Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am very pleased to be here today and to tell you a bit about myself and my appointment as Deputy Secretary, Senior Personnel and Public Service Renewal with the Privy Council Office.
Let me begin by briefly introducing myself. I understand that you have received a copy of my curriculum vitae for your review.
I think I'm one of the few public servants in the national capital region who was born and raised in Ottawa. I come from a long line of teachers--I know a couple of you are teachers--on both sides of my family who encouraged me to pursue a life in the public service. I would call myself a career public servant because it is my calling. In fact, I can't imagine doing anything else. It's been my whole career.
My first experience with the federal government was as a Tour Guide in Dawson City, Yukon, for Parks Canada. I spent the summers giving tours of historic sites from the gold rush era and swatting mosquitoes. In the winters, I went to law school at the University of Western Ontario.
Administrative law, as you know, governs the relationship between citizens and their government. While administrative law was my favourite subject at school, it was not necessarily my best mark. I did my articling in London and came back to Ottawa to join the government and to practise administrative law.
As you can see from my CV, I did start out doing legal research at the Canadian Transport Commission, and I ended up becoming the assistant general counsel. I found that my strength and my interest as a public servant was in management and in building capacity in organizations. You will not find many people as curious about organizational structure or how decision-making processes work as I am.
I moved from a director role in the new National Transportation Agency into a counsel and director of operations role in the Legislation and House Planning Secretariat at Privy Council Office. This was my first tour of duty in Privy Council Office. I learned a lot about parliamentary business, agenda setting, cabinet processes, and electoral law. I also learned a lot about how to manage people, or how not to manage people, depending on your point of view.
After a number of years in L&HP, I moved into a Director of Operations position in Security and Intelligence Secretariat. The role was similar in that it involved support to Cabinet, but the subject matter was completely different and fascinating to me.
I then spent three years over at Elections Canada where I met some of you. The Elections Canada mandate, I believe, is a noble one because of the democratic tradition it represents. I was there for the general election of 2000. This was a landmark election because it was the first time the federal government used the national register of electors.
In 2001, I went back into the security world at the Solicitor General, first in policing and then in national security and emergency management. I was there for the creation of the new department, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.
Now I find myself back in a core role in the Privy Council Office with responsibility for leadership of two secretariats. One of them is senior personnel, and its mandate is to support the government on Governor in Council appointments. The other is a newly amalgamated secretariat called the public service renewal.
I have an excellent team and we are working hard to help shape the senior cadre so that the public service can continue to provide professional non-partisan advice to the government and high-quality services to Canadians.
Let me stop there. I'd be pleased to take any questions and answer them to the best of my abilities, Mr. Chairman.