Canada. Commission to Inquire into the Public Service : The Commission to Inquire into the Public Service was established under Order in Council P.C. 2928, 21 December 1911, under Part I of the Inquiries Act (R.S.C., 1906, c.104) and on the recommendation of the prime minister. The Commission was mandated to inquire into and report upon all matters connected with or affecting the administration of the various departments of the government and the conduct of the public business therein and especially the following matters: (1) the methods employed in the transaction of public business; (2) the control of appropriations and expenditure; (3) the construction and, maintenance of public works and the carrying on of dredging operations; (4) the administrative methods and operations of the chief spending departments; (5) the administration and alienation of the public domain; (6) the discipline and efficiency of the departmental staffs; (7) the duplication of the same or similar work in the two or more departments; and any other matters within the scope of the inquiry on the Operation of the Civil Service Act and Related Legislation of 1907. The commissioners were Alfred Bishop Morine, Chairman; Guillaume Narcisse Ducharme and Richard Stuart Lake. Morine resigned from the commission effective 1 June 1912 (Order in Council P.C. 1491, 30 May 1912). The secretary was H.V. Rorke.
During the federal election of 1911, Robert Borden, the Leader of the Opposition, promised, if elected, to undertake "the extension of civil service reform." When Borden came to power later that year, he called for a more complete inquiry on the civil service than that which had been carried out by the Courtney Commission of 1907. As a result of that inquiry, in 1908, the Laurier administration had created the Civil Service Commission. It also established the "merit principle" (the selection and promotion of civil servants based on competitive examinations) for the "Inside Service", or for that part of the civil service located in the Ottawa area. But, the Commissioners appointed in 1912 concluded that other areas of the Civil Service had been ignored:
"the administrative machinery of the Dominion as a whole has never been reported on or reorganized; nor have the various parts been considered in relation to the whole. Owing to the great development of the country exigencies have arisen from time to time, and services have been created to meet these exigencies, but no organized effort has been made to coordinate these services with the various Departments of the Public Service as a whole, and assign to each its proper status and duties in the general machinery of the administration."
By appointing a public inquiry on the Civil Service, the Borden administration apparently hoped that some of the inefficiencies of the previous administration might be revealed. According to the Order in Council establishing the commission of 21 December 1911, the object of the inquiry was to:
"obtain such information as will enable any existing defects or abuses to be remedied, secure the adoption of more efficient methods, remedy any existing abuses and more throughly safeguard the public interest" (See R. Craig Brown, Robert Laird Borden: A Biography, Volume I, 1854-1914, Toronto: MacMillan, 1975, pp. 211-214; The Canadian Annual Review, 1912, pp. 204-205; Order in Council P.C. 2928, 21 December 1911; National Archives of Canada, Records of Royal Commissions, RG 33/83, Vol. 12, newspaper clippings relating to the Public Service.)
Hearings of the commission were held in Halifax, Charlottetown, Saint John, Sorel, Montreal, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria, Vancouver and New Westminster from 19 January to 17 August 1912. RG33-83 General Inventory
