. This is why it's important to continue the dialogue after the conference. We want public servants to come away from this conference better equipped to meet the challenges of the future.

Now, as we look at what comes next, I think there's some key areas we can provide new direction that'll make a real difference. This afternoon's panel is going to be a discussion on guidelines for how we responsibly use artificial intelligence in our work. It's also been very clear over the course of the conversations we've had in the last year that guidance with respect to the use of social media would be welcome and important. Yesterday we heard of the work that TBS has initiated in this regard, and I'm grateful for that because I think it provides a really sound foundation. But it also requires further development and discussion, given the evolution of social media on a minute-by-minute basis. So, I've asked Deputy Clerk Fox to continue these efforts, working closely with Jackie Bogden, the Chief Human Resources Officer, to continue this dialogue and to refine the social media guidance by the spring of next year in a way that will reflect national and international best practices.

Similarly, we don't want to lose the accomplishments we've had to date on our conversations on values and ethics, and I've asked Taki Sarantakis, President of the School, to establish a permanent values and ethics visiting scholar, which will be operational by 2025. And it'll be named after my friend and mentor, Ian Shugart, who was an inspirational colleague and mentor, former Clerk of the Privy Council and Senator who loved this country. He epitomized what we aspire to as public servants: committed to excellence in serving the public and supporting democracy with integrity, openness and respect. Taki will provide some further details on this, but broadly speaking, the new role will be an annual rotating appointment with a scholar focusing on the development and implementation of values and ethics courses; research on ethics and governance; promoting the importance of ethical leadership; and ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion are fully integrated in our values of excellence, integrity, stewardship, respect for democracy and respect for people.

Lastly, I would ask that the deputy ministers continue the momentum we have gained, by focusing their efforts within their organizations on the following: updating the organizational code of conduct, preparing a departmental report on the disclosure of wrongdoing and misconduct, requiring employees to submit annual conflict of interest declarations and incorporating consequential accountability for progress in implementing the Call to Action.

We are, together, the public service. We are the public service at this moment in time in the history of our country, all of us. We have a responsibility in that regard to live up the values of our organization. We have a responsibility to our society to serve to the best of our ability. We have a responsibility to hold ourselves to high standards. It's a very high calling. It's a critical role that we play. I'm deeply proud of this institution, and I really look forward to continuing this conversation in this format and going forward. And I look forward to the panel we're going to have right now. And I want to thank you all for participating in today's event. Thank you. Miigwech. Merci.

[00:15:25 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]

Transcript: Our Journey to Date, Our Journey Ahead

[00:00:00 CSPS title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:00:04 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen and addresses the audience from a lectern. Text on screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, Vice-President, Canada School of Public Service.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Good morning, everyone. Hello, everyone. On behalf of the Canada School of Public Service, I'd like to give a warm welcome to everyone joining us here from across Canada for this two-day symposium on Values and Ethics in the Federal Public Service.

I'm Nathalie Laviades Jodouin. I'm the Senior Vice-President at the Canada School of Public Service, and I'll be your moderator for today.

Before I go any further, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm in Ottawa, Ontario, on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. I recognize that some of you are joining us from different areas of the country, each on distinct traditional Indigenous territories. I invite you to take a moment of reflection to recognize and honour the deep history of these lands.

Thank you for joining us in such large numbers. We're delighted to welcome you. I'm told that there are about 12,000 people, plus the people here in Ottawa. So, thank you for joining us in such large numbers.

No matter where you're attending the event from, you can participate in the discussion by opening wooclap on your device. To do this, I invite you to go to wooclap.com and enter the event code VEOCT in the top banner.

This interactive tool is going to be used throughout our two-day event and you can access it by visiting wooclap.com and by entering the event code VEOCT in the top banner to join it. We'd also love for you to send in a photo of yourself and of your team to let us know where you're joining us from, and we'll display the photos during the live event here in Ottawa. Just enter the code VEOCT in wooclap or scan the QR code to share your photo as well as your location.

This is a bilingual event, and we encourage all participants to engage in the language of their choice. Feel free to interact in the language of your choice.

So, now we're going to test the tool with the quick, quick survey to see where everyone is joining us from today. So, we'd ask that you please enter the code VEOCT in wooclap to access the survey and answer the following question. What city or town are you joining us from today? From what city are you joining us today?

[00:02:45 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin and the results from the wooclap poll.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Lots in Ottawa, but many other places as well. Look at that. Toronto, Winnipeg, Sarnia, Laval, Gatineau, Dartmouth. Oh my gosh, a lot of places. That's amazing. Keep those responses coming. Brandon, Gatineau.

[00:03:15 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: All right, so it's wonderful to see everyone who's joining us. It's really amazing to see so many people joining us in large numbers. Thank you all for participating and we're going to be continuing to use this tool throughout the next couple of days, so stay tuned for the next survey.

Now we're going to dive into the key themes of the symposium. So, over the last year, there have been discussions from coast to coast about values and ethics. We've seen from these conversations a truly remarkable surge in ideas and passions. This conference is intended to continue these discussions and really aims to deepen what we've learned, learn how to maintain that momentum and learn how to seize the challenges and opportunities that are available to us both today and in the future, in a constantly evolving environment. Our goal is to inspire and empower you to truly contribute to our collective efforts of maintaining a strong culture of values and ethics within the public service.

So, thank you all again for being with us in great numbers, and we're going to make the next couple of days a really rich, engaging and productive one. Are you with me? Yes, yes, yes. Come on!

[00:04:34 Camera briefly shows a view of the audience, then goes back to Nathalie Laviades Jodouin full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, without further ado, we're going to get started and it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Elder Verna McGregor. Elder Verna McGregor is from the Algonquian community of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, which is approximately 120 km north of Ottawa. She works at the Minwaashin Lodge, which is an Aboriginal women's support centre located in Ottawa. Services and resources provided by Minwaashin Lodge assist in the empowerment of Indigenous women leaving violence. Elder Verna is firmly grounded in her community and Nation by also being part of the group of traditional grandmothers (Kokomisag) and Elders. This includes promoting the retention of the Algonquian language and culture, which is so important when addressing issues and connection to the land.

So, with that, please join me in welcoming Elder Verna McGregor.

[00:05:35 Elder Verna McGregor takes the stage. Text on screen: Verna McGregor, Elder.]

Elder Verna McGregor: Oh, Miigwech, Nathalie, and thank you everybody. Miigwech, <Indigenous word>, Thank you, everyone. Hello, everyone. <Indigenous word>, Hello, everybody. When I was driving in this morning, I was thinking about your theme, what unites us, what defines us. And I always think about the difference also too, as Anishinaabeg or also Indigenous people, because for us, too. I'd like to welcome you here to our traditional unceded lands. And what does that mean? Is that we never signed treaty for the lands here, I said, because we were good at hiding in the bush. Where we're meeting today is very special, because again, I always said that as people heard me speak before, we're at this confluence of the rivers coming from the four directions. And... Sorry about that. And at the centre, I would say, is that it represents balance. And we would meet here in the summer because we're known for the birch bark canoe, and we'd meet about talking about the lands and the management of the lands, because what I would say is <Indigenous language> but my traditional name is <Indigenous language>, which has so many other teachings. And I think we're in that time where it was foretold that we will need to come together as a people, regardless of our differences.

And that's one of the teachings of this medicine wheel. You had the different coloured people. And we have stories in terms of the names of that because we were all given responsibility to look after the earth, and because we're gifted with language and reason. So, our responsibility is to the next seven generations or future generations, because we're the ancestors of future generations. And so, when I'm coming here, I was thinking about that. What unites us too, is that one of the things, the teachings, is that we all share the earth, the water, the fire, the air. And Covid taught an important lesson in the last couple of years in terms of how we're connected to the air, how we're connected to the water, how we're connected to the fire by the sun, because without the sun, we wouldn't have things growing.

And one of our biggest teachings in our creation story is that we were given instructions to be caretakers of this earth, and to only take what we need. So, there was a reason why we were also nomadic. And we were known for the birch bark canoe. So, we would meet here and talk about the management, it was a system of land management and the management of the people. And you're meeting here with the management of the people as public servants, because it's the highest honour to look after the good of the collective. And that's one of the meanings of the eagle feather, as well. If you're gifted one, it flies highest to the creator.

But the other part though, is that we forget that we come from spirit. And this represents the north, south, east, west. The sun comes up in the east, goes down in the west, cold in the north, warm in the south. Although this is changing with climate change. We're seeing that now as watching the people in Florida. We were talking about it. They would talk about tears from our relatives' eyes. We see this today and so now, what unites us and defines us these days is that we need to reevaluate our caretaking of this land.

But at the same time, we live in a dynamic time where our population has grown to 8 billion people. When the <inaudible> start with Columbus year 1492, it was estimated that there was 112 million Indigenous people here on Turtle Island. Turtle island is North America. And there's teachings to that that goes with our creation story. But also, by 1650, that population was down to 6 million, it's estimated. So, it's the biggest population decline in the history of the mankind, I believe.

But what they also foretold, for us as Algonquin, the coming of the newcomers here, and the time we're in right now. And one of the teachings is we come from the earth, and we return back to earth because really, whether we like it or not, we're all headed in the same direction. And that's why sometimes it also represents your balance between your emotional, physical, spiritual and mental. And again, I was just talking to a group last week in change management, and I said, how does change apply to you? How does it apply to your emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental? And sometimes what is missing is the spiritual, in order to connect, and connect with our ancestors.

So, that's why I do the opening prayers here. I was gifted tobacco. Again, this is one of our first gifts given to us, with instructions that any time you harvest anything, there's always a reciprocity of giving an offering of tobacco, because it was the first gift given to us. Anytime you ask somebody to do something in sharing knowledge or prayer, there would be ceremony, there would be an offering of tobacco. So again, it's that understanding of reciprocity. And I think that's what your roles as public servants in guiding this whole economy, is how do we also manage the four elements that connect all of us and define all of us, so that we have a good life here? And sometimes it represents honouring the contrast and in today's structure of us living here, sometimes you have this contrast. I was thinking of this in parliament, the right and the left. But I said, how do you balance that for the well being of the collective? And that's why I think the public service plays a big role. One of the teachings here is this dream catcher, and I say this often. Commercially, it filters dreams, but really it represents the spider teachings, but it also represents a reminder that everything is interconnected, including the universe, because you know that the sun and the moon also are so necessary, that the moon guides the waters, and our bodies are made of 72% water. And the sun you need [for] everything to grow.

So, on that note, I'm just going to say in a little opening prayer, to honour also the work that you do, and what defines us and what unites us is the four elements, and that we all come here, and we're put here for a reason today. So, I say, Miigwech, <Indigenous language>.

So, I'm going to ask somebody in the audience if they want to translate, so I'm just going to point my feather. Really, what I say is I go around and it's really a blessing to remind people how gifted we are to be here today. And that, again, it's a reminder that we are caretakers of this earth for future generations. And we have a little baby in the back, and the baby's here for a reason, too. He's here to remind you, so when he starts to cry, it's a reminder. So, you're put on notice, folks, of your job to do a good job.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to just light a little smudge here. And why we do that is, it's our connection from the physical world to the unseen world. And I usually use sage, but today I'm going to use tobacco – I mean sweetgrass – and why I do that, it's again, our connection, but also the sweetgrass represents our balance in body, mind, and spirit. That you have good balance today, in the next two days, in body, mind, and spirit, and send good wishes in the work that you do. So, this is my worst part of my openings, is lighting the fire in front of everybody, but I'm getting good at it.

And actually, the sweetgrass represents also the hair of Mother Earth. And right now, it is like a time to harvest. So, I'm just going to go around the room really quickly, and I'll pass the podium back to Nathalie. Just a sec. I thank you for your patience, Miigwech, I'll be back.

[00:17:10 Elder Verna McGregor leaves the stage to smudge the room with sweetgrass smoke.]

[00:17:17 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin returns to the stage.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you so much, Elder Verna, for being with us here today. Thank you for your teachings and as well for setting the stage to get us going in the right way.

It is now my pleasure to introduce to you, and welcome to the stage the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, John Hannaford.

[00:17:44 John Hannaford takes the stage and addresses the audience from a lectern. Text on screen: John Hannaford, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet.]

John Hannaford: Thank you very much, Nathalie, and thanks so much for emceeing today and tomorrow. And thank you, Elder Verna, for your wisdom in starting our day off today. It's always such a pleasure to hear from you and to learn from you. And I think it sets a tone which is entirely suitable for the conversation we're about to have.

We welcome everyone here and those watching <inaudible> from across the country and abroad. This is simply fantastic. It's simply fantastic to see so many people here today. It's simply fantastic to have 10,000 people online. It reflects, I think, something that I have been very pleased to see over the course of the last year, which is a genuine appetite to have a conversation about who we are. And that's really the point of today. And it's the point of the last year, which was to remind ourselves of the role that we play in our society. Remind ourselves of the importance of that role, the limitations of it, but the opportunities of it as well.

We operate in a world that is increasingly complex. There's a range of troubling issues and that is simply the fact of our reality. But as I said, it's also an opportunity to reflect and find ways to address the problems that exist. Over a year ago, I launched this renewed conversation about values and ethics. I feel a lot of pride, and deep pride, seeing how civil servants have reacted. You've chosen to approach this discussion with dedication and enthusiasm.

Over this year, conversations have been happening at every level and in every corner of our institution. These discussions have helped us to understand what Values and ethics mean to us as public servants, especially in a rapidly evolving world. This spring, we asked departments and agencies to report back on their progress, both on Values and Ethics, and on the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion. To make progress on any of these issues, we need to learn from each other, share best practices, but more importantly, learn when things have not gone as we would have hoped. We also need to set goals and hold ourselves accountable. I encourage you, if you haven't already, to read your department's report <inaudible> from the PCO. The information is encouraging.

Many of you are taking actions to advance Values and ethics and the Call to Action within your organizations to embed them within your organizational cultures. And overwhelmingly, we heard you. That there is a desire to share those experiences. Share the difficulties that we've experienced, and how we resolve those challenges. Practical stories turn into good practice. That's how we bring our values to life in our daily work. And with your help, that's exactly what we're here to do today.

This conference is a step forward but it's not the end; it's rather about the way forward, collaboration, teamwork, enthusiasm and open communication. I'm inspired and I'm deeply proud of the creativity and innovation I've seen from public servants over the course of this last year. As we work together to further ingrain our institution's values and ethics in everything that we do.

As a public service, we're working to become increasingly more diverse, accessible, and inclusive. We're encouraging innovation and recognizing the importance of welcoming different points of view and novel approaches in doing the work that we do. And we're all here for the next two days to learn, including myself. Over these two days, we're going to cover a lot of territory and talk about the values and ethics journey that we've had to date and where we're going. We're going to update ourselves on the the way forward, on the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion, and discuss its intrinsic link to our core values and ethics. We're going to talk about upholding democracy, serving Canadians, and understanding our role as public servants. And we're going to explore the use of artificial intelligence in the public service. Through it all, we're going to be sharing new tools and resources. And we'll hear from your colleagues, public servants, who have stories to share about their experiences with values and ethics.

I'd like to conclude by simply saying, thank you. Thank you to all who participated in the healthy discussions of their departments. Many of you have been involved over the past year. Thanks to everyone who made this conference possible. I know it took a lot of effort from different groups. I'm grateful for you.

I want to thank all of you, every public servant, for serving across this country and around the world. You deliver excellence to Canadians every day, and your work is deeply important. Thank you. Merci. Miigwech. And now we're going to hear directly from public servants about how they're bringing their values and ethics to life.

[00:24:03 A video is played on screen, showing a series of images of Canadian landscapes, and a diversity of Canadians at work in a variety of occupations, as described. Text on screen: from coast to coast to coast. Whether it's in the frontline positions or headquarters, in call centres and offices, in airports and harbours, in laboratories and out in the field, public servants are working diligently to serve Canadians.]

Narrator: Public servants work all across Canada, from coast to coast to coast. Whether it's in the frontline positions or headquarters, in call centres and offices, in airports and harbours, in laboratories and out in the field, public servants are working diligently to serve Canadians.

[00:24:22 Text on screen, as described.]

Narrator: We serve in over 200 occupations. In all different roles and functions, we are united in our common purpose.

We are also making progress toward making public service a healthier, more inclusive, accessible, and safe workplace where all people can contribute and achieve their potential. And we are working to advance Reconciliation in our work, and in our organizations. We are at our best when we are representative of those who we serve, and when we respect the strengths that each public servant brings to the table.]

Public servants are professional; we are non-partisan, and we are committed to delivering excellence for Canadians. In our rapidly changing world, grounding ourselves in our shared values is more important than ever. Respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship, and excellence. Our values provide us with solid footing when navigating our incredibly complex environment.

Shifting geo-political dynamics, technological evolution, and the rise of misinformation and disinformation are just some of the pressures impacting our work. At the same time, these changes bring us new opportunities to innovate. Now is the time to bring our teamwork, creativity and passion to the forefront, and find new ways to serve Canada and Canadians better.

[00:25:54 Video shows images of public servants participating in various training events.]

Narrator: Over the past year, public servants have been engaged in a vibrant conversation on values and ethics. We have shown our dedication and eagerness to be part of this dialogue.

Public servants have shared their experiences, their concerns, and their concrete ideas for bringing our values to life and making ethics part of our everyday.

[00:26:14 Video shows a series of images from inside Parliament.]

Narrator: These conversations also underscore the important linkages between values and ethics, and the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion in the Federal Public Service reminding us both are integral to our institution.

[00:26:38 Video fades to re-show title page.]

[00:26:31 Text on screen: This symposium is an opportunity to reflect on what we have learned and to find ways to sustain this momentum into the future.]

Narrator: This symposium is an opportunity to reflect on what we have learned and to find ways to sustain this momentum into the future.

Narrator: Our values are enduring, and our purpose is clear.

[00:26:47 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you to the Clerk for these words of welcome and contextualization.

Now, as we move to the heart of this session, we're going to start with taking a deeper look at the outcomes of conversations on values and ethics that have taken place across the public service. And to lead us through this, I would like to welcome to the stage Christiane Fox, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, as well as Zabeen Hirji, Special Advisor to the Clerk of the Privy Council and the former Chief of Human Resources Office, and the former Chief Human Resources Officer at the Royal Bank of Canada. Please give a warm welcome to our guests.

[00:27:34 Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji are seated together on stage.]

Christiane Fox: Thank you very much Nathalie, the Clerk, and Elder Verna for starting this conversation.

[00:27:46 Christiane Fox appears full screen. Text on screen: Christiane Fox, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet.]

Christiane Fox: It's really good to see the people in the room who we've met across regions and the country, and who serve Canadians and the public service. It's so nice to see a lot of familiar faces in the crowd today to have this conversation. And Zabeen, thank you for joining us. And I think if I think back a year ago, at IPAC, you were having a conversation with the Clerk around the importance of value and ethics and who we are as a public service and how we deliver on our very complicated mandates, as the video highlighted. And so, we thought it was important to start this day with a bit of perspective that is not just within the public service, because values and ethics is something that we hold dear in terms of the roles that we all play individually and as part of this large, wonderful organization. But you see it from a different perspective. And so, I have a question for you. In the context of values and ethics, how do you see maybe private sector best practices relate to how we have a conversation around values and ethics within the public service?

[00:28:57 Camera alternates showing Zabeen Hirji full screen, and Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji seated together on stage. Text on screen: Zabeen Hirji, Special Advisor to the Clerk of the Privy Council.]

Zabeen Hirji: at Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. And thank you, as a Canadian, for your service to this great country. Very much appreciate what you do. And having now been around as an advisor for some time, really have a sense of how hard you work to build inclusive prosperity in our country.

So, let me just say a couple of words because I always go off script. You know that. So, I remember my first meeting with Clerk Hannaford, just as I was getting to know him. And even at that time, values and ethics was very much top of mind for him. And that's not unusual, in terms of the private sector lens, when there is a new leader to really step back and look at ways to take organizations to the next level. And then, of course, the conversation at IPAC and then the task team that was formed, which you were a part of, and I had an opportunity to travel along with you.

And if I look back to just a little bit on my experience RBC and then draw out some of the learnings which I think are applicable across sectors, the first piece of work that I led was actually 2001, and that was when the bank had come through ten years or so of acquiring different sectors of finance, because the regulation had been changing over time that allowed that. So, everything from branch banking to capital markets to insurance, and then, of course, functional staff: IT; finance; HR. And there was this opportunity to really look for what can we do to bring these organizations together? And so, there was a process to articulate values. And it seems to me that it would have been more similar to what you did earlier on, where it didn't have the significant employee engagement, because there was nothing out there yet. Employees didn't really own the values. And then the second time around, 2014, really looking at that, to modernize, what we call modernizing the values and articulating the purpose with much greater employee engagement, just as you're doing now, because at this stage, employees actually have ownership of the values, and you can't sit in the ivory tower and come up with that. So, I think that is a really good practice, because at the end of the day, we are all accountable for living the values and for bringing the values to life.

And one of the things that really, really struck me about the work was how much of a unifying factor it was. So, we started with, oh, we're different. Our work is different, our customers are different, we're in different countries, 40 countries, and how could we possibly find things in common? But what the values work did was it helped us to focus on the similarities, not the differences. And what's also important is, while the headline words for values are the same, you have different cultures in different parts of organizations, different roles, sometimes frontline versus somebody who's working in finance.

And so, the work involved in actually defining, what does respect mean? And you've got some definition there that applies across the enterprise. But what's super important is to bring that into departments, into teams, and sit down and say, so what does this mean to us day to day? How does this play out? What are the challenges that we have? And really contextualizing it, but also co-creating the definition around that, and having that level of flexibility so, in a way, the differences show up at that level, not at the overarching level. And that was probably the most powerful thing that we did.

And what it started to do, particularly the second time around, where there was also a focus on articulating our purpose. And clearly, it's easier in the public sector to, but sometimes you forget, I'm sure, as to why you're here and the difference that you really make, because we get so focused in our own silos. But it empowered people. So, I had people saying, one of the things that we are focused on is community. And I can now go into my community and support in a way that I couldn't before because I have something to point to.

So, these are frameworks that are not constraining but actually empowering. And of course, values are generally overlaid with an ethical framework which typically include things like justice, respect, fairness. Those apply universally. And so, your question around best practice is bringing it into your groups and teams, and it's not a one and done. This is an ongoing, always on. As context changes, as the world changes, having those conversations just built into the day-to-day conversations, the team meetings, it's not just about let's have a values conversation. That's where you start in this refresh and renewal. But then how is it built into everyday work? How do you bring [that] if you're sitting around a table making a decision and values matter the most when they're tough decisions?

Christiane Fox: Absolutely.

Zabeen Hirji: That's when it counts the most. And it's hard. And so, can you pull out your values framework and say, okay, let's just make sure that we are considering this in line with our values and then let people know how that's done.

And on this topic of hard, I know it's hard. You can't have a manual for everything or a policy for everything. There's judgment; there's peer support; there's manager support; there's leader support. And so, how you create those mechanisms to make it safe for people to do, but also to make it acceptable. I think I picked up most of the Clerk's comments in the back there, but talking about the mistakes, the failures, everything is not always going to work. Because if it does, we're not being innovative enough, we're not taking smart risks. And so, creating that environment becomes super important.

[00:36:18 Camera alternates showing Christiane Fox full screen, and Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji seated together on stage.]

Christiane Fox: That's so interesting. And I think a few things that you've said, especially the point you make about unifier, it acted as a unifier, and I think we saw that. There has been a huge appetite across the public service to have this conversation, to look at our values and ethics. And I think your exercise had two phases; in a way ours did too. We started with the Tate report in the '90s, and then the task force looked at it and asked: do the values in that report still reflect our values today? I think they do. People responded that, yes, the values are still relevant to the work we do. However, the context has changed a lot. So, I think resuming the conversation at this point was really important. And I think in sharing stories and experiences across the public service.

One of our colleagues, Gina Wilson, at Indigenous Services Canada, talked about this exercise as being, in part, storytelling for the public service. And I think that, as part of my role in the task force and the conversations that I've had since, I've learned a tonne about what people's challenges are in the values and ethics space. And I think, to your point around, these are hard moments when you have to make those decisions, and so it's not the time to have the conversation around the foundation. You actually have to have those discussions prior to. And I think what I've learned is sharing my stories of being a communications professional and sometimes having that grey zone of political communications versus Government of Canada, hard choices that I've made as a leader in light of services to Canadians, but sometimes challenged by other organizational issues that surface. And so how do you work through that?

And I think hearing from a prison warden in BC, or a pay advisor in Miramichi, or individuals who at times felt like their own identity became a political issue, and how do we navigate that as a public service? I have learned from those moments, and I think that this is part of what this conversation is about is we all – and I heard the Clerk say – we're here to learn and we learn from each other, and we're best when we collaborate, when we come together. And I think that that has to come with a lens of an understanding that the public service that I joined, I often tell this story that when I joined the public service, my then Deputy Minister, Richard Dicerni, pulled me aside and talked to me about what it meant to be a public servant. How that would impact who I was and what I represented, and the importance of nonpartisan, evidence based, data driven advice I would give in serving the country. And that really, really stuck with me. And I feel like over the last few years, pandemic; mis- and disinformation; introduction of AI; the context is so complex that coming back to this conversation, I think, is important.

And I think it's also important to note that the public service I joined is not the public service I want us to be, because it didn't talk about mental health. It didn't have Call to Actions. It didn't think about inclusion in the way we think about it today. And we're still not there yet. There's a lot more work to be done. But I think as a public servant, having the ability to compare our lived experiences and grow and learn, make us stronger. And one of the things, in this role, that I've reflected a lot more as of late is on trust. And the trust and confidence that Canadians have in institutions. At APEX we got to hear from Peter Mansbridge, who said the media industry is undergoing a similar challenge to government institutions.

Zabeen, what are your thoughts on trust in public service? And how does this Values and ethics conversation help us regain or keep that trust?

[00:40:14 Camera alternates showing Zabeen Hirji full screen, and Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji seated together on stage.]

Zabeen Hirji: Trust has become such an important aspect for institutions, for business.

Christiane Fox: Yes.

Zabeen Hirji: If you think about the banking sector, which is where I spent my career, the relationship with the customer is based on trust. And it's the same for Canadians with governments, the relationship is based on trust. And trust is so hard to earn and so fragile. And we know that. But there are moments of truth where you really have to think hard about trust. And trust is an outcome – you don't do trust. Trust comes from integrity. Trust comes from fairness. Trust is an outcome from many of your values, from respect. And as I think about trust in governments, of course, the media plays a huge role, and sometimes it's fair and sometimes it's not. And just for Canadians to have better skills to be able to decipher the fact from not, is important as well. But that's a different topic. And I think you're talking about upholding democracy tomorrow as well. That is something that becomes an important skill.

But I like the Edelman Trust Barometer – I trust it, ha ha. You can laugh – which has been around for a long time, it's a reliable source. And I was just looking at the data as I was preparing for this. And by the way, using GenAI, I was looking at the data, just saying, for your conversation tomorrow. And what's interesting is trust in governments, and not surprising, that in a crisis, it went up. So, in 2020, there was a huge increase in trusting – and this is Canadian data – in trusting government. And the following year, there was the same increase in trust in CEO's and business. And so, crises are moments that are trust building or trust destroying and you know that better than I do. But really paying attention to that is important.

What's happened, though, is that for governments, the trust levels didn't go back to pre-pandemic levels. And for business, they did. So, there's some learnings there, but it is around transparency. And again, I know these are really hard things, but important transparency with employees and transparency with Canadians. Your employees are a huge – they're advocates for the organization. And when they have information, they can speak about things, and there's a sense of pride that also comes from doing that. Accountability, which you touched on. Ethical leadership.

But one thing maybe that to finish off that I will add around trust that's emerging as something newer, is really trust in – it's around innovation. And so, Canadians overall, we are more skeptical about AI than the global numbers by quite a bit. In the Edelman Barometer, I think it's 19 points. And so, what Canadians are looking for is trusted sources of understanding the benefits of AI and the risks. And what are governments doing to help realize the benefits? We need that innovation for prosperity while at the same time smartly mitigating those risks and helping to educate Canadians on what they can do. But also, what are some of the things we can do? So, that may be something that you might talk about tomorrow.

[00:44:47 Camera alternates showing Christiane Fox full screen, and Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji seated together on stage.]

Christiane Fox: Absolutely. And I think the points you've raised around respect, accountability, stewardship, transparency, that's how we maintain and develop that trust relationship. And I think what I always try to remind myself, and I think it's an important reminder for all of us, in all the roles that we play at the end of the day, sometimes we can get caught up in the policy or the process by which we all have to work. A tv sub; an emcee; an operational plan; an IT system upgrade, whatever that work may be. At the end of the day, there are people behind all of that. And reminding ourselves around the importance of putting people first, putting Canadians first, or people who want to make Canada their home. And I think it's just this constant reminder as we want to gain trust that we can only do that, I think, if we keep that in mind.

And we have seen actually across the public service, a really interesting – you talked about values and ethics across the public service – but we're all unique in the roles that we play. The organizations all have a particular mandate.

And I think some of the real interesting parts of this conversation is seeing how people are living their values. And we've seen examples of that throughout the public service, throughout this conversation and in the submissions to the Clerk. But I know at Immigration, they decided to change how they onboarded staff in order to make it more meaningful. Not only did they do the regular onboarding, the regular training, they added a little bit more on values and ethics. But at the end of the day, they witnessed a citizenship ceremony so people could see the beauty of what it meant to do the work that they do and seeing how meaningful that can be to people. And so, how that looks like at Parks Canada or other organizations, we each have to make it our own. But I think overall, we all have to come together because the one thing that unites us is being public servants and living by those values. So, I thought it's worth a review of some of the documents online because it does remind us of the important role that we play.

[00:47:04 Camera alternates showing Zabeen Hirji full screen, and Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji seated together on stage.]

Zabeen Hirji: You know, one of the things, as you've been talking, the common theme is also just around our common humanity. As leaders, as individuals, what the pandemic did was just [it] accelerated a lot of trends.

Christiane Fox: Yes.

Zabeen Hirji: And people, the future of leadership or leadership today is really human. And I think what the values conversations help with is also for us to get to that humanity. Empathy, compassion, those are things that Canadians want to see as well.

And so, in communications, in engagement with Canadians, how can you bring more of that out? Because that's how we connect with Canadians. Everyone connects at that level. And that's what we saw during the pandemic, when you saw the spikes in trust, because we were looking for that leadership, that support, that empathy, that understanding, because we were all going through, regardless of level, role, sector, we all had common purpose and shared values.

[00:48:18 Camera alternates showing Christiane Fox full screen, and Christiane Fox and Zabeen Hirji seated together on stage.]

Christiane Fox: Yes. And it's something that we had a lot of conversations about in the context of the Values and Ethics sessions is, who speaks for public service? We've got ministers who speak to program and policies, as they should, but we have a responsibility to speak about our work, to speak about our trade. To have, especially in a world of mis- and disinformation, the public service route of our work. Explain a little, be transparent in our decisions, talk a little bit about our challenges in a realistic way. Because I think that when we do this, Canadians and the private sector, the academic sector, etc., can appreciate the challenges. And I think that sometimes, by sharing information and being open, we can also have partnerships that will help us handle the challenges we face. So.

Zabeen Hirji: And it builds pride. And that is such an important piece for people to be proud of what you do. And I think that's the opportunity for public servants is what are things that can be done to help get there because it's really hard. I get it. But the work you do is so, so important. And so, how do we bring that pride back into it?

Christiane Fox: Absolutely. Well, Zabeen, thank you for taking a few minutes with us. It's gone by very quickly and we're going to now move to our next panel. But I really appreciate you sharing your insight but also helping us along the way. I think it's really good sometimes to have an external voice to help guide our more internal conversation. But thank you very much.

Zabeen Hirji: Thank you. Thank you.

[00:49:57 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you again, Zabeen. And Deputy Clerk Fox, you're not off the hook, so we will keep you here for another little bit. So, we're going to now move to broadening the discussion with perspectives from other public service leaders across different departments. As I mentioned, Deputy Clerk Fox will be remaining with us. She will be moderating the panel discussion, which will also be followed by an opportunity for live questions from audience members as well as those joining us virtually. Just reminding you so that you can start thinking about those questions, that you can start submitting them by using wooclap and entering the code VEOCT. And so, with that, I'm going to invite our panelists to come join us on the stage. Please welcome Jacqueline Bogden, Chief Human Resources Officer at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Yes.

[00:51:02 Camera shows the audience and the panelists as they take the stage and are seated.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Taki Sarantakis, President of the Canada School of Public Service. Naina Sloan, Acting President, Pacific Economic Development Canada. Kimberly Lavoie, Assistant Deputy Minister at Natural Resources Canada. Vera Alexander, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister at Global Affairs Canada. And Vanessa Lloyd, Interim Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Services.

So, with that, Deputy Clerk Fox, the floor is yours.

Christiane Fox: Okay. Thank you and thank you to the panel for being with us this morning. I think we're going to have an opportunity to perhaps dive deeper into some of the best practices that have been developed over the last year, not only at the business level but also in individual departments.

[00:52:10 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: As I mentioned, I had the opportunity to go and travel a lot over the last year and talk to public servants, and I saw firsthand about the value in having the conversation. And we used to have a process by which we had conversations about values and ethics. I don't know if you guys remember the little book. When I joined the public service, you were given this book. So, first of all, there's a bring back the book movement that's been started because there's a reflection about getting your letter of offer and just having a link to the values and ethics that you may or may not spend a lot of time on. And I think we've got to rethink that a little bit. We have to rethink it both in the context of onboarding and we have to rethink it in the context of ongoing learning, that we are asking people to change jobs; change departments; change levels of responsibility.

And so, I think, as I had a chance to meet with all of these great panelists, it's an opportunity to look at, enterprise wide, what are some of the things that we can do to reinforce our values and to keep them alive and well in the conversations that we have? So, I'm going to start with Jackie and asking her a little bit about the code and why the code matters in terms of being a public servant.

[00:53:28 Jacqueline Bogden appears full screen. Text on screen: Jacqueline Bogden, Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.]

Jacqueline Bogden: Super. So, thank you very much, Chris. So, I brought a copy of the book.

Christiane Fox: Bring back the book.

Jacqueline Bogden: There you go. Bring back the book. There you go.

So, I'll just maybe start with first principles, as public servants, we are part of a very important national institution, and that is a professional and nonpartisan public service. And it is integral to Canada's parliamentary democracy. We have a fundamental role to play in serving Canadians and in the public interest, under the direction of an elected government and the laws of Canada. This is true whether we are scientists, inspectors, political advisors or passport processors, no matter where, we can learn from it.

As we fulfill our roles, it is very, very important that we always uphold and strengthen the trust and confidence of Canadians – that we need to firmly implant in our brains, front and centre.

So, how do we do that? We do this by, as we're talking about today, having very clear, shared values and expected behaviours that public servants collectively aspire to and try the best that we can to integrate into our actions and our decisions each day. These values and behaviours are of course described in the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector and in cases of conflicts of interest, your organization's code of conduct. Think of them as a compass that's there to guide us in everything we do. If you haven't done it recently, and I know we've been engaged in conversations across the institution, but if you haven't done it recently, I want to encourage you to sit down and take 30 minutes of your workday and read it from cover to cover. I did it again on the weekend, and I'll just say that the Code of Values and Ethics can inspire you, and it can remind you of why we are here and the importance of the work that we do every day.

My office has put together a great discussion guide called Everyday Values, which is publicly available and includes scenarios that can help you think about the values and ethics in your day-to-day work.

A couple more points: I also want to encourage you to think about what you are individually doing to improve and to live these values each and every day. The code is not there for somebody else. The code is there for each of us. And I want to encourage you that if you see something wrong in your organizations, like bullying or harassment or discrimination or fraud, that you speak up to your manager or another trusted person. That is another way that we live the values inside of our organizations. Accepting the values and complying with the expected behaviours are conditions of our employment, whatever our level or position. This means that we agree, and we aspire to bring the values and the expected behaviours to life every day. And we also understand that we can be held accountable if we don't live up to them.

[00:57:06 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: That's great. I think the scenarios that your team has prepared are really helpful, actually. It brings a little life into the experiences that we might face. So, thank you for this work. One topic of conversation that came up a lot, actually, in the conversations, and I recall one in particular in Toronto with young public servants around social media guidance, and we looked at what exists for public servants now to equip them, to make sometimes challenging choices about how perhaps a social media post could put themselves or their organization in a compromised position.

And it was a really polarizing conversation because on one side of the room, you had people saying, I can post whatever I want, whenever I want. That is my right. And on the other side of the room, you had people saying, I'm a public servant first. Whatever I post could actually negatively impact how I am perceived or how my organization is perceived. So, I think that no matter where we land, we're not going to make everybody happy. But I did feel like social media was an area of vulnerability. And we haven't spent a lot of time equipping people, not with the hard rules, because we'll never achieve those hard rules. But maybe reflecting on questions that we should ask ourselves around social media, so perhaps you can tell us a little bit of where we're at.

[00:58:30 Jacqueline Bogden appears full screen.]

Jacqueline Bogden: For sure. So, as you said, Chris, getting public servants, we heard this both during the conversations last fall with the deputy group. We continued to hear this kind of thinking from public servants during discussions across our organizations and social media. Using social media has become an important part of our lives. So public servants want to know how to separate the personal and the professional. How do our job responsibilities influence what we can or should post online?

So, as public servants, like all Canadians, as Chris just mentioned, we all have the right to freedom of thought; belief; opinion; association; and expression. And these are all very important. But at the same time, we also have responsibilities, because of our role as public servants. We're expected to maintain a nonpartisan, impartial, and professional demeanor to uphold that trust and confidence of Canadians in the government and the public service that I mentioned a moment ago. And ultimately, we all need to be able to exercise good judgment when we're online.

In response to employee requests, my office has developed a draft guide that is available now on the virtual booths for this event. We appointed public servants and other stakeholders as bargaining agents in the development of this guide. These conversations were very helpful and had an impact on the document.

I would like to thank everyone who has participated up to this point and say that the discussion is not finished. There are still opportunities to provide us with your feedback to make it more useful to help you make good decisions. The draft guidance basically aims to bring together, in one place, hopefully in user friendly language as possible, what our existing responsibilities as public servants when we choose to use personal social media. It does not set out new rules or policy requirements. It just brings what exists this today, all in one place.

We hope this guide will help with decision-making in two main ways. First, we have put together questions to ask to help officials understand the risks and implications of online activities. Second, there are examples of activities that are considered potentially appropriate and others that are risky or inappropriate.

One area we want to develop a little bit further is to integrate some more useful practical examples that relate to the day to day experience of public servants. This is an idea we got from civil servants and bargaining agents. So, we have a little more work to do. I encourage you all to read this document, to discuss it within your teams and organizations, and to share with my office your thoughts on how we can improve the guide and make it as useful as possible. Thank you.

[01:02:16 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Well, thanks for all the work on that. I tried to make my kids read it this weekend, and they looked at me like I had three heads. But I think that the beauty of what Jackie described as the process to get to where we are with the social media guidance, is that we actually engaged people in actually writing it with us. So, it was done rather differently. We got excellent ideas, people who looked at the Australia guidance and how the Australian guidance wording was less punitive, like, you shall not do. And more like, you have this amazing responsibility as being a public servant, so how you react and use social media reflects that. So, I want to thank Treasury Board for just opening up that conversation. And, like you said, to unions, to employees and it's a draft, there is space for us to grow, and frankly, technology will take us places where we have no choice but to grow. So, thank you for that work. Taki, maybe I'll go to you next. The School of Public Service works a lot on tools to support our employees when it comes to the issue of values and ethics and the necessary training. We've got a lot of tools. We've got learning programs. So, Taki, why don't you talk to us a little bit about the things that exist, but also maybe the things that have been adapted as a result of this conversation?

[01:03:35 Taki Sarantakis appears full screen. Text on screen: Taki Sarantakis, President, Canada School of Public Service.]

Taki Sarantakis: Yes, thanks, Chris. So, as you mentioned, we do a lot. We have all kinds of things in this area. If you go on our learning platform, just punch out values or ethics, and you'll literally see hundreds of courses; events; job aids; videos; interactive tools; etcetera. It's there for you to utilize. You're never alone.

Some other things I'd like to highlight. We're bringing in our 2024/2025, Jocelyne Bourgon Visiting Scholars. Actually, in the audience today, Professor Ian Stedman from York University, and he's one of Canada's top experts on values and ethics. He has a long history there, so he'll be joining us this year as somebody that interacts within the public service from the academic community.

The other thing that I'd like to highlight a little bit is one of the values, and this, to me, like, you can look at these values in a positive sense and in a negative sense, like, thou shalt not do this, as Chris said about certain things. But then there's also the positive values of stewardship. I'd really like to highlight stewardship and excellence because we really need to talk about that more in the public service.

And, as you've been hearing about, and as you know, we're the largest employer in Canada. We're one of the largest. We're one of the most, if not the most, important organization in Canada. And, not only do we live in a troubled world, we live in troubled times. And even if the world in our times weren't troubled, we live in times of tremendous disruption. So, you talked about when you joined the public service, when I joined the public service, you have to bring new skills. You have to constantly bring new things to the table to serve Canadians. And as we saw during the pandemic, populations, they literally will live and die – this isn't an exaggeration – based in part on the quality of their public service. And as we look around the world today and we see floods and fires and viruses and misinformation and disinformation, part of your job is to help Canada and Canadians navigate through that.

So, I think I would really like to put a focus on the excellence in terms of what you can get at the School. We need to keep getting our tool set better and better and sharper and sharper to serve Canadians in this new world. Because, even if we are perfectly able to serve Canadians today with the tools that we have, a couple of years from now, we won't be able to. So, we just have to keep learning, keep growing. And so, in addition to the usual suspects, I would really stress the excellence of the five values in ethics.

[01:06:58 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Yes. And you talk about tools, as we're going to have a conversation tomorrow about artificial intelligence. There's an element of values and ethics. There's an element of how we're going to transform certain roles in the public service. So, we have to equip our employees to have a continuous learning approach throughout our careers. And welcome to our colleague.

Maybe the next point is around conflict of interest. I have to say that that has been a bit of a challenging conversation over the last year, both in terms of people who have found themselves in a difficult spot in terms of the clarity around conflict of interest. Like, I will say, when I sometimes raised conflict of interest, people thought it was punitive, and they worried about what it meant to declare a conflict. And it's actually enormously healthy for an organization to be talking about conflict, to declare that conflict. In fact, when I was with the auditor general's group, they do a conflict of interest for every single audit that they conduct to make sure that they are protected. And so, I see it as a protection. I think that there are issues that have played out on Parliament Hill and the media that have made this conversation tough in the context of clarity around conflict of interest. And I, even as part of this role, had discussions with our critics in the various political parties around values and ethics, and conflict of interest surfaced in that. So, I do think it's important for us to tackle this.

So, Jacqueline, maybe could you tell us a little bit more about how we can equip people around conflict of interests?

[01:08:40 Jacqueline Bogden appears full screen.]

Jacqueline Bogden: For sure. So, super important subject. Conflicts of interest, if you didn't know, are covered under the integrity section of the Values and Ethics Code. So, what is a conflict of interest? In case this is the burning question that's in the front of your mind, what's a conflict of interest?

A conflict of interest means any conflict that arises between our duties as a public servant and our own interests or private affairs that could influence the way we do our job or that could appear to influence the way we do our job. The expectation in the code is that each of us, as public servants, take all possible steps to prevent and resolve any real, apparent, or potential conflicts of interest between our official responsibilities and our private affairs. And that when we do that, we resolve it in the public interest. And that part is very important. Conflicts of interest are very varied and range from small actions to major conflicts. Here are a few examples: accepting gifts, such as lunch or speaking awards; serving on a nonprofit board; working a second job; or helping a friend or family member get a job or contract; all these situations can give rise to conflicts of interest.

Sometimes a conflict of interest is obvious and straightforward, but at other times, the issue is that the situation might look like a conflict of interest, even if it's not. So, it might look like a conflict of interest in the eyes of a Canadian or a member of the public, but it might not actually be one, or the situation is one that is likely to become a conflict of interest. Any of those situations can have an impact on public trust, and that is what we're most concerned about here. We must therefore organize our personal lives in such a way as to prevent conflicts of interest in order to maintain public confidence in the impartiality of public service and in our decision-making. If a conflict arises, it's important that we disclose it and take steps to resolve it in the public interest.

So, Chris, one example of a situation that has come up a few times over the last year that can result in a conflict of interest is when a public servant wants to enter into a contract with the Government of Canada. So, you're an employee, full time, or part time, and you'd also like to do some additional work and enter into a contract. So, on this question, I'd just like to make super clear for anybody who might be wondering about this, that the directive on conflict of interest requires us to seek and obtain the approval of our deputy minister before we enter into a contract. So, just to be super clear, you need to have the approval first before entering into a contract. Your deputy will want to evaluate whether is a conflict between your duties and the contract that you want to enter into, so I think it's really important that people are aware of that requirement. So, I'll just make a couple of other points. We all have a process for managing conflicts of interest within our organizations. This, along with the guidance of our supervisors, are here to help us stay safe and on the right side of these issues. As a reminder, we're required to review our personal situation when our circumstances change or when we change jobs and every year when we review our performance with our managers.

So, my advice to everyone would be this: have a conversation with your manager. If you are concerned about any conflict that you might have between your personal and your professional affairs, have a conversation with your manager or file a conflict-of-interest declaration whenever there's something that might look like a conflict. There is absolutely no downside to checking it out. And it's actually, as Chris mentioned, something very healthy for all of us to do, is to be asking ourselves about the things that are happening in our private life and how that might reflect on our capacity to do our jobs.

Christiane Fox: Excellent. Taki, did you want to add anything?

[01:13:36 Taki Sarantakis appears full screen.]

Taki Sarantakis: Yes, maybe just to add a quick coda to what Jackie said. Sometimes we talk about values and ethics and code of conducts with a heaviness, like it's a punitiveness. And we talk about it like it's a punitiveness, almost that it's unique to public servants. It's not. Every profession in Canada, whether you're a doctor; a lawyer; an accountant; a financial advisor; an architect; an engineer; you have values and ethics. You have codes of conducts, and there are certain things that you can't do at certain times when you join that particular profession. Like there are certain things you don't want your doctor doing; there are certain things you don't want your lawyer doing with your money. There are other things you don't want your accountant doing with your money. And those are good things, so think of them in that respect sometimes when they feel heavy. Think of them not as negative things but think of them as part and parcel of who you are as a public servant. Because, if you look at it from the other side, you should be proud that you're not allowed to contract with your own employer. You should be proud of the values and ethics that you embody every single day as a public servant.

[01:14:51 Camera alternates showing views of the audience and panelists, and Christiane Fox full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Absolutely, and there are even perhaps some organizations that have decided to make annual attestations for conflicts of interest as a regular reminder for their employees. It's still a good practice for us. As I mentioned, we've worked a lot with our teams in the other regions, and the dynamics there can sometimes be very different from the dynamics we know here in Ottawa.

Naina, you flew in from BC last night, so thank you for being here. I spent some time with Naina and her team, and it really struck me when I was out west, just seeing how PacifiCan, a new organization, obviously, the footprint in BC and across BC, very close to the clients and the services, which can bring a dimension of values and ethics. And I wonder if you can speak a little bit about that regional perspective when it comes to stakeholder relationships, serving ministers, and maybe have you taken a different approach within PacifiCan on values and ethics?

[01:15:56 Naina Sloan appears full screen. Text on screen: Naina Sloan, Acting President, Pacific Economic Development Canada.]

Naina Sloan: Sure. Thanks very much, Chris, and I'd be happy to. So, I thought I'd focus on three things today, and the first, just to back up, is just to remind us of the reality of being on the front line, because I think that's what a lot of public servants in the region really feel. They're on the front line. It's the front line of amazing work and an amazing purpose, but it's the front line.

So, we talked about how, and Taki talked about how big the public service is. To my count, just over half of that public service is in regions, and so it's a large group of people. In BC, it's almost 30,000 people across the board. And these are people who are engaging directly, almost daily if not daily, with individuals, with businesses, with communities. And that engagement can sometimes last longer, be a bit deeper or more visible than for some colleagues in national headquarters. It's not always the case, but sometimes is, certainly with citizens, I think, more visible.

And, in that context, what a lot of regional public servants will tell us is that they are regulating, they're perhaps enforcing, or they're explaining decisions. They're undertaking activity that is important and can sometimes present a heavy burden. And so, one of the things that public servants in the regions are doing that I've seen, as we've had this conversation that's been very valuable, is they've been living this advice or had the motto that when the burden is heavy, share it. And that's really led to a lot of really, really interesting conversations, and an ability to manage that burden and the risks that come along with being involved in quite important work.

The other thing I would say about the reality of being on the front line is that we have opportunities. We have opportunities daily to interact with citizens. I mentioned that already. I want to come back to it because it relates for me to this point that was made about excellence a couple of minutes ago. Every interaction we have with a member of the public, whether it's from Service Canada or it's in another organization, is an opportunity to either contribute to trust, or detract from it. It's not always the big questions. It's a service that's relevant or needed in a moment and how we interact on that service. And I think our regional employees really understand the importance of excellence in execution, which is so important to our mission overall.

So, that's number one. With respect to PacifiCan, we've really had a privilege, and the privilege has been to be able to build an organization from the ground up inside the public service. And that is a privilege. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work.

Christiane Fox: I'll quote you on that. The hard moments. It is still fun. Remember.

Naina Sloan: It is. But what I would say is that there we've had the opportunity to build values and ethics into the foundation of the organization, again, from the ground up. Embed it, and we've embedded it in a number of different places. Three are really important, I think, to mention. One is governance.

And so, we've built core committees with the mandates and with the opportunity to have or bring a collective view to Values and ethics questions. So, they're not simply individual views or individual discussions between employees and their managers. So, that's in governance. Incredibly important to build it into learning. And we've tried to do that in the agency as well.

We have this infamous platform in the agency called Tuesday Training. It's a flat training platform in that it's all levels learning together, and it's on topics that are driven by the interests and the needs of our teams. We've had a whole number of values and ethics conversations, scenarios, discussions in our Tuesday trainings, and they've been incredibly effective. It's voluntary, and we get 78% to 80% participation from the agency every time. So, they're relevant and valuable. We know that. And then we've got some sandbox activity around AI and things like that that allow us to experiment and to share that experimentation, including the Values and ethics questions that come up.

Most importantly, and I'll go quickly here, I know we're short on time, but most importantly, we've had the opportunity to build values and ethics into our culture and our culture statements for the organization. We've involved the entire organization in creating something that we call the culture canvas, and that is a translation of the Values and Ethics Code and an elaboration on it for our organization. It crystallizes and guides behaviours and actions that we all commit to as individuals in the organization for each other.

It captures why we exist; what we believe in; how decisions are made; and how we will help each other to learn and grow inside the organization. It's a really, really wonderful expression of the people values in the code. It's not everything, but it's actually taken root, and it's really important to employees.

Finally, I'll just make one last point, and that is more broadly in the region in terms of best practice. I've seen a lot of really amazing practice in the region around values and ethics over the last year. One sticks with me, and that's really around the practice of meaningful engagement. There was a regional executive that I spoke to who was thinking about how to have the values and ethics conversation with his employees. His employees are shift workers. They're spread across the day and night, in addition to being spread across a region. And his employees were, I'll admit it, a little bit skeptical about what started from their perception as a corporate priority and wasn't really felt in terms of the organization.

So, that executive didn't have a large values and ethics conversation with his employees. Instead, what he did was he took the opportunity of having a values and ethics conversation, raising maybe just one point in every single meeting he had with his employees about their work or about whatever else they were talking about. His big innovation was old school. It's not an innovation. It literally was a piece of tape he put on his coffee cup that had the acronym for the values of that organization on it. And it was his reminder, and the reminder for those he was talking to about what they were going to talk about. So, they would talk about the risks involved in whatever was happening for the individual employee, for the agency, and for citizens they were serving. And I thought that was just amazing.

[01:23:12 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Great. Thanks for sharing that. When we've talked about values and ethics, in the first part of the task force, there were conversations around, are they the right ones? And I think people felt they were, but some people felt that they needed maybe a little bit more add ons or life to them. So, the complementary values included empathy, compassion, honesty, and innovation.

Kim, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about how Natural Resources Canada has incorporated a value within our public service values.

[01:23:58 Kimberly Lavoie appears full screen. Text on screen: Kimberly Lavoie, Assistant Deputy Minister, Natural Resources Canada.]

Kimberly Lavoie: Yes. Thanks for the question. I'm very happy to be here today, to talk about our value but specifically the value of Reconciliation, because it's a little new, it's not something that is in all the documents and in all the departments, but it's something that is really important for us, as public servants, and for the public service in general.

So, I'd like to just talk a little bit about some of the work we're doing in our department that really brings this to life. Most Canadians know that Indigenous peoples, First Nations, Inuit and Métis, have a very close relationship with the land, and the Department of Natural Resources is also the closest department to the land. So, we have perhaps a closer relationship with our Indigenous people than most other departments.

And as we move forward and as we're looking at progressing to net zero, there's a recognition that the projects that we need, the resources that we need to take, are coming out of the land. And that those resources are being taken either from Indigenous territory or very, very close to Indigenous territory. And to quote an Indigenous organization that we work with quite closely, the road to net zero runs through Indigenous lands in this country.

In this context, it's imperative that we make a concerted effort not only to advance reconciliation efforts within the department but also to play a leadership role in advancing the Reconciliation agenda across government. And so, some of that work includes the revamped Code of Values and Ethics that NRCan actually just launched this morning, so the timing is perfect. Sometimes the stars align. And in this particular case, it actually did.

And so, we launched our new code, and through the renewal process, it was identified that Reconciliation was really, really important to the department. And it was something that was profoundly important to not only talk about, but to really identify as part of who we are and what we do. And so, we added Reconciliation as a 6th value in our code. And this is in addition to the existing values of respect for democracy; respect for people; integrity; stewardship; and excellence. And so, I'm incredibly, incredibly proud of the work that the department has done in this regard.

And to operationalize this requires dedicated effort. You put it in a code, and it just doesn't automatically become part of everyone's life. And so, we need to really think about how we develop our processes, how we develop our policies, not just our programs and services, but really how we do all of our work. And in addition to the code, we also have Reconciliation as part of our Ombuds charter, which was just recently developed. And we had that actually vetted by our Elders and residents to ensure that it struck the right balance. And so, it's really, really important that we do this work properly.

And another big piece of work that I would say is probably some of the foundation that laid the platform for these pieces that I just talked about, was a department wide pathway to Reconciliation framework and action plan that was literally developed from the ground up. This framework consists of four guiding principles, five pillars and two key actions designed to place Reconciliation at the centre of how departments think, act, work and communicate.

And employees are expected to apply the guiding principles of respect, reciprocity, responsibility and relationships in their daily work. The approach taken to develop this framework is the associated action plan, which is an excellent example of how we can apply our values and ethics in practice. It went and took the opinions and thoughts of 400 people and brought that up, validated it with senior management, and actually put it in a document that actually has distinct actions that people are expected to take, and we're actually putting it in our PMAs. So, it is very, very much alive and well in the organization. And I'd now like to say a few words about some of the activities <inaudible> that we do in the department.

And so, the sector that I'm privileged to lead branches in some areas that ADM's head up is called Nòkwewashk. It's the first sector to receive an Indigenous name in the federal public service.

Christiane Fox: Oh, wow.

Kimberly Lavoie: And it was gifted to us by our Elders and residents. And Nòkwewashk means sweetgrass in Algonquin. And it is about our journey to ensure equality and balance in the natural resources sector. And part of what we have also is the Circle of Nations, which is our Elders in Residence program that I talked about. It is about establishing training for cultural competency for employees to support our Indigenous employees' network. And we actually have a physical manifestation of the house, which, if you've not been to it, it's in the Experimental Farm. It is beautiful, and the energy is... you need to go. That's all I have to say is you need to go.

Finally, we've worked very hard to support the Indigenous people in our workforce, and we have a recruitment and retention program. It's the Policy Analyst Development Recruitment Program. And we have an Indigenous stream to hire Indigenous folks and to actually mentor them up through the ranks. And we have a career navigator that actually helps them out as well. So, I'm going to leave it there. I think I can talk about this topic for a few hours. But it's important that everyone has an opportunity to speak. Thank you.

[01:31:03 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Thank you very much for sharing. It's also interesting because there was worry.

There was a worry, I think, when we started this conversation that in some way that values and ethics would trump a lot of the other initiatives around Reconciliation, and Call to Action. I think we've been quite clear that actually they go hand in hand, and I think you've demonstrated, actually, that they go absolutely hand in hand in terms of excellence and respect for people and the core of what we're doing. So, thank you for sharing that. And I think we're all going to go visit the Farm, and the centre.

So, as we embarked in this conversation, there was a lot of focus on accountability. And actually, our young public servants raised even sometimes feeling like there's a double standard between levels of accountability, of senior leadership versus new public servants. And I think that, in part, we have to be probably a little bit more open and transparent around the accountability that exists. And I think that we saw from our colleagues at Global Affairs that there's a really interesting way that we can do that and think about how we communicate that accountability and consequential accountability.

So, Vera, talk to us a little bit about how you got to where you got and the report you published and maybe some best practices for all of us to reflect on.

[01:32:14 Vera Alexander appears full screen. Text on screen: Vera Alexander, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Global Affairs Canada.]

Vera Alexander: Yes. Thank you, Christiane. Over the years, Global Affairs Canada has faced a significant increase or a growing gap in employee confidence in promoting the department's values and ethics, preventing harassment and managing, more generally, misconduct. And the public service employee survey found that the top reason employees don't report concerns is the perception that it won't help. So, what do we do with this? We thought about this and how we can react and actually – to win back or to raise the confidence levels of our employees. And that comes squarely at accountability. And our deputy minister came up with the idea of this annual reporting exercise. And if you haven't read it, our first was published in October 2023, the second in June 2024. But it lists all the complaints we've had in different categories; which ones moved on to an investigative process; what the outcome was; which were founded/unfounded; and then what was the consequence for those involved.

We consulted experts in privacy, lawyers, et cetera, to push our boundaries as far as we could and be as transparent as possible. The report was put out. I spoke about increasing the confidence of our employees, also by holding us to account, but also improving or developing a better understanding for our employees of what are the various mechanisms one can use to show all employees, again, educate them again on our standards, remind them of what is acceptable and what is not, and to encourage reporting and through all of that, reduce wrongdoing and misconduct.

Now that we have our second report, which we've improved by increasing the number of categories, the types of complaints, but also improving the quality of the data that we have, we can now also do year by year comparisons and in future also be looking at trends. And one thing we've noticed is there's a huge jump, or a very significant jump in the number of reports of wrongdoing or misconduct. But that has allowed us to address these situations earlier than we otherwise might have and to take action more quickly. So, we're already seeing the benefits of this report in being able to do that.

And then some of the perhaps unintended benefits are that when it comes to our own ecosystem, the labour relations experts; security experts; those conducting investigations; financial fraud; etcetera, they are working more closely together and more seamlessly to reduce time periods for response and reaction and investigation. And I'll just add that all this has been taking place – I think the first report was launched just on the heels of the creation of our new wellbeing ombud office, which is also serving as a one spot shop, if you will, or a place that people can go to in a secure safe environment to express their concerns and also be guided or informed about what various avenues they could take.

And then also during the course of this past year, we as a department have been talking a lot about our values and ethics, of course. We developed, and this was really a ground up, a vision statement for the department that we call our North Star, which is not just about the services that we provide to Canadians and our work, but also how we do our work. So, with these various avenues and discussions, I think we really have managed to improve understanding of the avenues that employees who are concerned about misbehaviour or wrongdoing can take and as well as understanding by all employees about what they need to live up to and hold ourselves to account when it comes to that.

[01:38:30 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: That's great. I know that central agencies are looking at how maybe we can collaborate to do something very similar. And I think you've sparked a conversation about what departments could be doing to be transparent and show that, yes, there is accountability, there are consequences. But the other side benefits that you talked about bringing people together, those are interesting benefits for the organization as a direct result of this effort. So, thank you. Thank you very much.

We'll move to our last panelist before we open it up for questions. Vanessa, clearly, in the national security space, you've had a very restful weekend. There wasn't a lot happening. So, an enormous thank you. I know you probably lack sleep, but you've joined us this morning to continue this conversation. And I think CSIS has done a lot of work in terms of raising awareness around the code and conflict. And so perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the services efforts in this area.

[01:39:31 Vanessa Lloyd appears full screen. Text on screen: Vanessa Lloyd, Interim Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service.]

Vanessa Lloyd: Thanks very much, Chris. And maybe I'll start with a thanks to you for inviting me to an event where my answer does not have to be for the reasons of national security. I can't answer that question. But seriously, colleagues, that goes a lot to what Vera was just talking about. And I am super proud because of reasons that you were speaking about with Zabeen this morning. Importance of trust in government institutions is about transparency, about having these conversations, and about being able to put things in the public domain.

So, as the values and ethics champion of our organization and operational intelligence organization, I'm super proud that our annual employee affirmation exercise has been cited as a best practice in the Clerk's report. And I'm really excited to talk to you about it today. That being said, I think some of the issues that we're talking about here go to the challenges that we've had in our department as an organization and more broadly over the public service. And it goes to Vera's points about what we're reporting on and what we're choosing to report on publicly. The CSIS is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and I can confirm that over the years, we've had many conversations internally about our culture and where we hope to be at this point.

So, like many of your organizations, our employees are first introduced to our code at the time of onboarding. It's not quite a book, Jackie, but it's a similar idea. And we try to keep that front end service over the course of the career. And that includes what I'm going to share with you today, which is how we do that over the course of a year. In 2019, we reviewed our code, and in 2020, we made quite a purposeful decision to publish the code externally. But we also made a significant decision about how we're going to live that in the organization. And that was to institute, as of 2020, an annual exercise where employees affirm their understanding of the code and their commitment to it. And it's both to the Code on Values and Ethics, and to the conflict of interest and post-employment directive.

So, what does that look like? Every year, over a period of approximately two months, the CSIS organizes an awareness campaign to remind employees of their obligations regarding the code and the annual attestation. The campaign includes reminders on employees' workstations, posters and messages on electronic boards in our offices.  And in plain language.

So, we start with a focus campaign, reminding people to know your code; to stop, reflect, inquire, ask questions; to have the reflex that when in doubt, check it out. Go to your code. Go to the policies that help give you that frame of reference. And then after that campaign, we progressed to an annual learning module that employees have to go through every year, as I said, to attest their understanding and renew their commitment to the code. And that exercise is contained of some of the elements that my colleagues have talked about today: concrete examples of how we, as employees, are expected to align those values with our daily responsibilities in our job, but also between our public responsibilities and our personal lives. And we really also make an addition to that commitment in terms of building those scenarios. And I'll be interested to see where Jackie ends up in the scenario building more broadly for the public service, but connecting it to what Zabeen was saying this morning, that's [an] important element to internalizing the code. It's connecting it to the business of your department.

So, we have commitments for the code to live as public service servants, and as for the theme for today, that's what unites us. And we're also driven by how we apply our particular values and ethics to the work that we're doing in service of Canadians.

The CSIS members are committed to safeguarding Canada's prosperity and national security interests and, in doing so, protecting our population. Our commitment to the code is a crucial element to the success of our mission. These values guide our actions in our functions. They are the foundation of our work and help us maintain public trust and [01:44:17 this] by meeting several other ethical standards.

So, thanks to this annual attestation exercise, we have an opportunity to make sure that living our values and ethics is at the front and centre of all of our professional responsibilities. The annual affirmation exercise helps us to remind us that ethical decision making is not just about the big issues – it is about the big issues – but it also happens in our everyday. So, our code guides us in making decisions that reflect our values. When we attest to the code and the conflict of interest and post employment directive, we are personally committing to integrating those values into our roles and ensure that when we encounter – because it's not an if, it's when –we encounter situations that go against our personal interests that the best solution must always be in favour of the public interest.

Specifically, the opportunity that it gives us every year is that when we experience periods of change on a personal or professional level, we must reevaluate our activities and our functions. The annual attestation reminds us to ensure that we're not in a situation of conflict of interest, whether real, apparent or potential. In part, the annual affirmation exercise is about compliance. It's important to be able to ensure that we have a measure of our success with regards to our ethical obligations, but it has to go beyond that. We need to embody those values in our daily decisions and actions and make sure that we're always upholding integrity of the public service.

So, we use these conversations as a way to emphasize that whether you're a new hire or a seasoned employee, that annual affirmation reminds us that we're all responsible for upholding our ethical standards and our obligations as public servants. For an intelligence service, it's also a commitment that demonstrates our dedication to doing things right, and doing the right things, even when no one's watching. And I can tell you, as an intelligence service, we always assume that someone's watching. Thanks very much. The opportunity to share with you today.

[01:46:35 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Okay. Thank you very much for sharing, and it's important to take some time to reflect on our obligations on an ongoing basis. So, we now have the question period. We don't have much time, but we can take a few questions. We can take questions from the room or virtually.

So, we can take questions from the room, and virtually, I would just ask you to make your questions concise, if possible. And limit yourselves to one question. You can direct it to a panel member, or we can direct it. We won't have everybody respond to everyone, but while we wait for any in room questions. Okay, we'll go to you next. We'll do the first one online, and then we'll go to the back in the blue sweater. So, how do you streamline different interpretations of shared values? So, how do we streamline different interpretations of shared values? Anyone want to jump at that? Yes, go ahead, Naina.

[01:47:31 Naina Sloan appears full screen.]

Naina Sloan: Well, I was just going to start us off by saying that the point of shared values, I think, is to have the conversation first of all. How do you do it? You have the conversation. And you can't do it without having that. And I think that that conversation needs to be quite clear about what we hold as personal values and what we hold as professional values or values as a public service. And those can be different, and we can come to those values with different interpretations, different backgrounds, different ideas, different levels of commitment, et cetera. And I think what we've heard on the panel is that that discussion of those shared values, understanding what we mean, what we don't mean, and how we will apply them together, is most important. So, I would say how you're talking about them.

[01:48:23 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: We also heard a lot about the problem of when our individual values can be in conflict with organizational values, and how we can reconcile our role within the organization. So, I think having a conversation and commitment with our teams is absolutely how we can bring people together. Taki, was there anything you wanted to add?

[01:48:49 Taki Sarantakis appears full screen.]

Taki Sarantakis: I'd like to perhaps clarify the question a little bit. The question said, how do we streamline different interpretations to our shared values? I'd make it a little bit more specific to say, how do we have shared interpretations of our shared values? Because it's really, really important that we're all on the same page on most of, if not all of these, because if you have shared values, but different interpretations, you don't actually have shared values.

[01:49:19 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Yes. Thank you. Okay, we'll go to the back of the room.

Audience member: Can you hear me?

Christiane Fox: Yes.

Audience member: Okay, so my question is for anybody on the panel, but primarily, Chris, it is for you.

Christiane Fox: Oh, okay.

Audience member: When we look at things like Reconciliation; the Clerk's Call to Action; the LGBT purge; we spend a lot of time tracking, training, who's attending, having conversations, commemorative events. What we haven't been doing is how do we move from that awareness piece, that I think we're doing well at, to concrete structural change? If we're going to talk about respect for people, it has to go beyond awareness and conversation. It has to result in an environment where people can speak up. And I'll be quite honest, I can speak up today partially because I have white privilege.

[01:50:04 Camera shows view of the audience and panelists.]

Audience member: I can speak in this space, and it's not a safe space, not necessarily here, but in my career, in the different departments I've worked in, I've been assaulted for speaking up. So, my question is, how do we move from discussion to concrete, structural, enduring change?

[01:50:22 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Well, thank you. And thank you for raising your own journey and the challenges that you've had. I think part of the conversation that we've been having is around concrete actions. To your point, the awareness piece is important, the engagement piece is important. The conversations have to be had. But I think what people need to see at the back end of that is, what are the concrete changes that they will see within their departments, whether that's the creation of ombuds people; whether that's better data sharing amongst our targets for recruitment to be a better and more diverse workforce; actually identifying the barriers that we see in people's ability to achieve higher levels or get opportunities, whether it be for language training or mobility.

And so, I think what you are articulating is where the system needs to go, is clarity around action, clarity around results against those actions, changes that we can make at the leadership level to empower people. And I think one of the hardest things to hear or see or do in a department, is when you know that employees within your organization are suffering, when you know that there is racism or you know that there is discrimination and trying to find ways in those particular instances to change the system, to support people.

So, I think that we get to that through action. I think we get to that through transparency around what we're doing; why we're doing it in a particular way; what we're prioritizing, because the system does not shift overnight. And I think that some of it will be enormously challenging. You talked about Reconciliation. Probably the biggest challenge we will have as a system is co-development vis a vis our Westminster system. We haven't actually tackled that. That's very difficult. How do we do that? How do we actually work within the system, yet be committed to Reconciliation?

So, I don't have the perfect answer for you, but I think what we have to do, each organization and government wide, is become more concrete about the actions we take, being more transparent about why we've chosen certain things ahead of others, and then actually working together on results. And I think that execution is something we should all be focused on. Execution of the changes within the public service and execution in operations and our ability to serve Canadians. We have struggled because we're big, and sometimes it can be hard to be nimble. We have great examples of execution. If you look at programs that have been stood up; changes that have been made; the post pandemic and pandemic recovery; there's really great examples of that. But I think execution goes at the heart of your question because it actually delivers on some of the words that we have been using for a long time. So, thank you for that question.

[01:53:20 Camera shows view of the audience and panelists.]

Christiane Fox: I'm going to go to another question in the room and then we'll go online. So, I'll go over to you. Yes. Yes. I think someone's going to come with a mic, actually.

Audience member: Hi, can you hear me? Great. My name is Alexis Ford-Ellis. I am a Gwich'in woman, and I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to stick to the one like you asked. It is around mental health and wellness.

I'm the Director for the Indigenous Wellness Resource Centre at the Knowledge Circle for Indigenous Inclusion. And what I'm running into oftentimes is, although we're doing lots around resources, building resources, making sure that they're distinctions based, is I'm still coming across, and so are my colleagues, addressing bullying of our Indigenous employees for being Indigenous, or not being Indigenous. Often, I will be a mental health support for many of our colleagues who are being disciplined or who are going through an investigation, going through a grievance. Oftentimes, from my perspective, because of my background, I know that they're also dealing with their own trauma, intergenerational trauma.

So, coming all the way back to it is within the private sector, there is a piece of legislation called Duty to Inquire. We don't do it necessarily in the federal public service. We think we do, but we don't. And so, what I would like to know is, how can we better – and this might be for you, Jackie, and it might be for all of you – but how do we better address, under the United Nations Declaration Act, how do we look after our Indigenous employees in government? We do great work looking after Canadians, but we forget that, as public servants, we are Canadians and that we aren't looking after us internally. And because we only have maybe 10,000 to 13,000 Indigenous employees, we need to do a better job, and we need to be better resourced. And it can't always be non-Indigenous thinking that they can look after us. We need to be able to look after each other, and we do it in a good way and in a kind way. And I guess that's what I'm getting to in terms of the whole values and ethics, is, can we add mental well-being into the values and ethics in terms of how do we treat people with goodness, kindness, and how do we address trauma when we think it's maybe something else when it's not, and how do we do it in a good way?

Christiane Fox: Okay, thank you. Jacqueline?

[01:56:01 Jacqueline Bogden appears full screen.]

Jacqueline Bogden: Yes, sure. So, I heard a lot in that question. It pains me to hear that there might be employees who are being bullied by people outside the organization. I have had to step in to protect employees from that. Hopefully, you have got a supportive management structure that's doing the same.

So, mental health is super important. That is part of that respect for people. And we have to continue to figure out how we bring that to life inside of our organizations. And I think what you're speaking to is the trauma that our Indigenous employees feel and how do we support them. So, I think that is definitely a work in progress and someplace that we need to get better at doing that.

I think I'd like to understand what the Duty to Inquire is. I haven't heard about that before, so I will ask my team about that. We do have opportunities to think about how we better support our Indigenous employees. For example, in the last round of collective bargaining, one of the things that I hope most of you are aware of is that we did create space for employees to take time away from the office, be on the land, and reconnect with Mother Earth and what matters. That is an important step towards supporting our Indigenous employees. But perhaps there are more things that we could do. And so, I think we would welcome to hear from you and other Indigenous employees about the ways in which we could do that. That's just one tiny example.

Christiane Fox: Go ahead, Kim.

[01:57:47 Kimberly Lavoie appears full screen.]

Kimberly Lavoie: Thank you so much for your question. As a Mi'kmaq woman, I understand some of what you're coming through and from. I, too, have people come to me with challenges. And some of that is informed by trauma and lived experience. And we need to remind ourselves that the legacy of residential schools is not something that was historic. The last residential school only closed in 1996, so there are people in the federal public service today who actually physically attended residential school. And so, it's not something that happened way long ago in the past. And it is not something that is a story or a history. It is real. And intergenerational trauma, also incredibly real.

So, as we are working with a diverse public service, we need to create safe spaces. Spaces where people can be themselves without fear of reprisal, to be able to have the candid conversations that are needed to be able to move forward, both professionally as employees, but also to grow personally, to grow into the roles that we want people to assume. So, safe spaces are really, really important.

And I would just add that as we're moving forward, we need to remember to be kind to one another. Because I do think that's something that we lost a little bit in the pandemic, is that we've lost the notion of kindness. And it doesn't hurt to be kind, and only good can come of it. So please, please, when you're dealing with your colleagues, you don't know what they've been going through that day. And while you know it may be frustrating, just remember, react with kindness and the world will be a better place.

[01:59:42 Christiane Fox appears full screen.]

Christiane Fox: Thank you. Unfortunately, we don't have anymore time for questions. Those who submitted questions online, we'll return to your questions during the programming. This is a really important time for this conversation. We've talked about the complex environment in which we operate. We have an electoral event over the next year. We have mis- and disinformation. We have an AI introduction that's disrupting our social, personal, and professional spaces. And so, I want to thank all of you who participated for your questions. I want to thank the panel for sharing with us your best practices.

Because it's important that as public servants, we equip ourselves to meet the challenges and be ready for continuous learning. Sometimes these conversations can be tough, but I think with honesty, with kindness, with respect, I think we are better equipped if we deal with issues together as a team. Public service is a team sport. And I think having this dialogue today matters in the context of what we will face in our current jobs and into the future. So, thank you very much to the panel. Thank you.

[02:01:00 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you, everyone. And I just want to reiterate our gratitude for the active engagement. We do hope to get to some of those questions later this afternoon. But in the interest of time, before we take a quick break, just a couple of short highlights, if I will.

Many of the resources that were mentioned during the discussion are available in our virtual booth. So, we encourage you to access it through the QR code you see on the screen.  Also, to mention that over the next couple of days, the social media team, actually from the Privy Council office, is set up just outside down the hall for those of you who are here in the room to interview willing participants on topics related to the symposium. And these interview clips will be featured on PCO's social media accounts. So, feel free as you exit the room to participate.

We'll now take a short break. In the interest of sticking to our schedule, I would ask that you please return at 1:45 pm, Eastern Standard Time. So, 1:45 pm, back in this room, Eastern Standard Time. And a final warm applause for our panelists here today.

[02:02:22 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen.]

[01:30:27 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]

Transcript: Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity and Inclusion: The Way Forward

[00:00:00 CSPS title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:00:08 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen and addresses the audience from a lectern. Text on screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, Vice-President, Canada School of Public Service.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, this afternoon we're going to be turning our focus to the important connection between Values and Ethics, and the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion. Without further ado, we're going to kick off this segment with a short video message from Caroline Xavier, Chief of Communications Security Establishment, and Champion for Racialized Employees.

[00:00:35 Video opens with Caroline Xavier full screen. Text on screen: Caroline Xavier, Communications Security Establishment.]

[00:38 Text on screen: Hello, fellow public servants of Canada.]

Caroline Xavier: Hello, fellow public servants of Canada. My name is Caroline Xavier, and I am the Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, or CSE, and the Deputy Minister Champion for Racialized employees for the Government of Canada. My pronouns are she/her. CSE's facilities include both the Edward Drake building, and our offices on the Vanier Parkway. We acknowledge that these locations are the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation who have been on this land since time immemorial. We recognize the important history of their stewardship of this land and understand their contribution to its present and future well-being. In the spirit of Reconciliation, we acknowledge all Indigenous People across Canada and their connection to this land.

As public servants, we recognize our obligation to learn about Indigenous history – including the history of Residential schools – and to work toward the implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action, and the implementation of the United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

I am honoured to have been part of the DM Values and Ethics task team last fall because it gave me the opportunity to listen to a range of public servants across Canada in different roles, at different stages of their career and in many different locations, and to hear their perspectives on what it means to be public servants today. As a part of this work, I had the opportunity to personally reflect on the question, what gives us our public service identity when our roles in daily work contexts are so different?

For me, what we do have in common is not just that we serve the government of the day and provide (either directly, or indirectly) services to Canadians. It's that we do all of this, guided by our public service values and ethics.

This matters because when Canadians interact with their government, they are not distinguishing between me at CSE, or Jean offering direct services at Service Canada, or Dion working as a border services agent at the CBSA. What Canadians expect is that we will all deliver our roles with professionalism, respect for taxpayer dollars, and care. Our values and ethics provide us with a framework for fulfilling this obligation to uphold the public's trust. The values also provide a framework to ensure we reflect the identities and experiences of those we serve across Canada in all our policy, programming, and service delivery. We cannot do that without ensuring that we have ways of knowing, understanding, and incorporating a wide diversity of perspectives into our work. There are so many ways to accomplish this. This is where it is valuable to ask, who is not at the table? And this is why it is so important to have a public service that is reflective of those we serve.

I suspect that is why we heard from you all that "respect is for people" is a critically important value for the Government of Canada and perhaps the value where – although good work is happening in this space – frankly, we could be doing better.

As the DM Champion for Racialized Employees, one of my responsibilities is to help foster and support Equity, Diversity, Accessibility, and Inclusion across the Government. The Clerk's Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion in the Federal Public Service serves as a guide in these efforts. This Call to Action, as well as the Accessibility and 2SLGBTQ2I+ frameworks, have helped lay an important foundation that acknowledges who we are as public servants, where we need to be, and how to get there.

That said, and despite these important foundations, this is a difficult mandate and one that takes a lot of heat from those that feel it may be taking up too much space, and equally from those that feel it is not maybe taking enough space, or creating enough systemic change. It takes the most criticism for being something that inspires behaviour that is too much about "me" and not enough about "we".

I heard from many of you that you are worried that the focus on values and ethics may take away from the work on the Call to Action. But I also heard from others that the renewed focus on values and ethics provides an enduring way to continue progress on the Call to Action. I also very much heard the importance of holding ourselves accountable in upholding our values, and that no one should be exempt from this applicability.

For me, Values and Ethics, the Call to Action, and other aspects of intersectionality are intrinsically linked with each other. They reinforce each other and together require us to be very intentional about actions and progress. They also require us to be accountable to each other. I really believe this intentional action and accountability is how we will move from "me", to "we".

Like you, I'm eager to see results and I will admit that progress has been slower than expected. And yet for me, this just reinforces that we can't pull back, or lose hope. We need to continue to be thoughtful and lean in with intention.

Often, it can seem like making progress on EDI and accessibility is hard. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where our personal and public service values don't align, but, strangely, I take solace in this challenge. Because "hard" means that we care, and public servants who care, make a difference and get it right.

Progress is never easy. It takes a lot of self reflection, courage and energy. As a deputy head, I will remain very committed to personally upholding the public service values for myself and my organization, and which means remaining open to feedback, continuous education, and change. Real change. My hope is that over today and tomorrow, you are re-energized, and feel motivated to continue to advance progress, however incremental. I believe that collectively, we can work together to realize the change we want and deserve, both for us, working within the public service, but more importantly for those we serve across Canada. Because it isn't about me. It has to be about "we". Thank you. Merci, Miigwech.

[00:08:10 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, I want to thank Deputy Xavier for highlighting the important linkage between values and ethics and the broader goals of equity, diversity, accessibility, and inclusion. These standards are absolutely fundamental to our mission in the public service, and we really take pride in being part of this important work. A key part of this work is actually holding ourselves accountable by fostering open dialogue and being transparent about where we succeed and where we fall short. We're now going to dive into these themes further with our next guest.

So, it is my pleasure to welcome to the stage my great colleague and friend, Gaveen Cadotte, who's Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet Public Service Renewal Secretariat at the Privy Council Office, previously Assistant Deputy Minister of Multiculturalism and Anti-racism at Canadian Heritage, and also co-chair on the Call to Action ADM task team. Gaveen, thank you for being here and guiding us through our next segment. The floor is yours.

[00:09:25 Gaveen Cadotte takes the stage and appears full screen. Text on screen: Gaveen Cadotte, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Public Service Renewal Secretariat, Privy Council Office.]

Gaveen Cadotte: Thank you, Nathalie. And many thanks to Chief Caroline Xavier. I really agree with her words around this important interconnectedness between the Call to Action for direction, and our public service Values and Ethics, because they are really intrinsically linked. And I'll get to this a little bit a bit later.

First, I just want to say I'm so happy to be here, to [the] opening the session. Nathalie, in the introduction, mentioned that today I hold the title of Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Senior Personnel. As of today, I am the Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet responsible for the Public Service Renewal Secretariat. So, it's my first day, here in front of you, on a topic I hold really close to my heart. My team and I, including the Clerk in his role as head of the public service, keep an eye on the bigger picture of what is happening in the public service, and that also includes the Clerk's Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity, and Inclusion. I would really like to thank my predecessor, Tim Pettipas, who led the Secretariat for the past six years. Thank you, Tim.

As Nathalie said, I also co-chair the Deputy Ministers' Task Team on the Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion.

And I want to speak a bit about the unique role of this collection of ADM colleagues that are supporting the Clerk in advancing the Call to Action. This is a very special group.

When we were calling around to see who wanted to be part of this task team, not one of them wanted to join unless we were going to hit the tough stuff. And there was a question earlier today in the morning around, what about that systemic change? And this was not a group that was going to be just looking forward to those early wins – we love the early progress and those early wins – but we want to get to this tough stuff and that systemic change.

So, over the past year, this task team has developed direction on measuring inclusion; we've provided advice on consequential accountability; and we're now turning our attention to dismantling those systemic barriers in addressing resistance and backlash. And so, I've been given the honour to introduce our esteemed keynote speaker, who will join us later.

But before we begin, I want to take a moment to hear from you. Of course, just after lunch. Got to get the crowd into it. Got to get you moving, thinking. So, we have a wooclap survey, a question that we'd like you all to participate in. So, you can either click the link, or scan the QR code, or type in, if anyone types in email addresses anymore, wooclap.com, and access the survey. And we're going to be answering the question together. What does accountability mean to you when creating a safe and inclusive workplace? Or, in a word or two: what does accountability mean to you when creating a safe and inclusive workplace?

[00:13:03 Split screen: Gaveen Cadotte, and wooclap poll results.]

Gaveen Cadotte: So, while those responses are coming in, I'm going to take a few minutes, maybe more than a few minutes, but a few minutes to talk about the Call to Action, its impact to date, and thoughts on where we go next.

[00:13:20 Gaveen Cadotte appears full screen.]

Gaveen Cadotte: So, in January 2021, the Clerk of the Privy Council issued a Call to Action on Anti-Racism, Equity, and Inclusion in the federal public service and, to accelerate the pace of change, the Clerk issued the Call to Action to ensure that we are doing transformational work. So, this is the forward direction of the Call to Action. It was issued on May 9, 2023.

So, for those of you that are less familiar with the forward direction of the Call to Action, it asks deputies to set multi-year goals for recruitment, promotion and inclusion for Indigenous employees, Black, and racialized employees, and to measure progress and establish consequential accountability for results achieved. The forward direction of the Call to Action is about tackling persistent systemic barriers, some embedded in processes, practices and some within our mindsets and our behaviours. Ultimately, it is to contribute to an improved representation and inclusion in the public service to help create a culture that allows for the effective delivery of service to Canadians and advice to government.

So, reflecting back on Caroline's comments, and that deep connection between the Call to Action and the broader dialogue on Values and Ethics, it had me thinking about those different ways that those both live within each other. And so, I encourage you to think about those connection points between our Code for Values and Ethics and the Call to Action.

So, here's what comes to mind for me: respect for people. This is about treating individuals with dignity, with fairness, and valuing, really valuing, those diverse perspectives and contributions. Respect for democracy is about providing sound advice and effective implementation, which relies on a public service that is reflective of Canada's diversity, and values the diversity of Canada, and reflects it at all levels. Stewardship and integrity. That requires holding ourselves, and others, accountable for addressing those inequalities, and ensuring that policies and programs are free from racism, from discrimination, and from bias. And it means that we must do what we say we'll do, and that we'll demonstrate that it has been done.

Excellence. We cannot be excellent if we are leaving brilliant, hardworking, talented employees out of the public service, or underutilizing their talent. An inclusive workplace promotes high performance and leverages the strengths of all its employees. It is responsive to the multicultural reality of Canada.

To achieve the goals of the Call to Action, it is essential to report on the progress made. It is in this spirit that in the spring, organizations were asked to conduct a self-assessment of how they have implemented the forward direction. The summary report that was prepared following these self-assessments provides an overview of the tangible progress made and identifies areas still requiring work. I encourage you to read this report on the v-Expo platform. Thanks to the efforts of new leaders at all levels of the public service, as well as the ongoing efforts of Indigenous, Black and other racialized employees and employee community networks, the public service is stronger today compared to 2021, than when we launched the Call to Action. As a result, today we have more disaggregated data, targeted initiatives to support recruitment, promotion and talent management, we have increased access to sponsorship and mentorship opportunities, new learning and training offerings; we have anti-racism secretariats, specialized task teams that have started a dialogue with public servants across the country.

So, while focusing on improving our workplaces, we've also seen this appointment of more Indigenous, and Black, and racialized employees to, and within, executive positions. And, while this is a start, the self assessment in the questionnaires also provided us with an opportunity to identify areas where additional work still remains. And there is more work to do.

We've seen departments still struggling, figuring out how to better access desegregated data on Black employees, and that impacts our ability to really set clear goals, recruitment, promotion, and inclusion of Black employees. We've seen some momentum where we really need to embed, really embed, the Call to Action into our overall business priorities – our plans, our processes – to ensure that the work is sustained. And this work is for each and every one of us as public servants, living out our public service Values and Ethics. It's not just for our colleagues in HR, or our colleagues in the anti-racism secretariats. It's really for each and every one of us as we live out our role as public servants. And a handful of departments have already put in place consequential accountability for any lack of progress that's being made against the elements in the forward direction. And success really requires that all departments are in a similar position to put this in place.

Now, we're already starting to see a rise in backlash, a rise in resistance, maybe folks thinking they can wait this out. And we're starting to see that there's sentiments growing in tokenism and starting to see that becoming more visible. And, we have to remember why we're doing this. And this is why this conversation together, with Values and Ethics and the Call to Action, is so important.

There's no riding this out. This is our public service values. These are the people that we serve. And if you're a public service manager, and there's people, these are your teammates. It's your colleagues. They need to be included. So, no one is getting an unfair advantage out of this work. It's about levelling the playing field for those who have been left out or left behind for far too long. It's about supporting and being open and receptive to those who are at the table, and recognizing who's not at the table, and making a seat and a place for them. Not just to be there, but to participate.

As I mentioned earlier, ultimately, this is about service to government and to Canadians, consistent with the excellence we aspire to in our Values and Ethics.

This is precisely why we need to continue these conversations to find ways to remove some of the barriers that have hindered progress for a long time. One of the next steps of the Call to Action will be to delve deeper into the issue of accountability and explore ways to address the systemic barriers that impede progress. A lot of work has been undertaken to help organizations achieve the objectives set out in the forward direction of the Call to Action. There are a range of supports and tools to help individuals and organizations advance this important work, including recent organizational documentation that is also available on the v-Expo platform.

So, some of the examples of the guidance that's already available is a guide for performance measurement and consequential accountability. So, if you don't know how to do it, there's a guide already: Assessing Inclusive Behaviours in Performance Management. Another system that requires barriers, systemic barriers, to be dismantled. Check out the guide.

Establishing indicators to measure and report on inclusion outcomes. Inclusion is hard to measure. Yes, but there's a guide. So, this is just the beginning, and there's more to do to build that public service that's inclusive to Indigenous employees; Black employees; racialized employees; ethno-religious minority employees; employees with disabilities; our 2SLGBTQ2I+ employees, recognizing the intersectionality of those identities.

So, there's more work to do, and I hope you will all join us and be part of the solution. I encourage you to ask questions and reach out to your colleagues and your management team as we advance this work. And feel free to reach out to my team, my new team, in Public Service Renewal Secretariat at PCO. You know, I've talked about it. There's probably something on the wooclap for me to tour into. Remember I said I was going to talk a little bit and get back to the wooclap? I think I talked a lot.

[00:23:17 Split screen: Gaveen Cadotte, and wooclap poll results.]

Gaveen Cadotte: So, let's look and see what we are seeing in those words. What does accountability look like? Respect figures quite big in there. Oh, my goodness, I need reading glasses. It's come, it's happened. Decolonization; trust; listening and acting; non-judgmental. Uncomfortable. It is. Empathy; transparency; accountability; listening; inclusion. So, these are things that we want for ourselves, in the workplace.

[00:24:00 Gaveen Cadotte appears full screen.]

Gaveen Cadotte: That our colleagues want, that our employees want, so how might we embark on that journey and make this a reality?

Now, I've talked a lot, so I have the immense pleasure of introducing another speaker, who is Daniel Quan-Watson. Come on up. I'm going to talk about you while you come up.

[00:24:23 Camera shows a view of the audience as Daniel Quan-Watson takes the stage.]

Gaveen Cadotte: Daniel is the only person of Chinese descent to have served as a deputy minister in the federal government. Before taking a well-deserved retirement, Daniel served as Deputy Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Deputy Minister for Western Economic Diversification, Chief Human Resources Officer of the Government of Canada, and Chief Executive Officer of Parks Canada, and in his various roles within and outside of the public service, Daniel has impacted the lives of many public servants and Canadians, including me.

Some of you may recall the powerful open letter that he wrote in response to the late Rex Murphy's article, which asked the question, how much are racism and discrimination actually a part of the Canadian reality? This letter stirred up a series of emotions in me, and for many others who read it. He outlined his countless experiences with micro-aggressions; overt racism; discrimination; stereotyping; and other harmful acts and acts that far too many public servants experience on a regular basis. And Daniel concluded his letter by posing the question, if my experience resonates with that of 100,000 other Canadians or more, then we are faced with a very difficult and defining question, so what are we going to do now? What a powerful question.

This question still applies today. What are we going to do now? We're doing it with initiatives such as the Call to Action; Many Voices, One Mind, and more. But there's no easing up on our efforts. We have to continue this path forward. So, without further ado, Daniel.

[00:26:30 Daniel Quan-Watson appears full screen. Text on screen: Daniel Quan-Watson, Retired Deputy Minister, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs.]

Daniel Quan-Watson: Thank you, Gaveen. I also want to thank the Privy Council Office and everyone here today. It is truly my pleasure to be with you and to be able to talk about these important issues, about values, ethics and anti-racism issues. It is truly my pleasure to be back on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin-Anishinabeg peoples, of the ancestors, and finally, of my great friend, my wonderful colleague Gina Wilson who is welcoming us here on this land.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are many of you here today who are concerned about whether or not the current focus on values and ethics means a lessening concern about anti-racism. And I also wouldn't be surprised if there were many of you here today, or participating online, who are concerned that anti-racism is maybe a passing fad, or maybe something that will become old news sometime soon. And I also wouldn't be surprised if there are a number of you here today who are wondering if anti-racism is still a real issue in Canada's public service, or in Canada generally, and whether or not we can't just get to the real business of doing government. I hope that the three points that I'm going to be making over the next 20 minutes or so will help you to reflect on this topic, no matter where your starting point is.

The quick summary of my three points is this. First: we cannot, as a public service or as individual public servants, live up to the Code of Values and Ethics unless we understand the role of anti-racism in ensuring the full and effective involvement of every component of Canada's population, across and throughout Canada's public service. That code is a published commitment to the government that we serve to Canadians and to each other.

Second: good public policy and public administration have always been good politics for every government in Canada since 1867. No matter what else has happened, that has remained true. The public service's contributions to public policy and public administration will, in every instance, be stronger when that public service better understands Canada; Canadians; their realities; fears; aspirations; strengths; and challenges. When we don't understand those things as well as we should, we will, in every single instance, serve Canadians less well.

The third point is that no matter what role you hold in Canada's public service, if you are not improving or advancing our systemic ability to hear; to understand; to engage with; to reflect; or to respond to all of the Canadians that we serve, then you cannot possibly be advancing the values and ethics that we have committed to upholding as effectively as we need to.

I would like to talk about some lessons from our past, because I think they are important. I started my career in the federal public service 35 years ago. We've made some huge changes in that time, and I think it's important to look back on some of those things. Many of the conversations we are having today are, ultimately, not new conversations at all, and many of the realities we take for granted are things that until very recently were impossible, all things considered. When I started my career, women made up less than 10% of senior executives, of EX positions in the public service. Many public servants, very publicly and very frequently, were saying openly that appointing women to EX positions was going to ruin the public service. This was said often and openly.

Indigenous peoples and public servants of colour were very rare in most departments, and even rarer amongst management and executive ranks. Persons with disabilities, even more rare than that. In 1989, when I started, we were still in the purge period, where federal departments and institutions actively sought out to identify gay and lesbian public servants and members of those agencies and fired them en masse.

Other than the single case of the great Deputy Minister, Tom Shoyama, there had never been a Gina Wilson. There had never been a Caroline Xavier. There had never been an Anil Aurora There had never been a Harpreet Kochhar. There had never been a Nancy Hamzawi. There'd never been a Thao Pham, or a Yasmeen Laroche who you're going to see shortly. And there certainly had never been a Daniel Quan-Watson in any of those offices. I had 422 years of predecessors in my different jobs as a Deputy Minister, not one person of colour in that entire 422 years of predecessors. And there wasn't a lot of reason to believe that that was going to change back in 1989.

So, why does this matter? It matters deeply because of this simple reality. Effective public administration and policy requires at least these things in order to be successful. First: to understand, as fully and as effectively as possible, the true nature of the issue that requires attention. Secondly: the ability to understand, as fully and effectively as possible, the full range of aspirations; fears; needs; and other reality of Canadians whose lives we are affecting. And thirdly: the ability to understand, as fully and as effectively as possible, why it may be that Canadians' experience in program and service implementation is sometimes very different from what we had predicted as public servants.

Without the right people in the right rooms – and by the right people in the right rooms, I mean the people who can help us understand who we really need to engage with; the people that conduct those engagements effectively; the people who analyze what we heard in a way that actually reflects what we were told and conduct the right research; the people making the decisions; and the people responsible at all levels for going out and translating those policies into programs – without the right people in every single one of those rooms, we cannot possibly achieve the public service Code of Values and Ethics requirements for excellence, for respect, or for stewardship.

We cannot achieve the value of excellence if our failure to understand the issues at hand leaves too many Canadians feeling misunderstood, forgotten, or excluded. We cannot achieve the value of respect for people, or respect for our fellow public servants, or the Canadians who rely on us, if we fail to recognize their abilities and the values of their contributions. And we cannot achieve the value of stewardship if we invest public monies in solutions that are weaker than they should be only because of who we chose to ignore; who we chose to exclude; and who we chose to fail to see.

The numbers alone make it clear that we have too frequently not had the right people in all of those rooms where Canadian work is done. I suspect that almost everybody participating today sees the value of citizen-centred approaches to make services more effective and efficient for those who use them. But at the same time, however, how often have we conducted entire, lengthy, and complex program and policy development processes that have profound impacts on even millions of Canadians with little or even no public service representation of people with a lived connection to those Canadians' experiences and backgrounds?

I would like to talk about two examples of this dynamic. In both cases, very large policy development processes were concluded in almost total absence of critically important voices in the rooms and offices of the public service where these decisions were made. Each of these processes has had multi-generational impacts and significant impacts and costs for Canada as a country and for many individuals and communities especially.

The first of these is the way that our collective agreements have always approached part time work. When collective agreements were first negotiated in the 1960s, we are barely a decade away from female public servants being automatically fired when they were married. You heard that right. Female public servants automatically fired when they got married. There was literally not a single female executive in many departments. As a result, these collective agreements, first negotiated in 1969 but continued on in many similar ways since then, were negotiated almost exclusively by men on both the management and on the labour sides.

If you look underneath what we say in those collective agreements about part time work, you hear two philosophies. One philosophy from management is, it's too complicated to have multiple people in one position, and if you only want to work part time, you're really not that serious about working anyway. And you hear the echoes of the thoughts from the labour side, that part time work is just a ploy by management to reduce wages and to reduce benefits. But a brilliant public servant on the panel a couple of years ago, Rebecca Reed, was Regional Director General at DFO, the Pacific region at the time, said that if women had been part in sufficient numbers, on both the management and labour sides, we would have done something very different over the last 50 years. Her point was that women who faced disproportionate expectations to take on childcare, family care, and other responsibilities, and who often have to make different choices than their male colleagues in balancing all of these demands, are far less likely to see part time work as simply a sign of not being serious about their contributions.

Because of whom we excluded from those rooms and conversations, and because we didn't bring the right people into those rooms and conversations to challenge the dominant thinking of the time, Canada lost enormous talent, contributions, and growth. Things that we could otherwise have had, except for the fact that we didn't bring the right people into the room.

The second example concerns major changes in government policies regarding negotiations with First Nations and Inuit in the 80s and 90s. At the time, there were no negotiations with Métis peoples, and that is why they are not included in the example. Examples include the comprehensive claims policy, the inherent right policy, and attempts to resolve residential school survivors' individual claims. Each of these initiatives had enormous impacts on First Nations and Inuit peoples.

One thing that didn't happen, though, and that we didn't think much about at the time, was this: in all of the extensive, detailed, and lengthy public service processes that developed and approved these initiatives, First Nation, Inuit, and Métis public servants were almost entirely excluded from almost every aspect of their development. And yet we did it. And almost no one outside Indigenous communities thought anything of it.

In both cases, Canada's public service gave Canadians less than they were entitled to expect from us.

We gave dedicated, talented, and promising women who wanted to serve their country less than they were entitled to expect from us. And Canadians were robbed of their contributions. We caused harm. We served Indigenous people less well than they had a right to expect from us and provided poorer service than we would have if we had sought out and brought dedicated, professional, knowledgeable, First Nation, Inuit, and Métis public servants into all of those rooms. We would have served Indigenous peoples and all Canadians better if we had made use of the experience and power of their life experiences.

But we didn't. And there are still far too many areas where we continue to do the same. Those days are not, unfortunately, simply an historic curiosity. The great Jacqueline Rigg, who many of you know, was able to say at the end of a 30 plus year career that she recently completed as an Assistant Deputy Minister, that not one single time had she ever, as a Black woman, been interviewed or considered for a job by another person of colour. She's far alone from being able to say that today in the public service. Tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of public servants can still say today that they have never reported to a supervisor who is a person with a disability.

There are entire teams in critical roles in far too many institutions that have no representation from too many segments of Canada's population. We're still in an era of firsts, where individuals from significant groups within Canadian society are taking on certain roles for the very first time in Canada's public service. I know, because I'm one of them. Too many of us can see too many brilliant public servants from various backgrounds who are passed over again and again and again, year after year after year, and no one can ever explain why it is always that way.

If we're going to live up to our values as a public service, we either need to give clear explanations in those cases, or we need to change what we are doing. We cannot simply let these things continue. I would like to take a moment or two to underscore this point on merit. I am reiterating it because it is a critical value for the public service and because I truly adhere to the principle of merit. In saying this, I think we would do well to remember who was in the room when merit was defined and who was not.

I have often said in my speeches over the years that "leadership presence" was something that was impossible to demonstrate with a voice an octave higher than mine.

I have no doubt that those who negotiated the collective agreements in 1969, and those who did the major Indigenous policy work of the 1980s and 90s were properly appointed according to the merit principle. Technically, they were qualified. But I would ask you to consider this. What should we, as a public service, think of what qualified means, and the merit principle means, if they consistently leave millions of Canadians without the confidence that their public service includes people who understand their lives and experiences? This isn't a rejection of the concept of merit, or being qualified, quite the contrary. It's a call to be deliberate in understanding what those things need to mean.

So, in practice. In a practical sense, what can we do to ensure that Canada's public service ensures the involvement of the full and effective contributions of all Canadians and avoids gaps in our understanding and ability to meet the needs of Canada and Canadians? I propose two sets of things: the first set of things is a set of things to do. The other is a set of things not to do. Jointly, I am convinced that it can make a big difference.

The first set of things is the "to do". Anyone who has worked with me for any period of time will know that I almost always start any task with this question. Naina, you know what it's going to be. What is the problem we're trying to solve? That can seem really simplistic, but ask a group of 6, 12, 50 people what the problem is, and you will be surprised by the fact that you do not get common answers out of all. It's why it's critical to ask that question.

You'll notice so far, maybe, that I haven't used the terms equity, diversity and inclusion in my remarks. I try to never use them when talking about problems, because diversity, equity and inclusion are the solution, not the problem. If we allow ourselves to think that the problem is a lack of diversity and equity and inclusion, I believe that we mask the failures and shortcomings that we create for Canada and Canadians by choosing not to bring resources and perspective to achieving what Canada and Canadians expect us to do for them.

The problem isn't that there are people who are unhappy about not having opportunities given to them. The problem is that we have too frequently failed to bring those talents and abilities to the places where they are most needed in order for us to to succeed. You get very different places depending on how you define the issuer problem. I recommend that every public servant, certainly every executive manager, supervisor, policy analyst, and operational design professional ask three questions.

First: where has the group, or role for which you are responsible, served Canada and Canadians less well than you would have if you had brought different people to the table? Whatever your answer is to that question, it's telling. If you're going to say that no matter who I have not brought here and what gaps I've had, it doesn't make any difference to the service I pride Canada and Canadians. That's pretty telling. If you've never thought, though, about this question before, it's probably a good thing to ask yourself why? Why is it that I went through as much of my career as I have so far, without ever asking what the impact is of the people I chose not to bring to the work that I'm doing?

Every executive at CIRNAC was required to ask that question as part of their performance management cycle. It took us over a year to actually understand what it means. It wasn't something that people had talked about before. In the end though, we said things out loud that allowed us to try to fix them and that had been there for a very long time, and we simply assumed somebody else would fix. But the act of saying out loud what the impacts are of our decisions not to include people, created change. What this exercise showed us was this: There is a real cost to Canada, to Canadians, when the public service doesn't pay attention to the impacts of the perspectives we've excluded in the many rooms and offices in which we do our work, and when we don't take active steps to address these situations as quickly as possible.

The second question: who is it that we have consistently failed to attract, retain, and promote through the systems and processes for which we are responsible? The issue of promoting within that is a very important one. If you're an executive or manager, ask yourself about the relative progression of staff from different groups, especially from the groups that are underrepresented, and ask if the patterns you see will allow for the full participation and involvement required to avoid the shortcomings that we talked about in the first question. If you can't answer that question positively, then fix it. Nobody else is going to fix your hiring, your team building, or your team capacity issues for you. It's up to you.

Third question we need to ask ourselves, it's a very difficult one, is what is it that is going on in our organization that makes it difficult or impossible for those we most need to hire, retain, or promote to join, stay, or encourage others to join our organizations? Last question is not something that you ever take on lightly, but it is critically important. As a Deputy Minister for nearly 15 years, including three years as Chief Human Resources Officer for the Government of Canada, I've had to deal with more than my fair share of harassment and discrimination cases. A common factor in almost all of these cases was that the abusive, discriminatory and harassing behaviour had been going on for years and years, and no one had stopped it. I will refer here to a few specific examples, not to embarrass anyone, but because these kinds of situations are much more common than acknowledged and because they cause pain and deep damage in the public service. Moreover, these situations profoundly harm our ability to give Canada and its citizens what we have committed to providing.

Recently, we've seen reports of public servants having to repeatedly explain to those in authority over them that the use of clearly derogatory and racist terminologies has no place in the public service. We've seen employees spend years and years having to either fight to be treated with even the minimums of respect and requirements of the law and their collective agreement, or to quit the public service. We've seen instances of employees posting racist posters in busy lunchrooms, only to find that the only single employee on that floor created a formal complaint out of it. Only one employee. Fortunately, these situations don't happen everywhere, every day, but they happen more frequently than any of us is comfortable saying, even for those who live these things as targets of them.

This is where I want to get to the set of things that we need not to do if we're to live up to our Code of Values and Ethics, and if we are to take the call to anti-racism seriously. If you are not or have never been the target of these kinds of attacks, success is not limited to being able to say: I have never witnessed this kind of thing. When you see things that may be harassment, find ways to support those who were targeted. Find ways to make it safe for others to speak about what they experienced. Understand that for many public servants, recognizing or speaking about such instances has perhaps never been safe. It may, in fact, have been very dangerous to admit, to speak up, or to complain. Be prepared for the fact that it may be an uncomfortable conversation for many reasons. But whatever you do, don't just turn or walk away. When the rest of us turn or walk away, the message to those who have felt singled out, discriminated against, or harassed is that if, capital IF, there is a problem, it's your problem, not mine.

This is not a culture that cultivates the breadth of skills, life experience, perspectives, and strengths that Canada needs and requires of its public service. A public service that seeks to be professional and nonpartisan must take up the challenges of ensuring that it is capable of addressing the gaps and cultural challenges that it may have in order to serve its citizens, and their government, as effectively as possible. One of the challenges that Canada's public service had made improvements on, but where much work remains to be done, is ensuring that it does not hold back or exclude some of the very elements that will guarantee that it succeeds more fully.

In conclusion, I'm optimistic about the future of Canada's public service because the journey I witnessed over the last 35 years makes me optimistic, and because of the skill, dedication, and aspiration of those who carry that responsibility today into the future. If you arrived here today worried about whether or not talking about values and ethics means moving away from anti-racism, I hope that you take from my remarks that Canada's public service cannot possibly live up to those values, especially those of respect for people, stewardship, and excellence if it doesn't.

If you arrived here today worried that anti-racism might be a passing fad or fading priority, I hope that you'll see from my remarks that better public policy and better public administration has always been better politics for every government since 1867.

If you arrived here today thinking that we've talked about these issues enough and that we've moved beyond them, I ask you to ask yourself what gaps are around us all and what cost do they bring to Canada and Canadians?

And finally, I would ask you this one final question that Gaveen has raised earlier, so what are you going to do now? Thank you.

[00:55:22 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Wow. So, first of all, I just want to thank again, Gaveen, for setting the stage so clearly and candidly, and Daniel as well, for your very profound and thought-provoking reflections. And we're not just going to let you get away. You're going to remain on stage for the next part of the discussion, so I invite you to take a seat. And just a reminder that this next panel discussion will also be followed by a Q and A, live and virtual. Just a reminder to go to wooclap.com and enter the code VEOCT, as you start thinking of your questions.

[00:56:00 Camera alternates between views of Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, the panelists as they take their seats on stage, and Nadia Theodore in a video chat panel.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: I'm now going to invite our panelists to join us, starting with our moderator, Paul Thompson, Deputy Minister at Employment and Social Development Canada. Followed by Patrick Boucher, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister at Public Safety Canada. And joining us remotely is Nadia Theodore, head of the Permanent Mission of Canada in Geneva, Ambassador and permanent representative to the World Trade Organization, the UN Trade and Development International Trade Centre, and World Intellectual Property Organization.

So, with that, Deputy Minister Thompson, over to you.

[00:56:50 Camera alternates between views of Paul Thompson, the panelists, and Nadia Theodore in a video chat panel. Text on screen: Paul Thompson, Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development.]

Paul Thompson: Okay. Thank you very much. First of all, a big thank you to Daniel for your passionate and motivating observations. That's a great starting point, I think, for our discussion this afternoon. It is truly an honour to be here with three distinguished leaders for a very important discussion. Perhaps before we start with the description, I could share some perspectives on the same theme that Daniel mentioned, the importance of an organizational perspective and an individual perspective.

When we think about our organizational responsibilities, these are profoundly important, and they vary from organization to organization. Obviously, in my case, I spent many years at Employment and Social Development, where diversity and inclusion are quite central to the mandate. I'd say they're hardwired right into our raison d'être, whether it's the policies we work on, the programs we design, or the services we deliver. For example, on the policy side, we had a task force that recently did a full-on examination of the Employment Equity Act. Quite dated. Needs desperate modernization to meet the challenges ahead. We also look regularly at poverty in Canada and notice its incidence, which is quite unequal, uneven across the country in terms of equity deserving groups.

When it comes to programs, like many other departments, very specific programs aimed at targeting issues around inclusion. We've got longstanding relationships with Indigenous organizations to deliver skills in employment training. More recent relationships, co-developing an early learning and childcare system, so many, many programs. We're developing a new disability benefit to support that community. So, those are profoundly important. And, Daniel, as you've noted, we can't purport to be a well functioning service organization unless we reflect the population we serve. So, this agenda is without question the right thing to do, but it's also a business imperative for the public services, as I think you eloquently pointed out.

So, that's kind of the organizational side of it but I think individually, as public servants, I'd like to get into this too. We have got tremendous opportunities and responsibilities as well. I've often thought about the fact that we're at the forefront of a learning journey of Canadian society. We have access to tools and information and insights that we can take advantage, and that's certainly been my experience. I was reflecting with Daniel before we got on, I've had the opportunity over my career to visit many Indigenous communities, dozens. But Daniel and I happened to be at Millbrook, First Nation in Nova Scotia when Prime Minister Harper issued his apology, the government's apology, to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit for residential schools. A powerful learning moment for me, and I consider that as a big part of my learning journey and subsequent passion for the Reconciliation agenda. I do think it's important that we reflect on these opportunities we have to learn more. Whether it's about Reconciliation or the resources during Black History Month that we can learn about, these are great opportunities to learn more. Maybe lastly, as an individual – and we can get into this, too – I certainly benefited a lot in my career from mentorship and think that's a profoundly important instrument that we have in our toolkit for moving forward and advancing the careers of others.

So, with that as a little bit of context, I'd like to dive in. Maybe we can start with a theme that you were referencing, Daniel, maybe I'll start with Patrick, and then Nadia. You mentioned the risk, Daniel, of this being a buzzword or just a slogan. Patrick, do you have thoughts about how we can make this more of a permanent and enduring agenda?

[01:01:16 Patrick Boucher appears full screen. Text on screen: Patrick Boucher, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Public Safety Canada.]

Patrick Boucher: Yes, thanks very much for the question. And I'd just like to start by acknowledging as well that we're gathered here on beautiful unceded Algonquin territory, and I really just want to acknowledge everyone in the room for being here. I think the numbers are tremendous in terms of registration numbers, and that's great because I think that speaks to the importance of these conversations here today and again tomorrow.

So, thanks to everyone for being part of that. Yes, the whole buzzword thing is, I think, a live debate. And I would just say that when I think of that, obviously as an institution, as a public service, I think we've been quite clear that we're taking that principled approach here. And that principled approach is very much anchored in the values that we live and breathe every day within the public service.

But if we're really going to breathe life into that vision, I think we really need to focus in on the mindset shift that I think needs to occur. Getting to the place where, whether it's managers, executives, employees, recognize the value in this. And I say that in the sense of making sure that as a manager, we have the most high performing team that we could have. Recognizing that diversity of thought, lived experiences, having that as part of your team, as a manager, makes you a better manager; allows you to better deliver on the things that are being asked of you; makes us, I think, better as a public service to be able to deliver on important priorities that we're being asked to deliver on by the government.

So, I think that's where we need to get to. We have a very clear vision. I think as an institution, we've been quite clear about that. But getting to that mindset shift where it's not just a buzzword, where there's true value, and everybody understands that value. I think if we could get to that point, and I think we're making tremendous progress, we'll be a better public service.

Paul Thompson: So it actually takes root in our culture, and not just a passing...

Patrick Boucher: It becomes part of our DNA. It actually gets ingrained within our values and ethics.

[01:03:30 Camera alternates between views of Paul Thompson, the panelists, and Nadia Theodore in a video chat panel.]

Paul Thompson: That's great. Nadia, what would you like to add to this question?

[01:03:36 Nadia Theodore appears full screen. Text on screen: Nadia Theodore, Head of Mission in Geneva and Ambassador to the WTO.]

Nadia Theodore: Thanks. I hope everybody can hear me. And it's great to be virtual. I wish I was there in person with you all, but great to participate virtually.

Maybe I would just start by saying that I think that it's important for us to acknowledge the reasons why people would think that this is a buzzword or a passing phase or something that is not for the long haul. And I think that it's because – I mean, when you listened to Daniel's keynote and he spoke about where the public service was when he started versus where it is today, it struck me that when he was talking about some of the firsts, and some of the progress, those firsts and progress were quite recent.

So, when you mention Deputy Xavier, Chief Xavier, she became an Associate Deputy Minister four years ago, so very recently. When you talk about the evolution of executives, and the executive ranks, being representative of the Canadians and the Canada that we live in, much of the progress has indeed been quite recent, and, in fact, has been due to world events that drove – world and domestic events, I would say – that drove people to have no choice but to do something because of the strong voices within the organizations that we lead as public service leaders.

And so, if you think about that context, it is no wonder that as the world continues to evolve; as world and domestic issues continue to pile on; as things get ever more complex; as we come out of a pandemic where we hired record numbers of public servants that we now have to teach and bring into the fold in terms of what it means to be a public service, which is a new challenge, it is no wonder that people think, well, how are we going to do all of these things all simultaneously with the same rigor for it all? Something's got to give. And what's going to give? Well, probably the thing that maybe nobody wanted to do anyway, and they felt that they just needed to do it because of world and domestic events that pushed us.

So, if we're being honest with ourselves, that is the context. And that is probably why people think that it is a buzzword and think that it is a passing phase. And I say that because I do think that understanding where that sentiment comes from within our organizations is key to then figuring out what we do about it. Because to me, when you understand where that might come from, you then understand that the key to overcoming that sentiment and changing mindset, quote unquote, is really about building and maintaining trust. Building and maintaining trust amongst our employees, and building and maintaining trust amongst leadership, amongst the leadership ranks that also have a heavy lift and a heavy learning curve in order to really sustain the effort that is needed to get where we want to go when we talk about building inclusive workplaces, and the workplaces that we want to see in the public service.

And so, to me, that's the most important thing, is to really not forget the context and not forget the why of why people might be feeling that this is a passing phase or a buzzword. And I think that that will lead us to really digging down, doing the work. Ne lâchez pas as we would say in French, like, don't let go, keep moving, and understand that pushback is inevitable, but pushback is actually part of progress. So, I'll leave it there for now.

[01:08:33 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: Okay. Thank you very much for these thoughts. That's a very good point. Maybe we can move on to barriers and maybe you can start with Daniel. What are the systemic barriers to equity, diversity and inclusion and how can we remove them?

[01:08:53 Daniel Quan-Watson appears full screen.]

Daniel Quan-Watson: I think the biggest barrier, there are several, but the biggest one is the question:what is the problem we're facing? Is it because people keep complaining because they would like to have jobs but did not get them? Is it because there are gaps in the way the public service has been set up, so that we are not delivering programs and services at the level we should? I think we could use the concept of buzzwords only if there is no real problem. We never talk about buzzwords for long, at least when we're facing a problem that we recognize as a real problem.

So, I think that's the big question. And I have enormous respect for what has been said about taking methods for inclusion into account. This is a very good thing. But we are in government. If we ever went to the Treasury Board, to the Department of Finance, if we said, well the answer is money. Just give us more money and things will be fixed. We would be thrown out of the room immediately. We're told, but what's the problem? Define it. What is the gap you're trying to fill?

So, in my opinion, if we take inclusion into consideration without accounting for the costs of exclusion, we'll never get there. And for me, that's the biggest barrier, it's clarity on that first question.

[01:10:38 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: Nadia, do you have anything to share concerning barriers?

[01:10:48 Nadia Theodore appears full screen.]

Nadia Theodore: In my opinion, yes, I completely and absolutely agree with what Daniel said. I also think that another significant barrier for us is that, honestly we are just human, and change is difficult. Making changes in a large organization is difficult for managers and for employees as well. It's very difficult to see changes and not think: what does this mean for me? This is something that is completely—I always tell my employees and even my friends, my colleagues—that this is completely normal. We are all human. Then I think the barrier—the pushback—that we're dealing with, we're dealing with the fact that there are people asking questions, like: what does this initiative that gives a helping hand to a specific group mean to me? What does it mean to me that you have a selection process that is just for another group here? We consider these questions to be bad questions.

In my opinion, these are questions that are completely normal in an organization, to have people asking questions: what does this mean for me? Then it's up to us, the managers, the leaders in the organizations, to explain to people what our values are as a public service, why we do things that way. Giving the facts, giving the data points to show people that this is why we do what we do. This is why we strongly support the idea of a public service that is based on values of equity, diversity and inclusion. It's important, not just for policies but for programs, for everything we do. And I find that a considerable barrier is that, as good Canadians—because I lived in the United States for a long time and I can see the difference—as good Canadians, we don't like to have conflicts, we don't like to have difficult conversations, to have conversations with people when we're talking about difficult subjects. When people can ask tough questions, then the questions can be answered honestly, and as a team. Yes.

[01:14:02 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: Great. Thanks very much, Nadia. Patrick, do you have anything to add about your perspective on barriers?

[01:14:31 Patrick Boucher appears full screen.]

Patrick Boucher:  Well, I think a lot of good points have been made. Maybe what I could add is that, you know, in a very practical way, as a public service, if we want to try to identify barriers, address them, put plans in place to try to overcome them, I think it's really important that we can look at this from different perspectives. So, recruitment; I think that would be a set of barriers that we could tackle together as a public service. It's all well and good if you recruit people, but you can't keep them; so retention would be another aspect that we should target. In his speaking points, Daniel talked about talent development. So how can we—whether it's an Indigenous employee joining the public service, how can we guide this individual, foster their development, offer them opportunities throughout their career. Then ultimately, it also comes back to talent management. So just from a very practical perspective, I think that would be the approach to take. And I know that we're doing this as a public service. I think it's very important. It's very important to not just boil the ocean on this, to really break it down in different buckets that we could address.

[01:15:58 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: Very good. Patrick, maybe I'll stick with you. I mentioned the profoundly important Reconciliation journey that we're on as a country and our responsibilities as Canadians, as public servants. There are some links to the inclusion agenda, but that Reconciliation has a very important life of its own in the life of the country. Can you share some reflections on what you see the links with diversity, inclusion and what stands out as important distinctions as well for you?

[01:16:32 Patrick Boucher appears full screen.]

Patrick Boucher: Sure. So, I would say that when you think about EDI or the Calls to Action, I see those as very effective means of advancing Reconciliation within the public service, so I think it serves to advance that. And I'm really deliberately saying within the public service, because as an institution, as a federal public service, we obviously have a huge role to play in facilitating Reconciliation across the country, in supporting society to advance Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. But how are we going to do that if we don't get our own house in order first? So, I think if we're going to do our part as a partner in reconciliation, and many provincial governments, obviously Indigenous people, municipalities, citizens, all have a role to play in reconciliation. So, as an institution, if we're going to play our role, I think we need to also look at Reconciliation within the public service with our Indigenous employees.

So, this question really brings me back to Many Voices, One Mind: A Pathway to Reconciliation. And, for those who aren't acquainted with it, this was a tremendous piece of work that was led under Gina Wilson back in 2017, and that we continue to implement to this day. And in essence, that was really to identify barriers to Indigenous employment within the public service. There was a lot of engagement with existing public servants, Indigenous public servants, past Indigenous public servants, to really understand why they left the public service. And I remember the stats back then were very clear. I mean, we were doing an okay job in recruitment, but we were losing Indigenous employees much faster than we were recruiting them, which really got us to think about zeroing in on those barriers; identifying solutions to it; providing advice on possible steps that as an institution; enterprise wide solutions that could be taken; but also advice to deputies on how, within their own authorities, within their departments, actions that they could be taking.

So, all that to say is, I think there's a direct link between the work that we're doing on EDI, on calls to action, even the work that we're talking about today over these two days around Values and Ethics that really serve to advance Reconciliation as a whole.

[01:19:11 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: That's great. That's helpful. Daniel, you've devoted many years to this question as well. Anything you want to add to Patrick's answer?

[01:19:18 Daniel Quan-Watson appears full screen.]

Daniel Quan-Watson: Yes, just very quickly, every single one of us in this room has been judged under the Public Service Employment Act to be qualified to govern Canada, to put it simply. But just think about all your time in elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate school. What would the total number of minutes of education you had about Indigenous peoples' contributions to Canada add up to? For me, it's 15 minutes, ten of which was talking about John A. MacDonald sending the army to put an end to Métis rights discussions in Saskatchewan <inaudible>. Not one second of it was from an Indigenous perspective.

So, how similar is that to who you are and how you were raised? What messages did you take about the importance of Indigenous people and their contributions to this country when all of those institutions were preparing you for that moment when under the Public Service Employment act, out of 40 million Canadians, they said, you small 300,000 people, you're the ones who are most qualified to govern this country. And if you think about that, to me it's a good place to start thinking about what Reconciliation needs to mean.

[01:20:39 Camera alternates between Paul Thompson full screen, and the panelists seated on stage.]

Paul Thompson:  Maybe a question for Nadia. Daniel spoke about the importance of accountability and consequences. Perhaps you could share some perspectives on this question, on the link between accountability, consequences and our goals for equity, diversity and inclusion.

[01:21:06 Nadia Theodore appears full screen.]

Nadia Theodore: Well, without sounding maybe too cute about it, to me that the link seems obvious. I think Daniel said it during his keynote that – or maybe it was Gaveen that said it when she was speaking, I can't remember – but we set objectives and then we hold ourselves accountable for those. And that's not a new concept. I mean, we like to now make fancy words for everything and package it nicely so that maybe it sounds like we're doing something different, so we don't have to say that we didn't make it work the first time around, because now it's different and now we're going to do it better.

But frankly, accountability and consequences are part of what has been a core value of the public service and of any workplace. And, I think that, frankly, if we are being honest with ourselves, I think that over the years and decades, as things have gotten heavier and harder and more complicated, it is easier to make accountability more complicated. And to almost layer on accountability the same way that we layer on approval levels, the same way that we layer on complexity of decision making. Sometimes it's needed and sometimes it's not.

And what I would say about accountability and consequences, as it relates to values and ethics, and as it relates to anything that we do in the public service, is that it is incumbent on each one of us, whether you are an individual contributor in your organization or whether you are a manager or whether you are a senior leader, to understand what it is that you are accountable for in your day to day work, both from a work perspective, from a deliverable perspective, but also from a values perspective. How you show up in your work. The how of your work, not the what of your work. Figure that out. And it might mean figuring it out in terms of talking to yourself. Maybe it's talking to your friends, maybe it's talking to your managers, talking to your colleagues, but you have to figure it out, and then you have to start by building those accountability measures in for yourself, because you value yourself as a public servant, and then your manager and each level of your managers need to do the same thing.

And frankly – people say I'm too blunt to be a diplomat, but I will be blunt – we just have to get on with it and do it, frankly. And really and truly remind ourselves that we are in a period where lack of trust for public institutions is at an all time high. And that, again, sounds quite trite. Trite, I think, is the word. It sounds like it's just a throwaway line, and then you kind of continue on what you're doing. But it has real consequences. It has real consequences for who we are as a public service, for what we get to do and what we get to influence as public servants, and for the future of the country and what we are responsible for as public servants in this country. And I think that at the core of fixing that, what we control is how we do our jobs and how we show up. And that's the accountability and the consequence part.

[01:25:02 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: That's great and thank you for being blunt. It's appreciated. We are approaching the end of our time. I know we've got questions coming in on wooclap, but maybe I would like to just do one final round with the panel before we go to the open questions. Daniel, you talked about the challenges of being the first, or amongst the few who are the first. Anything more that you could share, like advice for individuals that find themselves in those situations?

[01:25:43 Daniel Quan-Watson appears full screen.]

Daniel Quan-Watson: Two things. First of all, if you are one of the first or one of the few, and you feel that – and that can come from any number of different backgrounds and perspectives – it's not in your imagination that you're carrying extra weight. And just know that and understand that. And when it seems harder for you than for other people around you, you're not necessarily wrong. So don't beat yourself up too much about that.

But the other thing I'll say is this, I only succeeded as much as I succeeded in my career because there were some fantastic people from across the entire spectrum of the public service who helped me out and supported me and gave me advice and guidance and gained support at different points in time. And if you see someone who's the first, someone who's the few, someone who's out there on their own, be a support, you have no idea what impact that will have and for how long.

[01:26:43 Camera alternates between Paul Thompson full screen, and the panelists seated on stage.]

Paul Thompson: Indeed. Great advice. Okay, so we do have questions coming in, so rather than dominating with my questions, I am going to pull some from the wooclap platform, a reminder for folks that they can submit questions through wooclap.com, and I'll maybe look for some volunteers on the panel to take on these questions.

So, the first one is, in an asymmetrical society, how do you ensure that values and ethics do not get used as soft power to silence marginalized groups from seeking equity rights? So, who wants to, as we digest that question, it's deep. Daniel, I'm going to put you on the spot.

[01:27:32 Daniel Quan-Watson appears full screen.]

Daniel Quan-Watson: Sure, thanks.

Paul Thompson: Because that was our deal, that you get the hardest questions.

Daniel Quan-Watson: I would say that you make sure you have the right discussions to get the right values. The values that we have in the code of public service, make sure that we don't get there. It gives the platform to make sure we don't. In fact, I think the entire thrust of what I was saying is if you've got the right values, you see them the right way, you can hold the institution to account for what it promised itself and promised others. I think we have that here. But if you get the wrong values, then you're in trouble.

Paul Thompson: Yes. Patrick, you'd agree with that?

[01:28:05 Patrick Boucher appears full screen.]

Patrick Boucher: Yes, and maybe just to double down on that as well. I think it comes down to something that you raised in terms of that starting question, what are we trying to fix here, and making sure that we stay focused on treating this as any other business priority, that we tackle as a public service that we're very good at.

[01:28:25 Camera alternates between each panelist full screen, and the panelists seated on stage.]

Paul Thompson: Yes. We have discipline and rigor with how we approach.

Patrick Boucher: Exactly.

Paul Thompson: So, why don't we bring this?

Patrick Boucher: Whatever government priority it is, we're good at it. We set a plan in place. We're clear on our vision. We resource it, we measure ourselves, and we hold ourselves to account, so let's not make this anything but that. It's a priority for the very obvious reasons that we've talked about, and let's treat it as any other business priority that we tackle on a day-in, day-out basis across the public service.

Paul Thompson: Very good. Nadia, anything on this before we go to question two?

[01:28:56 Nadia Theodore appears full screen.]

Nadia Theodore: Yes. Maybe just quickly, and maybe to be the contrarian or to maybe give a different perspective. I think that sometimes you won't be able to guard against that.

Again, I think that if we're being honest with ourselves, there will be times when the public service values – because remember we were talking about not our personal values – the public service values that, in our jobs we are accountable for, will inevitably clash with what a group of individuals, one individual, rightly might believe is something that they deserve to have, either in the workplace, or just by virtue of them being a person. And I think that that's to be expected.

I'll give you an example. I was the Consul General to the Southeast USA in Atlanta. Based in Atlanta, responsible for six southeast states. I was also only the second Black female Head of Mission at the time to ever be appointed, and at the time, the only Black female Head of Mission. And I was in the United States at the time that Ahmaud Arbery and others were murdered. I wanted to go out and march. I wanted to participate in the marches. I wanted to participate in the letter writing. I wanted to participate in all of the civic and civil action that was taking place, because I am a Black person living at a time when it was, to me, very critical that I do something. The values that I signed up for when I decided to be Head of Mission, when I decided to represent Canada abroad, meant that I could not march anywhere. I could not take part in a letter writing campaign. That is a clash. And I think that we have to be honest with ourselves about it. I had to be honest with myself about that clash and decide how I was going to reconcile that.

And so, I just think that we do have to be honest with ourselves, that it's not always going to be as simple as, if we get the right values and if we do it right, then it's going to end up right. There will be clashes. There will be things that will be difficult, that will be very messy. And I think that people have to be prepared for that and again, be prepared to have those difficult conversations and to make those choices as they present themselves.

[01:32:10 Camera alternates between Paul Thompson full screen, and the panelists seated on stage.]

Paul Thompson: Indeed, thank you for that. So, it is inevitable that our values and ethics were never intended to provide a crystal-clear pathway to any particular. It's a framework within which we analyze situations, and those kinds of clashes are indeed inevitable, and we have to navigate them and provide public servants with the tools to do that.

I think now we've taken a few questions from the platform. I'm going to turn to the audience. We've got a question right here.

[01:32:40 Camera shows the panelists seated on stage.]

Audience member: Hi there. I just wanted to pick up on what Nadia was talking about when it comes to truth, because when it comes to diversity and inclusion and having more diverse voices at the public service table, that's happening, not because Canada thought it was a good idea, it was the relentless advocacy of marginalized people that made that happen. And so, my question is, how do we get to a place where we can more truthfully acknowledge when we miss the mark as an institution? Because we're not good at saying when we've missed the mark, we're not good at identifying failure. And then where do we go from there? We'll cover it up. We'll say, oh, we continue to do X, Y and Z. Or, yes, we're working on it, but we never come out and truly say, yes, we missed it. We failed on this, but here's what we're going to do to do better. How do we get to that as an institution?

Paul Thompson: Nadia, that was directed at you, so I'll turn to you.

[01:33:51 Nadia Theodore appears full screen.]

Nadia Theodore: It was? Okay, sorry. Well, listen, I mean, nobody likes to admit that they failed. Again, we have to be honest. It's like, there's no one who likes to say: Ah, I completely messed up the plan and I failed. So, if only, when we have consequences, when we have this kind of accountability, it allows us to be a little more comfortable saying: you know what, it didn't work this time. We have to try something different. And I also think that for the public service, especially today.

In these times – I feel like my mother when I say that – it costs a lot more when we fail. You know, the speed at which information flows, the speed at which people know who did it and who didn't do it and make up the stories around it. So, it's no wonder that many times the idea is about to be just very risk adverse. It's no wonder. And we also have to acknowledge that.

And I would say to you, and I say this from a point of actually wearing a public service, senior leader, public service hat, don't be afraid to start small. You know, it doesn't have to be, all of a sudden, we're admitting our failures around everything and being big and bold on every issue. Start small, start by identifying one or two projects, one or two initiatives where you say to your employees, or as an employee, you say to your manager: Okay, this is going to be the initiative where we're going to try, and if we fail, we're going to decide that we are going to communicate internally exactly how we failed, why we failed, and we're going to have real conversations about it. Choose a couple, and be very clear and specific about it, and then double click on it and drive it.

Because if you try and create a culture of a fail-fast culture in the public service, just like that, all of a sudden, across the board, I just believe that it's too much, frankly. It's too much for us, it's too much for everybody, and we need practice, and we need to start small. So, that would be my practical suggestion, would be to identify one or two initiatives where you have decided that when you fail, you're going to be loud and proud about it and identify it from the start and then follow it through.

[01:36:55 Camera alternates between Paul Thompson full screen, and the panelists seated on stage.]

Audience member: Great. Thank you. We can take another question in the room. I think we've got another question, and if you have a particular panelist that you'd like to direct it to, feel free. Otherwise, I will exercise my prerogative.

2nd Audience member: Thank you so much. I wanted to preface my question just by mentioning I'm a neurodivergent person, so I'm going to try and phrase my question respectfully, and that is my intention, so I just hope that you understand that and take my question as such. I'm noticing that persons with disabilities are not being included quite as much in the conversation as other marginalized groups. And I'm sorry, I did have a point, and.

Paul Thompson: Happy to come back if you want to take a pause.

2nd Audience member: Yes, if you don't mind. I'm sorry.

Paul Thompson: We'll just take a pause. It's fine. And we'll take another question, and then I'll come right back to you, and maybe we can do two questions at once. So, is there another question that we can turn to in the back? And we'll do two at once. There's one in the front here.

3rd Audience member: Hi. I have a question. So, we're hearing a lot of great ideas, and people will want to go back to their departments and support Call to Action, and my question relates to how to do that. So, for example, I'm a researcher. I study ethics, and one of the things that the research shows is that information-based interventions don't always work, and, in fact, they can actually have the opposite impact. So, there's research showing that some multicultural efforts have actually increased negative perceptions about racial differences and biological differences, that sort of thing. My question for the panel is, what do you recommend government departments and agencies do when they go back to have a meaningful approach to dealing with the Call to Action?

Paul Thompson: Very good. And I don't know if we want to do a check in on our previous question on how we ensure persons with disabilities are prominent in our Call to Action, or do we want to leave it at that? Maybe we'll just be leaving it?

2nd Audience member: Sorry. Thank you so much. So, my question was, like I mentioned, that persons with disabilities, I'm noticing, are just not quite included in this conversation as much right now. And there is sort of an issue with people who have multiple disabilities. And some disabilities are maybe more visible, some are not visible, and some people may develop disabilities or may need some support. So even if, for example, a person can create a program, that a person without disabilities can create a program for the public service, for example, and then they themselves develop a disability. They, I don't know, get a concussion, they break their leg, they develop arthritis or something, and then suddenly they need the support. And so, they could potentially create a program that will later be a disadvantage to them as well.

And there's also different layers of that. A person, like, for example, a woman with a disability, has multiple layers of struggles, being a woman in the public service as well as being a person with disabilities. And it is harder to get accommodations, I think, as a woman, because some certain types of disabilities that women have, or certain – I'm using the term woman a little bit more loosely – people, medically, women, aren't taken necessarily as seriously all the time. And so that also causes issues with things like filling out the forms necessary by a doctor to get the accommodations that one needs. And it's just a very complicated and there's so many different layers to it.

And there's also types of disabilities, like neurodivergencies, that tend to get ignored in, or maybe not ignored but not considered, in the conversation. Things like when we talk about values and ethics, some people might think, oh, to be respectful, you have to phrase things in a specific way, where a person who is neurodivergent might not be intending to be disrespectful, they're just trying to be honest in their question. And their question or their comment is coming from a true place of trying to help or from a true place of curiosity. But it is heard or seen from the lens of, oh, they're just trying to push buttons, or they're just trying to be mean, and so they're not actually heard. And so, there's that, you don't feel welcome in the conversation because of that.

I know I kind of mentioned a lot of different things in there, but my point is, what are we doing to include all of the different types of perspectives of people with disabilities? How are we making sure that people with disabilities in all of the different forms, and also just people who are marginalized, who fit into multiple different categories? I'm using that term categories a little loosely, but like that, everyone is being heard and everything is being taken into consideration.

Paul Thompson: Very good. So, we've got two profoundly important questions here, one on inclusions of persons with disabilities. This is one that's near and dear to my heart. I talked about the importance of being in a service organization, and the slogan, nothing about us without us is much more than a slogan. It's critically important we design services with persons with disabilities in mind. I don't know if any panelists want to do a quick reflection on that one or this other interesting question we had on research objectives, and then we're going to do a quick wrap up after that. Patrick, do you want to?

[01:43:24 Patrick Boucher appears full screen.]

Patrick Boucher: Yes, I'm happy to jump in on that first question that was asked. You know, my advice would be just go back and get involved. I mean, I think there's a lot of opportunities, there's a lot of things happening across various departments, real tangible initiatives that are being undertaken at the departmental level. But I truly believe everybody has a role to play. As an individual, get involved. And whether it's from a research perspective, well, that's something that you could bring to the table, and I think they would be very useful.

Of course, make sure that, to your point, nothing for us without us, make sure that you're engaging, whether it's Indigenous employee networks within your departments or other networks, make sure that you're working with them and engaging with them as allies to try and find some of these solutions. So just quick advice on that.

[01:44:11 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: That's great. That successful engagement internally leads to more appropriate services for Canadians. Maybe just turn to, for some last reflections to the panel on any last comments you want to share on perhaps what success looks like or what you aspire to seeing as outcomes. Nadia, do you want to go first, including thoughts?

[01:44:38 Nadia Theodore appears full screen.]

Nadia Theodore: Yes, maybe I'll use my couple of minutes, maybe, to address the question that somebody asked about disabilities and how we [could] do a little bit better on that, just because I think that it warrants a little bit, a couple more minutes. And I would just say to you that from my perspective, it's not only just about having voices heard. I really do think that when you're talking about multiple layers of inclusion and multiple layers of giving our employees what they need to survive and thrive in the workplace and deliver for us, it really does take, as Patrick said, folks to get involved.

And, from the employee side, but also from the manager and leader side, I really do think that leaders need to make sure that they are watching out for who is not included. And listening and pushing hard when you hear a question or somebody raise their hand and say – or not raise their hand, there's somebody continuously who's not raising their hand, who you're not hearing from, who is continuously maybe being told that they're being disrespectful – double click on that a little bit. Like, really, are they? Or is that a perception? Is that something that we are not giving that person in order for them to participate fruitfully in whatever we're trying to do. Is it an "us" problem, or "them" problem, or a systemic problem?

And so, I really do think that if we ask those types of questions, then it doesn't have to be about making sure that we include everybody in every line and making sure that we say all the right words and use all the right buzzwords so that everybody feels, quote unquote, included, that it really is about making space and creating space and having spaces so that people can raise their issues and managers can engage with people, as it were, when it were, in a way that truly allows people to thrive in the workplace. Thanks. And thanks for inviting me.

[01:46:55 Paul Thompson appears full screen.]

Paul Thompson: Great. Thank you, Nadia. Turns for some questions, quick concluding remarks. Patrick, anything you want to conclude on in terms of what success looks like?

[01:47:02 Patrick Boucher appears full screen.]

Patrick Boucher: Yes, I think for me it's that we continue to really drive this as a business priority, as we spoke about earlier on in the conversation, because, again, I think we're tremendous at it as a public service in terms of treating it as such. And we deliver, making sure that there's the space for everyone to be a full participant in this journey of Reconciliation within the public service, in breathing life into the calls to action and anchoring all of that in the values and ethics that we're here to celebrate and discuss today and tomorrow. So, it's a journey, and I guess that's, for me, it's success that we continue to move those yardsticks based on that.

[01:47:47 Camera shows the panelists seated on stage.]

Paul Thompson: That's great. We'll let Daniel get the last word in. You're going to start, and we can finish the conversation today.

[01:47:54 Daniel Quan-Watson appears full screen.]

Daniel Quan-Watson: I would say there are 40 million Canadians. There's this entire tiny little community called the Federal Public Service. You might think it's big, but it's 300,000 people out of 40 million. It's the single most powerful collection of power in the country. And you're being asked by the most senior public servant in the country to talk about the values that should matter to Canada and Canadians and the most powerful institution that is guiding it. That was impossible in 1989 when I started. I've retired now. I just give kudos to the Clerk, the Associate Clerk, all of the people have done all of the work to make sure this conversation happens. And take it from somebody who could not have fathomed this moment 35 years ago. Take advantage of every little bit of it and make it worth everything you possibly can.

[01:48:59 Camera shows the panelists seated on stage.]

Paul Thompson: Excellent. So, with that, I want to thank our three amazing panelists. That was a rich conversation, and we had some great insights from all your different perspectives and backgrounds and experiences. I really appreciate you sharing your frank thoughts and just putting some words of wisdom, making them available for the broader public service community. Thank you very much, all three of you.

[01:49:38 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Once again, I would like to thank our panel and remind you that several of the resources that were mentioned during the discussion are available right in our virtual kiosk. So, many of the resources that have been mentioned are available in our virtual kiosks, so I invite you to please scan the code to access that information.

So, as we move to our next panelist, we're going to be queuing up a quick little video for you.

[01:50:12 Video title page. Text on screen: Reflections on Our Values: Respect for People.

[01:50:16 Niha Shahzad appears full screen. Text on screen: Niha Shahzad, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, ON.]

[Text on screen: Respect for people, for me, is the foundation of what equity means.]

Niha Shahzad: Respect for people, for me, is the foundation of what equity means.

[Text on screen: We need to understand that each person and each individual is going to have a different experience with that rule or that policy.]

[01:50:22 Video shows a diverse group of people sitting together at an Indigenous event.]

Niha Shahzad: That we understand that each person and each individual is going to have a different experience with that rule or that policy.

[01:50:16 Tammy Branch appears full screen. Text on screen: Tammy Branch, Canada Revenue Agency, Ottawa, ON.]

[01:50:16 Text on screen: It's how we treat our colleagues, how we treat the people that work for us. It's how we respect the accountabilities that we have.]

Tammy Branch: It's how we treat our colleagues, how we treat the people that work for us. It's how we respect the accountabilities that we have.

[01:50:37 Video shows two people raising a Pride flag.]

[01:50:37 Text on screen: It's about recognizing the dignity and value of each individual.]

Narrator not shown: It's about recognizing the dignity and value of each individual.

[01:50:44 Raoul Ntwali appears full screen. Text on screen: Raoul Ntwali, Canada Revenue Agency, Charlottetown, PEI.]

Raoul Ntwali: For me, respecting someone means recognizing their unique perspectives, experiences and contributions. It doesn't matter where they come from or what role they play.

[01:50:44 Louise André appears full screen. Text on screen: Louise André, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Montreal, QC.]

[01:50:55 Video shows a diverse series of people raising their right hands during their citizenship ceremonies, and a room full of new Canadians cheering together and waving Canadian flags.]

Louise André: In our department, we're lucky enough to be able to take part in citizenship ceremonies, and these are really powerful and really moving. When I took the oath, I cried because I was so moved.

[01:51:05 Tammy Branch appears full screen.

Tammy Branch: Sometimes we need to help guide: guide our employees in the direction that we need to go. We need to be a safe space for them to express their concerns when they don't feel that they're being asked to do something that fits with their core beliefs or their sense of what their job is about.

[01:51:20 Video shows a diverse group of people working together around a table.]

Tammy Branch: If we work together, we respect each other, we can accomplish great things.

[01:51:23 Video ends with symposium title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[01:51:45 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Now, I am truly honoured to introduce our next speaker. Yazmine Laroche is the first person with a visible disability to become a federal deputy minister in Canada and was Canada's first Deputy Minister of Public Service Accessibility. Throughout her public service career, she has been responsible for major initiatives including the New Deal for Cities and Communities, the merger of the National Archives and National Library, and the new Gordie Howe International Bridge project. She sits on the Board of Directors of the National Arts Centre, where she chairs the Human Resources Committee. She is also the Chair of the Disability Screen Office in addition to sitting on the advisory committee of the Auditor General of Canada. With that, let's warmly welcome Yazmine Laroche.

[01:52:30 Yazmine Laroche takes the stage, then appears full screen. Text on screen: Retired Deputy Minister of Public Service Accessibility, Treasury Board Secretariat.]

Yazmine Laroche: Hi, hello, hello, hello. Hi, hi, hi. It's like going back to old loves, eh? What a pleasure to see you and thank you very much for the invitation. I am delighted to be here with you today.

So, six minutes to discuss accessibility and why it matters in the context of Values and Ethics. Yikes. I feel like saying like Daniel said, because he said it so beautifully and so eloquently.

So, I'm going to try and race through some thoughts for today and, so let me start and we'll see how it goes. So, for me, accessibility is a prerequisite for putting our values into practice. Does it show respect for people when we don't provide new employees with the basic tools they need to do their jobs? Does it show respect for Canadians when we design new apps that don't work with screen readers?

Does it show respect for colleagues to tell them that they should probably just work from home because it will just be easier for everybody? Does it show respect when a guest from outside the public service uses the posted address on the website for your office, only to find that there is no accessible entrance at that address?

These are all examples that we heard from our conversations with thousands of public servants as we designed the first public service accessibility strategy. Now, that strategy did launch a number of great initiatives, AAACT's lending library, and training modules around assistive technology; the workplace accessibility passport; a resource hub on everything to do with accessibility. And we have frameworks, and we have guidance, we have the Clerk's Call to Action, the GBA+ framework, the many offerings of the Canada School. This is all great stuff, but the problem is people need to actually use the tools, the frameworks and the training and then apply them. Otherwise, they risk becoming tick the box exercises and they don't actually result in change.

When I started my last job, the data was really concerning. Public servants with disabilities were hired less often, left more quickly, had the lowest promotion rates of any over-represented group in the Canadian public service and the highest rates of harassment and discrimination.

Although things have improved somewhat in recent years—promotion rates are rising and the departure rates of new recruits are dropping—people with disabilities still represent only 6.9% of the Canadian public service workforce.

Why should you care? Well, 27% of Canadians live with at least one disability. That's an increase of 5% between 2017 and 2022, and it will continue to rise. Soon it will be one third of the Canadian population. Everyone's lives will be touched by disability. You, a family member, a neighbour, a colleague. As has been noted, it can happen to anyone at any time. And the thing about disability is, it doesn't discriminate. It does not care about your gender, your race, your language, your age. It intersects with every identity. And when it does, too often that exacerbates inequity. Which is why when I was Deputy Minister for Public Service Accessibility, we placed so much emphasis on allyship. It is really important to advocate for your own communities, but it is equally important to support our colleagues as they struggle and advocate for inclusion.

Too often large organizations end up, and not necessarily intentionally, pitting disadvantaged or underrepresented communities against each other. It's kind of like the Hunger Games for the excluded. You have to fight each other for resources and for attention. And the only people who benefit from that are those who already hold the power and the privilege.

I'm not trying to paint an overly negative picture, but what I'm trying to convey is that values are critical. But if our written and codified values are not consistent with our culture and our behaviour, then we have a disconnect. One of the things I've learned. Feel free to applaud. It'll just make me take longer. Sorry. Sorry, John, but please feel free to applaud anytime. I welcome it.

So, one of the things I've learned over a long, long career is that there's a difference between our stated values and our unwritten values. The values that created a culture that is not always respectful, that does not always act with integrity or stewardship, and that defines excellence or, as Daniel mentioned, merit, in ways that often exclude people One of the things I learned was that there was an archetype of the model public servant that had developed over, I don't know, about 100 years. It was white, male, primarily anglophone, definitely not disabled. It was a loner, not a team player. Competitive, prickly and difficult. Good with ministers, able to manage up adroitly, and obsessed with results. Does that sound like anybody you know?

I remember once having a conversation with a deputy minister. I think we were having discussion about leadership competencies, and we were discussing somebody who worked at PCO in a pretty senior role. This person was notorious for being awful to staff and to colleagues. And I asked this DM, why does he get away with it? And I will never forget what he told me, because he's really, really smart. And I said, but you can be both smart and nice. Have you ever been told that you're too nice? As if demonstrating respect and showing empathy is a sign of weakness. This type of thinking is what has kept too many people from fulfilling their potential. And we know from a multitude of studies that organizations that create inclusive and respectful workplaces, that value diversity and leverage the talent of their people outperform those who don't.

So, what's changed? Because here I am. First federal DM with a visible disability. Well, in the mid 1990s, our first female Clerk, Jocelyne Bourgon, launched a series of initiatives that led to some impressive changes. DM committees, including the one led by the late John Tate on Values and Ethics, accelerated development programs to bring non-archetypal public servants, like Daniel, into more senior positions. A pre-qualification program to create new assistant deputy ministers and to reduce the rampant favouritism that was modelled in the old system.

The immediate results were that many more women went into leadership positions, and now we almost take it for granted. It took longer for other groups, deserving but underrepresented individuals. But change is happening. I see it, it's happening here. So now let me move on to what I think you, the people in this room, the virtual participants, can do.

First, think about the privilege of working in an organization that is designed to serve Canada and Canadians. That's our raison d'être. That is an unbelievable gift. You know, I look back and say I was an accidental public servant because I only joined so I could pay off my student debts. And of course, I got hooked. I came to understand that in the public service I could make a tangible contribution to the life of my country, which is where my own personal motto comes from: make things better.

And as I look back on my career, I can say that I did my very best to live up to that motto. Whether in developing cultural policy, designing new national infrastructure programs, creating the new deal for cities, I had the opportunity to contribute and to make a difference. And then I got to do a job that spoke directly to who I am and what I care deeply about.

Why does that matter? Because it speaks to the public service that you are becoming. It speaks to the public service's capacity for growth, and ability to change. To be and to do better. So, let me ask you to think about a few things. How do you show up? How do you give life to these core public service values? As others have said, too often we look to somebody else to take care of it. But the only way these things become real is when we apply them to the way we do things, big and small. If you're a manager, do you ask your staff, how can I help you to flourish in this job and to realize your potential?

Be curious about the world, about people who don't necessarily look like you or think like you. This is a large portion of Canadians that we serve, and they are also our colleagues. Support different perspectives and points of view. The worst thing that can happen to an organization is groupthink. This is not where the best solutions are created. I've sometimes heard it described as adversarial collaboration. I love that expression. It means making space for differences and getting comfortable with discomfort. For me, this is a way of living up to the value of respect.

I believe we give life to public service values in the way, the how, that we work with and for others. And we do it together because nobody succeeds alone.

Let me close with some thoughts from two very, very different authors, but they both inspire me so much. The first is another old white guy, dead a long time ago, E.M. Forster, whose beautiful novel Howard's End has at its very core the phrase "Only connect". And this from the late, great American activist, author, and educator Bell Hooks. "When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect."

Think about how you can make that real in everything that you do, in everything that you do in service of Canada and Canadians and your colleagues. I want to thank you so much for the time today, and I wish you a great rest of your conversation. Keep it real. Keep it happening.

[02:08:09 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you, Madame Laroche, for closing us out and sharing some valuable insights, some key takeaways. You have a lot of big fans, including myself.

So, with that, I'd like to turn the podium over to Clerk Hannaford for some closing remarks and a preview of tomorrow's agenda.

[02:08:42 John Hannaford takes the stage and appears full screen. Text on screen: John Hannaford, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet.]

John Hannaford: Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Yazmine. It was really fantastic to have the opportunity to learn from your insights and wisdom. Because it's really essential for our work concerning values and ethics.

You know, the one thing I would say based on my participation in sessions like this over the course of the last year is we're always left wanting more. And I certainly feel that way. I think this is a very, very rich conversation. And I think, from the very beginning, Chris's chat with Zabeen this morning, to the best practices, to the conversation around call to ethics, and then Yazmine's really extraordinary comments at the end.

We have a lot to learn and that's why this type of conversation is so important. I will not say an awful lot more right now, other than thank you very much to everyone for participating today across the country, around the world, and here in this room. I am inspired by these conversations. I really am. And I think Chris said it this morning, these are the things that unite us.

There are many, many things that are different, of course, across our organization. We are, notwithstanding the fact that we're not immense, we're pretty big. And that is pretty big in a number of ways. We're diverse across our geography. We're diverse in terms of the functions we perform. We're diverse in terms of our backgrounds. The things that unite us are those values. We are united by being public servants. And in this course of being public servants, we adhere to a set of Values and Ethics that are inspiring and that encapsulate the purpose that we serve. And that purpose is of extraordinary importance to our society, and it is something that should drive us as we pursue our work with excellence.

So, I'm really looking forward to coming back to this tomorrow. We'll have a conversation around our place in democracy, and we'll have a conversation around the application of new technologies and the work that we do. And I thank you again for your participation today. And thank you, Nathalie, for your emceeing.

[02:11:04 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, thank you so much. Just very, very quickly. We, as Clerk Hannaford mentioned, have a very packed agenda again tomorrow, so we look forward to you joining us again. I'm also excited to share, and it was mentioned earlier that we have many regional events that are taking place across Canada and probably abroad as well. And we'll be bringing some highlights, so stay tuned for that.

Don't forget to send us, as well, a photo of yourself or of your team that we can display on the photo wall. So, wooclap and enter the code vephoto to do so. The photo wall will be on display at the in-person event here in Ottawa and included in the event webcast. It can also be shared on social media. And the speaker's corner will also be back tomorrow, so be sure to join us for that.

So that's it. Thank you for today. See you again tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your day, everyone. Thank you.

[02:12:04 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen.]

[02:12:10 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]

Transcript: Upholding Democracy, Serving Canadians: Understanding Our Role as Public Servants

[00:00:00 CSPS title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:00:08 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen and addresses the audience from a lectern. Text on screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, Vice-President, Canada School of Public Service.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Welcome back, everyone, to the second day of our event. Good to see folks back. And for those of you who may be joining us today only, I just want to reintroduce myself. I'm Nathalie Laviades Jodouin. I'm the Senior Vice-President at the Canada School of Public Service, and I'll also be your moderator for today.

We have another full agenda for you today, but first I want to take a moment to acknowledge and recognize some of our regional events. As you know, the public service is spread across Canada and abroad, and we wanted to allow as many people as possible to join us, like we're doing here today. Deputy heads and other senior officials are hosting events in every province and territory, bringing together local public servants from a range of departments and agencies. I'm going to be naming a few.

In Atlantic Canada, we have Michael Vandergrift hosting Fredericton public servants at the NRCan Forestry Center; Arianne Reza and Laura Lee Langley are with public servants in Moncton; Harpreet Kochhar and Christine McDowell are in Halifax; Paul Ledwell and Lawrence Hanson are in Charlottetown; and Annette Gibbons and Dave Boland are in St. John's.

We also have events in the Quebec and Ontario regions. Many thanks to Isabelle Mondou and Jean-Frédéric Lafaille, who are hosting civil servants in Montréal to reflect on values and ethics; Kaili Levesque and Jean-Françoi Fortin, who are leading an informal discussion with colleagues in Quebec. And Arun Thangaraj and Nancy Gardner, who are each hosting events in Toronto. In the north, welcome to public servants in Iqaluit who are gathered with CanNor President Jimi Onalik, and other federal executives. Beyond these whole of government regional events, individual departments are also showcasing what values and ethics mean in their own specific contexts. We have Anne Kelly hosting Correctional Services Canada employees today at Beaver Creek Institution in Gravenhurst; Natasha Kim and Major-General Paul Prévost are hosting employees at Canadian Forces base Kingston; Bob Hamilton is in Sudbury with CRA employees; Sandra McCardell is in Washington today with federal public servants there; and Christopher McLellan and Rob Stewart are hosting events at other missions abroad later in the month. So, this is just a sample. There are many other events taking place within and across teams throughout the public service, and it's really great to see that we're reaching public servants where they are.

Send us a photo of you or your team watching the webcast and let us know where you're participating in the Values and Ethics event from. Go to wooclap.com and enter the code vephoto or scan the QR code to share your photo and your location. The photo wall will be on display at the in-person event here in Ottawa and included in the event webcast, and it might be shared on social media..

So, with that, we're going to continue with the day. Yesterday, we heard from our leaders about their journeys and the lessons they've learned in relation to values and ethics, and about the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity and Inclusion. We heard from some powerful speakers who have shown not only how to raise the bar that we set for ourselves on anti-racism; on Reconciliation; on inclusion of persons with disabilities; but also, on how to hold ourselves accountable for living up to those standards.

Public servants on the front lines shared valuable insights into how they apply values and ethics in their operational contexts across the country and beyond. We also heard about the critical role of building trust and respect, not only with the public, but also within our organizations and our teams, as a foundation for driving progress on the Call to Action in Advancing Equity, Diversity, Accessibility and Inclusion within the public service. Today, we're going to continue with those conversations by examining how our values and ethics help us public servants navigate the challenges and opportunities in our evolving landscape.

One rapidly evolving area is artificial intelligence. AI is highly relevant to public service because of its impact on service excellence and resource stewardship. We'll delve deeper into how AI is shaping our work, the opportunities that it presents, but also the responsibilities that come with its use.

But before we move on to the next segment, let's take a look at another video in our series, highlighting how public servants bring their values to life. This video focuses on respect for democracy and integrity.

[00:05:19 Video opens with title page. Text on screen: Reflections on Our Values: Stewardship.

[00:05:25 Video alternates between Winona Embuldeniya, aerial images of the National Capital Region, and a ceremonial smudging an Indigenous flag. Text on screen: Winona Embuldeniya, Women and Gender Equality Canada, Winnipeg, MB.]

Winona Embuldeniya: Respect for democracy means upholding the principles of our parliamentary system, respecting its democratic process, and then being nonpartisan. But to me, it's also meant upholding the honour of the crown. And it's also meant, for me, working inside the system to ensure that Indigenous voices are heard.

Rajiv Gupta: I mean, democracy is under threat. I'm seeing that it's something that needs to be protected, and it's really the responsibility of every Canadian, but even more so, those that actually serve in the public service. So, certainly something that's very much of interest to me.

[00:05:45 Video alternates between Heidi Robertson, and colleagues interacting on a whiteboard. Text on screen: Heidi Robertson, Department of National Defence, Ottawa, ON.]

Heidi Robertson: Every day I'm contemplating ethical questions like, are we going too far politically? That we're allowing people to participate fully in democracy? So, as long as you just do what you're supposed to do in those situations, that's how you make it better for everybody.

[00:06:12 Video shows symposium title page. Text on screen: Reflections on Our Values: Integrity.]

[00:06:17 Video alternates between Daniel Drouin, and views of the National Capital Region. Text on screen: Daniel Drouin, Employment and Social Development, Ottawa, ON.]

Daniel Drouin: For me, the two key words are keeping the employers trust, but also keeping the public's trust. Because as far as we're concerned, we're paid by the taxpayers, which, for me, is very, very important.

[00:06:28 Khadaja Elsibai appears full screen. Text on screen: Indigenous Services Canada, Toronto, ON.]

Khadaja Elsibai: It's really up to us as public servants to be clear on our role. To always think about what is in the public interest; what is going to help us maintain the integrity of our regulatory regimes.

[00:06:40 Justin Mathews appears full screen. Text on screen: Justin Mathews, Privy Council Office, Ottawa, ON.]

Justin Mathews: There are no easy answers, never has been. So, at the very least you could do is, when in doubt, ask.

[00:06:48 Video ends with symposium title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:06:52 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: This video is yet another reminder that our values and ethics code guides everything we do. But values aren't just words on paper. They come to life through our actions and the examples we set.

Before I introduce our first guest, let's take a quick survey to help set the stage for the themes we'll be discussing shortly.

[00:7:20 Split Screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, and wooclap QR code, and then survey results.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Please go to wooclap.com and enter the code VEOCT in the top banner to access the survey and answer our question. What is one word that describes what it means to you to be a public servant? What is one word that describes what it means to you to be a public servant?

We'll take a moment and look at what's coming through. Pride; responsible; duty; support; serving Canadians; responsibility; services; excellence; support; integrity. Service coming through loud and clear. Integrity. Excellent. Let's keep those coming. Accessibility; representation; leadership; building Canada. Thank you. Thank you for your participation.

[00:08:20 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: When we think about what it means to be a public servant, we are essentially reflecting not only on how we embody our values at work, but also on the unique role we play in achieving the shared goals of the public service. We discussed this topic yesterday and will explore it further today in discussions with our speakers.

I would now like to welcome our first speaker, Professor Ian Stedman, who joins the Canada School of Public Service as a Visiting Scholar through the Jocelyne Bourgon Visiting Scholar Initiative that was launched in 2021. As an associate professor of Canadian public law and governance, and the graduate program director in the School of Public Policy Administration at York University, Professor Stedman is a leading expert in public sector ethics and accountability.

Prior to joining York University, Professor Stedman held the inaugural research fellowship in artificial intelligence law and ethics at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and then a post doctoral fellowship at York University where he researched the governance of artificial intelligence in healthcare. In his role as a visiting scholar, Professor Stedman will support the School in advancing activities related to public service values and ethics. This will include participating in School events and other learning initiatives in partnership with departments across the public service. We are really fortunate to have the benefit of Professor Stedman's extensive experience as a professor, an advisor in the Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario, and a researcher focused on the challenges and opportunities of our digital world.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Stedman.

[00:10:16 Professor Ian Stedman takes the stage and then appears full screen. Text on screen: Ian Stedman, Visiting Scholar, Canada School of Public Service, Associate Professor, York University.]

Professor Ian Stedman: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Nathalie. It's an absolute pleasure to be here and to take in all these wonderful discussions and to reflect on what we've heard so far. As an outsider, I can say that. I have to say it's really quite inspiring to see the depth of engagement that we've seen yesterday, and I'm sure we'll see more today.

I've been given five minutes, so I better not be-labour this. I'd like to take that time to tell you a little bit about myself, why I'm here, what I hope we can accomplish together. So, as you heard, I started my career as a lawyer north of Toronto, and then I quickly moved into a role at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, working for the Office of the Integrity Commissioner. My job there was primarily to give advice to the elected MPPs, but also to help out with lobbying registration administration, and then advice to public servants under the Ontario Public Service Act.

When I was at that office, though, one of the things that I realized, that stuck out to me, was that almost nobody really understood the rules. Some of them, in particular the gift rule, a little bit too complex. And, to almost everyone who came into the office, it was a nightmare to try to explain these things. Politicians barely understood what the rules were. The public absolutely didn't understand what the rules were. And as a person in that office, picking up the newspaper – we had physical newspapers back then, it was not all digital – I would see that even journalists didn't have anyone who could help them really make those things accessible. And so, from the inside, pulling my hair out, looking outside, thinking, why is this stuff so hard? Why does no one get it? It really struck me.

It was never my intention to become an academic, but I just didn't see too many people actively engaging with these topics in a critical and thoughtful way outside of government. And I truly think that we need that. We need that very much. We need people on the outside looking in, asking questions. We need people pointing fingers and saying, why aren't you doing this or that? That's what makes a healthy democracy. But more importantly, I think that's what can help drive innovation and progress. People who aren't on the inside looking at what's happening and asking questions.

You know, academia and academics sometimes suffer from the criticism that we stand on the outside looking in and pointing fingers, and that we really don't know what it means to be a politician, or a public servant, on the ground, having to make real decisions about complex issues under incredible pressure. That's not an unfair criticism most of the time, but academics are also the ones who often take the time to look at what is being done and to ask whether it meets the standards that have been set, and to talk to people and to try to understand the why. Then they can help suggest solutions and maybe even do it in a way that puts pressure on those who have the power to make things happen.

Now, I don't mean to suggest by my remarks today that I think there's something broken. Far from it. But the Deputy Minister's report to the Clerk drew our attention to the fact that public servants are being confronted with new challenges that they don't think are reflected in the Code of Values and Ethics. And some of you also noted that you don't think the code helps you navigate those issues when you confront them. For example, we heard yesterday about the idea that aspects of a person's identity can become the subject of politics. And that living through this can make it very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile your humanity against your duty to uphold public service values. And I can also tell you that I hear over and over again that remote work and virtual work make it hard, or at least a little bit harder, to build a culture around values and ethics in the same way as has been done before in the past. Something has changed. There's less water cooler chit-chat where you can have these little conversations about the minutiae of what it means to do your job on a day-to-day basis. And I'm sure you've all heard this, too.

But let me say something really quickly about artificial intelligence as well. I know we're going to talk about it today. You heard it's a part of my background and what I do. It isn't just a public sector challenge. We all need real leadership helping us understand when and how to use these tools, not only because they're complicated and under regulated, there's the academic in me, but because they need data. And as I'm sure we'll talk about today; our data can be dirty. Dirty because we've only just started to have conversations and to speak openly and actively about who has the power when it comes to AI and how they exercise it, but also about whose voices have been included and excluded when we make policy. Policy, data being reused to glean new insights. That data could be filled with bias.

So, to try to gain new insights from that potentially biased data that we haven't really interrogated, it may feel challenging for a public servant to do that and say, how am I still acting in the public interest? How is what I'm doing having and showing respect for democracy? How are we going to reconcile what AI is and what we don't know about it with those values that we've been talking so much about? These are real problems. These are real questions that we need to grapple with in order to make our public service one that is welcoming of diversity of voices and experiences, and one that is welcoming of a diversity of ways of knowing and doing. We need to grapple with these challenges so that we can build the public service we want, as we move forward into this complex, virtual, and I would dare to say, oftentimes impersonal world that the authors of the code may not have imagined was forthcoming.

I don't have enough time to dig into it today, but you should know that these conversations are also being had in other jurisdictions all around the world. Things have changed, and we all need to make sense of what that means. It's not just a matter of navigating the day to day, either. At the international level, organizations like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, have also been having these conversations for years. They've been writing for years about the important role that public sector ethics and values plays in good governance overall. So, we're doing the right thing by having this conversation and asking these questions.

Let me end by saying this. I'm just a visiting scholar. But, like Daniel said yesterday, I'm here at a time when you, the public service, are having a conversation about things that we rarely talk openly about. And I think we're having this conversation at the right time. The Canada School of Public Service thinks so, too, because they've given me this opportunity. And I want you to know that I, like each of you, care about this conversation. I want to learn what matters to you; what works and what doesn't work. I want to hear the whys and I want to think through the whats and the hows. We all, each of us, wants to do good work, and we all want to leave this place better than we found it. So please, I would say to you, feel free to connect with me, to reach out to me, to send me an email, send me an anonymous email if you want. Start a Twitter account – it doesn't make any sense to send me an anonymous Twitter message – I don't care what it is. Reach out to me. Tell me the things that you think I should hear so that I can spend my time here doing meaningful work that can help push the envelope a bit. Please.

And with that, it now gives me great pleasure to introduce the man who needs no introduction because he's the reason we've had this opportunity to come together. He has an incredibly impressive career in the public service, working in more roles than I can wrap my head around, as a lowly academic, worked in human rights, in trade and foreign affairs, as an assistant secretary to the cabinet, as a deputy minister in different portfolios, and even as an ambassador to Norway. He's seen the public service through many different lenses and at many different levels. And he stands here, I think, from my days with you, steadfast and committed to seeing that this public service continues to evolve. So, his remarks today will help us focus on what it means to be a public servant so we can continue to sharpen our understanding of our engagement with our values as we continue to learn how to operationalize them amongst all the challenges that we're facing.

So, with that, I cede the floor to Clerk Hannaford, and thank you for your time.

[00:18:47 John Hannaford takes the stage and then appears full screen. Text on screen: John Hannaford, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet. ]

John Hannaford: Thanks very much, Ian. I think that set the tone for today very nicely and for the work that that we have been doing and will continue to do over the course of the next period of time.

This is the second day, obviously, of a symposium that I think has been really quite inspiring to me. There has been a depth to this conversation which is, I think, reflective of an appetite for us to grapple with some of the core issues that we are confronting as a community and some of the things that define us as a profession. And that, in and of itself, I think, is, as I say, it is inspiring to me personally. It's inspiring of the vibrancy of this group. It's inspiring in the sense that I think we are grappling with things that matter, and that's to the strength of us as an institution and the future of this body.

[00:19:48 Split screen: John Hannaford, and symposium title page. Text on screen: What it means to be a public servant.]

John Hannaford: I want to start by saying, though, that we are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. And the importance of statements like this link us back to the discussions we've been having. Values and ethics are rooted in the respect for people, and respect for people is rooted in the work that we are doing towards Reconciliation. So, wherever you are today, whether it's in the National Capital Region, or across Canada, or abroad, I encourage you to learn the history of the area you find yourselves in, and to learn from the Indigenous peoples. As has been evident from the conversations we've been having, we learn enormously from those around us. About a year ago, we launched this dialogue on values and ethics.

[00:20:37 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: And I was struck by the enthusiasm with which public servants entered into this dialogue. I enjoyed engaging with public servants at all levels and getting a new perspective on what we're doing on behalf of Canadians.

Many of the conversations have really centred around the theme of what it is to be a public servant. You're all going to have different answers to that question based on your own experiences; the job you do; the institution you serve; and the way that you serve Canadians. For my own part, the service of democracy is one of the most inspiring aspects of the work that we perform together. We are a central pillar of our democratic system. And the democratic system is a central pillar of our society, so we make a very direct contribution to something that is really fundamental to the society that we serve.

And I want every public servant across our organization to feel proud, not just of their individual achievements, or the achievements of their team or department, but in being a public servant. And I must say, I found it enormously gratifying to watch the words flash up on the screen earlier. Service should be enormously prominent, as should be pride. And I hope this conversation reinforces that pride in who we are. Our work is essential to our democracy, as it is for our country and to Canadians as well. We defend the system's integrity and credibility, and we respect the democratic will of the Canadian people. This is a profoundly important role to play. Each of us is part of something bigger.

[00:22:39 Split screen: John Hannaford, and symposium title page. Text on screen: Each of us is part of something bigger.]

John Hannaford: For me, that realization crystallized very early on in my career. As a newly minted lawyer, I was given an opportunity in 1995 to play a role in a dispute that we were having with Spain on our east coast fisheries.

[00:22:53 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: That dispute found its way in front of the International Court of Justice, and I was part of a small team that was asked to present our defence in that context. And I realized, as I was working on our presentation of Canada's case, that this really wasn't about me. It was about Canada. The consequences that we would have, as a result of our success or failure, would be felt by our country. It would relate to our waters and our relationship with an ally. Work I was doing really wasn't about me. It was about our country.

And that same feeling has followed me throughout my career as I was given the responsibility of being a deputy minister and leading an institution of public servants who impress me daily with the quality of the work they did and their commitment and the depth of their expertise. It's followed me when I've had the opportunity to travel with prime ministers to areas near conflict zones where you see our people in uniform, who serve and sacrifice for the ideals that our country holds dear.

We're all part of something bigger. When a Canadian asks for help with their tax return, signs up for online programs and goes through [24:19 inaudible], the experience they have shapes their perception of the public service and the government. Public servants who work at a call centre, create web content or review applications identifying eligibility requirements for a program are part of something bigger. Those who work with the public are not the only ones involved. Everyone who works behind the scenes to support our institutions—I'm thinking of, for example, human resources, administration and information technology, who contribute to our success.

When public servants at every level deliver excellence and demonstrate integrity and exercise sound stewardship of the taxpayer dollars that builds trust and confidence. It's not just what we do, it's how we do it. And as we face an operating environment that's ever changing and increasingly complex, these conversations about how we do our work, how we embrace our core values, how we adapt to continue to deliver excellence in the future, are essential. So, how should we proceed?

[00:25:48 Split screen: John Hannaford, and symposium title page. Text on screen: We deliver excellence as a team.]

John Hannaford: Well, guided by shared purpose, with a strong understanding of who we are as an organization. And that's what our Code of Values and Ethics provides. A professional, nonpartisan public service is an essential part of our democracy. We provide the government with options and then put the government's decisions into practice in the service of Canada. Our advice is based on science, evidence, knowledge and experience. We are honest and forthright about challenges and provide solid options to address them.

[00:26:24 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: Ultimately, it's up to ministers to make decisions on behalf of our country and, whatever our personal beliefs, we have a professional duty to support our democracy by serving our clients, the government, and Canadians to the best of our ability. We do this with courage, with candour, with transparency and openness, and with respect. I talked about respect earlier, how it is a big part of Reconciliation, learning and listening to Indigenous peoples, respecting their knowledge, their stories, their identities, and their experiences. As we discussed yesterday afternoon, we also bring our values to life by making meaningful progress on the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity and Inclusion, and by making our workplaces accessible to all. By promoting a healthy culture, our ability to innovate and solve problems comes from teamwork, which happens when people feel valued and included.

We need to have candid conversations about mental health and safe work spaces, as well as seek out different points of view, reflect on them, and communicate the decisions made and their rationale. We also need to be agile and resilient in the face of change. The reality of our work and the world we live in is that change is constant. Whether this change is as global as a pandemic or as local as a change in priorities, we must accept it and empower ourselves to succeed. There are many things we can prepare for; we can analyze trends and predict different scenarios for a year or five years ahead. We need to be comfortable with the unknown unknowns. There will always be surprises, and it's up to us to respond effectively. We've seen extraordinary examples of this, including our responses during the COVID pandemic and to the wildfires across the country. To manage risks, adapt to new circumstances, and make the most of opportunities to innovate.

Now, we know that there is a fixed election date in October of 2025, and as a professional and nonpartisan public service, we support democracy and carry out the business of government. For those of you who have joined the public service in recent years, you will not have had the experience of our role during an electoral period, and I strongly encourage leaders across our system to discuss that role during the election time. And I encourage us all to embrace our role. The public service offers continuity for Canadians and for the duly elected government. It is the strength of our system.

Now, in all we do, we must strive for excellence, and achieving excellence is no easy feat. We are, after all, only human. Sometimes we can feel like we're hitting roadblocks, and it can be hard if our advice doesn't make it to the final cut. But take this to heart. Our service matters, our work matters at every level and in every part of the country. Ultimately, I hope you come to see yourselves as I see you, part of an essential whole, contributing to an organization that has great meaning and profound purpose. An organization whose core principles have stood the test of time. An organization that will continue to evolve to meet the current and future needs of Canadians. This is why this conference is so important. This is why it's important to continue the dialogue after the conference. We want public servants to come away from this conference better equipped to meet the challenges of the future.

Now, as we look at what comes next, I think there are some key areas we can provide new direction that will make a real difference. This afternoon's panel is going to be a discussion on guidelines for how we responsibly use artificial intelligence in our work. It's also been very clear over the course of the conversations we've had in the last year that guidance with respect to the use of social media would be welcome and important. Yesterday we heard of the work that TBS has initiated in this regard, and I'm grateful for that because I think it provides a really sound foundation.

[00:31:24 Split screen: John Hannaford, and symposium title page. Text on screen: We serve democracy – a purpose that has stood the test of time.]

John Hannaford: But it also requires further development and discussion given the evolution of social media on a minute-by-minute basis. So, I've asked Deputy Clerk Fox to continue these efforts, working closely with Jackie Bogden, the Chief Human Resources Officer, to continue this dialogue.

[00:31:41 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: And to refine the social media guidance by the spring of next year in a way that will reflect national and international best practices. Similarly, we don't want to lose the accomplishments we've had to date on our conversations on values and ethics, and I've asked Taki Sarantakis, President of the School, to establish a permanent Values and Ethics Visiting Scholar, which will be operational by 2025. And it will be named after my friend and mentor, Ian Shugart, who was an inspirational colleague and mentor, former Clerk of the Privy Council, and Senator who loved this country. He epitomized what we aspire to as public servants: committed to excellence in serving the public and supporting democracy with integrity, openness and respect. Taki will provide some further details on this, but broadly speaking, the new role will be an annual rotating appointment, with the scholar focusing on the development and implementation of values and ethics courses; research on ethics and governance; promoting the importance of ethical leadership; and ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion are fully integrated in our values of excellence, integrity, stewardship, respect for democracy and respect for people.

Lastly, I would ask that the deputy ministers continue the momentum we have gained, by focusing their efforts within their organizations on the following: updating the organizational code of conduct, and preparing a departmental report on the disclosure of wrongdoing and misconduct. Require employees to submit annual conflict of interest declarations and incorporate substantial accountability for progress in implementing the Call to Action.

We are, together, the public service. We are the public service at this moment in time in the history of our country, all of us. We have a responsibility in that regard to live up the values of our organization. We have a responsibility to our society to serve to the best of our ability, and we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to high standards. It's a very high calling. It's a critical role that we play. I am deeply proud of this institution, and I really look forward to continuing this conversation in this format and going forward. And I look forward to the panel we're going to have right now. And I want to thank you all for participating in today's event. Thank you. Miigwech Merci.

[00:34:32 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you very much, Clerk Hannaford, for taking the time for being with us here today and sharing your thoughtful insights. So, as you take a seat, just letting everyone know, we are going to get ready for our next panel discussion, which Clerk Hannaford will be moderating.

[00:35:00 Camera alternates between Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, the panelists taking their seats on stage, and the panelists participating virtually.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, with that, I'm going to be inviting our panelists to come join us on the stage, starting with Melissa Dorian, who's a manager at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, as well as Nathalie Morin, Director General at Environment and Climate Change Canada. And I would also like to invite participants who are joining us virtually, starting with Ayesha Zafar, who's an Assistant Deputy Minister at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, as well as Raoul Antwali, an Issues Manager at Canada Revenue Agency. Just a reminder for everyone to go to wooclap.com and enter the code VEOCT in order to submit your questions. And with that, Clerk Hannaford, the stage is yours.

[00:35:40 Split screen: John Hannaford and panelists on stage, and panelists participating virtually.]

John Hannaford: Excellent. Well, look, it's a pleasure to get a chance to chat with all of you. And my hope in this session is really, we can have a bit of an exchange. This is an opportunity to hear from your experiences, hear from your perspectives, and to share with everyone who's participating,

[00:35:55 Split screen: John Hannaford, and panelists participating virtually.]

John Hannaford: all 15,000 of you, the insights that you've gained from the perspectives that you have. It was mentioned yesterday that we all come at the role of the public service from our very specific perspectives. I want to hear about that, but I also want to hear about some of the sort of transcending experiences [that] you've had. In other words, how you see yourself contributing the broader whole, how you see values playing into that. And maybe Raoul, it's a little unfair, but maybe we'll start with you. I think you're the newest of the public servants on this panel, so I'm kind of interested in your experience to date, how you view the conversation we've had about values and ethics and your reflections on the way forward.

[00:36:36 Split screen: John Hannaford and panelists on stage, and panelists participating virtually.]

Raoul Ntwali: Of course. Thank you so much. Hi everybody. Thank you very much for having me. I would have really liked to be there with you today, but I'm very grateful to still be able to join you virtually and participate in this conversation. Clerk Hannaford, I want to thank you, too, for bringing back this important discussion on values and ethics and for advancing the Call to Action on Anti-racism, Equity and Inclusion across Canada. The work you've done since taking office has truly been inspirational, and I want to congratulate you.

[00:37:13 Raoul Ntwali appears full screen. Text on screen: Raoul Ntwali, Issues Manager, Canada Revenue Agency.]

Raoul Ntwali: Also, a big thank you to the teams of the Privy Council Office and the Canada School of Public Service for putting this symposium together. Special shout out to Martin, to Catherine, Danica, Aman. There are many people behind the scenes, who've been working very hard to make sure that they can happen. Many thanks to all of you.

And so, yes, thank you for the question, Clerk Hannaford. Maybe I'll start with a little bit of background. So, yes, I started my journey in the public service at the Canada Revenue Agency in 2019. I have to say my onboarding experience was very different from what many younger public servants went through during the pandemic. I had the privilege of working closely with my colleagues every day, and we worked in person. I shadowed them. I bombarded them with a bunch of questions. Those poor guys. And they were incredibly, incredibly patient and understanding with me. And they were very supportive. They practically held my hand until I felt confident enough to take on my own responsibilities independently.

And this kind of in-person experience really helped me understand the core values that guide us in the public service. Values like respect for democracy, values for respect for people, integrity and excellence. It really shaped my understanding of what it means to be a public servant and how we serve Canadians with accountability and respect. And for those who were onboarded during the pandemic, the experience was understandably very different. They didn't have the same in-person support, but they were part of something new and something important. These younger public servants were pioneers in the virtual onboarding, and through their feedback and adaptability, they helped us improve this process.

I remember when I moved into my second role at the CRA during the pandemic. My entire onboarding was done virtually. My mentor and I would spend long hours, sometimes entire days on MS teams, on calls, working through files, one at a time. And it wasn't the same as being in person, but it showed me that with the right support, values like stewardship and excellence can still be upheld, even in a virtual environment. And this transition has also opened up opportunities to bring in amazing talent from across the country, not just locally. So, I think we need to embrace this new reality and keep improving, ensuring that no matter where someone is located, they can feel connected to our shared commitment and values in ethics.

And for younger public servants, I have to say I think values and ethics are central to how we see our roles in the public service. Younger public servants really care deeply about fairness and equity, and they want to see respect for people in every aspect of their work. They expect integrity, not just in the task they perform, but in the leadership and the decision making around them. And that's why it's so important to keep talking about these values, not just as ideals, but as practical, everyday actions.  You talked about the resources that were shared by TBS yesterday. The Chief Human Resources Officer spoke to us about resources that have been created for us, and it's a great way to keep those conversations going. I believe these resources provide practical tools to help connect core values to our day-to-day work, whether we're working in the office or remotely.

And one of the best ways we can help younger public servants understand what it means to be a public servant is by involving them in this conversation, like I am here today, participating in this conversation. You know, I've had the great privilege of serving one of the largest employee networks in the public service, the CRA YPN which is a professional growth network. I am also an active member of the Federal Youth Network, and these are all examples of spaces that were designed to give you younger employees a platform to share their ideas. Their voices help shape how we apply values like respect for people and integrity in today's evolving workplace. And when young public servants are actively involved in these discussions, they feel a stronger connection to the values that guide our public service. And similar to you, Clerk Hannaford, when you were a young lawyer participating in that dispute, you felt a stronger connection to the values and you realized that, you're part of something bigger.

And when I talk about this approach, it's not something theoretical. We've seen it in practice. For example, the new social media guidelines were developed with input from public servants—public servants from all departments and levels across Canada. This is a testament to the value of integrity through transparency and inclusiveness. And this kind of collaboration shows that when we work together, we can create policies that represent a wide range of experiences and needs. And it reminds us that respect for democracy and respect for people go hand in hand with the need to ensure that every voice is heard.

So, in the end, values and ethics come to life through the stories we share. At the CRA YPN, we have something called success through failure, which is a series of events where we open a platform for people to talk about their failures. We encourage them to talk openly about their experiences, both their successes, their failures, but especially those failures and challenges, because they break down barriers. And they remind us that we're all constantly learning and we're all human. And by sharing these stories, we make values like integrity, like stewardship, personal and practical, not just something that is written in the code, but something that we live every day.

So, I guess my message today is to keep the conversation going, to keep learning from one another, and to ensure that values, respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship, and excellence, continue to guide us as we serve Canadians. So, I'll stop there and turn it back over to you, Mr. Hannaford.

[00:43:00 Split screen: John Hannaford, and panelists participating virtually.]

John Hannaford: Those were great points, Raoul, and I must say, one of the reasons why I thought it was important for us to initiate this conversation, was a personal experience. I have a daughter who started her career during the pandemic, and it was a less-than-perfect experience, to be honest. She started working for a big organization. It was not the public service, but she'd moved to Toronto. She started her career working at her kitchen table in a very small apartment. And her experience, as I kind of talked through it with her, was so different from mine when I started 30 years ago, where I had the opportunity, as you did, Raoul, to be chatting with people who were much more experienced. And sometimes finding that what I was watching, I didn't think was actually great practice. But in many instances, just by kind of imbibing what was going on around me, I had that opportunity to kind of take in the rules of the organization and the culture of the organization. And I have felt that through the pandemic, we lost the edge on some of that. And I thought it was really important for us to invigorate this conversation, in part because a substantial number of people have joined since that period, and that was their initiation to this profession.

And maybe we can turn it over to those on my right for your thoughts and experiences. We'll start with you.

[00:44:34 Split screen: Melissa Dorian, and panelists participating virtually.]

Melissa Dorian: Well, as a manager in the public service, we're often squished between two layers of implementing direction and providing fearless advice up the chain of command. But there's a lot that managers can do to empower and equip employees within their teams to really feel like they're living the values and ethics in their everyday lives.

And it's funny, before coming here, I did reach out to colleagues in other departments in different lines of work and ask them what they felt about the values and ethics as a practice in their everyday. And for the most part, people really saw the respect for people coming out in their work and in their day to day. And I think in no small part because of the hard work that's been done across the public service when it comes to mental health and well being; the 13 psycho psychological factors for a healthy workplace, but also the work on the Call to Action and EDI and Accessibility. But it was clear that people had a harder time identifying the piece around democracy, the value of an ethic around democracy in their day-to-day work. And I think when the conversation shifts a little from the word democracy, and maybe using the old adage that many of us are familiar with, with fearless advice, loyal implementation, it resonated a little more.

And I think that's what managers can bring back into their teams, is bringing these conversations and inviting conversation around, how do you provide fearless advice?

[00:45:48 Melissa Dorian appears full screen. Text on screen: Melissa Dorian, Manager, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.]

Melissa Dorian: How do you loyally implement? And for those who are in the position for decision making, how do you make unbiased decisions? And it can be small things. So, in your team meetings, we're very good at saying, what are the barriers for moving forward a particular project or designing something.

But there's a different set of questions we can add in there. And it's those questions around, is there something that happened throughout the week for which you felt conflicted? Or for which you felt uncertainty? And oftentimes when it's framed that way, people will start sharing information. And those are those moments where the values and ethics really need to be leaned into. And we can use different language, but really it comes back to the values and ethics around providing fearless advice and loyal implementation. And what will happen is if you, as a manager, can foster within your team a curiosity and a comfort with challenging each other, you will start building courage within your team members.

So, we hear this a lot. I'm very fortunate to be a chair of the ISED managers community, and we poll our members. And on a regular basis, what's come out over the years is we need to strengthen our sense of courage. And when we unpack that a little more through conversations, what we're hearing is that individuals aren't always sure how to package information and how to send it up in a way where they really are providing fulsome information, and where they are checking themselves so that they're not tailoring it just to get buy-in. They're not tailoring it just because they know that it's something someone wants to hear. And it takes courage to do that because people worry, oh, well, if it's not what someone wants to hear, is this going to reflect badly on me? Will this affect my PMA? But if you can create an environment within your team where you encourage members to challenge each other in professional ways, and a challenge doesn't mean confrontation. Just voice different opinions, bring different opinions to the table, and encourage them to challenge you as a manager. Make it safe, build that confidence and that reflex in your employees. That way, as they move up the chain, they're also going to exhibit that courage. And they can model it. They can see you modelling it.

Now, the second piece to this, the loyal implementation. Oftentimes when you go back to ask that question to your teammates again, what is it that maybe made you feel conflicted or uncertain? The other part that often comes out is, well, my personal opinion or my personal preference isn't really well aligned with what I'm being asked to implement. And that's a real feeling, and that's something we can't ignore. And particularly in this day and age, where our opinions are something so tied with our identity and that are so out there and encouraged to be out there in social media, and it's something that people are rewarded for with instant likes. Share your opinion, instant like. But then you come to work, and you're asked to park it. Park your opinion, park your personal preference. But that's critical for our work. But it does require managers to then lean into their employees and help them be okay with that, because it's not an instinct that people come with. And it requires letting people be humbled in their opinion and holding back their opinion at certain moments in time. But with the recognition that the decision that's been made, it may not benefit you personally, but it's at someone's benefit within Canada. The people within Canada need that decision right now. And most public servants, I think, would very happily, loyally implement when they know that. I think where it becomes a bit tricky is that idea of loyal implementation requires trust in the process.

So, we've talked about the people of Canada trusting the public service, but there's also a notion of public servants trusting the process, the internal process. And this is where there's like a feedback loop that starts to build. Because if an employee, for example, doesn't have the courage to provide fulsome recommendations designed in their program, designed in the service, if they feel that maybe their own internal bias has been built into a process, into a recommendation, then it becomes harder to trust the process because you think, well, maybe someone else has too. Maybe the decision makers haven't been provided with unbiased information on which to make their decision.

And so again, it comes back to fostering courage within your teams, courage within individual employees, to bring in a diversity of views to challenge each other on, have we examined this from every possible angle, so that the advice you're sending up, the programs you're delivering, really have been well thought out, are reflective of everyone's needs. Decision makers are given the information they need to make unbiased decisions. And at that point you can go with the flow and realize that what you're implementing, it will meet someone's need and you can be proud of what you're accomplishing.

And that word pride, so it did come up in the word cloud. And that's something that's extremely important and something that perhaps we don't lean into enough as managers or we do it in very isolated ways. So, we're so busy maybe fostering a sense of pride in the work that a team is doing. But then the sense of loyalty is to that team and not necessarily to the organization or to the public service. And wow, we have a lot to be proud of as a public service. We're amazing. Canadian public service is always at the top when you look at global indexes of public service, and it has been for years. But we've also heard a lot of bad news about ourselves over the last number of years. And it's something that managers can lean into, is to foster a sense of pride in our team members.

And be conscientious of not just building that loyalty to the team, because we've all been there. At some point in time in your career, a recommendation is going to not gain favour or your program or your initiative is going to change. And if your sense of identity and pride is strictly to that of your team and to your work, it makes you vulnerable. And it makes this idea of democracy vulnerable because you're not as supportive of implementing the decision, because you feel disheartened. But, if you really feel like you're part of a bigger picture, a public service, and have pride in being a member of the public service, not just your team, it's easier to accept the decision and support the decision because you're proud of your colleagues and you're proud of the work that's being done.

And so, there's a lot that managers can do. And as far as what can organizations do for managers, that's a lot of pressure on managers. That's a lot of responsibility. And one thing we hear repeatedly is we want to learn, and we want to network. And by network, I don't mean climb the ladder and shake hands. I mean have connections with peers with whom you can talk through these complex situations. But managers often feel they don't have a lot of time to do that, or they feel the pressure to deliver, to deliver, to deliver. But if we can create some space for them and really model and emphasize the need for folks to take the time out to learn, to take the time out to connect with each other in order to have a network behind the scenes that you can rely on to talk through these notions, that is one of the best things that we can do for managers.

And I could probably go on for days, perhaps I'll wrap it up with that statement. And for the decision makers, again, to help build that trust, communicate how decisions are made. Employees don't have the benefit of having been exposed to what information you are considering. They have to trust in the process. And oftentimes the decisions are filtered through many layers before they get to an employee. And it's not always obvious how the values were reflected in a decision.

And so, whether you're a manager within a team making a decision; an executive within an organization; a deputy administer; a governance table; or a central agency, when you're communicating the decisions, be conscious of the fact that an average employee needs to be able to see the values reflected in that decision. And when they can see that, the loyal implementation piece becomes all that much easier.

[00:54:32 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: Those are great points. Thank you very much. Your perspectives, on the scientific side of the things, so to speak.

[00:54:38 Nathalie Morin appears full screen. Text on screen: Nathalie Morin, Director General, Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Nathalie Morin: On the scientific side of things, I think there are many points that managers agree on. I think it's really important to understand that the context is changing very quickly. Scientists are still the trusted source of information in Canada. The public still trusts scientists. So that increases the pressure. I think it's clear that trust needs to remain. I think scientists feel the need to maintain that trust. But there's a lot of conflicting messages. Now, we are in evolving mode. AI, we talked about AI. We are talking about speed, the speed of research, the speed of having answers for supporting policy decision, regulatory development. But to do the science and to be thorough and to make sure that we're maintaining that integrity, it comes at conflict at times. So, I think it's very important to recognize that.

And I think this is where the Code of Values and Ethics but also the scientific integrity policy that we have, helps navigate and guide us. And, I think, it's sometimes people are thinking, oh, it's easy, but sometimes it's these small nuances in the day to day that comes and makes a conflict or make you think about it, and you're kind of, oh, let's think about that. Let's pause. And just earlier today I was talking with Melissa, and I was just saying last week a team who is informing me of [an] upcoming article "Going Nature". I'm so excited. As the DG, I'm super happy, I'm proud. I'm like, yes, this is awesome. Then I started reading the abstract and I'm like oh, this is not exactly the type of news that I was expecting. This is against what I was expecting as a result. But then I was in conflict with myself I was like okay, so this means I need to be giving a heads up to my boss and to my boss' boss. I need to engage media. So, this is where I'm like okay, this is interesting news. And it's just that it's in a flash. In a moment I'm like oh, ok, I need to think this one through for one second. But, at the same time, this is where I'm pleased because even if this is not giving the news I was expecting, I know down the road this means that it's going to be thorough and it's also that it's going to force more debate and more conversation.

And I think this is always where some people are afraid of the debate. And I'm like, no, debate is good. You need debate to have strong policy decisions, or even to make sure that this paper, this article is thorough, this is why they're calling it peer reviewed. This is making sure that it can be trusted and be a reference point in the future. But there's a way to do it right. Debate; thorough conversation. It's always about in the respectful, in an open, transparent way. And this is where it goes a long way. And I think that really when we do things while respecting our values, scientific integrity is always there, and really, allows people to be recognized internationally. We have Canadian researchers on the international scene who are truly recognized for their integrity and their way of doing things. So, I think it's really important to continue these debates and these conversations.

[00:58:18 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: What are the differences, the distinctions between the experience of a government scientist compared to someone in academia, for example?

[00:58:32 Nathalie Morin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Morin: Listen, it's a really interesting question and we often ask ourselves the question: what is the role of a scientist in the federal government versus in universities? We always say that in the federal government, there's a mandate, we have priorities. We can't start researching anything with no connection to our government priorities. I think it's important to recognize that. That said, we must maintain the independence of those researchers to be able to make progress. That said, there's often a lot of collaboration with universities, and even then, it's important that these relationships also respect values, and that there's no interference. So, it's important to manage this properly and recognize this. Universities play a really important role in Canada, and it's very complementary in everything in the field of research, sometimes what we refer to as pure or hard research. Sometimes they even have much more freedom to go in all directions than we have in the federal government.

Obviously, I also do research in the federal government that supports long-term research. We are trying to fund projects that need data over longer periods time. So, these fields are really complementary but also important. I think, when it comes to academics versus us in the federal, I think we have different purpose, but we work really hand in hand with a lot of universities in every domain to make sure that we are supporting each other and not overlapping, of course.

[01:00:04 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: Excellent. Aisha, maybe we could turn to you, and your perspectives from more of the security community and the sorts of situations you've encountered both in that context and in aligned department.

[01:00:18 Aiesha Zafar appears full screen. Text on screen: Aiesha Zafar, Assistant Deputy Minister, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.]

Aiesha Zafar: Yes, thanks for that. So, thinking back to when I first started over 20 years ago, I started in counterterrorism intelligence, and so values and ethics has been ingrained in me since day one as a public servant, again, over 20 years ago. But I think the way that I've understood it or connected to it has changed through all of that, and not necessarily because of being in this security environment, but maybe more because of the roles that I've taken, and the vantage points that I've had through it.

So, I was young, fresh out of university, right after 9/11, working in counterterrorism intelligence, as I mentioned. And I'm a Muslim by faith and a Pakistani by heritage. So, we were working very intimately in, what was called in the west, the war on terror. But what it ultimately was, was a multi-pronged war against Islamic extremism. And if you remember back then, what was being relayed in the media, what was happening in our communities, there was misinformation, there was fear, public attacks, and even people in the community who didn't understand how I could be on the side of a fight against Islamic extremism. I mean, I felt all of that.

And so, from an early time in my career, I really had to understand my own identity and my own values and what I was doing, and then what my role was as a public servant. But that work was still very operational. So, maybe it was easier for me back then to separate the politics and the media and everything else that I was seeing, because we were super mission focused. There were bad people doing bad things, and we were trying to stop them from doing that. And I was very proud of my work and the people that I worked with. But then, you fast forward. And I started working in policing. I had left the federal government, started working for the province for a few years, and that was, I would say, my very first real exposure to how government works, because the role that I had before, like I said, was quite operational and mission focused. And so, I didn't need to necessarily think about how government worked at that time. I wasn't writing policy option memos or doing stakeholder engagement for those new policies. I was very focused on a particular national security issue.

So, when I started working for the province, I was already the equivalent of a director and I was working on these public safety initiatives that seemed so simple to me. Do this, people are safer. It's very easy. And we would write these recommendations, and I couldn't understand why they weren't just so easily being implemented by the government. Do this, people are safer. I would get really, really frustrated. And I remember it was my ADM who said to me, he actually had the conversation with me and said, Aiesha, your job is to give the best advice. You're the expert in this area. So, give your recommendations and the implementation options, but your job is not to make the decision. So, give your recommendations and the implementation options, but your job is not to make the decision. That's the job of the people that this province elected to be the government. And you uphold democracy in our democratic institutions by playing your role as a public servant and doing it to the best of your ability. But remember your role. And Melissa talked about democracy, fearless advice and things like that. And what is your role as a public servant in this big machine?

And then, when I worked in the deputy's office as the deputy's Chief of Staff, that's where I really saw how complex things actually were. I saw all the things that came to the DM's table. I saw all the things that came to the minister's table. And it wasn't just mine. It wasn't even just our department. It wasn't just our government. And I started to gain a better understanding of the complexity of decision-making and governmental oppression. So, it really helped me put into perspective my role as a public servant, but perhaps even more so, I think it helped me realize that I wish I had understood that sooner when I was in National Security Operations and when I was in a truly operational environment. I think it's really important for every public servant, no matter what industry, sector, field that you're in, to know that we are public servants, and that's what makes us the same. What does that mean in terms of our values and our ethics and our behaviours? But if I can add one more thing, I would say now, in this world, a world with more humanitarian crises, with wars, threats to our democracy, with different perceptions on immigration. I work for IRCC. This is a really fast changing world. And now, as an ADM, I have, again, a different vantage point, and I'm thinking about it differently all over again. It's hard sometimes. I think the conversation of values and ethics is one that you have to have with yourself regularly, and you have to communicate with others as well. I think Melissa also talked about, have those conversations, have that debate. Each of us is in a different role with a different vantage point. We have a different passion or goal or objective, but we have the same values as public servants, and we have to constantly remember, what does that mean in my space?

[01:05:32 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: Those are just terrific points. Look, there's been a lot of wisdom that's been shared over the course of all four of your comments, so I'm very grateful to you.

I wonder, we will turn to questions from the audience, but before we do, just interested, if very quickly, you could each give me something you are most proud of in being a public servant. Let me start with you, Melissa.

[01:05:54 Split screen: Melissa Dorian, and panelists participating virtually.]

Melissa Dorian: Well, the example that I'm going to share will probably get a groan from the audience. I had been part of the future of work office at ISED and helping to implement the direction for increased on site presence. But why I'm proud of that is because we took a lot of effort, concerted effort, to help employees through it. It's a difficult change for people and it's not an easy sell. And the fact is, this is exactly one of those moments where we have to take our personal perspectives and personal preferences and hold them in check and look at the bigger picture. And that is a very, very, very tricky thing to do.

But I am proud of having been there as a support, to try to help on the change management side of things, to try to help on the communication side of things, to try to encourage my team members and equip them for that change and to bring their best to the workplace every day. And they did the same for me. And that's why I love my team. They're just fantastic individuals. And we've fostered this sense of courage within our team and challenging each other and looking at things from different angles. And that became very pertinent for sustaining us through that period of time. Because it's tricky when you are potentially at odds with colleagues within your organization in trying to implement something that isn't sexy, isn't a fun thing to work on. It's a hard thing to work on.

[01:07:48 Melissa Dorian appears full screen.]

Melissa Dorian: But I'm very proud of how we came together to support employees through that change and try to find the best in the situation, all the while bearing in mind that notion of not taking action in our self interest, but really finding opportunity. And what we did see throughout the pandemic, I think teams actually worked very well virtually, and bonded well virtually, and had a good sense of direction for themselves within their teams. But people ended up working far more in isolation than in any other point of my 18-year career. And it comes back to that cautionary tale I was mentioning before. If your sense of identity is strictly tied to your team, you don't realize the bigger picture of what you're engaged in as a public servant, and everything becomes that much harder.

And so, again, I'm proud of the work that was done. And I think it's one of those moments where all the values and ethics for each of us working in that team are tested every day. But I hope that for employees in the organization, things were made that much better because we genuinely cared, and we genuinely applied the values through that transition.

John Hannaford: Fantastic. Nathalie.

[01:09:59 Nathalie Morin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Morin: I've been really lucky to have been able to carry out great projects, to have made great policies or regulations, things over the years, but what I'm most proud of is really to have helped my teams, to have helped employees to continue, to persevere, to understand how the public service works—because you have to understand how it works—and above all to continue to help them grow in the public service. I think that's what I'm going to remember the most when I retire one day. I think that's really what will stay with me, it's really having been able to work with highly competent and high-quality people. You know, we're really lucky. I think that, Mélissa, you mentioned that we're recognized worldwide for our high-quality public service. And I think it's really because of the people and how much they care. I think it's amazing how people like to help each other through the journey. And I think that's exceptional. So, this is what I'm mostly proud to be part of that game.

[01:10:10 John Hannaford and on-stage panelists appear full screen.]

John Hannaford: We're a community. Aiesha.

Aiesha Zafar: It's going to be such a cheesy answer, Clerk.

John Hannaford: Cheesy is good.

[01:10:20 Aiesha Zafar appears full screen.]

Aiesha Zafar: It's everything I've been able to do, like contributing to keeping people safe and well. Canadians safe and well, in whatever way I can. I get to wake up every day and contribute to Canadians in Canada. And my kids are going to grow up here. They're growing up here. My neighbours, I look at our parks and our communities and our schools, and I want my kids and their kids and my extended family and everybody I know to be able to continue to be well in this country. So, it kind of sounds like that whole national security mission and purpose, but really there is such a purpose in public service and the fact that we are entrusted by Canadians to be able to do that. And it's my way of kind of giving back as well.

[01:11:04 John Hannaford and on-stage panelists appear full screen.]

John Hannaford: Terrific. Raoul.

[01:11:07 Raoul Ntwali appears full screen.]

Raoul Ntwali: There's so much to be proud of. But I think the biggest for me so far has been leading the CRA YPN, the professional growth network that I was talking about. Honestly, I like to say I've worked with the smartest people in the public service through that network. Being able to serve them, being able to help them find their voice and contributing to our agency's development and continued growth through the different events that we did, through the different consultations we did, looking at corporate policy documents, looking at HR procedures and whatnot, and sharing our voice and our opinions as young public servants. And to be able to see that take effect and eventually impact everybody else across the agency is something that is very powerful for me. And I'm very proud of that work that we've done.

[01:11:12 Split screen: John Hannaford and on-stage panelists; Virtual panelists.]

John Hannaford: Madam.

[01:12:04 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you, everyone, to all our panelists. And now we'll move on to the Q and A. So just a reminder, wooclap.com, VEOCT to submit your questions. And we'll do our best to alternate between our virtual participants and those here in the room.

[01:12:04 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Just for those here in the room, we're going to try and get as many questions as possible from everyone. But for those of you who are here in the room, limit to one question. Don't try and get sneaky. I'm not going to let that happen. And use it as an opportunity to practice your concise briefing skills. I will also ask my panel members here to indicate to me if they wish to take a question, in particular, not all of you are required to answer all of the questions.

[01:12:59 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And that way we'll try to get to as many as possible. So, I'm going to start with one that's come in virtually, and it reads,

[01:13:10 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, and virtual panelists.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Sometimes it can be hard to respond to higher official demands and uphold nonpartisanship, public interest, and also protecting the crown. How do you balance all these things? Who would like to? Yes.

[01:13:23 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: Look, I think I contest slightly the framing of the question because I think oftentimes if we are responding to demands that is part of the function of a public service, we are here to be providing support for the elected officials, who are often the sources of the sorts of demands that we are responding to.

And so, I think, on the one hand, that sort of level of service is something that we should be mindful of, and that's an opportunity for us to be excellent in the work that we do. I think as we're doing that, we need to be very, very careful about the kinds of functions that we play, that nonpartisanship is inherent in the role we play. Our credibility is based on the fact that we are not partisan. And I should say it's not that there's anything wrong with being partisan. I think our electoral system is premised on people feeling strongly about events, participating in the electoral process, bringing vigour to our public debates. That's all incredibly important, but we have a very specific role within that, and that is different from the broad public.

And our role is to make sure that we, A) are providing the best information, the best support we can to people who have been elected by our fellow citizens. And the second is to make sure that we are doing that in a way that provides confidence that we're not just being driven by whatever the issues of the day are, but we are actually basing our advice on the best expertise we can, the best information we can, and in many instances, the sort of experiences that we have over the course of time.

And I think it's really important to then situate that, we're also not the only voice providing advice to governments, and we shouldn't pretend that we are. There are all sorts of information that exists in our society. Anyone who is elected is going to be drawing off of that information, as they should. But what we have, which is unique, is we have a right to be heard. We participate in a process where we can provide advice to the duly elected government. We are here to do that. And that is an extraordinarily important thing, and it's something that we should be deeply proud of, and we should take extremely seriously. And that's a slightly separate question than if we are facing competing demands on our time. And that is something that obviously is a reality in most workplaces, where you have a bunch of different demands that you need to figure out. And then that becomes an issue of prioritization and how you best decide what's most important together with leadership and with the people who are posing the questions in the first place. And that's kind of a collective responsibility.

But I think that issue of a nonpartisan source of information is a huge strength of our system. And if you look at, there's just been a Nobel Prize that was awarded to economists looking at the importance of institutions in successful societies. We shouldn't lose track of that. It really, really matters. And as I say, part of our legitimacy in that broader system is the fact that we don't come at this from a partisan perspective. We come at it from a public service perspective. And that's distinct.

[01:16:43 Nathalie Morin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Morin: Maybe if I can just add just one small thing. Sometimes people are concerned that they will not say what people want to hear. But, over the years, I realize that by saying the right things, you even gain more respect from people because sometimes they don't want to hear what you think they want to hear. So, just providing fearless advice, this is the answer. But then after loyal implementation, of course, but you know, sometimes people respect that also.

[01:17:13 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: And I think it goes to that question of courage, and that's on us as leaders as well, to create an atmosphere where people can actually have a discussion. Because if we're all just sort of going into a conversation knowing that we're all going to agree at the end of it, then there's not much point in having the conversation. And, I used this phrase somewhere else, we're kind of aggregators of wisdom. We are all coming at this from a whole bunch of different perspectives. And the strength of our system is ultimately because we can have robust exchanges, you can come to better advice, and that collectively is our responsibility. But we have to give ourselves and give our system permission for that to happen in order for us to get that result.

[01:17:59 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you very much. So, I don't know where you are, but there is someone in this room with a question, so I will ask you. Perfect. Thank you. And please feel free to introduce yourself. This is just a reminder that you can also ask your question in the language of your choice. Go ahead.

[01:18:15 Split screen: John Hannaford and on-stage panelists; virtual panelists.]

Audience member: Thank you. Thank you very much. And this is for all of you. I'm from the Public Health Agency of Canada, and as a brand-new public servant, there was a recent change in government, and the area that I worked with tended to have a lot to do with social determinants of health. And the new minister was reported to have said, don't talk to me about social determinants of health, which is odd, but a bit of an issue when you're working in public health, and you want to loyally implement the policies of the government of the day. But that government of the day thing is, I think, important when we start talking about democracy and the value of democracy, because we have to recognize we are a first past the post system.

And so, when I think about the value of democracy, I think about, yes, they're the people who are giving us guidance at the moment, but there's all the other people who didn't vote for us, who are also Canadians that we're supposed to serve. And the people who, for a variety of different reasons, either don't feel that they're represented in the government, don't bother voting, or are otherwise excluded and deserving of equity that they're not getting due to inherent biases and other things.

And the reason why I bring up that particular minister in that particular situation is, not my area, but one of our fellow groups was working in Tuberculosis. And the situation with Tuberculosis in the north is one where social determinants of health is huge. Well, there was an election very shortly thereafter. There was a new minister, Leona Aglukkaq, who came from the north. One of the first things she reportedly did when she ended up in the Minister of Health chair was say, what the heck are you guys doing about Tuberculosis in the north? Fortunately, my colleagues, while not necessarily raising things above the radar, not necessarily saying a heck of a lot because they knew they weren't going to get the traction from the previous minister, were able to say, here's what we've been working on for the last couple of years. Here's the work that we're doing to help support TB in the north.

So, I think that that's one of the things that we as public servants always have to consider is, yes, we have to loyally implement the policies of the government of the day, but that's today's government, and we are here to serve all Canadians at all times, so there does need to be ways of balancing the work that will serve everybody that still has to go on in the background.

So, that's what I'm kind of looking to you, as the Clerk, and others. How do we do that balance?

John Hannaford: So, that's a great question. And it goes to some pretty fundamental points around accountabilities and responsibilities. And I guess I'd take a couple stabs at it, and I'd be very interested in hearing my colleagues as well.

[01:21:12 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: I think on the one hand, as a deputy minister, I always felt that it was my responsibility to say to my ministers what I understood to be the major problems that we needed to be addressing and to make suggestions as to what kinds of options there were available in order for us to address challenges that were rising. And part of that was to try and draw off of some degree of forecasting as to where you could see problems coming as well. And I felt that was an important role that I have. And the extension then is the department has an accountability to me to be engaging in some degree of foresight and some analysis around the situations that we confront. And that's irrespective of mandate. That's just, I think, the nature of part of what departments should be doing.

At the same time, the way our accountabilities work, I am accountable to a minister. The minister is accountable to parliament and to the prime minister and to the legislature. And that legitimacy is then the expression of our democracy. And that's the strength of our system, is we have that participation that will determine broad direction of our country and our government, and it flows through that series of authorities. And it is entirely within the mandate of an elected government to determine what the priorities should be and how we should be spending our resources. And that then is the faithful implementation piece. But I think, and maybe to go back to an earlier point, there are no bright lines here. This is the nature of a values conversation, is there are no bright lines.

The thing that I have found really gratifying about what I've participated in over the course of the last year is, if it's simple, then you're not having the right conversation. And what's been gratifying has been to see that we frame our conversations more now with respect to our core values, whether this is a respect for democracy, whether it's respect for people, stewardship, integrity, and excellence. And that should be the rubric under which we are having these conversations, recognizing that there probably are going to be differences of views and there's not going to be bright lines.

But I do think what's critically important is that recognition that, A) we have a responsibility to be giving our best advice and to be describing the world as we see it, but to respect that there is a democratic process that's resulted in a set of strategic decisions that have been made. And those strategic decisions are going to have resource consequences, and they're going to have other consequences that we have to respect, because that's the nature of our system. And so, I'd be very grateful for any other thoughts on that.

[01:24:03 John Hannaford and on-stage panelists.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Maybe I'll invite Aiesha, I saw you nodding quite a bit, so please go ahead.

[01:24:08 Aiesha Zafar appears full screen.]

Aiesha Zafar: I was agreeing with what the Clerk was saying, but sure, I think it is a challenging one. And I think I had this conversation with my team last week, and our advice, as a public service, isn't going to change. If it's fair and objective advice, the advice is the advice. It might be the way that we message it, how we incorporate it in our advice, whether it's implemented now or later, faster, slower, the language we use, et cetera. Like when I hear the minister or the minister's staff say that they don't want to hear about something,

[01:24:48 John Hannaford and on-stage panelists.]

Aiesha Zafar: usually it's because they don't feel that they're being heard on what they want to actually achieve either, or we didn't explain ourselves enough. And so, I actually find that challenge really interesting, where it's like, how do we meet these policy objectives while doing all the things? So, in the immigration space, it's, how do we meet these policy objectives that the government has set out while keeping Canadians safe and reducing the abuse in our systems, improving client service, etcetera.

[01:25:08 Aiesha Zafar appears full screen.]

Aiesha Zafar: So, sometimes it's a matter of messaging it a little bit differently, but really showing the government of the day, okay, I understand you want to achieve these objectives. Here are all the different things we need to consider, and we're going to help you do that. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But sometimes I will say, or I'll have conversations with the teams because we'll look at the advice that we're providing, and we're like, okay, is this truly objective? Is it? Or do we already, in our own heads, think that it's a bad idea and we've written it that way as well? And so, we go back and we're, okay, how can we make this objective and be really clear?

So, there's an art to it. And like I said, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But at the end of the day, if you are putting that best advice forward in a way that understands what the government is trying to achieve, then you can get to a further part in that conversation.

[01:26:08 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen briefly, and then split screen with virtual panelists.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you so much for that. All right, a question that many will relate to coming in virtually. With tightening budgets, how can the public service make sure that public servants don't take unethical shortcuts in an effort to uphold high expectations and demands?

And if I may, I might direct a this one first to Melissa. In your role as a manager, how would you answer this question?

[01:26:36 Melissa Dorian appears full screen.]

Melissa Dorian: I think part of it is in how we frame our thinking of productivity. And I think Treasury Board, TBS, may be looking into this very shortly, but that notion of there's a lot of emphasis on productivity as being the output, and is the output generated on time and within budget? But there needs to be an equal attention of focus to the how we are producing part of the conversation, because it really does take both. We could just be churning out things on time and churning a lot of it out. But if we're not invested in applying good, proper practices in the development, then what we're producing isn't necessarily meeting the need, it's not necessarily where it's worthwhile putting our effort.

And so, at a team level, at a manager level, again, it comes back to a lot of those same conversations of create space for brainstorming, create space for diversity of views, create space for different voices. And Ian Stedman, in his opening remarks, had made the question around data and questioning, whose voices are represented in this data? And had also made the comment about it's important to ask questions. And while his example was people outside of the public service asking questions of decisions that are being made, though for the same reasons that that is important in building trust, we need to have that as part of our day-to-day way of working within our teams.

And, while you may think I'm straying from the question a bit, the notion is if you invest in good quality development, you may have to sacrifice the amount you're producing at the end of the day. But the impact, the outcome, not just the output, but the outcome of what you're actually delivering to the people in Canada, could be far more meaningful. And so, it does require a rethinking, a redefinition of this concept of productivity, to shift the focus so intensely away from units of production and cogs and machines. And by doing that, again, this comes back to the values and ethics. Because excellence is about innovation. You can't innovate if you don't take the time in the process to really focus on how you are producing and not just how much and what you are producing.

[01:29:10 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you very much. And if I may, Raoul, as a slightly more recent civil servant, I would be curious about your perspective on this question.

[01:29:33 Raoul Ntwali appears full screen.]

Raoul Ntwali: I think the only thing that I'd like to maybe add to what my colleague has just said, is that a lot of departments go through a bunch of exercises to figure out what project should we keep funding, what should we let go for now, just to kind of adjust to this new reality that we're in. I think it's important that we look at the opportunity cost also.

So, for example, you have a project you want to put forward, but there's not enough budget for it. How will this affect Canadians at the end of the day, if we don't put this forward? So, I think that's also something that's important. I know that there are lots of directions coming from above, from below, from everywhere, but it's also important to see what the impact is, how it will affect the population. Is it important to go back and ask for more money sometimes or not? It happens. That's the job of a manager, they understand. So, I think that's something to add. We have to look at every single thing and look at the impact that it provides to Canadians and also see how can we make sure that they can continue benefiting from these programs that we're putting forward. And if there is no budget, what can we do? Also, money is not always the solution. Sometimes there are other ways that we could do things.

For example, at the CRA, we've realized that by involving younger public servants, giving them micro projects, they're so thrilled to contribute and to provide their voice, that projects continue to happen despite the budget not being available. But there are people who are really committed, and they really want to put their voices forward. They want to put their energy towards something that they care about. And I guess that's my message. We have to look at what we can do if there's no money; if there's no money, can we ask for a little more money? I'll stop there. I guess that would be my point of view.

[01:31:26 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, with virtual panelists.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Great. Merci beaucoup, Raoul. We have another question coming to us virtually. How can we make employers and leaders accountable in making decisions based on the public service values, and in modelling these values?

[01:31:43 Split screen: John Hannaford and on-stage panelists; virtual panelists.]

John Hannaford: I think that may be for me. So, look, I think there are a number of answers to that. The first one is we have conversations like this. We set our expectations for ourselves, for our community. We remind ourselves of what our standards are. As I said in my comments, we are the public service right now. There's no one else. It's us. And we collectively have accountability for this organization. I have particular accountability from where I sit. But this is on all of us to make sure that we are being guided by the values that define us. And there's particularly a role for leadership in that regard.

[01:32:34 Split screen: John Hannaford, and virtual panelists.]

John Hannaford: And there's a technical answer to this question as well. One of my roles is I chair a group of senior officials who do all of the assessment. I'm looking at my friend Donnalyn McClymont, who's the secretary to this group. We do the assessment of all the deputy ministers. And I can tell you that one of the central conversations we have for each deputy minister is not just what was accomplished over the course of the year, but how was it done. And that is a significant part about how people have been treated.

[01:32:58 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: It's significant part about how the values have been reflected in other ways. Have we actually seen sound stewardship? Have we seen integrity in the way that people have carried out their jobs? Those are all fundamental questions that we should be asking of each leader, and that should then be reflected in the review of PMAs at each departmental level. And when I was in the department, I can assure you that that was a central piece of what we're talking about.

Another piece of this, and this is one of the outcomes of the process that we've just had, is I've asked all of the departments now to follow a practice that was started at Global Affairs of having aggregated accountability reports so that people can see that there's actually been actions taken, because there are constraints as to how we do these kinds of practices. We do need to be respectful of people's privacy, but at the aggregate, we can show that there is actually action taken with respect to breaches of the conduct that we have prescribed.

And so, I think all of those things are super important. But I circle back to the key piece. This is about our culture, and it really is about all of us seeing ourselves as the embodiment of the institution we have carriage of right now. And as I say, absolutely is a question of leadership. But it's not only a question of leadership.

[01:34:16 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, with virtual panelists.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you. Looking at the time, we have time for. Oh, we've got someone in the room. Go ahead, we'll alternate.

[01:34:31 Split screen: John Hannaford and on-stage panelists; virtual panelists.]

Audience member: Okay. Hello. Good morning, Clerk. John, it's nice to see you. Thank you so much. Laurie Sargent from the Department of Justice. And I do, I must admit, have a bit of a legally informed, shall we say, question to put to you all. But it's one that I, coming from a practice of human rights and Indigenous rights, take very seriously. And that is that if we look at our code, it does speak to the fact that these values are founded, rooted in our constitution. And I wonder if you could speak a little bit to – and what I really like about this conversation is the real talk that we're having about those challenging situations – about when direction coming down from the highest levels does not appear consistent with the constitution. How do we work through that? And this does come from real experience, but it's also drawn from the conversations we've been having about Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Reconciliation, et cetera, which are very much constitutionally grounded rights and principles.

So, I wanted to launch that easy one out into the ether for some reflection. Thank you.

[01:25:45 John Hannaford appears full screen.]

John Hannaford: And we have about two minutes. I'll start, unless others wish to chime in. Look, I think there's obviously a specific role for justice with respect to the charter, which is prescribed, and that's a critical role to make sure that we're mindful of charter obligations. I was a legal advisor at one point. I think we have, from the legal perspective, a responsibility to be as clear as possible as to where we see legal risks and the sort of management of those kinds of risks in the context of policy development. And that all, to me, goes to having a very early engagement with the lawyers and making sure that we are mindful of the kinds of considerations that should go into policy development. And at the end of the day, we operate within – faithful implementation is not limitless in the sense that we need to be guided by what our legal requirements are. We need to be guided by the constraints that we may have. And those are important things.

And I just want to pick up, because it has been a theme that came up through each stage of this conversation, and it's not quite your question, Laurie, but I'm going to change the topic. The point is the intersection between our personal views and our institutional role. That came up in the conversation that Catherine Blewett led. It's been evident, each conversation that I have had, it's been present over the course of the sessions we've been having the last two days. And it's front and centre in the questions around social media. And I think it does get to the point I was raising earlier, that it's a good thing to have strong views. It's a good thing to have a sense of your own limitations and your own perspectives. Those are all features of us as individuals. But we do have an institutional role here which is constraining, and that's just true. And we have responsibilities that, because we embody this institution, our actions reflect on the institution. And there may be instances where you come to a point where your own values don't coincide with what that institutional role is. And that's okay, too, in the sense that there are all sorts of ways of contributing to the well being of our society.

But if we're in the public service, we are constrained to being nonpartisan. We have to be mindful of the fact that our actions reflect on the institution as a whole. And we have to reflect on the fact that the legitimacy of our system turns on duly elected governments. And that's just the way the system works. And it's important that that's the way the system works. And so, I see that as a feature, not a bug. But the point is that there's an intersection between what our personal views will be and those institutional views. And sometimes there will be tension, and sometimes that's a cause for personal reflection. But it is really, really important that we always be mindful, as we are public servants, in the role that we play in support of our democracy and in a reflection of those democratic values.

[01:39:04 Melissa Dorian appears full screen.]

Melissa Dorian: Can I add something? And it's not directly a response to that question, but I just want to point out, look what's happening here. We have very challenging questions being asked to the Clerk, directly to the Clerk, and no one is being led out of the room, no one's mic is being turned off. Like that is a reflection of the public service we're in. And this is an example of the values and ethics in practice, in work, and something we can have faith in and something we can have pride in.

[01:39:34 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Amazing. So, we've come to time, and I'd like to thank our panelists: Raoul; Aiesha; Nathalie; Melissa, and of course, Clerk Hannaford. So, again, if we could thank them for spending that time with us.

[01:39:34 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, on-stage panelists, and virtual panelists.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And just a few final comments before we take a quick break. If you haven't visited it yet,

[01:40:1 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, and wooclap QR codes.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: we have a virtual kiosk where you can find a lot of resources that will either support or complement a lot of the topics and conversations that we'll be having, so don't miss out on that. It also includes an onboarding video, actually, from the Clerk, that introduces new public servants to the unique responsibilities and privileges that we all have in serving Canadians. I encourage you to check that out. A reminder that the speaker's corner is available here. Out there in the hall in Ottawa. And that the Privy Council Office's social media team is here on site to interview anyone who's interested on topics related to the symposium. These interviews will be shared on the Privy Council Office's social media accounts. So be sure to it check out. We've received a lot of photos, I understand, so be sure to check out our photo wall as well. But we are now going to take a break. We will see you back here promptly at 1:30 Eastern Standard Time. We're back right at 1:30 pm Eastern Standard Time. Thanks, everyone.

[01:41:21 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen.]

[01:41:26 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]

Transcript: Exploring the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Public Service

[00:00:00 CSPS title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:00:08 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen and addresses the audience from a lectern. Text on screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, Vice-President, Canada School of Public Service.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Welcome back, everyone. For those of you here in Ottawa, I invite you to please take your seats. Welcome back, everyone. We have an exciting agenda ahead as we shift our attention to the role of artificial intelligence and its linkages with public service values.

Before we do that, however, I want to take another moment to talk about some of our other regional events. We flagged earlier events taking place today in eastern Canada and central Canada, as well as in Iqaluit. So, now we're going to talk about the west. A shout out to Jean-François Tremblay, and Naina Sloan, who are leading discussions with federal public servants in Vancouver. In Calgary, we have Chris Forbes and Raj Thuppal, who are also hosting a fireside chat to talk about themes raised at the symposium. In Regina, we have Bryan Larkin, Sam Hazen, and Shannon Grainger, who are at the Canadian Heritage Museum leading a discussion on values and ethics. And in Winnipeg we have Gina Wilson and Diane Gray, who are at Red River College for a panel discussion showcasing different perspectives on our shared values and ethics. And in the northwest, in Whitehorse, David Millar from Parks Canada is hosting a panel to talk about some of the key takeaways from the symposium. And in Yellowknife, Valerie Gideon and Chris Fox are at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre to discuss key themes also coming out of the symposium.

So, I just want to say thank you to everyone for coming together today, both in groups and in teams and departments, in agencies and regions, as well as in missions. Now, before introducing our next guest, we will start the session with a quick video highlighting the themes of stewardship and excellence.

[00:02:11 Video opens with title page. Text on screen: Reflections on Our Values: Stewardship.

[00:02:14 Dylan Jenkins appears full screen. Text on screen: Dylan Jenkins, Indigenous Services Canada, Ottawa, ON.]

Dylan Jenkins: The value of stewardship. It's about caring for resources. It's people. It's always people first.

[00:02:20 Franco Pagotto appears full screen. Text on screen: Franco Pagotto, Health Canada, Ottawa, ON.]

Franco Pagotto: We try to be as transparent as possible.

[00:02:24 Video shows a person working in a lab, then back to Franco Pagotto full screen.]

Franco Pagotto: So, from the highest level of government down to my immediate manager, every penny that I spend in my lab to do the work is accounted for.

[00:02:32 Natasha Cote-Khan appears full screen. Text on screen: Natasha Cote-Khan, Public Services and Procurement Canada, London, ON.]

Natasha Cote-Khan: I feel a great sense of responsibility to design a system that works well so that people stay,

[00:02:37 Video shows people in a variety of government workspaces.]

Natasha Cote-Khan: and they have that enjoyable experience and remember their years with fondness and enjoyment.

[00:02:44 Video shows title page. Text on screen: Reflections on Our Values: Stewardship.

[00:02:48 Honey Dacaney appears full screen. Text on screen: Honey Dacaney, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Toronto, ON.]

Honey Dacaney: Excellence is a culmination of all the other values being brought to life. And so, integrity, respect for people, respect for democracy and stewardship.

[00:03:01 Mireille Lacroix appears full screen. Text on screen: Mireille Lacroix, Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, On.]

[00:03:05 Video shows people in a variety of government workspaces.]

Mireille Lacroix: When we don't have all the answers, we open ourselves up to curiosity, to recognizing the contributions that other people can make to our work to help us achieve a result that would be better for everyone.

[00:03:15 Video ends with symposium title page. Text on screen: What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

[00:03:18 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Delivering excellence is one of our fundamental purposes, and part of this is finding creative and innovative solutions to the complex challenges we face. And one area, that has had a profound impact on both public service excellence and stewardship, is artificial intelligence. And that's the focus of our next segment.

Before I hand over the mic to our keynote speaker, however, we're going to conduct another quick survey to get a sense of how AI plays a role in your daily work and to set the stage for the discussion ahead.

[00:03:53 Split screen: Nathalie Laviades Jodouin, and wooclap poll results.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, as we did earlier this morning, you're now used to it: wooclap.com, VEOCT to open the survey. And the question being, do you use artificial intelligence at work? Do you use artificial intelligence at work?So, we're going to take a look at the responses. So, a bit of a tie there, or close, between regularly use and using it occasionally. Oh, although occasionally is now trending upwards. Interesting. I have never used AI at work at 32%. Keep those responses coming. Let's see. So, it's fair to say most either regularly or occasionally use it, but there is quite a bit of a chunk who have never used it at work. So, that'll be interesting for the discussion that's ahead. Keep those coming. We want to be able to kind of pull those responses. This is really helpful, helpful information.

[00:05:13 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: All right, so as we were mentioning, the focus of artificial intelligence, these advances come with great responsibility as we need to use them both ethically and effectively. That's what our next guest is going to address, talking about the opportunities and challenges that artificial intelligence brings to our roles and the link between these factors and the values and ethics in the public service. So, I now have the pleasure of introducing Dominic Rochon, the Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. The floor is yours, Mr. Rochon. Thank you.

[00:05:53 Dominic Rochon takes the stage, and then appears full screen. Text on screen: Dominic Rochon, Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer of Canada, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.]

Dominic Rochon: Thank you very much, Nathalie. Hello everyone. Hello, everyone. I'm delighted to be here and be part of this very important conversation that we've been having over the last couple of days. I note that we've been talking about values and ethics from many different angles, and I've listened intently, and I'm hoping that all of these conversations have stimulated thought and reflection for you as much as it has for me as I've been sitting in the front row. And I know not too many people have ventured up front here, so hopefully I haven't scared anyone with this conversation. But as I listened intently the last couple of days, it stimulated a lot of thought.

Right from the opening traditional prayer from Elder Verna yesterday, we heard about the notion of seven generations thinking, and I could not help but ponder how we can sometimes barely figure out how to solve the problems of the here and now, let alone be thinking about seven generations. I believe the Clerk said it best in his opening remarks yesterday when he mentioned that we were here to learn over these two days, and the keynote speakers and panel conversations so far have certainly given me pause to think about the journey that our public service has been on.

I note we are reflecting about how we behave, how we treat one another. Words are ever important, and if I may say, even the simplest things like how we dress, or indeed, where we work can quickly become something very controversial. These are not issues that were necessarily heavily debated when my grandfather, or indeed my father, made their way through their careers as public servants. But you will note that I'm wearing a suit and tie here today to address all of you. And you might be surprised to hear how many times people poke fun at me for my attire, particularly in IT circles, criticizing me for being too formal, and threatening to brandish a pair of scissors the next time I show up with a tie. And yet, as the son of a career diplomat, my father's wisdom about dressing a certain way out of respect for the people you will be encountering always rings true in my ears. So, simple questions about values, integrity, and respect abound, and crises of conscience can arise at any moment over the smallest of things. And that's before we even broach the ever-evolving subject of technology.

In my role as Chief Information Officer for the federal government, I'd like to speak about how public service values and ethics must be the cornerstone of the use of artificial intelligence in government. Of course, AI is on everyone's lips these days. In fact, I don't think there's been a speaker or a panel that has not mentioned AI in the two days that we've been here, and there's not a day that goes by that I'm not asked about AI. To the average person, the expectation seems to be that AI is this revolution that has landed upon us and will be transformative, that your IT departments will just sprinkle a little AI stardust on products and services and things will magically be better. But it's, of course, much more complicated than that, because how we use AI is, at its heart, a conversation about values and ethics. And that's what I want to talk about today.

Now, I have resisted creating an avatar in three minutes that I could have, interacting with you, on the giant screen behind me and have you walk through various AI use cases. Frankly, I haven't even availed myself of wooclap, despite the fact that Nathalie did ask one question, so I'm afraid I've chosen a much more traditional way to convey my message to you. So, dare I say, it might be a bit boring. But suffice to say that I hope to frame things for the panel discussion that will follow, where I have no doubt there will be ample opportunity for a much more lively and perhaps spicy dynamic. So, until the panel arrives, bear with me. AI, of course, isn't anything specifically new. We've been doing it since the 1950s, but in recent years, it has evolved to a place where it has the potential to open all sorts of new ways of doing things that will enable us to work more efficiently and better serve Canadians. At the same time, it can also have life changing consequences for the people we serve, and it must therefore be used responsibly and ethically. Nathalie mentioned this in her opening remarks. I choose to channel the Marvel comic universe in saying that with great power comes great responsibility.

So, the widespread adoption of generative AI, and the fact that these tools are going to be in everyone's hands, if they aren't already, must be governed by guardrails and done responsibly to prevent and address bias, protect human rights and democratic institutions, and enhance public trust. Yes, AI has great transformative power, but fundamentally, this revolution is about managing change while being guided by our values and ethics, and that's what we're working towards in government.

Before I get to what I call moral guideposts, I would like to set the stage by looking at the broader AI landscape in Canada. Canada has been a leader in artificial intelligence and deep learning since the 1990s. Thanks to innovators like Geoffrey Hinton. I think the Clerk mentioned that he actually recently won a Nobel Peace Prize, or a Nobel Physics Prize, rather. And Yoshua Bengio and essential early investments by the federal and provincial governments. Canada was the first country in the world to implement a national AI strategy. Today, rapid advances in generative AI in particular are unlocking immense potential for our country, dramatically improving productivity by reducing the time spent on necessary but laborious or repetitive tasks. AI also has remarkable potential to make the world more accessible to people with disabilities, allowing them to access new skills that were previously out of reach. Researchers and businesses are using AI to create incredible new innovations and job opportunities across every aspect of the Canadian economy, from drug discovery to energy efficiency, housing innovation and improved hospital care.

So, the transformation that we're seeing across the board in Canada when it comes to AI is indeed significant. Within the federal government, we've been developing our own ability to leverage AI and other automated tools in a responsible way. Our human centric approach to the development and deployment of AI prioritizes transparency, accountability, and fairness in automated decision making, and there are several departments involved in developing our AI ecosystem. Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada is looking after AI regulation for the private sector and the funding of institutes. Indeed, since 2017, ISED has overseen $2 billion worth of funding for the Canadian AI ecosystem, with an additional $2.4 billion identified in Budget 2024. ISED's efforts include, for instance, the introduction of the Pan Canadian AI strategy, to drive AI's adoption across the economy and society, as well as the creation of an advisory council on AI to guide AI growth, leverage expertise, and ensure it is grounded in human rights, transparency, and openness. They are also the lead, of course, on Bill C 27, which is winding its way through parliament and, if adopted, would introduce, among other things, an artificial intelligence and data act.

For its part, Global Affairs Canada is involved at the G7; at the G20; at the Council of Europe; United Nations, and other international fora negotiating international standards for the ethical use of AI. And of course, the Canada School of Public Service has an important role to play as they're putting in place an awareness campaign to inform all public servants of this transformative technology and providing AI related training. For its part, my department, the Treasury Board Secretariat, is looking after the guidelines and rules for AI's adoption and responsible use by public servants.

And, needless to say, a great many departments and agencies, from the National Research Council to Environment Canada, Agriculture and Agri Food Canada, or the Space Agency, have gone far beyond merely dipping their proverbial toes in the AI pond. And you'll also hear that DND, and the Communication Security Establishment, and StatsCan, and a number of other departments and agencies have already their own AI strategies. The Privy Council Office, with Mark Schaan's recent appointment as Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet for Artificial Intelligence, has the daunting task of coordinating all of these moving parts. So, AI is here. We're creating an AI ecosystem in government, we're investing money, and we're asking every public servant to leverage it.

I mentioned a moment ago that the Treasury Board Secretariat has put in place a series of policies, risk management frameworks and tools to help the public service use AI responsibly. One of these tools is the Directive on Automated Decision-Making. Departments that use automated decision-making systems for certain programs, including those that rely on AI, are required to comply with the requirements of the directive. For example, people need to be given important information about when and how to use automation to make decisions that affect them. Decisions made by AI systems must be fair and accurate, and potential negative impacts of automation must be continually identified and minimized.

I therefore encourage everyone who's currently using AI or considering doing so in the future to familiarize themselves with this important policy tool. The Directive on Automated Decision-Making builds on the Algorithmic Impact Assessment tool to help federal public servants identify, assess and reduce the risks associated with the use of AI in decision-making. Furthermore, in February, the TBS published the second version of the Guide on the use of generative artificial intelligence. This guide provides public servants with advice, principles and best practices on the use of generative AI tools, with an emphasis on its safe and ethical use.

This guide on the use of generative AI speaks to the importance of aligning with the FASTER principles of fairness; accountability; security; transparency; education; and relevance. Principles I'll get to in just a moment. Overall, all these instruments will help you, as public servants, be more productive and deliver higher quality work, while at the same time hopefully help you manage potential risks, such as generating inaccurate information; amplifying stereotypes; or compromising privacy and security.

And of course, there are many examples that demonstrate how AI is now being used to streamline government operations. I'll offer up two quick ones. Employment and Social Development Canada is using AI to increase the efficiency of administrative processes, such as automatically assessing the relevance of comments in record of employment forms. And the GAC document cracker, or Doc cracker, developed by Global Affairs Canada, uses AI to help officials quickly find the information they need by summarizing and organizing large volumes of documents.

There are undoubtedly many more examples, but at the same time, what we must remember is that generative AI tools are just that, tools. As such, they should be evaluated for their potential to help increase the efficiency and productivity of public servants, not for their potential to substitute for a high performing workforce.

I should also mention that last May, the President of the Treasury Board launched a panel on Canada's first AI strategy for the federal public service. This strategy will align responsible efforts in this field across government, including how we use it to deliver services, conduct scientific research, strengthen cybersecurity and achieve efficiency in our operations. This will help us improve how we serve Canadians and how we train and develop our workforce so they are ready to adapt to the changing workplace. These consultations have already taken place with people in academia, bargaining agents, civil society, public service, Indigenous communities and industry, and those with the public began last month. If you have not yet participated in the public service consultations, you can still participate in the public consultations that are currently underway. The feedback we've received so far reinforces that our strategy must be focused on people, collaboration and trust. Trust, trust and transparency, is something that came up time and again yesterday.

Trust is essential. This means respecting inclusive and equitable practices that meet the needs of diverse communities; ensuring transparency, accountability, privacy and security of our AI initiatives; and minimizing their impact on the environment. Essentially, we want Canada, like other countries have done, to publish a strategy for AI in the public service in the spring of 2025. This is an important step towards adopting a consistent and uniform approach to AI within the federal government.

Now, with respect to your daily work, the Call to Action and the guide on the use of generative AI is clear. Federal institutions should explore AI tools to support and enhance their operations. And let me debunk a persistent myth that public servants are not allowed to use generative AI in the government.

That's not true. We can use it, but only in a responsible and ethical way. We're also well aware of the expectation that these tools will impact the way we work, but we'll need to adapt. The point is that we can't miss the boat or be afraid of using this technology. Now that we have the guardrails in place, you'll need to use it.

But you can't manage AI through controls alone. You'll have to use not only our values and ethics as guideposts, but your own sense of right and wrong to maximize the use of these tools to enhance our effectiveness. And with that flexibility comes accountability. As I said at the outset, this is about managing change. And what does that look like in our everyday work?

To help you understand, my office has prepared a document entitled Generative AI in your daily work, which was posted today on the virtual kiosk of the Canada School of Public Service website. If you're not sure what generative AI is, it produces material, like text and images, based on what you ask it to do. Examples of such tools include ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini. All these tools are here to help you, but it all comes down to one question: should you use generative AI for your project? Every situation is different. So, make sure you think about these guiding principles and your moral values before using AI.

The document we published today will help you use AI responsibly and in accordance with the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector. For example, it shows you what generative AI can be used for; this includes writing presentations, report outlines, speaking notes, meeting minutes, and other documents. Exploring creative ideas and creating images for presentations. But it also describes what you can't use AI for: producing inappropriate, illegal, or unethical information; creating a single source of information for important business decisions; creating images of people; and creating materials that could mislead people or spread misinformation.

And to help you learn how to use generative AI tools responsibly, there's a handy acronym that I mentioned earlier to guide you. That acronym is FASTER, and it identifies six principles as well as do's and don'ts associated with each principle.

So, in the FASTER acronym, F stands for fair, so that you check to ensure that AI generated output is representative and inclusive and doesn't contain harmful stereotypes. The A is for accountable. In other words, take responsibility for what you prepare using AI. S is for secure. Meaning you use public tools with unclassified data only and don't input personal, sensitive, or protected information. T is for transparent. Meaning you indicate on the final product that you use generative AI, and you inform your manager when you use AI to complete your tasks. E is for educated. For example, you take courses and read articles on using generative AI. And finally, R is for relevance, which means remember that generative AI isn't appropriate for all uses. There's a lot more in this starter kit to the interesting and exciting world of AI, and I recommend you familiarize yourself with it before using generative AI in your work. AI is inevitable, and everyone is going to need a basic understanding of it, including when it should be used. So, I'll repeat, the Canada School of Public Service is also offering courses on it, and I really suggest that everyone look into that.

So, I told you it was going to be a little bit lengthy, but I needed to get through all of the various guideposts that we have in place. We have a panel discussion ahead. We'll get to the finer themes of AI, and perhaps specific examples with that panel. I've stayed clear of discussing how much this might cost, or how we need rigorous data strategies before we can truly adopt these tools, or indeed how we're tackling and overcoming our serious situation in the federal government when it comes to technical debt. We'll need to invest in compute power, in digital skills, and questions abound about the impacts on the environment, or, as we heard earlier, how this impacts productivity. All topics that may arise with the upcoming panel.

But before I hand things over to them, maybe I'll leave you with this one thought. As public servants, our collective commitment to ethical and responsible AI must be unwavering. We must advocate for AI that combats barriers to inclusion in the workplace and respects human rights and democratic values, and this is reflected in our AI strategies and policies. It's also incumbent on us as public service employees to manage this change and uphold our moral contract with Canadians.

To do that, connect early on with policy frameworks and guidelines that ensure AI is developed and used in a way that respects human rights and our values. And consult with experts, both within your organization and outside, to explore and understand the ethical considerations of a particular use of AI. You can also reach out to my office within the Treasury Board Secretariat for assistance, guidance, or collaboration on AI related matters. And don't forget to check out the latest information on Canada.ca.

AI is here. It's changing the way we work, so let's get comfortable with it, use it responsibly, and help guide the AI revolution. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[00:26:25 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Thank you very much, Mister Rochon, for shedding light on why AI should be a topic of central discussion, and how it intersects with values and ethics. And thank you for the shout out as well to the School, but also many other resources that you will find if you visit our virtual kiosk, which I'm sure we will scan. But you're already familiar with it, so go check that out. So, let's continue the conversation by hearing from other public servants, both in the federal government but also other jurisdictions, as they share their experiences and best practices using AI. So, the panel discussion, you are now used to it, will be followed by a Q and A, both here in the room and with our virtual participants. So, I'm now going to be inviting our panelists to join us.

[00:27:22 Camera shows the panelists as they take the stage.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, first, welcome Mark Schaan, who's Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Artificial Intelligence at the Privy Council Office, who will also be moderating today's discussion. Welcome, Mark. Also joining on stage is Ima Okonny, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Data Officer at Employment and Social Development Canada.

[00:27:50 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen briefly, then we see the panelists participating virtually full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: And also, a couple of participants who are joining us virtually. First, Natasha Clarke, Deputy Minister at the Department of Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions in the Government of Nova Scotia. Welcome, Natasha. And Anna Jahn, Senior Director, Public Policy and Inclusion at Mila, Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. Welcome, Anna.

[00:28:13 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: So, a reminder to everyone, wooclap.com, VEOCT to submit your questions. And with that, over to you, Mark. Thank you.

[00:28:18 Split screen: Mark Schaan and Ima Okonny are seated on stage; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn appear in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: Thank you, Natasha, and thank you all for being here today. It's really a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak with such an excellent group, it's really a great group. I hope that our panel today has an approach that achieves the result that <inaudible> to be expected.

[00:28:42 Mark Schaan appears full screen. Text on screen: Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Artificial Intelligence, Privy Council Office.]

Mark Schaan: I think we'll have to see whether or not we can live up to the hype which is normal for those of us who talk about AI is we are often hype busting or thinking about whether or not we're actually going to be able to do what it says that it possibly can. We're the last panel today [before] the Clerk's final comments. Our conversation which was preceded by our other panel today. It was amazing, and many different opinions are important for our conversation today. I was really struck by the conversations over the last two days and the ways in which it's really pressing on the things that we're going to talk about today. Yesterday, one of the panelists said that trust is an outcome, it's not an action.

[00:29:30 Mark Schaan and Ima Okonny are seated on stage.]

Mark Schaan: And I think when we think about artificial intelligence, we often think about it as a thing and not a process. And I think we actually, hopefully today, will talk a little bit about what is the process of AI that actually arrives at its responsible usage, and its effective outcomes.

[00:29:40 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: There were also some really important discussions this morning about the important ability to rethink our processes. I think one of the panelists talked about the fact that our democracy and our institutions shouldn't be so fragile as to be vested in one particular configuration or one particular kind of format. And I think that's true for how we think about artificial intelligence. It really does have to be open to the possibility of doing things in a new and different way and maybe to concentrating our efforts onto some of the other spaces where we can really add value. It's clear that artificial intelligence has such an incredible capacity and influence that is just starting in the economy and society. It's clear that artificial intelligence is a technology that touches our lives in ways that perhaps seem new from older innovations in technology.

AI is hitting us in new and very different ways. And on the one hand, it holds this incredible promise, the ability to no longer care about repetitive tasks, to maybe be able to free up some of our capacities to be able to allow machines to do some of the work that actually underpins some of what we're up to.

On the other hand, it raises really important values and ethics questions, particularly for those of us, who are public servants. It raises questions about why it is that when you ask generative AI formats and a number of questions what a leader looks like, it never shows you anything other than a white man. It raises really important questions like what is its relationship to the creative sector that actually underpinned much of the data that actually feeds into these models? Where was that data created? Who was compensated for it? Where was it labelled in the world? And what about the environmental and other consequences of these processes? At the same time, it's this amazing opportunity for us, as a public service, to potentially leapfrog and utilize a technology that Canada has almost had more responsibility for than any other nation in the world.

And so, how do we strike that balance? And so, I'm super lucky today to be able to be joined by such an incredible team who is going to help us kind of wrestle with some of these questions. And so, I'll ask them each to kind of grapple with this question at outset, which is how and what do you see as the opportunity and the considerations for the responsible implementation of AI in a public service context? And maybe I'll start with you, Ima.

[00:32:26 Ima Okonny appears full screen. Text on screen: Ima Okonny, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Data Officer, Employment and Social Development Canada.]

What Unites Us, Defines Us; Values and Ethics in Today's Federal Public Service.]

Thank you so much, Mark. And also, thanks to our CIO. I thought your framing was excellent in terms of really painting the picture of what the ecosystem looks like in terms of the supports for us to get this going. And also, thanks so much to the Canada School PCO for us starting this extremely important conversation around the intersection of artificial intelligence data, and values and ethics.

So, in terms of answering your question, Mark, I've been in the public sector now for 25 years, and I know the Clerk, in the previous panels, asked people to reflect on when they just started in the public sector. So, when I started about 2000, I had done some contracts before then, what struck me was the care people had for people. Public servants really wanted to do good for Canadians. There was a lot of focus on making sure public servants were equipped to be able to deliver for Canadians. And I've seen that throughout the last 25 years in the public sector, even in my current role in Employment and Social Development Canada. So, when I think about leveraging technologies like AI, so today we're talking about AI, tomorrow it could be something else, I think the power we have, and the opportunity is to really turn all the talent we have across the system, leverage this technology for good to be able to deliver to Canadians.

We talked early on about the challenges with trust, challenges around people being concerned about so much risk around leveraging AI. And I think the opportunity for us, as public servants, is to turn this around and to focus [on] what makes us different, for example, from the private sector, and then drive to innovation based on that.

So, for example, in Employment and Social Development Canada, one of the things we did at the height of the pandemic was see how we could leverage data and AI to really drive to those comments that the CIO talked about earlier on, because we saw that our agents were inundated, the forms were coming in. We got so [many] forms because people were losing their jobs. And one of the things we thought about is, how can we support Canadians through this difficult time? And the way we did it was to leverage AI.

We leveraged it legally. We worked with TBS to ensure that all the protocols were in place. We also ensured that the privacy considerations were in place, the security considerations were in place, and we proved that this could be done. Many people said, you can't do this in the legacy system with all the data challenges we had, but we were able to do it and we were able to deliver.

So, I think the question for us, Mark, going forward, is how can we scale some of this across the public sector? Because we've proven that we can do this in a way that meets the protocols. We're very transparent about what we did. Right now, if you go to the open government portal, you will find documentation about what we did. We've been very open about some of these practices we've had within the organization. And I think that work also was able to get people more literate in terms of understanding some of those key data considerations, the foundational considerations around data integration, and then the responsible considerations around AI to make sure that, as we looked at this solution, which is still running up to today, we're also looking at things like data drift, because the data changes. If you look at the population of Canada, it's constantly changing.

So, they need to be very intentional, to be very deliberate in terms of how we leverage and push for innovation while at the same time sticking to those core values and ethics. So, I'll pause there for now.

[00:36:26 Mark Schaan and Ima Okonny are seated on stage.]

Mark Schaan: Thanks so much, Ima. Natasha, from your perch in Nova Scotia, what are your thoughts on some of these opportunities and considerations for responsible implementation in a public service context?

[00:36:40 Natasha Clarke appears full screen. Text on screen: Natasha Clarke, Deputy Minister, Department of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions, Government of Nova Scotia.]

Natasha Clarke: Mark, I love your grin, because Mark and I have been on a couple of conversations already about AI and I'm sure he's wondering, what's Natasha going to share with the audience? I think a couple of things I'd like to chat about and just share in terms of perspective. Certainly, here in Nova Scotia, I would say we're about one metre into a million-kilometre journey, in terms of AI.

What I would share, though, is the journey that we've been on in the learnings around how to shift a public sector entity system that's been an analog government since the 18th century to one that can work and think differently. And I would say we're still on that journey. And why I feel that's really important to hit home on is that AI is another type of technology. Now, it is a very different type of technology, meaning that what we needed to have been focused on during the Internet era, and maybe we've gotten away with not being as sharply focused on it then, that's going to cause us some significant consequences if we don't start to focus in on things like digital literacy in the public service, data management, and some core infrastructure and foundational things that we need to make sure we're putting in place.

Now, in saying all of that, I think we have huge opportunities. We all know that we're trying to solve wicked hard problems, and I do believe that technologies definitely can help us do that. But first and foremost, we really do need to make sure we're falling in love with, what's the problem we're trying to solve? What's the user need? And really making sure that we're not just saying those words but being in the context of the people that we're either serving or again, the problem that we're trying to address, to making sure that our hypotheses are actually valid.

So, I think that's my counsel as to the first place to start, because I do think these technologies are going to be incredibly powerful for us as public servants. But if we jump too quickly, and I think Dom said it perfectly, the AI stardust. I get a lot of calls on, Natasha, we need the AI, but what we want to get folks thinking about is, what is that problem? What does that user need? But also making sure we're thinking through the consequences. This type of technology is different than your traditional word processing or traditional processing technologies that we've used historically in the public sector. And so, if I was a policy person, I need to now raise my literacy and understanding the implications, not just the benefits, but potentially the unintended consequences of that technology. What I think is really awesome is that, obviously Dom talked about Treasury Board Secretariat and the guidelines and the principles that have been put in place. We've done similar things here as well, to start to help public servants to feel comfortable.

And the other thing I would share is don't be afraid. And no one has this really all figured out. Microsoft, what was it, about a year ago, was still trying to figure out how to leverage this. So, I know that even for myself as someone in this space, there are times where I feel like I'm behind. Don't let that get you caught up in worrying about that. Just start to use it in the context of the guidelines that have been shared. And when we get into some of the questions later, certainly I'll share some of the recent learnings that we've had, but maybe I'll just leave it at that in terms of some opening thoughts.

[00:40:33 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: Thanks so much, Natasha. And it is always fun to be on panels with you, so I look forward to your next interventions as well.

Anna, as someone who helps guide public policy practitioners around the world around some of these issues, what for you do you see as the opportunity and some of the considerations for their responsible implementation of AI in a public service context?

[00:40:58 Anna Jahn appears full screen. Text on screen: Anna Jahn, Senior Director, Public Policy and Inclusion at Mila.]

Anna Jahn: Yes. Thank you, Mark. And I better step up to be as fun of a panelist as Natasha is, my lord.

So, I'm joining you right from a non-public service context. I'm joining you from an AI Research Institute. And at Mila, we are really, in a way, in a privileged position to be a bit at the heart of the Canadian AI ecosystem, meaning not only do we work with excellence, at Mila [there is] currently 1300 researchers here, but we also work with industry, we work with governments, and we work with international organizations to partly support and help them think through the adoption of AI technology. My team in particular tries to really even more bridge the gap between the research community and policymakers. But generally, we really are trying to support, in a way, everyone on this journey. So, we can see a bit and we can compare a bit what we see here.

I would say, on the opportunity side, and I think a lot of things were already said by my two brilliant panelists. I think, though, what we see, or maybe I personally see as the biggest opportunity in a way, is that governments have an opportunity to actually respond to societal needs with AI technology. A lot of the AI that we're seeing being put out and being deployed, are responding to the platform owner's needs, the producer needs, and the user needs. And I don't want to at all diminish user needs. I think the thinking about human-centred design and really thinking about user experience is really important. But often the societal needs are getting a bit forgotten. And I think ultimately governments have an opportunity to explore how we can really respond to some of these really big needs and huge challenges that we've been grappling with, whether that's in the area of climate change, health, etc, etcetera. And, I think, make a general case how AI can actually really make a difference and better deliver ultimately, of course, around citizen expectations of what governments can do. So, that's the small, or rather, really, really big challenge here and opportunity. And of course, there are lots of pieces that already were mentioned around better citizen service delivery that ultimately leads to trust as an outcome.

Around considerations, maybe I'll name four, that I think we are seeing across the ecosystem and across governments. First, I really want to just emphasize again the point around education and training. If you have a workforce that ultimately doesn't know what AI is, it's really, really hard to think about, fall in love with a problem and come up with solutions here. And I don't suggest that everyone gets a PhD in machine learning. I really, truly believe that every public servant can have a good grasp of what AI technology is within a day. That learning can be delivered in all kinds of different ways. It doesn't have to be the MIT course in person, but ultimately, I think we all have to figure out a way that, across the organizations, people know what AI actually is. Because I think only then can we really go to the problem definitions.

And I fully, fully agree with Natasha that we need to start with a problem, and we need to fall in love with the problem and not start with, oh, there is this tool that can do cool stuff and I'm going to now put it somewhere in my system. So, it needs to be around the problem. The problem needs to come first, but we can only identify the solutions if we have a fundamental understanding of what AI can do, and how it responds to these kinds of problems. And again, it doesn't have to be complicated – but AI is good in certain things and if we understand that and how it ultimately then is built, I think we can be a lot better around the solution finding.

Third, I think we do need to start thinking about this more as a change management process as opposed to just adoption of a tool or a technology. I think often the challenges that we're seeing with adopting ultimately a quite disruptive technology and a technology that really challenges, in many ways, everything that the public sector partly stands for, or actually everything that a democracy almost stands for. It is slow and it is consensus building and all these kinds of things. And so, thinking about it more as a change management process and therefore being really mindful on how we introduce it, how do we make sure that, for example, our own employees really understand what is being automated, and that they're not losing their job, et cetera. So, a lot, of course, is therefore then around communication. But I think the more we shift into a change management mindset, the better.

And then ultimately, I would say the last point, I think considering and thinking and talking about AI more with regard to augmentation as opposed to automation, because I think ultimately this is a technology that can augment certain tasks, certain processes. And I think the word automation sometimes may be a bit misleading. And it also maybe creates fears that I think maybe are – yes, I think with the word augmentation [it] might be better managed. And so, I think that shift of thinking of it as an augmentation with, of course, always a human, for example, in the loop, because if we talk all of a sudden just about automation,

[00:47:06 Split screen: Mark Schaan on stage; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Anna Jahn: I think there are indeed some really core, of course, fundamental questions around how, are these decisions being made, and how does the system actually know how to serve, for example, that person and everything that we mentioned before around bias and the data, etcetera. So, I'll leave it maybe at that.

Mark Schaan: Very interesting and thanks for this perspective. It's so important to focus on the problems and take an approach that recognizes that artificial intelligence is a general technology. It's not just a solution or benefit; it's truly a process.

[00:47:16 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: And, Anna, you've heard me say this before, but I also think we need to think about AI as a long game. We didn't get to the solutions we have in AI without 50 years of rapid and continuous support for foundational science that helped get us to these technologies. And so, let's not think that we need to solve it all in a day or get from zero to 100 in a day.

[00:48:12 Split screen: Mark Schaan on stage; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: Natasha, maybe a follow up for you on just again, thinking about your spot in Nova Scotia, some of what you're thinking about in terms of early use cases. And some of maybe the fundamentals that need to be put in place as you think about early use cases like data; like appropriate technological infrastructure; like skills and capabilities; and maybe where you might see some opportunities for engagement between provinces and territories and the federal government as we explore the responsible use of AI together.

[00:48:40 Natasha Clarke appears full screen.]

Natasha Clarke: Thank you for that. A couple of things. I might just bounce around a little bit. In terms of use cases, like I said at the outset, I think we're just starting to dip our toes in in a few ways. Certainly, our health system has been embracing AI for some time in terms of x rays, lab results, some of those, I want to say more lower hanging fruit kinds of examples. Certainly, in terms of the public service we've been rolling out copilot and I can see how public servants are using that and experimenting with that, which is brilliant. We just recently had some learning as well where we're actually going to issue some guidance on AI meeting assistance, where we actually had some AI meeting assistants join some meetings. And I think some public servants were perhaps a bit unaware and what the consequences of that was, especially as we start to move to maybe confidential or in camera meetings with stakeholders. And so, I think that would just be something to share, and [we're] happy to share that guidance as we publish that here in Nova Scotia. But back to some of the comments that Anna was making in her opening and then back to that fundamental infrastructure piece and the collaboration.

[00:50:04 Split screen: Mark Schaan, and Ima Okonny on stage; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Natasha Clarke: I feel that, in Canada, I know we have a productivity issue. I really see the public service wanting to –

[00:50:14 Natasha Clarke appears full screen.]

Natasha Clarke: I would like us to get back to our roots in terms of creating the public good and public value. And when I think about innovations that have been made historically, whether it be GPS; the Internet; etcetera, I think we also should not hold ourselves small in terms of those types of innovations that we collectively can work on together to drive a very different type of future for my son, for example, who is turning 16 next week.

So, when I think about digital public infrastructure, when I think about how might we leverage the data that we have stewardship over in a very privacy and consent-based way, how do we build proper technology infrastructure like data exchanges? How might we take an upgrade to how we issue identity today, meaning we have paper driver's licenses, we need to move to digital trust and credentials. And so, there are other elements of that kind of digital public infrastructure that I feel that we collectively can be working on together to get at some of the things that Anna was talking about, which are those bigger societal challenges.

I'm really excited. In the past year and a half, two years, there's been a federal provincial territorial table of ministers and deputy ministers focused on cybersecurity and digital trust. AI is a topic at that table, and productivity most recently was a part of that conversation. And how we can collaborate and share. But I would like to challenge us to move past, bringing my guiding principles and I'm going to share them with you, and then we're going to have a muffin and be excited about that, to actually digging in on, how might we collaborate on that digital public infrastructure to put those foundational pieces in place. It doesn't mean government has to solve all the problems, but we can set the table that then can create some enabling activity, whether that be with research and academia, private sector, what have you.

And certainly, we've seen other nations globally being able to leapfrog Canada in those spaces. And what I'm concerned about is they're going to eat our lunch. But I believe in what we can do. And I know just even being invited to participate in a panel like this today invites those conversations because I really get fired up about, how might we work together to tackle some of the things that, like I said, Anna had shared in her opening remarks.

[00:52:52 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: Thank you, Natasha. I'm also an optimist, particularly regarding the possibilities for coordination and cooperation between the provinces and territories. It's the same values and ethics issues; it's really the same infrastructure and capacity issues; and as Anna said, it's truly a change management process. And really, as we go through this change banded together, we will be so much stronger together if we actually kind of figure out how we can do it in ways that draw on our respective capacities.

Ima, we talked about, and you commented on the possibility of increasing and improving services to citizens with the use of artificial intelligence. And maybe you can talk a little bit more about the possibilities and considerations around citizen-facing services and really some of how you guys are drawing on that at ESDC as you think through these very important and really meaningful kind of opportunities.

[00:54:10 Ima Okonny appears full screen.]

Ima Okonny: Thanks, Mark. I would just say that before I came to the panel, I looked at StatsCan website. I looked at the population clock. You know, the population clock they have. If you don't, if you haven't seen it, it's fascinating to look at it. And our population there says we're going to over 40 million. I also went on StatsCan's website. We're very lucky. We have a very solid statistical agency in this country. I looked at the population of Indigenous people. I also looked at a population of French speaking people. I looked at the population of racialized Canadians. I also browsed through some of the studies we've done around the underserved, the people that we're not even reaching. I looked at some of the considerations and some of the challenges we faced during the pandemic and who was mostly impacted by that pandemic. So, I will say that I think we've researched enough to know where some of the challenges are in the system, to Anna's point about social good. We've already done – there's a lot of research out there. And every time we go and talk about our data strategy, some of the responses we get is, you collect so much data on us, what are you doing with all this data?

So, when I think about citizen-facing services and enhancing delivery to Canadians, I think about the opportunity we have, given everything we currently have in place. We have a very talented public service that understands some of these problems. I saw it during the pandemic. I saw people working [at] 03:00 am; delivering; building systems; putting things together; going to the front lines to deliver to Canadians. I think the question for us now is, given everything we know, we already know about the system, the challenges, the issues, the people that were not served properly, how can we turn this around to target and reach the people that we're not reaching? And I say, to be able to do this, we need to work closely in terms of understanding the population segments.

So, working closely with StatsCan. We do a lot of work with StatsCan to understand the different population segments; understanding the urban/rural divide; understanding that the population is aging; understanding that disability is growing. You know, we have more people with disabilities now than before, so as we're thinking through service delivery and citizen-facing services, how are we thinking through accessibility? How are we thinking through and making sure that as we're leveraging artificial intelligence, we're using proper training data because it's been proven that francophone text and anglophone text is not treated equally. So, how do we make sure that we're putting all these considerations in place? How do we make sure that some of this data we're leveraging properly reflects the diversity of the Indigenous populations, and the challenges that we've seen? Now, we already know of because we've researched all these things.

So, I think I'm in the space now, Mark, and the space now that we need to move, and we need to move in terms of saying, yes, there's some high-risk artificial intelligence cases, we know that. We know that there's the risk of leaving people behind if we're not doing things deliberately and intentionally. And the TBS has put out a lot of tools. We've worked with some of our institutions, like Mila. We worked closely with Mila. We've put some of the governance frameworks in place. So, the question for us, as public sector is, how can we leverage current things we have to drive to better delivery. And, like I said in my opening, we do have those opportunities. We do have classic cases. Like for example, I spoke about how we leverage the record of employment comments. But there's some work we did in my department that I thought was one of the outstanding cases of the use of AI for public good, just like what Anna talked about.

So, I'll give an example. There was a policy change that impacted some of the most vulnerable people in our society. And there needed to be extensive reviews and case notes after case notes and agents were inundated with the amount of files that were coming out. So, what we did is we leveraged natural language processing, machine learning to say, can we mine these notes so that we triage the cases? So, keeping the humanity loop, like Anna said, but then triage those cases to really accelerate the most at-risk populations getting the benefits that they were entitled to. So, like I said, the reason we were able to do this is we knew there was a problem and we anticipated that if we didn't move quickly, we're putting people in vulnerable situations.

So, there is the risk, but there's some low risk, high impact cases, use cases, and that could be leveraged today. And I think the opportunity for us, as public servants, is we already know what the problems are because we saw it, we even saw it during the pandemic. So, I think the challenge is how do we pick the most critical issues to solve and focus on them, and then drive through innovation and solutions?

[00:59:42 Split screen: Mark Schaan; Natasha Clarke and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: It's incredible. It's such a new perspective. From time to time, we have conversations about AI and all the concerns and issues, especially the issue for groups in minority communities. It's refreshing to think a little bit about, how could we use the power of technology and the power of data to actually inverse that?

[01:00:08 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: So, we know that technology often has its most negative and challenging effects on marginalized communities. They're often the ones most personally and first impacted. And so, how actually might we be able to turn that on its head and really think about the ways in which AI and our data could actually best serve those least accommodated and effectively served by our systems.

[01:00:50 Split screen: Mark Schaan; Natasha Clarke and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: Anna, you have a privileged perspective in the sense that Mila, as a leading light in AI, has the chance to be able to engage with all sorts of players, both familiar and unfamiliar with AI, as they grapple with and think through the power of this technology. And we know that Canada is not an island. We're very much on this AI journey alongside a lot of partner countries across the world, and reflections from that sort of special spot that you sit in about some of what others are dealing with, use cases, considerations, and maybe any lessons learned that we should be thinking about, particularly as the world embraces this technological journey.

[01:01:24 Anna Jahn appears full screen.]

Anna Jahn: Sure, I will respond to that question in one second. But I just wanted to build on one other thing that Ima just said, and I just wanted to maybe add to that. I couldn't agree more in terms of the approach to really think of problems and needs and actually turn it a bit on its head and respond to those needs, especially of more vulnerable populations. I just wanted to say, though, with my inclusion hat on, I do think also we need to do that with people that know the technology and are coming from those communities. So, we can keep building, the solutions can be built by people who are sitting somewhere in an office and have no lived experience. And so, at Mila, we try to do that through a couple of different programs. One is specifically for Indigenous talent in AI, and one is trying to bring in more women and gender diverse people in the field of AI, because if we look at our student population, we have some real diversity issues. And so, that's just something to add here that I think both on all sides, we need to actually think about the inclusion.

So, now back to the international question. In a way, the good news is no one has figured this out and everyone is trying to figure it out. Every country that we talk to, and we do have the privilege of getting, for example, a lot of international delegation that come visit Mila because they're fascinated in a way by the model as a nonprofit organization that is working in this space. So, lots of governments, a lot of provincial governments, all levels of governments are trying to figure this out but also, of course, the private sector. It's not that the private sector has figured out how to adopt AI perfectly. They have the same change management questions. They have the same questions around AI governance, et cetera. So, in a way, really, let's be clear that no one has found the silver bullet.

I would say though, that those countries who are more advanced on their kind of digital transformation journey, I think have a leg up. And so, every country that has more seriously put in resources and education, et cetera, for their government or their public sector has a leg up in terms of how to think about now adding AI to that mix. It comes with its own specific challenges. But a lot of the things that I think we collected, [that] we have learned about digital transformation, are partly applicable to the adoption of AI. And so, therefore, not surprisingly, Singapore has some really, really interesting use cases and have a really interesting approach, and I would say, probably the most advanced government in terms of when it comes to AI adoption. They also have a really excellent portal and, in terms of transparency, have a really good way of communicating how AI exactly is used and what are the actual use cases of AI in the public sector and how they serve citizens. It's always hard to compare apples and oranges, but you can partly, of course, learn from that. But I would say these are examples of countries who have taken the overall digital transformation very seriously.

There are lots of countries who are trying to play catch up, partly because they haven't actually invested in AI. Germany is trying to really and massively spend on figuring out both digital transformation and AI, because they're a big country and they have a lot of resources. They're doing that. We see in other countries, though, that are leapfrogging. So, we see Nigeria, I think is probably one of the most advanced AI policy landscapes, as well as in terms of adopting AI in citizen service delivery. The US, of course, is also doing that. And I think I would highly recommend for everyone to visit AI.gov.com. It's basically the repository of all US government, not only policies and approaches and processes, governance frameworks, but also it is an ongoing collection of use cases. And I think having one place where citizens can see like, oh, what is happening in health and AI use cases, I think is kind of an interesting and a good way of engaging citizens in this.

I think, we shouldn't forget that Canada has one real advantage here. And that is Canada does have a unique <inaudible> ecosystem. Canada was one of the first countries to come up with a Pan-Canadian AI strategy, and that has resulted in a really rich, not only research ecosystem, but overall ecosystem. We may be lagging behind on the AI adoption and commercialization side of things, but we have a talent that is really the envy of almost every country that comes to visit us. And so, I'm just going to add our organization here to the mix, in terms of collaboration calls, when we're thinking about collaboration, please tell us how we can support you in your journey of AI adoption. So, how can you take advantage – and shout out here to our sister institutes, the Vector Institute, and Amii – it's not just Mila. There are three AI research institutes. There are more than 3500 AI researchers here, and they are all quite eager actually to support governments, especially in the last year now, truly more and more profs come to me and say, how can we support not only AI policy conversations, but how can we support the adoption of AI in government. So, please come and talk to us and see how we can support.

[01:06:52 Split screen: Mark Schaan; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: Thank you, Anna. I think it's such an excellent and effective offer but also for public servants who want to use AI in their field of work. You've touched on a subject that is very close to my heart. Which is that I actually see extraordinary promise and excitement. I think part of the reason why some of those Profs are super excited to play in this space and to work with public services is actually because it comes down to how it can actually meet some of our values and ethics opportunities, which is, I think people are motivated by the notion that we can actually get to service excellence; that we can actually get to ethical and considered supports to democracy; that fuelling the work of government is actually a unique opportunity. And the ability to do that in conjunction with new services and tools, I think is a huge one.

And, on the other hand, I also recognize, as I did in my opening, that it's not a zone that doesn't raise values and ethics questions. I noted at outset considerations around bias and discrimination, and thoughts about appropriation and the effective remuneration of content, thoughts around copyright, and then considerations on environment and opportunity costs, even. That which we invest in AI might be coming at the expense of other things. So, I wonder if the three of you can comment a little about maybe both how AI can be both consistent and an opportunity to live out public service values, and then also some of what we might need to make sure we're thinking about as we deploy new technologies and as we engage in the use of AI in services and in our own day to day effort. Because lots of this is actually not going to be widespread, big implementations. It's actually going to be small changes on the back-office side, or the ability to be able to write the context section of a background report with publicly available information that summarizes it way better than I'm capable of being able to do.

So, some of those thoughts about both opportunities to live out those values, and then maybe some of what we should be really thoughtful about. Ima, do you want to start?

[01:09:40 Ima Okonny appears full screen.]

Ima Okonny: Yes, for sure. I'll start. So, when I think about the opportunities, one of the things, the recent projects we did was leveraging AI to look for challenges in the system, so systemic issues. So, again, you will notice that I talk a lot about leveraging AI to turn things around. We leveraged AI to look at one of the programs and kind of analyze who was getting grants versus who wasn't. And by looking at those trends, or mining through a lot of information, you could actually leverage the output of that work and the outcomes of that work to shape policy going forward. So, for example, if you look at our current population, we have high immigration rates, population is aging, we can already anticipate what's coming. Talent is thin in the public service. People are going to be retiring. There'll be more demand for accessibility and all this.

So, we can actually leverage and mine some of this information and then design policy that meets the needs of people. People will say, okay, well, your data is skewed. And what I will say is that within the public service, we have so much data. I've worked in data for the last, over 20 years. We have so much data that we're not even touching yet. So, I think the opportunity for us is to look at that data, look at who we're missing in that data, leverage the different administrative sources of data. Break down some of those silos, because a lot of this data is stored in silos. Break it down. Look at what we can do in the legislation to shift things and look at clients from a 360 perspective, and then drive to innovation and delivery. And if you do that, you can mitigate for bias. There are ways to mitigate for bias.

So, for example, in my team, we've built a data ethics team, and the work of that team is really to analyze as we push out solutions, so to analyze if we're really leaving any segment of the population out. And we also look at the accuracy of what we're doing. So, often you'll see companies say, well, we're 67% accuracy, or 70% or 90%, but who's that 10% they're leaving out? So, it is important to understand who that 10% is, because if that 10% is comprised of 5% of the Aboriginal or Indigenous population, then we've not done our job as public servants.

So, I think in terms of the values and ethics component, the respect for people, the inclusion, the diversity, it is important to bring that element into everything we do. And as we reflect excellence, whether we're leveraging AI or data, we're bringing that lens of equity, we're bringing the lens of inclusion, and we're making sure that we're not leaving any Canadian out, because we cannot leave anybody out.

[01:12:45 Split screen: Mark Schaan, and Ima Okonny on stage; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: Exactly, exactly. We'll get to the question period in just a minute. I'll give my other panelists a quick moment, though, to weigh in on considerations and opportunities to live out public service values with AI. Natasha?

Natasha Clarke: Thanks. Wow. It's a hard thing to just rap on with one minute. So, a couple of things, again, popcorning a few things Anna mentioned earlier about those countries or those jurisdictions that have invested heavily in digital transformation. I cannot underscore that enough. We can get very excited about AI.

[01:13:26 Natasha Clarke appears full screen.]

Natasha Clarke: There are some fundamental pieces that, again, I would just reiterate from things like stock funding projects and fund teams, we need to invest in continuous improvement, those kinds of things. I think also another lens under which I would look at this from a values and ethics perspective, which is more maybe external thinking from a public policy point of view, is data privacy and my personal data record in the future. So, I had great opportunity to go to Estonia and Finland this year to talk to some folks there. And Finland, for example, was rolling out deep fakes and fake news education to their elementary, junior high and high school cohort. I thought that was really interesting. But what has also got me thinking about, as we venture into this space, not only the service benefits or the benefits to efficiencies for government, but also that public good and that public protection values that we have to have. And thinking about data privacy, and what does that mean now to protect my face and my voice? And then this week I read the article about neural privacy. I wouldn't even begin to understand that.

So, I think we have to think about those lenses not just from an inside out perspective, but also an outside in, when we think about public good and aligning by those values. Because, my one last statement I'll make is, we cannot control complexity. And that is the world we are in, is complexity. And so, I really feel that the way to navigate through that is to be principles based, and values driven. And I think this conversation about values and ethics, as we proceed on this journey as public servants, is going to be even more important to help us navigate the complexity that we're all going to face.

[01:15:24 Mark Schaan, and Ima Okonny on stage.]

Mark Schaan: Couldn't agree more, Natasha. Thanks so much. Anna.

[01:15:29 Anna Jahn appears full screen.]

Anna Jahn: All right, I'm going to try to be fast. So, maybe building on those two – principle based, values driven – those are excellent. And I would say, though, they need to become alive. And I would say they are becoming alive by two ways. One is they need to be reflected in the governance structures and models that we build around AI systems in the public sector. And then secondly, they need to be, in a way, become alive through actual responsible AI practices.

What does that actually mean? It means that everyone in the public service has to think about, what does it mean in my context, and it will actually differ. So, I think it's a great idea to have general principles and values that everyone shares, but then we need to break those down, because what we hear all the time, especially from our technical staff in our AI research, what does it actually mean, fairness? What does it actually mean, transparency, in the day to day? How do I code for that?

And there are, interestingly, ways to code for that. There are technical solutions for that, but it needs to be broken down. It needs to be broken down into very specific practices. It's generally a good idea to probably break it down along, for example, an AI lifecycle, because that really is a good kind of framework to think about it. At what stages do I need to consider? Where do my checks and balances come in? Where do I need to worry about the data sources? Where do I need to worry about bias? How can I then mitigate for those things, et cetera, et cetera.

But we actually need to give people a bit more help in breaking it down, because often where the disconnect comes in is between the interpretation from those principles and the values to the actual practices. And of course, also how we design the kind of the governance structures around it. And so, really that's where the rubber hits the road. And it can really look quite different. It can look different from NRCan to Health Canada because the context changes, the population we're serving changes, etcetera. So, one size fits all, doesn't work in this context, I find. I think the principles can stay the same, but then we need to be breaking them down into specific kind of context dependent practices. And that can look very different for everyone. But I think that's ultimately the hard work that we need to get started on.

[01:17:57 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: Thank you, Anna. It's such an important perspective, it's important to recognize that artificial intelligence doesn't exist in a vacuum, it truly exists in a context. As Natasha said, it starts with the data. It's impossible to consider the implication of AI outside of a data perspective and from the origins of the use of the technology. But there are also services consumers.

So, it can't be thought of in this kind of vacuum of either thinking about where AI comes into the utilization journey and then ultimately where it ends up and how we think about integrating both of those perspectives. The other thing that I think it's super important to recognize is that it's also not arriving absent an analog world that we are currently operating in. And I think we sometimes forget about that. I'm used to giving AI presentations at private sector panels where I remind people that the analog for many of the services on the private sector side – I usually pick on the financial services industry, it's not their fault – but the previous decisions about access to credit and capital were made by racist, homophobic, colonial, white male bank managers.

[01:19:24 Split screen: Mark Schaan; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: And that's not to pick on them specifically, but it's just to say that as a generalization that was the case. We have an opportunity with better data systems and with technology to be able to improve those outcomes against the current analog that potentially produces those sorts of nefarious outcomes.

And I think we have to continuously think through both the opportunity and then also that whole journey of, where does the data come from? Because if we're now going to make decisions based on technology, but with really bad data, we're just going to end up in the same outcome. So, to your point, Ima, about, how do we actually ensure that we're thinking through all of those issues?

[01:20:06 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: We're now at the question-and-answer period of our panel, your questions. There's some already, I think, being generated in wooclap, a reminder – it always gives me a tickle just to say that word – but wooclap is available. It is at your disposal. Please do add in your questions. The QR code is there. The event code is VEOCT. And we also have a chance to be able to take some questions from in the room.

[01:20:32 Split screen: Mark Schaan, and wooclap poll results.]

Mark Schaan: And I see them already starting to pop up. That's really great, so maybe we'll start with a question in the room. And I think I see someone with a microphone just right there, so go ahead.

[01:20:43 Mark Schaan, and Ima Okonny on stage.]

Audience member: Okay. There you go. Alberto Garcia from Treasury Board. I love AI. I really like it. It has increased, a lot, my productivity and my ability to deliver outputs. And one of the things that comes into my mind as a public servant and as well as a citizen who's integrated and who wants to integrate with technology and make my life the least complicated as possible. And as we're talking about values and ethics,

[01:21:30 Split screen: Mark Schaan, and Ima Okonny on stage; Natasha Clarke and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Audience member: I wonder if we are not still thinking about some values in a context that it's not relevant any longer. Being more consistent on that and clear, one of them is privacy. So, I recently moved places and just the thinking of how many notices I have to give to banks, to service providers, to friends, to this and that about my new address, leaving alone, it's just overwhelming. Oh, my gosh. Another task that I have to tackle. While thinking if I could just tell Siri or Alexa, or whoever, notify everybody who needs to know, that I have contact with, of my new address. Boom, done. I don't have to worry about anything. I don't have to make the list and all of that.

So, I'm just thinking about from a perspective of governments, national and sovereign, if there is a possibility to start having a dialogue, or opening a dialogue about, what does the meaning of these values mean in the new or in the current realities?

[01:22:59 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: I have many thoughts, but I am the moderator, so I will give first crack to my co-panelists as to who wants to tackle whether or not we need to revisit some of our prepositions and baseline assumptions about things like privacy in a modern and technologically augmented world.

[01:23:23 Ima Okonny appears full screen.]

Ima Okonny: I can start from what we learned during the pandemic. So, very great question, because during the pandemic, the height of the pandemic, the provinces needed information. They wanted to understand what was happening with people who lived in their province. Simple, right? We could not share that data. We couldn't share the data, not because of the Privacy Act, but because of the legislation and the Income Tax Act, that you're just not allowed to share that data. So, as the pandemic moved on, what we realized is we needed to share that data with the provinces for them to have a view of what was going on, because they needed to plan. So, we actually had to change the legislation to enable us to do that, and we were able to change the legislation very quickly because it was in a different context from today.

So, what I learned from that experience is it's not just the Privacy Act that's the challenge. It's also the way we've crafted the legislation, because we've crafted the legislation based on the different departments, and it hinders us from sharing data between departments also. And sometimes within departments, even within the same departments, there are some areas you can't link or connect data together.

So, to me, and I don't know if you'll like me after this, Mark. To me, we need to have a renewed focus on the legislation, because the legislation was crafted in a certain way many years ago. It was crafted for certain reasons. But now, as we think, digital, in this digital age, there is so much opportunity, like I said, for us to change how we craft the legislation and how we look at data.

So, one of the pet peeves that I've had is we in the data space, we focus on talking to each other. But I think it's important for us to bring in legal, bring in drafters at the conceptual phase, so that we can look at the art of the possible in terms of data integration. Because a lot of the problem that you're raising there lies with our inability – it's not because we can't do it. We've done, throughout my career in the public service, we've done fascinating things around data linkages working with Statscan. But there's opportunity for us to look at things in a more horizontal way, to look at things like client 360, for us to really shift and evolve how we engineer and architect data without looking at those silos of departments. But for us to do that, we have to kind of take a step back and review some of the legislation. And that's kind of what I'm thinking. So, I don't know, Mark, if you still like me after this.

[01:26:06 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: Of course, I still like you. I'm happy to weigh in with a quick comment, but Natasha or Anna?

Anna Jahn: Go ahead, Natasha.

[01:26:22 Natasha Clarke appears full screen.]

Natasha Clarke: Well, I was going to say, I feel like all of us want to weigh in on this one. Just a couple of things. 100%. We need to look at legislation and reimagine things because stuff was written who knows how long ago. And written by people, and we can change it because we're people. We can do it and we can use AI to help us.

I'll just share a couple of things. I think we always have to be taking the pulse check of the social license we have in the world. As we know, societies change, but that doesn't mean everyone's okay with telling Siri to do all the things for them. Maybe my soon-to-be 16 year old will be comfortable with that. Not sure I am, but I think that's something for us to be mindful of. I would also just share with everyone. There was a blog post written today by a guy by the name of Tom Loosemore from Public Digital who talked about boldness. And he referenced a blog post that actually was written a long time ago by a woman by the name of Janet Hughes that talked about, should boldness be an explicit public service value? And what it talks about is, let's stop incrementally improving things, but let's actually really reimagine.

So, if you think about Netflix and Blockbuster, they were both in the same business. And Netflix did not process improve blockbusters processes. They completely reimagined the delivery of entertainment by the use of technology. And I guess that's what I would share is I feel that we should be a bit bolder, and I think that's what you were getting at with the legislation. I think we need to be a bit bolder and not just process improve around the edges. And that's what the opportunity is. And we do need to continue to check in on our values and what is shifting over time due to expectations and the social license we have.

Mark Schaan: Thanks, Natasha. Anna, go ahead.

[01:28:14 Anna Jahn appears full screen.]

Anna Jahn: My only two additions are maybe to say, I think values in particular are renegotiated all the time, and they need to be renegotiated all the time within the public service. And so, when I say renegotiated, it doesn't mean that the value itself changes necessarily, but really that the meaning and the interpretation of that value might really shift. And so, that's a process that needs to happen within the public service. And in a way, that's exactly what's happening probably here in the last two days. It's a process and engaging in that negotiation.

But I think, to your point, Natasha, around social license, I think there's sometimes assumptions that are being made by governments about what kind of social license we have and also how people interpret these values, be that around privacy or any others. And I think that's really where, testing those assumptions, and understanding better where actually citizens are at, what their expectations are with regard to not only the service delivery, but upholding of some of these values, I think is a really good exercise. And I think that dialogue doesn't happen often enough between the public sector and the people they serve.

[01:29:34 Split screen: Mark Schaan; Natasha Clarke, and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Mark Schaan: Yes, thank you, Anna. I had dedicated more than eight years of my career to modernizing the Privacy Act, particularly in an industry context. So, I had a lot of feedback about the evolution of privacy considerations. The only thing I think we have to think about, particularly in an AI context, is – and I hear you – people trade their data for convenience all the time. And they do it with commercial actors, particularly all the time. But there's another context for the government. There are two factors that are very important.

One, we are often delivering citizen services, and we are the arbiter of democracy and fairness, and there is lots of information that gets provided to governments that is not assumed to be shared on a widespread basis. I am fully willing to tell some people that I'm a member of the 2SLGBTQ2+ community. I am not comfortable with that information transporting to all sorts of services that I'm not necessarily comfortable with what that might mean for me. And I think that brings back, from a values perspective, how are we actually working with end users about the benefits that come from the consideration of the sharing of information? Because they're not always automatic.

I usually use the example of a member of our Canadian Armed Forces whose file transfers automatically to Veterans' Affairs, and our assumption that that's always a good thing. But it turns out if that file includes both things that we would never want to have to tell people again where it would be super useful, like all of the information related potentially to a disability that we encumbered as we were a member of the Armed Forces, we're probably good. But if it also includes a whole bunch of HR filings about the fact that we weren't a great employee and that the end of our career was not actually voluntary, we're probably not super interested in that information transferring over to our colleagues at Veterans' Affairs. And then when we put that into an AI context, I think we have to think very carefully about the degree to which that information is then fuelling algorithms and lasting well beyond the situational context that the individual is comfortable with.

And so, I think the answer is, it's complex, but I think it really does underscore our need to continue to place emphasis on it. I think there's perhaps, yes, one question, one more question. And it's not that I'm avoiding the environmental question, it's just that I think it's a really hard one to answer in a short period of time. And so, I will take one more question from in the room, and I think I saw that there's someone with a microphone in the back.

[01:32:34 Split screen: Mark Schaan and Ima Okonny on stage; Natasha Clarke and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Audience member: Hi. Hello. Thank you so much for this opportunity. I've really enjoyed these sessions. This might be kind of a tough question, but I feel comfortable asking it in the spirit of the discussions that we've had so far. So, as a non-executive public servant, it does kind of seem like senior management is distracted by the new big shiny issue of AI, and we might be putting the cart a little before the horse in some cases. So, arguably there are other more pressing, older issues or lower hanging fruit that we've yet to fully resolve as a public service. And just for example, yesterday we had a great discussion, but it was a long time coming, regarding social media. We probably should have had that one about ten years ago. So, there's certain issues that we haven't yet tackled successfully.

So, we also know that there are values and ethics issues with the application of the directive of prescribed presence on top of the Phoenix pay system issues. So, I know that we can focus on more than one issue at once, but resources are also finite, and our track record lately hasn't been great. So, it's reasonable that Canadians would not have a huge amount of trust in the federal government's application of AI. And public servants individually likely have concerns about our use of AI based on our own lived experiences. So, that's not to say we don't have very talented and effective people working on this, and it's extremely relevant and important. They're dedicated, effective public servants that are working to only provide fearless advice. But it's really up to the decision makers, as has been stated several times today. So, sometimes it's difficult to be comfortable with the decisions that are made against our best advice as public servants.

So, I guess my question is related to things within our control. How are we working to build accountability with AI use so that our own policies match our mandates and stated values? How are the internal system processes working with AI different from Phoenix, or the application of the directive on prescribed presence, or internal social media policy? And finally, how can we avoid the pitfalls of other past internal projects, especially related to equity, and ensure our AI uses align with the stated values and ethics? Thank you. Merci. Miigwech.

Mark Schaan: This is a bigger question and thanks for the question. There are many elements to this question. I don't know. I'm happy to take parts of that, but colleagues, any thoughts?

[01:34:56 Split screen: Ima Okonny; Natasha Clarke and Anna Jahn in video chat panels.]

Ima Okonny: Yes, I have a lot of thoughts, but I know we don't have much time. What I will say is, I've been reflecting a lot. I've been reflecting on where we are as a country. Like I said, we've hit 40 million people. Population is aging. We have a diverse population. We have a poly crisis. If you look at all the challenges that we're facing, we also have an opportunity. And this is a huge opportunity. And some of us knew it as an opportunity 20 years ago because we worked in the data space, and we've been leveraging AI and algorithms in different ways.

I think, for me, the way I look at it, and I know there's the shiny object syndrome, some people have that, I will acknowledge that. But the way I look at it is that based on everything and the challenges that we face today, we need to do things differently. And this is an opportunity for us to lead in a way that's different in terms of saying we can actually leverage data, we can leverage AI, we can leverage some of the automation, things like RP, to shift things. We have a crisis in service delivery right now. You hear about all the challenges we're having. And we cannot continue to function as a public sector the way we did 20,30 years ago.

So, to me, my focus in terms of how I work and how I think through values and ethics is, how do I leverage the talent of my team, the talent of people across the organization, to really drive to excellence? Because it is clear that, the more we deliver services, and we do so in a way that is inclusive and doesn't leave anybody out, the more we're going to grow trust. And given the state we are right now, I can't see any other way for us to do this in a way that's targeted and precise and measurable, than leveraging data at this point. That's kind of where I sit with the question.

Natasha Clarke: Mark, I can, if there's time?

Mark Schaan: Yes, super quick. And then we'll wrap.

[01:37:15 Natasha Clarke appears full screen.]

Natasha Clarke: Just one perspective, because I can't weigh in on all the pieces, obviously, because there's some federal context there. But in terms of certainly where I'm situated, the approach that we've been taking, and I know sometimes actually it might even come off as like I'm a Debbie Downer. And Mark knows this. I just talked to ministers pretty frankly a few weeks ago. It's back to the point around digital transformation and the fundamentals. If we do not change some fundamental things that we do in the public service around how we approach this kind of work, I would agree. I don't know if I would have trust in our ability to get this done. There is a lot of hype and a lot of excitement around this technology.

But what I'm getting at is things like investment in digital and data literacy and raising that for everyone, not just the people in my department or the IT shops, but everyone. Changing how we fund initiatives in government, moving away from funding projects to funding products and services. Thinking about that timeline and that horizon and why I think that's so important, is AI is going to require us to do continuous improvement. It is not a set it and forget it type of technology. It's also focusing on data management and making sure we really understand those data sources. Are they ethical, are they inclusive, et cetera, et cetera. So, these things are very boring. I am, like I said, the Debbie Downer wet blanket, but I think they're really foundational if we want to actually achieve the opportunities that we're talking about, which at the bottom line, our most important deliverable is trust. And these things will help build all of that. So, we can't forget the boring knitting that we need to do while we enter into all of these other exciting things as well.

[01:39:10 Anna Jahn appears full screen.]

Anna Jahn: I swear I'm going to take one minute. And as an outsider, let's learn from our mistakes. I think that's the biggest piece. I think both the most recent books by Jeff Mulligan in Yuval Harari are all talking about institutions that are losing trust and are basically no longer delivering value. It's because they basically haven't managed to learn from their mistakes, from their past mistakes. And so, more honesty, more looking back in terms of what didn't work here and why didn't it work, and what can we learn about the future when we talk about all of a sudden, the latest shiny thing I think is really, really important. And I think we are all collectively, not just in the public service, not very good at that because it's not fun and it's uncomfortable. And yes, we're very nice Canadians that don't really love those kinds of conversations. But more looking back and learning from mistakes, I would say, is maybe a good idea.

Mark Schaan: Huge thanks, panelists. And maybe just last thing I'd add to that question is Canada was helpfully responsible for the development of this technology. We've played an outsized role in its creation. Our populations, our citizens, are using it on a daily basis and have expectations and a belief in government that we will actually match where they're at and meet them where they are. And I think that behooves us to actually think through thoughtfully, logically, methodically, to all of the points made about the hard work that follows this. It isn't actually about necessarily just finding the shiny tool and figuring out where you can apply it, regardless of whether or not it fits the problem.

[01:40:52 Mark Schaan appears full screen.]

Mark Schaan: It's actually about the capacity building so that we can actually take the meaningful risk of deploying this to improve our functions in line with our values and ethics. Big thanks to the panel. Very valuable conversations after two very full days. So, thank you very much. And thanks to all of you as well.

[01:41:21 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen briefly, along with wooclap QR codes.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: Clearly, you're expecting another guest here, so I'm just going to take two seconds to welcome back, for some closing remarks, Clerk John Hannaford. Thank you.

[01:41:40 John Hannaford appears full screen. Text on screen: John Hannaford, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet. / Greffier du Conseil privé et secrétaire du Cabinet.]

John Hannaford: Thanks a lot. And thanks for adjusting the mic. That was a really good panel, and it ends a really good two-day session. And so, I want to thank everyone who's been participating in all of this. I want to thank Mark for his leadership of that last conversation. Thank you to all the panelists and speakers we heard from over the last two days.

You know, I think the thing that has struck me over the course of the last two days, is the power of stories. The power of exchanging views and having meaningful conversations. And we started this process about a year or so ago with a view to doing that. I think for a variety of reasons, it was a conversation that was ripe. It was important for us to make sure that people who had joined our community had a sense of the core values of the community. It was important for us to hear about the range of experiences that now make up the public service. We've just heard about the future of best practices and ways to use artificial intelligence. This is fascinating too. It's important for us, not just as a community but also as a supplier of services to Canadians.

I think we are at a real moment. I think we are at a moment in a number of different ways. I think there is a series of expectations on us as an institution at a time when institutions are challenged. This could be partially a question of how we apply new technologies, the exchange that was just had. It's partially a question of how we respond to challenges of much more complicated geopolitics than we have seen in a long time. It's how we rise to serve Canadians at a moment when Canadians really need service. And, if you think of the range of conversations that we've had over the last two days, we started yesterday with an overview of the journey that got us here. A discussion on all the practices that were mentioned in conversations during the year. This was obviously an example of an exchange of ideas and a conversation. We talked about the importance of inclusion; the centrality of the Call to Action; and the critical work that we need to be doing to make sure that we are accessible to all Canadians as an institution and as a service provider. We've talked about the role of the public service in promotion of democracy, and defence of democracy. And we've talked about application of new technologies.

In addition, we introduced new tools and practices to address some of the key concerns raised by public servants during our sessions on values and ethics. Including conflicts of interest, onboarding, management orientation and intent, and guidelines on personal use of social media. I want you to have a look at all the resources that have been developed over the course of this last period and are now available on the kiosk associated with this conference, and you can have access to that through the QR code. I'd also like you to take advantage of the speaker's corner as part of this exercise.

But most importantly, I want to leave you with this thought: the discussion is not over. We've got to continue to bring our values and ethics to life. They are a critical part of the work we do. They define us in what we do. That has been an absolute theme that is completely striking over the course of the last two days and every conversation I've had in the last period of time. They are an affirmation of why what we do matters. It's critical that we continue this work. We are in a world where change is rapid and inevitable. We can't always predict what that change is going to entail. But what we can do is build as resilient an institution as we possibly can in order to support each other, support the Canadian public, and to support our institutions. And that's on all of us. I said this earlier, and I meant it.

There's a particular role for leadership when it comes to the culture of our organization, but we are all the embodiments of that culture. It is why I'm so touched, honestly, at the degree of participation that we've had over the course of these last two days. I'm touched by all of you here in this room and I'm touched by all the conversations that have happened over the course of the last two days across the country and in missions around the world. [It's a] sign of enthusiasm, and it gives me enormous hope for the future of this institution. But for now, it's our institution. We're the embodiment of it right now. We are the public service. We should be deeply proud of that, and we should maximize the effect that we have recognizing the importance of the role we play in the society that we serve.

So, I want to thank all of you for participating. I want to thank the organizers of this symposium because it was an enormous amount of work that went into all of this. I'll note Chris Fox, Donnalyn McClymont, Derek Ferguson, Taki Sarantakis. Lucy Ellis, who wrote a lot of my remarks. I'm very grateful to all of you for your leadership in all of this. And there are many, many others who played such a critical role. I think the School did an absolutely terrific job supporting all of it.

But I want to leave you again with thank you. I thank you for your service to this country. Thank you for your participation in today's events and thank you for your ongoing enthusiasm. It matters a lot. We make a big difference, and I'm very grateful to you. Thank you. Merci. Miigwech.

[01:48:28 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: I want to extend my gratitude as well to you, Clerk Hannaford, for actually being so present throughout the two days. It matters, and we really appreciate it. So, thank you.

So, as we conclude our gathering today, I do want to take this moment with great honour, once again, to invite Elder Verna McGregor to provide some final remarks.

[01:49:04 Elder Verna McGregor takes the stage and appears full screen. Text on screen: Verna McGregor, Elder.]

Elder Verna McGregor: Hello, everybody. There are less people here today. We're near the end. When I was thinking about these values and ethics, I always think about the contrast here and honouring the contrast. And I think this reconciliation is also that understanding we have a different contrast in understanding. And that's why I do these events, to try and bridge this understanding, because it was foretold that here we are in terms of this climate crisis. So, here we are. One of the things I was thinking about, when John Hannaford mentioned the power of story. For us, we would meet here and also share stories about the land because that was also our method of learning. But also bringing that to today's scenario with AI. I was going to a meeting with Heritage in the spring, and what happened is I said, I don't know what I'm going to talk about on this AI. And spirit works in funny ways. I was listening to my radio, and it turned about this conversation on AI and how this editor used AI to create stories. But when she keyed in different keywords on different people, it searches the whole engine, and it brought forward on one person very negative connotations and on another person it brought favourable. And it turned into a racial contrast because you see it picks up all the keywords that are on the Internet and it created a story.

So again, this AI, I think you still need that verification also as you move along in your personal information about you. Because why I say that to you is I worked in the bank and at that time you take the loan application and then the computer would formulate an outcome in terms of giving the loan or not. And it would access the Credit Bureau. And if you had an unfavourable Credit Bureau, then that's where the person to person comes in because everybody has a story. I remember having one girl, I said, yes, your credit is not good, but it was in the past. And she said, well, I was supposed to get married, and my groom ran off on me and I was stuck with all the cost of the arrangements. And, by knowing that, I had to write the justification and she got her loan. But with AI, again, with our dependence on it, again, you miss that personal touch.

So, again, values and ethics, for us to know with the public service to, yes, we're valuing change because change is the only constant. And Covid taught everybody this, how fast things can change. But it was also foretold the times we're in, and it's coming together like this to share that information and evaluate also the policy and procedures that you're undertaking. So, I think that's very important.

So, now I'm just going to say a closing prayer to honour your journey here of also the public service, which is part of the canoe teachings. And I'm going to make you canoe home. Don't take the O train. No. This may be more reliable. I'm going to sing you a little song, but if you want to, join in. Part of that too, is finding your voice because sometimes, in the public service, you get lost in the policy and procedures. But sometimes when you have conflict, it's a sign that things need to change. But sometimes fear holds you back in bringing forward the concern. And what I did is, when I worked for Minwaashin Lodge, we had the drum circle. There are teachings to the drum, but also, it's to find your voice as well. And finding courage, which is one of the seven grandfather teachings of value, which is, again, different to the values and ethics that were explained earlier here.

So, the second part, I'm going to sing you a little song. Actually, I'll just do the canoe song because you're going to canoe home and not take OC Transpo. No, no, I better not say that. Mark Sutcliffe might be here. No, no, no, I'm just kidding. No. But we do need public transit because, again, we're in climate change. Change is the only constant. So, here we go. But the second part, I want you to join in, find your voice. If I'm just singing by myself, are actually 10,000 people out there. If you're still out there, please join in. And the audience here can't hear you anyway. But it goes like this. Well, this is a practice, so it goes.

 <Indigenous song>

The first part I'm singing is, you're going to paddle home. And it's very expressive. You see you coming around the corner and the people are singing because they're saying they're already coming home. Now, it's been a while, and jiimaan ni is canoe. So, the canoe is bringing you home, because this was canoe central here, because of the four directions. And honouring the four directions and the four stages of your life, which is part of the public service, is one of your stages of life, too. So, here we go. Everybody ready? Okay, now you're ready to join in.

<Indigenous song>

Now I'll do the second part, and you'll have a second chance.

<Indigenous song>

Now it's the last chance here. Now, you're going to run out of the room after this. That's okay.

<Indigenous song>

Miigwech, everybody. Now, you could put your values and ethics aside and head home. Paddle home.

[01:57:52 Nathalie Laviades Jodouin appears full screen.]

Nathalie Laviades Jodouin: That's kind of a hard act to follow. Elder Verna, thank you again for sharing in your wisdom and your teachings and for sending us all on our way in a very good way. So, with that, everyone, this officially concludes our two-day symposium. I'd like to thank again all the speakers who joined us over the last two days. Your contributions and questions were very important and enriching for this discussion. There was a great energy in the room, and we'll get the final numbers, but I think over 15,000 people logged on across the country. So, I think that deserves an applause. Yes. The School is always very proud to be able to take part in these initiatives and support the conversation and ongoing discourse on values and ethics, as well as all other themes we've heard over the last two days.

So, you will be receiving an evaluation questionnaire. Please, please, please give us your feedback so that we can continue to bring these important conversations to the forefront. And as the Deputy Clerk mentioned yesterday, this is not a one and done. So, hopefully, this is just additional momentum to conversations that have been taking place for many, many months now. And I think important values and ethics doesn't start and end here. This is not a one and done. Hopefully we've given you much to reflect on to take back these conversations in your respective workplaces and contexts. So, with that, thank you again, it's been a true honour. So, until next time. Thank you, everyone.

[01:59:47 The CSPS animated logo appears on screen.]

[01:59:51 The Government of Canada wordmark appears and fades to black.]