6 hours Ago By Kathryn May, Policy Options
OTTAWA – Public servants are running for office in record numbers this election, with Conservative candidates outnumbering the Liberals nine to one. The 2025 election is challenging the old myth of a Liberal-dominated bureaucracy and raising perennial questions about neutrality, non-partisanship, perceptions of bias and trust in a public service where the rules allow political activity. The Public Service Commission, the guardian of a non-partisan public service, confirmed 65 bureaucrats sought permission to run in this election.
Eleven withdrew, 54 were cleared to seek nominations, and 24 are on the ballot — for nine different parties. The Conservatives drew the largest share with nine candidates — flipping their long-standing claim that the public service is packed with Liberal sympathizers and loyalists. Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said his power would be checked by a Liberal-dominated public service, Senate, and judiciary.
The numbers are small in a workforce of 367,000, but public servants running federally are always sensitive. “The numbers aren’t conclusive..
.but they certainly give perspective on the conservative narrative that the public service is just a Liberal stronghold,” said Ralph Heintzman, a longtime senior bureaucrat who helped write the values and ethics code governing the behaviour of Canada’s public servants. Only one public servant — an economist and director general at Global Affairs — is running for the Liberals.
Timing and the wild shift on political fortunes may be factors. With many bracing for a Conservative sweep just three months ago, many would-be candidates made decisions about running before the late Liberal surge. The PSC approved requests to run up to March 28.
Some speculate the numbers are higher because this election is so consequential — squaring off against Trump — or perhaps public servants, expecting deep cuts no matter who wins, see it as an exit strategy. Amanda Rosenstock, a policy analyst, is making her second run as a Green candidate, this time in Ottawa Centre. She believes public servants understand their role and the limits of non-partisanship.
“The public service is not the place to try and change policy if they feel strongly about something. That’s the role of the political system,” she said. “My guess.
..is these public servants want to see a change in policy direction and are choosing to do so by running for office.
” David Zussman, who served eight years as commissioner of the Public Service Commission, long believed public servants shouldn’t run for federal office — a position the courts struck down in 1991. That left the PSC with the job of overseeing candidacies and setting conditions. In his day, Zussman said it was rare to see public servants run, and when it did happen it was typically in small-town ridings far from Ottawa.
Running in the capital, so close to ministers and headquarters, was highly sensitive — and is still taboo for senior management. This time, however, nearly half of the public-servant candidates are running in Ottawa-area ridings. Sign up for the Functionary, Kathryn May’s newsletter on the public service “They were known locally as the face of government, had a certain prestige, and were often persuaded to run,” Zussman said.
“But they were far removed from the machinations of Ottawa — I don’t remember a public servant running in Ottawa. That seems new.” Zussman recalled regularly fielding complaints from Ottawa-area MPs who were upset federal employees campaigned for their opponents — which still happens today.
“We had to explain they had the right to do that,” he said. “But I always felt it was a non-winnable issue to convince a new government they were inheriting a public service not biased against them.” Public servants were once barred from political activity until the Supreme Court’s landmark Osborne ruling struck down the ban, citing Charter rights to free expression.
That opened the door to political involvement — as long as public servants remain neutral on the job. Today, the PSC sets the boundaries, weighing factors like rank, influence, visibility, links between the political activity and their job, and how publicly identifiable they are as public servants. Those approved to run must take unpaid leave and resign if elected.
Heintzman argues the court may have done a disservice to good governance. Letting public servants run in federal elections, he says, clashes with the very idea of a professional, non-partisan bureaucracy. “It’s not that public servants can’t be loyal or impartial afterward.
I think they can,” he says. “But perception is everything. The bottom line is trust.
Why should the public and politicians trust the impartiality of a public service stuffed with former political candidates?” Public servants aren’t just running Running is the easy part, says Emilie Taman, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor who lost her job when she ran for the NDP in Ottawa–Vanier in 2015 without the PSC’s approval. She says the bigger chill is in the everyday political decisions public servants face: whether to put up a lawn sign, wear political buttons, canvass or fundraise on their own time. It’s all allowed, but a lot of public servants are still afraid to engage.
When in doubt, they play it safe. “Management is so angsty about political activity that I think it permeates to people’s own sense of what they should do versus what they can do.” Sharon DeSousa, president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, says public servants are engaging in this election like never before.
About 400,000 members have visited PSAC’s election campaign pages, with large numbers signing petitions. PSAC also ramped up efforts to make sure members know they have the legal right to take part in political activities — especially in what DeSousa calls “a pivotal election in Canada’s history.” That kind of visible political engagement may be legal, but in today’s hyper-polarized climate — where social media blurs public and private lives — it lands differently.
Even the perception of partisanship can be politically explosive. No government has systematically replaced senior bureaucrats with political appointees, but a distrustful new government some day might. The growing number of politically engaged public servants reflects a broader generational shift—one that’s quietly redefining neutrality and loyalty to government.
(One of the first things Privy Council Clerk John Hannaford did was launch a review of values and ethics soon after his appointment, to help ground a workforce that has grown rapidly and shifted generationally.) A new generation, a new ethos Zachary Spicer, an associate professor of governance and public administration at York University, teaches values and ethics. For younger workers, the lifelong career — loyal, neutral, steadily climbing the ranks — is giving way to a generation of “in-and-out” bureaucrats.
They see government as just one chapter in careers that may include stops in consulting, other levels of government, NGOs, academia, or the private sector. If you’re not planning to stay in government forever, running for office is not the career-ender it used to be, he said. This cultural shift is partly economic.
In cities like Toronto, public-sector pay — especially provincially — often doesn’t cover rent, let alone student debt or a down payment. He said some opt for municipal government in places where it is cheaper to live. They follow opportunity.
If the public service isn’t a lifelong path, running can feel less like crossing a line and more like a career move. The PSC’s non-partisanship surveys reveal subtle but notable changes in attitudes and behaviour in recent years. Nearly 98 per cent of employees in 2018 reported they steered cleared of political activity other than voting.
By 2023, that number slipped to 94 per cent. Meanwhile in 2018, 73 per cent of public servants felt their work units operated impartially — a figure that climbed to 91 per cent in 2023. But Heintzman doesn’t buy the idea that young public servants are turning away from long-term careers.
Predictions about the death of the career bureaucrat have been around for decades, but haven’t happened. He acknowledges younger workers come from a more horizontal, peer-driven culture, unlike the hierarchical world of older generations. But that doesn’t mean they can’t adapt.
The public service, however, needs to put more focus on acculturation — helping new hires to bridge the difference “between the culture that young people might come in with and the culture that they need to operate within.” Andrea Chabot, a program manager at the Canada Revenue Agency and candidate for the Canadian Future Party, believes public servants running can return to their jobs as non-partisans. A onetime Conservative and Reform campaigner, she’s now running to modernize the public service for the digital age.
For her, the real issue isn’t just neutrality — it’s whether public servants can speak truth to power and have their “fearless advice” heard. “I’m fighting for public servants who are beating their heads against the wall trying to help Canadians but running into roadblocks from people who don’t understand what it takes to deliver. Their voice is missing in the House and is necessary.
If I lose my career over this, so be it. I’ll pivot.” This article first appeared in Policy Options.
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