OTTAWA – Early in his tenure as deputy agriculture minister, Ray Protti had reason to wonder what he had inherited.
As the departmental briefings continued to acquaint him with his new domain, it seemed that everything was up in the air. The government’s oldest department was being turned on its head.
“I remember saying to a group of senior managers two or three weeks after I’d started (May 31, 1994), ‘is there anything in this department that is not under fundamental review and examination’,” Protti said. “The short answer was ‘no’. It all was.”
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During the first eight months in what he calls one of the most difficult jobs in government, Protti has dealt with an array of controversies and proposals for change.
There have been tense trade negotiations with the United States, federal-provincial negotiations over safety nets, preparations to end the 97-year-old transportation subsidy program for prairie grain and detailed work on reforming the supply management system.
In the background to all of this, planning has been under way for sharp cuts to the department’s budget, workforce and mandate that will be dictated by this month’s federal budget.
In preparation, every departmental program has been subjected to intense scrutiny to decide if it is still justified and if so, whether it should be transferred to the provinces.
Budget of $2 billion
All the while, the new deputy minister has had to become familiar with the ins-and-outs of one of Ottawa’s largest, most diversified and most decentralized departments – 10,500 employees, offices in each province and a 1994-95 budget of more than $2 billion.
Of all the jobs he has held in a lifetime of government work, 49-year-old Protti said he has never had such a difficult assignment.
“This department has the reputation of being one of the most complicated and difficult jobs for a deputy minister in Ottawa and everything I’ve seen in eight and a half months bears that out in spades,” he said.
Complicating the learning period was a waning staff morale, which has suffered in the wake of rumors that the February budget will bring cutbacks and job losses.
“I wouldn’t call it a morale problem but I would characterize it definitely as a problem of uncertainty,” said Protti.
He is looking forward to budget night so employees will be able to deal with the reality of the cuts rather than the rumors.
And he is looking forward to the post-budget world when the department can concentrate on carrying out the mandate it has left after the paring.
Protti came to Agriculture Canada with no direct experience in the industry or in the agriculture bureaucracy, but has spent more than two decades inside government.
He grew up in Edmonton and later moved through a series of government jobs in Ottawa, from finance, treasury board and the privy council office. He worked in the department of labor as deputy minister and then worked five years as head of Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
He said his knowledge of government central agencies and “how the decision-making process works” was good training for his job, which he described as being “of assistance to your minister and (pursuing) the minister’s agenda.”
Protti said after a career of moving up through the bureaucracy, he is looking for some job stability in his life.
“I’m looking for a long stay here.”
