Carey Doberstein (UBC)
The proliferation of agencies and arms-length bodies in recent decades has provided opportunities for elected governments to reassert political control in an increasingly fragmented public service framework. Yet nearly all governments in Canada have created offices within the professional bureaucracy responsible for vetting all government appointments to such agencies and authorities to signal a regime of merit above all else. At this time we have little basis to make systematic claims about the political independence of agencies in Canada. This study addresses this gap by drawing on the Government of Canada’s Staffing and Non-partisanship Survey (SNPS) micro data from 2018 and 2021, which surveys all employees in 76 departments and agencies on a host of questions related political impartiality in the carrying out of government duties. Using various questions and responses from these surveys, we are able to assemble a set of answers to the following research question: do the agencies within the Government of Canada show evidence of a central claim pertaining to the virtues of arms-length agencies, namely that they are more politically-insulated? The data reveals that, after controlling for various relevant factors with matching methods, those working in agencies are less likely to report their organizations act impartially in carrying out their duties than those in conventional departments, though this is driven largely by particular types of agencies.