Does the prime minister really need almost a thousand people to run his errands?
According to a news story last week, there is a plan to set aside the entire city block across from Parliament Hill for the ever-growing staff of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and Privy Council Office (PCO). It now takes a whole city block to accommodate the people who control the prime minister’s contact with the public, Parliament and civil service. There are over a hundred staffers in the PMO, and over 800 in the PCO, currently spread out around town. Understand, these are just the central co-ordinators. They are the pinnacle, the brain trust, the crème de la creme. Beneath them is a mountain of 37 cabinet ministers, 47 federal departments and major agencies, and 283,000 public servants. The boss of the PCO is Alex Himelfarb. A couple years ago his office reported to then-prime minister Chretien on what Canadians think about the federal government. The report was blunt. The PCO concluded that Canadians see public institutions as “remote, self-serving, inaccessible, non-responsiv
