BOOK REVIEW: Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism, by Andrew Griffith, Anar Press, 2013, 117 pages Any time a just-retired mandarin decides to write about his days serving the “Harper Government” should be good for the health of Canadian democracy. Our system of government is kept alive in the delicate balance and dance that defines the relationship between an elected government and career bureaucrats, and it comes as no surprise that Andrew Griffith’s insider account of Ottawa is still rife with tension – even nearly eight years after the Conservatives came to power. Mr. Griffith is generally sympathetic to the Conservatives, or at least to Jason Kenney, who he describes in an interview with New Canadian Media, as “arguably the most effective Minister in the Harper government.” His book, though, is not an outright endorsement of all that Mr. Kenney did at the citizenship and immigration portfolio, but in a broad sense, he sees most of the changes as positive and ultimately helpful to sustaining public support for relatively high levels of immigration. But, before he got there, the Minister met with stiff resistance. Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias is a must-read for anybody in Canada who is part of the vast immigration sector (nay, industry) or is interested in the sausage-making policy apparatus in Ottawa. It offers unique insight into how Ministers relate to the public service, how bureaucrats try their hardest to have their way in dubious “Yes, Minister” style, and the extent of disconnect between these two pillars of democracy in particularly contentious areas such as citizenship-immigration, environment or foreign affairs. This consummate public servant of 30 years must be given credit for calling it like it is: “After all, governments are elected, whereas public servants are not, and governments are ultimately accountable for their decisions before the public.” He comes down hard on his “know-it-all” former colleagues who often have a hard time acknowledging their own biases and lack of objectivity: “who are sometimes ideologues in disguise.” Mr. Griffith cites a series of episodes during Mr. Kenney’s tenure at Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to illustrate the “circle of arrogance” that characterized meetings between Minister Kenney and his civil service advisors. Each side was entrenched in their opinions, with bureaucrats seeing the new Minister’s ideas as an “existentialist challenge to the role and expertise of the public service.” The author often gives readers a fly-on-the-wall account of how policy evolved in the frying pan of this tension. One of the more long-term consequences of Mr. Kenney’s tenure at CIC has been the impact that his ears-to-the-ground approach has had on the policy-making apparatus. Bureaucrats who swore by the absolute authority of the evidence they gathered from large-scale surveys and focus groups were forced to recognize the value of “granular detail” provided by anecdotes relayed by the Minister through hundreds of events he personally attended. The author has done a commendable job offering readers a snapshot of the number of outreach events that Mr. Kenney went to and the ethnic communities that seemed to have more of the ear of the Minister. Here’s a nugget: in the author’s reckoning, Minister Kenney delivered 273 speeches and statements to cultural communities between 2007 and 2011. The Minister invariably had his way in his face-off with mandarins, but before getting there he had to get the civil service to expand their definition of what constituted “evidence”. Could random notes taken at these so-called ‘curry events’ actually form part of evidence going into policy making? Officials initially balked, but eventually had to give in under the sheer weight of information coming in from these informal sounding boards. But, when they did, they did so with remarkable enthusiasm, finally quoting from the Minister’s own speeches to buttress their policy proposals. Another big change during Mr. Kenney’s tenure at CIC was the introduction of a much-tougher citizenship guide called “Discover Canada,” replacing the rather rudimentary “A Look at Canada” that had served as the textbook for newcomers since 1996.