In this episode, Deputy Minister Francis McRae shares a remarkable journey through her career, bridging both public and private sectors. Raised in a large family, she learned early the values of teamwork and independence, shaping her approach to leadership today. Francis underscores the importance of listening and continuous learning, offering insightful career advice rooted in her experiences. Highlighting public service as a noble career path, Francis emphasizes its transformative potential and the vital role of volunteering in giving back to communities. Her leadership at Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) exemplifies a commitment to advancing gender equality through collaborative efforts and evidence-based policy. She discusses the challenges faced and achievements made, including fostering a diverse workforce and navigating resource constraints. Throughout, Francis's narrative inspires us with her dedication to public service and the pursuit of meaningful societal impact. Her vision for the future underscores the ongoing fight against inequality, and advocating for positive change. This episode resonates with those passionate about making a difference, offering valuable insights into effective leadership and the enduring values of public service.
In the second part of our conversation with Deputy Minister Francis Macrae, we hear Francis reflect on her extensive career within the Privy Council Office. She emphasizes the enduring principles of Canada's public service, rooted in impartiality and commitment to democratic governance. Francis discusses the pivotal role of her department, Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE), which focuses on convening stakeholders, building capacity across sectors to promote gender equality, and serving as a knowledge broker to inform policy with research and data.
Throughout the discussion, Francis underscores the challenges and rewards of public service, highlighting the diverse and dedicated team at WAGE. She addresses the department's efforts to maintain a high level of gender diversity among its workforce and the ongoing need for prioritization amidst resource constraints. Looking forward, Francis outlines a vision for the next decade, emphasizing the continued fight against gender inequality and the importance of collaborative approaches to achieve meaningful societal change.
Timestamps:
(00:02:15) Reflecting on Public Service Career
(00:04:50) Role of Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE)
(00:07:25) Challenges in Promoting Gender Equality
(00:09:10) Importance of Data in Policy Making
(00:11:40) Future Vision for Gender Equality
00:00:01 Katie Jensen (Host)
I'm Katie Jensen and this is The Path of Public Service from Applaud, celebrating people who have spent their lives working in Ontario's public sector. This is part two of our conversation with Francis Macrae, the Deputy Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth for the Government of Canada. In this episode, Francis shares what it was like to work in the Privy Council Office under three different prime ministers.
00:00:25 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
The constants are there. The foundation is always there.
00:00:28 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So the public service in Canada, at least at the Government of Canada level, is the permanent public service. My role is not a political role. I have very strict rules around the type of political engagement I can do, which is basically the only thing I can do is vote. And that's a very, very key part of our values as a public service.
00:00:48 Katie Jensen (Host)
Work-life balance.
00:00:50 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
You can be a parent, you can be a good mom and also be a public servant that is very dedicated and passionate and career-oriented at the same time.
00:01:03 Katie Jensen (Host)
And the importance of public service workers experiencing new environments.
00:01:08 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I think everybody in a region should come to work in Ottawa for a little while, and everybody in Ottawa should really go to a region for a while. You just need to learn about how to serve the entire country.
00:01:20 Katie Jensen (Host)
We begin with Frances explaining the three main pillars that guide her work at Women and Gender Equality, also known as WAGE.
00:01:28 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
It's a small organization. Our job is really to do three things. It's to convene the right tables and the right spaces to get the right players around, to discuss and move forward.
00:01:42 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
It is to build capacity. So not only do we need to be thinking about Women's and gender equality, we've got to support others in understanding how those issues apply in their field.
00:01:59 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
If I'm at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, what does equality for women and gender diverse people mean for me in my work? And that's part of what we do, is we help build capacity across the system on kind of competency and capacity around equality issues.
00:02:20 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And the third thing about what we do is knowledge broker. And so we have research, we work very closely with Statistics Canada, others with provinces and territories, with nonprofit organizations who do a lot of community-based research, and we want to put that knowledge in front of people, shine a light on it. Make sure that we are raising that evidence to the attention of others who can act on it.
00:02:48 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So those three roles. Convening, capacity building and brokering knowledge. Those are kind of our fundamental rules.
00:02:59 Katie Jensen (Host)
Tell me about the makeup of your work team. Is it only women and gender diverse people who care about women and gender diverse people? Is it a diverse staff?
00:03:08 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I mean, it's not a surprise that people who work for women and gender equality care about those issues. No one works here that doesn't want to be here, let's just say that. Otherwise they'd be in a bigger department with more opportunities for promotion. We don't have as many levels. We don't have as many internal opportunities as you might in a bigger organization. So everyone that's here wants to be here.
00:03:32 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Demographics-wise, you know, if you look at our numbers, we're about 83% people who identify as women here, which is, of course, well, well, well above the workforce availability numbers. And for the public service as a whole, you're probably talking about 50 something percent, but certainly nowhere near 83%. This department started as a organization called Status of Women, and again, it wouldn't be a surprise that most people who work for a status of women organization are going to be people who identify as women. So that's the first thing.
00:04:08 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
We have a specific secretariat called the 2SLGBTQI+ secretariat, which was transferred to this department when we became a department, and that organization was originally established at the center of Government at the Privy Council Office. And that organization, I would say, is, I would say, mostly 2SLGBTQI+ people, again, passionate about their work.
00:04:34 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
But I would say not exclusively 2SLGBTQI+ people. I know a lot of folks in this organization consider themselves strong allies. They have a family connection. They have a close personal connection, and just a real passion for these issues. I just met someone yesterday who's a fierce, staunch ally, and she came from a different department, so happy because she got a job here, which I didn't really know until she was hired by the management. But she has been an advocate, I know, for her whole career.
00:05:06 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So we do have a pretty diverse population when it comes to employment equity groups. I mentioned women. We are at or over workforce availability for people with disabilities, for indigenous people, and for what they now call visible minorities in the Employment Equity Act, ut that will be changed, I think, to racialized people.
00:05:28 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
We always need more diversity. We're try to be very careful about that. We certainly need to be sure that we are drawing on all the diversity of the Canadian population. But there's no question, 83% women is very different from most federal organizations, for sure.
00:05:47 Katie Jensen (Host)
When thinking about the work you do, do you ever have to think about prioritizing or deprioritizing projects, even when you know you're making good progress and it's just about limited resources? Is that a part of your job that ends up happening where you have to make those difficult decisions around suspending initiatives?
00:06:03 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Yeah, look, prioritization is a constant factor. I think probably anywhere, when I worked in private sector, it was the same thing. You're constantly thinking about what is going to be your best value added.
00:06:15 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
In the case of a federal government department, as you probably know, the funds that we have, the resources we have are given to us by Parliament to execute on specific activities. We're really mindful of that, that governments make commitments to launch or continue or discontinue certain initiatives.
00:06:41 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
That is then agreed on by Parliament when the Budget Implementation Act is passed or when the estimates are passed.
00:06:49 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And then we have to execute on those activities. So, we need to be very mindful of what we are asked by Parliament to do, because Parliament is the voice of the people and Parliament decides what it is we need to be spending our money on.
00:07:08 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Now, is that always easy? Not easy, particularly when sometimes you have demands coming at you from other places who need your help.
00:07:19 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And we always like to work with people on women and gender equality issues. The fact is, we're only a few hundred people, and we can't be everywhere. And so we have to be thinking about, one, what we have been funded to do by Parliament, and focus on that, explaining that work to Canadians. Because I think one of the key things we need to do is not only do the work we're asked to do, but show people that work and the impact of that work. To me that's a critical piece of our delivery.
00:07:53 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And so yes, that does mean looking across and thinking, "Well, what else do we do that we are maybe a little too thin on.” And where we would need to ask ourselves, “Is that the best value with those resources or can we move it to this other piece that actually needs more resources?”
00:08:14 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And sometimes you make budget requests and you ask for more resources, but the reality is that the first thing you have to do is live within your means, right, live within your budget.
00:08:23 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And so you have to make choices about how you spend those resources. And these are not easy things for sure, but it's like anything. I think about in private sector for example, or even in nonprofit, if you're taking on new lines of business and new activities, you do have to look at what you then are already doing that you need to think about. So you might have to scale it down. You might have to delay it. You might have to think about dropping it. But there are also things you might be thinking, “Actually we're not in this and we should be.”
00:09:04 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So it's constantly reassessing how people are spending their time. You can't throw it up all into the air and have people in chaos. But it's kind of getting through a thought process that really helps us decide how we spend our time, and what the outcome of that energy and investment is, and are we living up to what Parliament asked us to do as a priority.
00:09:31 Katie Jensen (Host)
Can you walk me through your day-to-day?
00:09:34 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
You know, every day looks a little different, to be perfectly honest. There are lots of days that I spend talking to my colleagues across government on some issues that we're working on together. I think we could all understand that when you're trying to solve challenges around equality for women and equality for gender diverse people, that's not something that can be done in a little agency like mine of a couple hundred people. I need folks across government to be working with me, so I spend a lot of time on that.
00:10:04 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I would say that one of the things that I spend a lot of time on as well is with folks in the organization here, not just the leadership team, but really trying to connect at the grassroots level. And why is that really important right now? It's because our department was created in legislation in December 2018. And so we're just over five years old as a solid standalone department and a lot of that was in the pandemic. And so we did extraordinary things, different things that maybe we wouldn't necessarily have done had there not been that crisis happening, during which women and gender diverse people needed a lot of extra support. I think that's clear. And so now we're looking ahead to what does the future look like? And so I spend a lot of time talking to people about where we're headed as opposed to just where we've been.
00:10:56 Katie Jensen (Host)
I'm curious about the conversations you have about where we're headed. What do you see 10 or 20 years from now for women and gender diverse people?
00:11:03 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
It's a really important question because you ask about 10, 20 years. If I go back to when this all started, I would say in earnest in the Government of Canada, it would have been in the 1970s with the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. And after that, the government of the day set up an awful lot of structures to be able to deal with the fundamental inequality that women were experiencing and frankly have continued to experience.
00:11:30 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I think one of the things that I hear a lot from people is, “Well, you know, women are equal now. We don't have to spend all this time on it.” And really while that's true in some respects, you know, in legislation, for example, and human rights, it is not true in the sense of the wage gap that remains. And that is quite significant.
00:11:56 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I think it's clear that we're making some progress around the world on addressing wage gap for women, but there is a very long way to go.
00:12:04 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
For gender diverse people, a big thing that we worry about is crime. And the fact of the matter is that gender diverse people are often targeted by hate crime, by violent crime, in a way that is disproportionate. We know the disproportionate impact of violence against women, particularly indigenous women.
00:12:25 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Women with disabilities have some of the highest rates of crime directed towards them. So when I think about what the next 10, 20 years looks like, we've got to systematically be able to expose and shine a light on remaining inequality, and be able to target that inequality efficiently and effectively at a system level. It's not by my department acting on these issues alone that they will be solved. I need our public safety colleagues. I need our health colleagues as two specific examples to be able to make progress.
00:13:05 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So, I think what I see in the next 10 to 20 years is continuing to shine a light on inequality that persists. We can do that with better data and disaggregated data to target specific groups of women and gender diverse people that are dealing with the biggest barriers, and then finding solutions by working in partnership with others on those.
00:13:26 Katie Jensen (Host)
I'm curious about what you might say to someone who perhaps is a bit younger, maybe dealing with the frustration of knowing that all the hard work you pour into the job might take decades to show the results. It also might not be the result you want to see, maybe no result. How do you counsel someone through that, and what do you tell yourself?
00:13:45 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
It's a really good question, because, you know, one of the things that we talk about here in our organization is why people have even joined this department. And for the most part, I would say everyone who is here really wants to be here. They believe in the issues that we work on, and they want to work on these issues and make progress. So we have a very dedicated group of folks who care a lot about making things better.
00:14:16 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And that's a double-edged sword, because if you care a lot, you absolutely are going to put in your best effort. You're going to be thinking creatively and constantly about what you can do to make a difference.
00:14:28 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
The other side of that, though, is that it can be very frustrating, exactly as you say, to not see progress in the kind of time frame that we might want to see.
00:14:40 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I actually spoke to our minister, Marci Ien, about this not that long ago, about how challenging it can be to keep people focused and thinking ahead when it seems like things can be slow.
00:14:54 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And we talked about the fact that one step is progress. And so we have to take the small steps forward, and celebrate those. And that gives you the energy to keep going.
00:15:14 Katie Jensen (Host)
I'm curious about what the word “duty” means to you, because you were talking about being assigned this role as the Deputy Minister and you just went with it. It was the dream job, but if it wasn't the right fit, you'd still have the obligation to try and make it work.
00:15:27 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Yeah. And that's really what it's all about. What I can tell you is that whenever I've been asked to go do something, it’s been for a reason. And people will explain to me, “This is why we think you're a good fit for this job.”
00:15:41 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I say to them, “OK, I can see that, I can see why you would see that I can bring something to that job.”
It's very important that people in the jobs that we have at a senior level, that they're the right people for the job. And so at least what I've seen a lot of thought goes into the skills that you need, the type of person, the types of issues the organization is going to be struggling with, there is a lot of thought that goes into that. And I can tell you that I have come to see that there are reasons why people are asked to do certain things and it's because people see in them the ability to do that. And so that is duty, there's no question.
00:16:23 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
If you've been in public service for a long time, you have a sense of duty and contribution that is bigger than yourself. It's bigger than the job that you're in, and it's pretty awesome.
00:16:41 Katie Jensen (Host)
You've worked under three prime ministers. Can you tell me about the transition period between governments? Because I think a lot of people might conjure the image of strife for a massive changing of the guard. But I'm wondering, in a practical sense, if things actually change dramatically, or if they just shift a little bit when leadership changes like that.
00:16:57 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Yeah. It's an important question. I would answer it in two ways.
00:17:00 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
The constants are there. The foundation is always there.
00:17:04 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So the public service in Canada, at least at the Government of Canada level, is the permanent public service. There are obviously some roles that do change. So for example, my role, all deputy ministers, the clerk of the Privy Council, other kinds of appointments, are made at the pleasure of the Prime Minister.
00:17:24 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And so the Prime Minister of the day, whoever that may be, can make changes the way that they see fit, and they can do that at any time, they don't need to wait for a change in government. So that's just part of what we live with, and it generally works pretty well. That foundation is there in terms of the permanent public service.
My role is not a political role. I have very strict rules around the type of political engagement I can do, which is basically the only thing I can do is vote. And that's a very, very key part of our values as a public service. That impartiality requirement to serve democratically elected governments is really topline consideration for us.
00:18:09 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
When governments change, we know what they're interested in, because they've already put out platforms or spoken to Canadians about what they want to see. And then Canadians vote, and through that, we decide as a population which government we believe best represents what we are looking for.
00:18:37 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And so, as public servants, we do respect that Canadians elect a government that they are comfortable with, that they are connecting with. And so, as public servants, we serve the government of the day. And so, it's our job to be able to help that government achieve what it wants to achieve and for which it's been elected to achieve.
00:19:08 Katie Jensen (Host)
Looking back, can you tell me about some of your career highlights?
00:19:12 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
You know, I have been very, very lucky to do some really interesting things in my career. I'll give you maybe 3 examples.
00:19:21 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
One specifically was when I met my current husband. I wasn't married to him yet, but he was asked to go to New Brunswick and run a government agency in New Brunswick. So I decided I would go with him, and I worked for a federal agency there for four years, located in New Brunswick but with an Atlantic Canada responsibility.
00:19:42 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And working for the public service of Canada, but in a region, was really eye-opening for me and it's where I took a lot of my lessons about representing the federal government outside of Ottawa, being humble about what you don't know about a culture, about how people think about government, what they expect from government, and really just the people. The people I worked with had worked together for a very long time, and me coming in from Ottawa was not necessarily something that they were all that thrilled about.
00:20:24 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
In a way they were happy to have me because there were some skills I had they could use. But this person coming in from Ottawa, clearly I needed to adapt, and I really learned a lot about adaptation. I was not in the driver's seat and so that really marked my view about Ottawa and the regions.
00:20:44 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And I often said to people, I think everybody in a region should come to work in Ottawa for a little while, and everybody in Ottawa should really go to a region for a while. You just need to learn about how to serve the entire country. And it's, I don't think it's easy to do that if you spend your entire career in Ottawa. That was my personal experience.
00:21:05 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
The second thing I would say is, about 10 years in government, I decided to leave. I was kind of bored and I couldn't really see what my next role was going to be. And so I was asked to consider joining a private sector firm as a consultant, and I did, and I loved it. And one of the things that I learned the most there was the value of time. Time is money in a private sector organization. And in the public service, it’s not always easy to see that connection.
00:21:38 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
So I spent a lot of time learning how to be most efficient and effective with my time and make decisions about how I was going to spend my time.
00:21:47 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And the other thing I learned is about the importance of people management. And again in the public sector it's important, but you don't see the financial impact of being a bad manager. Whereas in the private sector, if I was a bad manager, they would have to fire me because it costs money to keep hiring people. It costs money to train people and then have them leave with that knowledge. It costs money when you're constantly trying to explain to clients why you've got a revolving door and that they've got to get people up to speed once again. So that is a really huge learning for me that I had out in the private sector, and I I think about it to this day.
00:22:29 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And maybe the last one I'll mention, I was able to be the Assistant Deputy Minister for Public Service Renewal working in the Privy Council Office, advising the clerk at the time and the Prime Minister through the clerk on issues of public service, modernization and renewal. And that was a real pleasure because I care a lot about the public service, I care a lot about renewal. I wanted that job so badly when I saw the poster, and I applied for it. And I was just thrilled to have that job for a few years to work at that system-wide level on renewing the public service.
00:23:07 Katie Jensen (Host)
Tell me about the mentorship you received.
00:23:09 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I talked about this one occasion that I had when I was a young officer working in the Privy Council Office.
00:23:16 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And I had a, what we would call a, deputy secretary at the time. So a deputy minister level person, I ended up working with her many times in my life.
00:23:26 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Her name is Janice Charette, and Janice was, up until recently, the Clerk of the Privy Council. But at the time, Janice was a deputy secretary. And I remember I was in her office with my boss and my boss's boss, who were two guys, great folks who taught me a lot.
00:23:43 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I was in Janice's office and we were waiting for a meeting to start, and she started talking to me about a toy she had bought for her son who was about four years old at the time. And she was showing me this toy she had just bought at lunchtime when she went out.
00:23:58 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And it was the first time in my career I had ever seen anyone talk about their kids in that way and be excited about something that they wanted to share about their child. And what it taught me is you can be a parent, you can be a good mom and also be a public servant that is very dedicated, and passionate, and career-oriented at the same time and I will never forget that day. I can picture it clear as day.
00:24:36 Katie Jensen (Host)
Before that, did you think there was a strict division between work and life, and you felt hesitant to say anything?
00:24:41 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
This was before I had kids, and before I was even married. It just opened my eyes to the possibilities, I would say. I did feel that my work life was divided between my real life and my family life. Even with my brothers and sisters and my mom, and what I could do at work. And so, it really opened my eyes to the fact that you don't have to have these strict divisions, and in fact it's important to people around you, the more senior you get, to see you as a whole person.
00:25:16 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I do this thing where I write a weekly message to all of my staff every week. And I've just done it for all my jobs, and I do it today. And one time I remember, I wrote this message and I was saying, “Ohh, I'm writing this message on a Thursday. I know I normally write to you Friday because tomorrow I'll be off at a tournament with my child and so I'm taking the day off.”
00:25:38 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And I had young women write to me after that and say, “I have never heard anyone at your level talk about taking a day off to be with their kids.” And it surprised me. But then I remembered that day with Janice in her office and how important those role models are. Giving people permission to be who they are, to be a good parent, and to be able to talk openly about that - it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. So showing that to people what I've learned and I'm hopefully allowing others to be doing is really important to me.
00:26:19 Katie Jensen (Host)
Can you tell me about the mentorship you've provided for people during your career?
00:26:24 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I meet people all the time. People write to me sometimes and say, “I heard you speak somewhere,” or "Somebody I know knows you, and so would you mind giving me 1/2 an hour of your time?” And I, I mean, I always say yes.
00:26:36 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Because, one, I learned from people, I learn about their stories and I learn about what maybe they're facing. And two, I do feel like it's my job to use my privilege, my networks, to shine a light on talent that's out there, and everybody has talent in some respect.
00:26:59 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
And so, I really feel that the public service is so broad and there are so many different places you could work. There is a place, I think, for anyone who wants to work in public service, and it's my job to kind of understand where those places might be. Students I meet. Sometimes I speak at a university event and I'll get students writing me after, and so I'll talk to them.
00:27:21
I talked to people that I've worked with before, who stay in touch and want to have a mentorship session, they've got something that they're dealing with, I'm happy to help that.
00:27:33 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
I tend to not have kind of only one person that I deal with, or a few people that I provide mentorship to. I think it's important to me to be open and be available to whoever wants to talk to me. And I learn every time, every time I get something out of it. Every time.
00:27:52 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
There's always an insight someone has that I have not thought about, no matter who they are. And I'm just curious by nature, so I love learning more about people and their journey and then thinking about what I can do to help them achieve what they're looking for, or help them think it through.
00:28:10 Katie Jensen (Host)
If you were talking to someone who was looking to start their career in public service, or looking to switch from private to public, what advice would you give them?
00:28:18 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Your hearts got to be in it. I've seen a lot of people think about, well, you know, the public service is a steady job, it's a stable place, I’ll have a good pension. If that's why you're in it, I think it's going to limit your ability to make a difference. So I would say whatever you choose for how you want to spend your working life, be sure that it's where you want to be. And that you can bring the skills you have to the table in a way that you're going to be comfortable with when you look yourself in the mirror and say, “I did something good in this world.”
00:29:02 Katie Jensen (Host)
It's like they say how you live your days is how you live your life.
00:29:06 Deputy Minister Frances McRae
Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:29:12 Katie Jensen (Host)
Thanks for listening. Applaud is proud to showcase the dedication of those who make decisions for the greater good and strive to leave the world a better place for all Canadians. All personal views expressed by guests and our host are their own. Applaud will continue to recognize those in public service, offer a kaleidoscope of perspectives, and operate in good faith to build trust with Applaud members and all public citizens. You can share feedback on this episode by visiting ApplaudPublicService.ca