Speaking truth to power: the line between the public service and politics is a fine, and sometimes, faint one. Some politicians cross that line and ask civil servants to take some action that is clearly political in nature. That's when bureaucrats face the difficult choice between letting it go or saying forcefully, "No, Minister".(DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT--GOMERY REPORT)(John Gomery)

Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Canada & the World

Ottawa's bureaucracy is structured like a pyramid. At the lowest levels are large numbers of civil servants whose job it is to keep the machinery of government running. These are the people that ensure pension cheques go out at the right time to the right people. They test drugs to make sure they are safe for use by patients. They draw up contracts and negotiate prices for the purchase of goods and services by the government. They carry out thousands of different tasks.

Their work is supervised by managers. The work of the managers is supervised by higher level managers. Let's take a quick look at Environment Canada to get an idea of the structure of the system.

The department is a small one by Ottawa standards, but it still has 4,700 employees and an annual budget of about $500 million. Each year department staff:

* Make thousands of inspections and hundreds of prosecutions for offences against Canada's environment laws;

* Monitor the most dangerous chemicals among the 24,000 or so in use in the country;

* Provide expert scientific advice and environmental impact assessments in significant spill incidents;

* Implement or support 350 environmental technology advancement projects in Canada and abroad;

* Issue more than a million weather forecasts and respond to 44 million requests for weather and environmental information;

* Protect more than 400 species of internationally shared migratory birds and 11 million hectares of...

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