The former head of Statistics Canada says he knew sending a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatening to quit his job was a gamble, but he’s not sorry he rolled the dice.
Wayne R. Smith stepped down in dramatic fashion from the head of the agency last Friday, explaining that he could no longer head up Statistics Canada if an outside department — in this case, Shared Services Canada — was in charge of the computer servers and other IT infrastructure his staff needed to do their jobs.
On Monday, Smith spoke with various media outlets, including Global News, about his decision. He confirmed that he sent a letter to Trudeau in early August explaining that he was planning to quit, and explaining why Statistics Canada needs to be in charge of its own information technology.
“I knew it was a risk,” Smith said, adding that he had a “strong sense” that he might end up making good on his threat.
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The prime minister did not, in fact, reply until last Thursday, saying only that he was committed to the independence of Statistics Canada.
A second letter arrived from the clerk of the Privy Council, the highest-ranking official in the federal civil service, explaining that the government was accepting Smith’s resignation.
“I felt it was nonetheless a gamble that was worthwhile,” Smith said Monday.
“It was in the interest of Statistics Canada to try and see if there was any possibility of achieving something that would actually protect the agency’s independence … I’m comfortable with where I am.”
Possible interference
The former chief statistician explained that centralizing IT work to Shared Services Canada has meant his teams can’t meet their deadlines. It also creates the risk of outside interference in the agency’s work.
“If Statistics Canada is developing a new program around abortion statistics, and somebody decides that they really don’t want that, the informatics infrastructure necessary to actually carry out the program might not be available to me,” he said.
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An announcement about unemployment statistics that is perhaps untimely for the government could fall victim to a website crash, he added as another example.
“These all sound like extreme cases, but the whole idea of independence is you make sure it couldn’t happen,” Smith explained.
“You have to be concerned about the fact that, ‘who is Shared Services accountable to?'”
Census hobbled
Smith said the delivery of the 2016 census was a major success for his department, but the infrastructure the agency needed to properly disseminate the results and explain them to Canadians wasn’t ready in time.
Before Shared Services Canada took over, that job would have been done in-house, he said, and “there wasn’t the need for 50 meetings with 20,000 people in them.”
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“We had a project team … but we required Shared Services Canada to deliver the informatics infrastructure,” he said.
“We still don’t have it … our people are ready and the infrastructure isn’t.”
Shared Services Canada has regularly come under fire from departments who are frustrated at having to hand over control of their systems to another government department. The previous Conservative government set up the central IT service in a bid to cut costs by eliminating duplication.
Instead, the federal auditor general said earlier this year that it wasn’t clear if there were any savings from the department, and Shared Services Canada and the agencies it served didn’t communicate clearly about projects and expectation, which led to disputes.
-With files from the Canadian Press
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