New Governance Approaches

The Province of NB is in trouble on many fronts as outlined on the website of the Coalition. It is clear that traditional approaches to governance of the province have not served the province well in the last two decades. The world has changed, international markets and the economy have changed, other provinces are growing their economies but NB is stuck in a political system of having to satisfy far too many interests in order to get the most basic of reforms implemented. In the end, in any democracy, elected officials have to get elected then re-elected. Too often the electoral term is spent in satisfying the interests of those who supported candidates or who promise to lend support in a future election.
The Coalition of Concerned Citizens has developed a set of principles on which we believe public policy in NB must be developed in order to enable the province to thrive. As political parties release their platforms for the 2018 provincial election, the Coalition will review the platforms, measuring them against the Principles and releasing an assessment or “scorecard” on our website and social media pages. This is intended to add to the public debate of the real issues facing New Brunswick to enable informed voting.
The decisions that must be made to ensure the economy, stability and growth of the province will never be universally popular with 650,000 voters. And as long as small population bases maintain the same electoral influence as larger population bases, key decisions will always be difficult to achieve. And many of the reforms needed to strengthen the province require years to implement fully.
In other jurisdictions, faced with similarly challenging decisions, governments have sought new ways to achieve new directions. Ontario, for instance, faced with daunting and incredibly costly issues of capital spending in health formed the Health Care Restructuring Commission. This body was led and populated by persons universally respected in health care in the province and it was their job to sort out major points of contention and competition within the system. Government created the body and was totally accountable for its actions but delegated to the Commission the responsibility of leading change, mediating conflict, and managing some situations that otherwise would have been very difficult for those seeking re-election.
In the early days of “Medicare” provinces had “Hospital Commissions” that served to add professionalism and discipline to decision-making, thus “de-politicizing” many health care decisions. These commissions were abandoned as funds seemed to get tighter and governments wanted “direct control”. But it has not worked well in terms of cost containment of quality of service and organization. Indeed, in NB the real “heavy lifting” of health care reform in 1992 was done by non-elected, non-governmental personnel.
In NB there is need for changes in Education, municipal government organization, health and long term care, public service processes, and many more. What the Coalition is suggesting is that government establish mechanisms in which seasoned, experienced, trained persons from outside government are brought to the table in some form to help in government decision-making. Some illustrations of how that principle might work:
• Public Accounts Committee, where the Auditor General’s Report has had stinging, serious criticisms of government practices for years, could be augmented by amending terms of reference and composition to include 2-3 non-elected members appointed, perhaps, by chambers of commerce or the NB Business Council. In public perception, governments do not seem to take the Auditor General seriously and this would open the process significantly.
• Health and Long Term Care: replace Seniors Roundtable with a smaller group not to exceed 12 people who have knowledge, training, education in the field together with a keen understanding of public policy principles and current trends in health care worldwide. This group would be chaired by a respected, non-governmental person answerable to the legislature.
• Tourism and Marketing Commission: bring to the table some non-governmental personnel who bring a true tourism and business focus to New Brunswick Tourism and integrate with other departments that play a role in tourism such as DTI.
• Finance and Economic Development/Natural Resources: the same principle of bringing to the table non-governmental people with specific expertise and who do not represent interest groups at any level. This will enable the focus to remain on evidence, best practice, fiscal discipline.
• Education: same principle again; there is much evidence that must be brought to policy making and the system cannot be changed every time there is a change of government; an Education Commission bringing experts, persons with experience working in systems that really work well (such as Korea and some of the European countries).
The first step in moving forward on any of these files is that in each sector government must have a clear set of issues based on objective analysis; then government must admit, as painful as that may be, that there are serious issues that cannot be dealt with using conventional methods. True application of Lean Six Sigma in each area would be enormously helpful at least in defining the key issues.
Ken McGeorge
June 20, 2018