The Civil Service Act 1918 was a piece of legislation passed by Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden

Robert Borden

Sir Robert Laird Borden, PC, GCMG, KC was a Canadian lawyer and politician. He served as the eighth Prime Minister of Canada from October 10, 1911 to July 10, 1920, and was the third Nova Scotian to hold this office...

 following the First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. The act called for a number of reforms to be made to the Canadian civil service, and had implications on how Canadian public administration

Public administration

Public Administration houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal.....

 unfolded over the following decades.

Circumstances leading to the Act

In 1911, a number of members of the Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 business community made a proposal to the then leader of the opposition, Robert Borden. In the proposal, they agreed to support Borden in the upcoming election

Canadian federal election, 1911

The Canadian federal election of 1911 was held on September 21 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 12th Parliament of Canada.-Summary:...

 if he instituted reforms in the civil service.

Those who lobbied for the reforms made the argument that until then the Canadian civil service has been inefficient largely as a result of patronage

Patronage

Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...

. Under a patronage system, the civil service had a tendency to go through a larger turnover

Turnover (employment)

In a human resources context, turnover or staff turnover or labour turnover is the rate at which an employer gains and loses employees. Simple ways to describe it are "how long employees tend to stay" or "the rate of traffic through the revolving door." Turnover is measured for individual companies...

 than otherwise, as it is largely replaced following the formation of every new government. The direct result of this is a more limited expertise on the part of those occupying important government positions, decreasing productivity

Productivity

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...

 and efficiency in government.

Specifically the Ontario business community argued that this inefficient organization of the civil service reduced the international comparative advantage

Comparative advantage

In economics, the law of comparative advantage says that two countries will both gain from trade if, in the absence of trade, they have different relative costs for producing the same goods...

 of Canada, having negative implications on the financial interests of Canadian businesses. They saw a more professional and skilled civil service as being conducive with these interests.

Reforms

As noted, since Confederation, the Canadian civil service had been predominantly made up of officials who had been appointed through patronage; that is, officials appointed by the Prime Minister as a 'handout' - for example, political supporters, friends and family. A cornerstone of the Act was to shift away from these patronage-based appointments, towards merit

Meritocracy

Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or...

-based appointments to the civil service. Specifically, the Act called for the Civil Service Commission

Civil Service Commission

-Chairmen:*John Houghton MHK, 2004-date*George Waft MLC, 1996-2004*Clare Christian MLC, 1981-1982*Noel Cringle MLC, 1992-1996*Walter Gilbey, years unknown...

 (later renamed the Public Service Commission

Public Service Commission of Canada

The Public Service Commission of Canada is an independent government agency that safeguards merit-based hiring, non-partisanship, representativeness and the use of both official languages in the Canadian public service...

) to oversee all appointments to the public service, as means of detaching the politicians from the appointment process.

Competitive exams were introduced with the Commission to ensure competentcy among the service. In addition, much of the civil service was reorganized, and the job-classification system was overhauled.

Implications

The most important long term implication of the Act was a more professional, competent and skilled Canadian civil service. Moreover the decreased turn-over associated with merit-based civil service results in a bureaucracy with interests more aligned with national, as opposed to partisan-political, well being.