I learn that there are no more recruitment competitions in the Quebec public service. The case is disturbing.
When I was a public servant, deputy ministers complained that not enough Anglophones took part in these competitions… written in French. They also argued that they were not designed for ethnocultural participants. […] I myself asked in 2006 that the government do more for them. I was far from imagining that it would be by abolishing competitions that he would achieve this.
Because, without competition, the hiring of certain categories of underemployed citizens will indeed get better, and Quebecers will be served, especially in the great multicultural region of Montreal, not only in English, but in many other languages. […]
But what worries me more is the progression of employees within the public service itself. Without competition, many executives will promote civil servants with whom they have affinities or who are yes-men who will not harm their cushy little career. The “Little Russian” Nicolas Gogol knew this system well. Inevitably, it is the public service that will lose in quality.
Recruitment competitions came with the Quiet Revolution. The new modern state wanted to break with the Duplessis era and the cronyism that was rampant then. It took some sixty years to come to the funny conclusion that they didn’t work. Allow my skepticism. Some say that François Legault has a weakness for Maurice Duplessis; I don’t doubt it for a moment.
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