ABSTRACT
Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................216 2 The Glassco Commission: A Watershed in the History of
Canadian Administrative Reforms .................................................216 3 “Rational Management” and Central Controls in the Trudeau
Era ..................................................................................................219 4 The Conservative Interlude: Let the Managers Manage …
Budget Cuts ................................................................................... 222 5 The Chrétien Years (1993-2003) and the 1995 Program Review
Exercise ...........................................................................................225 6 Conclusion .................................................................................... 228 References ................................................................................................229
1 Introduction Canada has certainly been no stranger to service-wide administrative reforms. Since the 1960s, although the rhetoric of reform has often exceeded its results, the Canadian Public Service has lived through a series of reform initiatives and task forces meant to modernize its management, to improve its performance in delivering services, and to improve its accountability to Parliament for its use of authority and public funds. Although it is not possible to do justice to this complex history in a short chapter, we nevertheless provide an overview of these large-scale administrative reform initiatives and explore the factors that led to their varied outcomes.
