UNKNOWN

The transformation of the environment and of the institutional order has created quite a challenge: maintaining some sort of adequacy between these evolving realities and the frames of reference in use by public sector executives. Complexity is often nothing more than a name for a new order calling for a new frame of reference, and the reluctance to abandon old conceptual frameworks is often responsible for fundamental learning disabilities.

Through a series of conversations with Canadian federal senior executives about more and more daunting problems – from coping with an evolving context, to engaging intelligently with a new modus operandi, to trying to nudge and tweak programs in order to correct toxic pathologies, to reframing perceptions and redesigning organizations to meet the new challenges – weaknesses of the capabilities of the Canadian federal executives to respond to current challenges were revealed, and suggestions made about ways to kick start a process of refurbishment of these capabilities. This means having to gain new knowledge about complex systems – something that calls for intellectual effort.

This volume draws mainly from extensive Chatham House style discussions on 24 different topics, with approximately 100 senior executives of the Canadian federal government, with a number of interviews conducted afterward with other senior Canadian federal executives on the same themes. APEX provided a safe space for these Chatham House discussions, an opportunity for engaged senior executives to discuss daunting wicked policy problems, challenging ideas and intriguing hypotheses, and to reveal how they and their colleagues think.

Ruth Hubbard is a practitioner, advisor, explorer, and published writer about governance and management challenges, especially in the public and not-for-profit sectors. She served for more than a decade as a federal deputy minister, during the iImplementation of Canada’’s value-added tax (the GST). Later, she was Master of the Royal Canadian Mint and President of the Public Service Commission. She was a senior research fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Centre on Governance and Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. from 2002 to 2017.

Gilles Paquet (1936–2019), O.C., MRSC, was Professor Emeritus at the Telfer School of Management and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre on Governance of the University of Ottawa. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Royal Society of Arts of London, and served as President of the Royal Society of Canada (2003–2005). He studied at Laval, Queen's (Canada) and at the University of California (Los Angeles) where he was Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics. He taught at Carleton University for almost 20 years before joining the University of Ottawa in 1981. He received honorary doctorates from Queen's, Laval, and Thompson Rivers University, received the Public Service Citation Award of APEX, and was made Honorary Member of l'Association des économistes québécois. He was made Member of the Order of Canada in 1992.