Reforms
As noted, since Confederation, the Canadian civil service had been predominantly made up of officials who had been appointed through patronage; that is, officials appointed by the Prime Minister as a 'handout' - for example, political supporters, friends and family. A cornerstone of the Act was to shift away from these patronage-based appointments, towards merit-based appointments to the civil service. Specifically, the Act called for the Civil Service Commission (later renamed the Public Service Commission) to oversee all appointments to the public service, as means of detaching the politicians from the appointment process.
Competitive exams were introduced with the Commission to ensure competentcy among the service. In addition, much of the civil service was reorganized, and the job-classification system was overhauled.
Read more about this topic: Civil Service Act 1918
Famous quotes containing the word reforms:
“Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.”
—J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)
“We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in Education.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nothing divine dies. All good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for barren contemplation, but for new creation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)