Preston Manning: Why the Federal Bureaucracy Must be Reined In by a Newly Elected Government

Commentary In Canada’s democratic political system, after a general election, the party winning the largest number of seats in the elected assembly forms the next government, and the party winning the second-largest number usually becomes “the Official Opposition.” On the surface, therefore, it might appear that the chief sources of criticism and opposition to the decisions and policies of the newly elected government will be the Official Opposition. But with the growth of the civil service and the size of the public bureaucracies today, increasingly the chief opposition to the decisions and policies of a newly elected government may not be that of the official opposition, but that of unelected public officials—“the opposition of officials”—many of whom may remain loyal to the previous government’s priorities and policies, especially if it has been long in office....