Advocate says New Brunswick's social policy process is broken
In sweeping report, Kelly Lamrock says programs are fixated on rigid rules not results
New Brunswick's child, youth and seniors' advocate has issued a sweeping and scathing denunciation of how the provincial government runs social programs, saying the system is fixated on following rules rather than achieving results.
Kelly Lamrock traces the problem back three decades and blames it for what he calls the "breaking down" of a range of services in such areas as health care, social development and education.
He decided to write the 49-page report while working on a review of the long-term-care sector.
What he found during that work convinced him there was a bigger picture to examine beyond the normal scope of his mandate.
"The failings in long-term care are also the failings in how New Brunswick social programs have been governed," Lamrock writes.
The child protection service was one of the programs Lamrock called out in his report. (Shutterstock)
"The programs can only be fixed by fixing flaws with general government. The centre of government cannot order a department to fix the problem when the centre is a large part of the problem."
He told CBC's Information Morning Fredericton he produced the report out of frustration.
"I'm frustrated because it doesn't have to be this way," he said.
"We've got to have an urgency about solving problems instead of an urgency about going through the motions."
The report lists several examples across a number of departments where program goals were not set out, from housing incentives and First Nations mental health programs to child protection services and school-based behaviour mentors.
Meanwhile, front-line employees lack the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the people looking for help, because those employees are forced to stick to rigid rules.
Lamrock writes that when he asked the finance department how it came up with its budget for moving seniors stranded in hospitals to long-term care, and how many transfers it aimed to do with the money, officials "could not provide us with any of that."
"The department of finance did not even think to check if the waitlist numbers were getting better or worse, even though those numbers were knowable," says Lamrock, who eventually obtained the figures from the Department of Social Development.
"This is precisely what we mean by the disconnect between the budget process and the actual results that impact New Brunswickers."
Another example he points to is the lack of any forecast of how many children will need the services of school psychologists — a workforce plagued with shortages — in the coming years.
Lamrock's report said there is a disconnect between the budget process and what New Brunswickers see day to day. (Guy LeBlanc/Radio-Canada)
"You would think that, if you asked those questions, there would be an answer. And in New Brunswick, you would be wrong," he says.
The report urges the government to split the Executive Council Office and the Finance Department — which now share a deputy minister — into two distinct units, with a new social policy branch in the mix to promote a focus on needs and goals, not budget lines.
Lamrock's conclusions are so blunt that his report includes a short appendix addressing civil servants and underscoring that he is not attacking them.
"It's just my job to try to get your attention when the people who need all this to work can't," he says.
Lamrock, a Liberal cabinet minister from 2006 to 2010 who was appointed advocate by Premier Blaine Higgs in 2021, is careful in the report to not blame any single government for the problem.
He traces its origins back to the Frank McKenna Liberal government and its focus on reining in program spending in an effort to balance the budget.
The government took the credit for good fiscal results, and "the buck was passed on" to health authorities, hospitals, school districts and others to deal with the consequences.
That approach "infested" the civil service and has not changed, Lamrock says.
"We are trying to get a bureaucracy built for 1994 to solve the challenges of 2024," he writes.
Lamrock's report traces issues back to the Liberal government of Frank McKenna in the 1990s. (Chris Young/CP)
"If the effect seems about as effective as trying to pump up a high school dance today with the Macarena, that's because the time lag is every bit as dramatic."
While sound budgeting and fiscal management are important, Lamrock argues the flawed dynamic often cost taxpayers more in the long run, forcing governments to spend unplanned amounts of money to fix a problem they might have avoided in the first place.
"A failure to train enough nurses will eventually lead to overpaying for travel nurses in numbers suspiciously close to the original training shortfall," he says.
That is a reference to the controversy over the health-care system's use of contracts with private travel-nurse agencies.
New Brunswick's auditor general confirmed this week he plans to investigate what led to the contracts being signed and whether they represent good value for taxpayer dollars.
The decision followed reporting by the Globe and Mail that agencies such as Toronto-based Canadian Health Labs have charged rates of more than $300 an hour, roughly six times what a local staff nurse earns.
The Vitalité Health Network alone spent about $158 million to hire out-of-province nurses in 2022-23, contracts obtained by the newspaper revealed.
Lamrock
linked previous failures from the provincial government as leading to
the highly criticized move by Vitalité Health Network to hire travel
nurses through agencies that sometimes charged more than $300 per hour. (CBC)
Lamrock's report also slams external consultants, including the Arthur Andersen company, the global accounting firm he blames for a policy that said two people on welfare could not live together to pool their money without having some of their benefits clawed back.
The rule, repealed in 2022, was "one of the stupidest, most self-defeating pieces of policy ever dreamed up by a consultant," he says.
Another system adopted by the province, Lean Six Sigma, promoted uniform, centralized approaches to programs at the expense of flexibility, Lamrock says.
That model is more appropriate for the manufacturing sector than social policy, he adds.
"We only hold people accountable for: did you follow the rules? And if people get hurt, that doesn't matter," he said in the interview.
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With files from Information Morning Fredericton
Why is it that I am not surprised?
Hugh MacDonald
It would be a shock and a first if they were good value for taxpayer dollars.
Opposition leaders endorse Lamrock findings, but report's future not clear
Holt embraces ‘overall concept’ but won’t commit to all recommendations if she becomes premier
Kelly Lamrock's call for sweeping changes to government policy-making now faces the same uncertain future as other major reports: will it get implemented?
Opposition parties were quick to agree Monday with the findings of the 49-page document released Monday by the child, youth and seniors' advocate.
But it was less clear that the report will — or even can — spur a dramatic reorientation of priorities.
Opposition Liberal Leader Susan Holt said her party agreed with the "overall concept" but would be "exploring" the specific recommendations, which, she said, could not be easily put into effect in a single four-year term.
Liberal
Leader Susan Holt says she agreed with the concept of the Lamrock
report, but implementing changes is difficult over a four-year period. (Ed Hunter/CBC)
"It's a philosophical change to how we govern," she said.
"It's about putting people before protocol, and it's about introducing a level of flexibility and a bit of a decentralization to how we govern, which requires courage."
She said Lamrock's report will have an impact on how the Liberals govern if they win this year's election.
Green Leader David Coon said he would implement the report if he became premier but he was not optimistic the other two parties would.
Green Leader David Coon says his party would implement the report, but he's not sure if other parties would. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
"It takes leadership to make these changes, and that leadership is not in place," he said.
In a statement, Premier Blaine Higgs said the government will examine the report and is looking forward to a second report from Lamrock this week addressing "core issue" in the long-term care sector.
"We understand that reviews such as this often grow in breadth and depth and end up with a cross-departmental lens to the issue at hand," the statement said.
"Unfortunately, there were limited conversations with government leadership, and ministers, on what was included in this ad hoc report."
Lamrock, a former cabinet minister himself, released the report, How It All Broke, in an attempt to diagnose why a range of provincial social policies and programs appear to be in crisis.
He said he decided to issue a broader report after seeing common issues in several departments he has examined.
Lamrock's report says a culture first put in place three decades ago forces government departments to strictly follow rigid program rules while never having to account for whether the rules actually help, for example, more people get off social assistance or find spots in long-term care.
The Lamrock report called out government culture that becomes entrenched over administrations. (Guy LeBlanc/Radio-Canada)
The report points to examples like the provincial finance department not being able to say how many people were being transferred from hospitals to long-term care because no goals had been established — just an amount of money allocated.
It flags the lack of any forecast for how many children will need the services of school psychologists — a workforce plagued with shortages — in the coming years.
Lamrock says the province's Executive Council Office and Finance Department – which now share a single deputy minister – should be separated, with a new social policy unit playing a major role.
Researcher says problem goes way back
Donald Savoie of the Université de Moncton, one of Canada's leading experts on public administration, said Lamrock's report reflects what researchers in the field have been saying for years.
Savoie says, however, that Lamrock is wrong to date the focus on rules and budgets to three decades ago. It goes back to Victorian times in the United Kingdom.
"The problem is as old as the study of public administration," he wrote in an email.
"In every case the approach or approaches failed. In every case and in every jurisdiction throughout the western world, governments are still trying to fix it."
Donald
Savoie, an expert on public administration, said Lamrock's report
reflects what researchers have been saying, but added that the problem
is larger than just New Brunswick government. (CBC)
Savoie also disagrees with Lamrock's suggestion that rethinking the centre of the New Brunswick bureaucracy is the solution.
Instead, he says moving the legislature away from partisanship and closer to its role of holding the cabinet accountable is more likely to have an impact.
"Change how partisan politics works and you may have a chance of changing how the budget process works and how government decides," Savoie said.
"It is a case of telling the legislative assembly, the premier and cabinet: heal thyself before you try to heal anything else."
Lamrock told reporters Monday that the system is difficult to change — even for former ministers like him who arrive in office thinking they can just tell officials to adopt new approaches.
Instead, ministers arriving in their departmental offices for the first time are presented with a stack of binders.
A potential 'guide'
"What the briefing binders tell you as a new minister is all the lines you can use with the press to justify all the everything that's already happening. And you realize, 'Oh, right — the machine keeps going.'"
He said he hopes the report will be "a bit of a guide" to new ministers, aspiring premiers, future deputy ministers and even journalists who may use it to look for better ways to do things.
Stephen Drost, New Brunswick president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said Lamrock's report echoes what union members experience.
"Not surprised whatsoever," he said. "Really glad to see it come out. This is something CUPE has been saying for years, and I mean for decades: it's not the workers, it's the system itself.
"You have to stay within very restrictive parameters and you can't actually provide the actual services that the public deserve."
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