Bev Oda, the minister responsible for Candian International Development Agency, altered a recommendation made by staff within the agency. By hand-writing "NOT" in a document produced by a civil servant, Oda altered the recommendation from reading a contribution to the organization Kairos be approved, to reading the contribution not be approved. See the document here.
Oda has now come under fire by opposition parties for previously denying any knowledge about who had altered the memo.
PM Harper has defended Oda by saying that it is the minister's decision whether or not to fund an organization and not the bureaucracy's.
Once again, Harper relies on the lack of knowledge in the general public around the role of bureaucratic arm in relation to the political arm. The civil service is certainly not composed of decision-makers, rather, it is composed of those who have the academic, technical, and institutional knowledge to advise politicians on making decisions.
By changing the recommendation, Oda was not taking responsibility for her decision and rather was trying to shift that responsibility to the poor bureaucrat who wrote the memo (in all likelihood in good faith).
Part of being a politician is the privledge of making these types of decisions. That being said, the politician also bears the responsibility for that decision- especially in cases when decisions are contrary to what has been recommended by the bureacracy. Given that every recommendation that comes up to the political level must be buttressed with an appropriate amount of evidence to clearly demonstrate why the recommendation is in fact in the best interest of the public, that same burden must fall on a politician when he or she decides to take another course of action.
So either our PM is trying to pull a fast one on the public with his justification of Oda's actions, or he simply misunderstands the intended model of a relationship between a cabinet and the bureacracy. Either way - it's NOT looking good.
