This book looks into the forces at work that have undermined critical thinking and sound intellectual inquiry in the world of public affairs in Canada, have fostered reductive perspectives and destructive blockages to collaborative governance to emerge, and have succeeded in blinding observers to the real sources of the present Canadian malaise, blocking the road to imaginative repairs.    
Part I deals frontally with the twilight of critical thinking that has led to a dramatic weakening of the critical examination of issues, and the process of inquiry that has been significantly weakened by ever narrower perspectives.
Part II focuses on two mental prisons: the obsessive and reductive insistence on a quantophrenic twist (only that which can be quantified counts); and the failure by crucial partners to live up to the requirements of their burden of office in circumstances when disloyalty considerably enfeebles the possibility of effective collaborative governance and the chance for  organizations to succeed.
Part III suggests that it is not impossible to get rid of the blinders preventing the adoption of more synoptic approaches, and the exploration of more imaginative designs to repair our organizations and institutions. Ways to deal with the challenges facing the Canadian socio-economy are hinted at, and the work of a successful social architect showcased.   
The conclusion makes the case for an approach that is both synoptic and guided by reasonableness - against the dogmas of disciplines and skimpy rationality.This book looks into the forces at work that have undermined critical thinking and sound intellectual inquiry in the world of public affairs in Canada, have fostered reductive perspectives and destructive blockages to collaborative governance to emerge, and have succeeded in blinding observers to the real sources of the present Canadian malaise, blocking the road to imaginative repairs.  
Part I deals frontally with the twilight of critical thinking that has led to a dramatic weakening of the critical examination of issues, and the process of inquiry that has been significantly weakened by ever narrower perspectives.
Part II focuses on two mental prisons: the obsessive and reductive insistence on a quantophrenic twist (only that which can be quantified counts); and the failure by crucial partners to live up to the requirements of their burden of office in circumstances when disloyalty considerably enfeebles the possibility of effective collaborative governance and the chance for organizations to succeed.
Part III suggests that it is not impossible to get rid of the blinders preventing the adoption of more synoptic approaches, and the exploration of more imaginative designs to repair our organizations and institutions. Ways to deal with the challenges facing the Canadian socio-economy are hinted at, and the work of a successful social architect showcased.  
The conclusion makes the case for an approach that is both synoptic and guided by reasonableness - against the dogmas of disciplines and skimpy rationality.

Unusual Suspects

This book revisits the tainted blood tragedy that Canada experienced in the latter part of the 20th century. It presents an argument in brief about the tragedy being the result of a cascade of pathologies of governance. Then it challenges the conventional wisdom and its explanation boiling down to four ill-founded accusations. After proposing a systemic reconstruction of the tragedy, it develops some responses to the systemic governance failures. The conclusion takes stock of the modest progress in the repairs of the toxic system in place, and the postface focuses on the demise of critical thinking as a fundamental source of the crisis and on a need to refurbish critical thinking if advances are to be expected in what remains a work in progress. This book revisits the tainted blood tragedy that Canada experienced in the latter part of the 20th century. It presents an argument in brief about the tragedy being the result of a cascade of pathologies of governance. Then it challenges the conventional wisdom and its explanation boiling down to four ill-founded accusations. After proposing a systemic reconstruction of the tragedy, it develops some responses to the systemic governance failures. The conclusion takes stock of the modest progress in the repairs of the toxic system in place, and the postface focuses on the demise of critical thinking as a fundamental source of the crisis and on a need to refurbish critical thinking if advances are to be expected in what remains a work in progress.

The Tainted-Blood Tragedy in Canada - A Cascade of Governance Failures

A Plea for Bold Organizational Experimentation. The eighth book in the Collaborative Metagovernance series is an irreverent challenge to administrative conservatorship, and a case for bold organizational experimentation. It makes the case for effective new actors, new structural forms and new social technologies, while showing the perils of ill-conceived contraptions like super-bureaucracies, single-purpose agencies and failure to pay due attention to good management. This series of books is designed to define cumulatively the contours of collaborative decentered metagovernance. At this time, there is still no canonical version of this paradigm: it is en émergence. This series intends to be one of many construction sites to experiment with various dimensions of an effective and practical version of this new approach. Metagovernance is the art of combining different forms or styles of governance, experimented with in the private, public and social sectors, to ensure effective coordination when power, resources and information are widely distributed, and the governing is of necessity decentred and collaborative. A Plea for Bold Organizational Experimentation. The eighth book in the Collaborative Metagovernance series is an irreverent challenge to administrative conservatorship, and a case for bold organizational experimentation. It makes the case for effective new actors, new structural forms and new social technologies, while showing the perils of ill-conceived contraptions like super-bureaucracies, single-purpose agencies and failure to pay due attention to good management. This series of books is designed to define cumulatively the contours of collaborative decentered metagovernance. At this time, there is still no canonical version of this paradigm: it is en émergence. This series intends to be one of many construction sites to experiment with various dimensions of an effective and practical version of this new approach. Metagovernance is the art of combining different forms or styles of governance, experimented with in the private, public and social sectors, to ensure effective coordination when power, resources and information are widely distributed, and the governing is of necessity decentred and collaborative.

Irregular Governance - A Plea for Bold Organizational Experimentation

Scheming Virtuously: The Road to Collaborative Governance is an invitation to subversion, but also a somewhat personal account of the displacement of the dominant governing regime (Big-G centralized government) by small-g collaborative governance, in a world where power, resources, and information are widely distributed. In this new world, the citizen's burden of office is clear: to be a producer of governance. Scheming virtuously is the order of the day-active engagement, imaginative problem-reframing, astute organizational design, and effective action within the bounds of the appreciative systems in good currency and beyond. Scheming Virtuously: The Road to Collaborative Governance is an invitation to subversion, but also a somewhat personal account of the displacement of the dominant governing regime (Big-G centralized government) by small-g collaborative governance, in a world where power, resources, and information are widely distributed. In this new world, the citizen's burden of office is clear: to be a producer of governance. Scheming virtuously is the order of the day-active engagement, imaginative problem-reframing, astute organizational design, and effective action within the bounds of the appreciative systems in good currency and beyond.

Scheming Virtuously - The Road to Collaborative Governance

This book explores the thinking of Canadian federal public service senior executives through conversations. The transformation of the environment and of the institutional order has created quite a challenge: maintaining some sort of adequacy between these evolving realities and the frames of reference in use by public sector executives. Complexity is often nothing more than a name for a new order calling for a new frame of reference, and the reluctance to abandon old conceptual frameworks is often responsible for fundamental learning disabilities. 
Through a series of conversations with Canadian federal senior executives about more and more daunting problems - from coping with an evolving context, to engaging intelligently with a new modus operandi, to trying to nudge and tweak programs in order to correct toxic pathologies, to reframing perceptions and redesigning organizations to meet the new challenges-weaknesses of the capabilities of the Canadian federal executives to respond to current challenges were revealed, and suggestions made about ways to kick start a process of refurbishment of these capabilities.This book explores the thinking of Canadian federal public service senior executives through conversations. The transformation of the environment and of the institutional order has created quite a challenge: maintaining some sort of adequacy between these evolving realities and the frames of reference in use by public sector executives. Complexity is often nothing more than a name for a new order calling for a new frame of reference, and the reluctance to abandon old conceptual frameworks is often responsible for fundamental learning disabilities. 
Through a series of conversations with Canadian federal senior executives about more and more daunting problems - from coping with an evolving context, to engaging intelligently with a new modus operandi, to trying to nudge and tweak programs in order to correct toxic pathologies, to reframing perceptions and redesigning organizations to meet the new challenges-weaknesses of the capabilities of the Canadian federal executives to respond to current challenges were revealed, and suggestions made about ways to kick start a process of refurbishment of these capabilities.

Probing the Bureaucratic Mind

Pasquinade is a satire or critical comment traditionally posted in a public place in ancient Rome; in particular, on the statue of Pasquino. Pasquinades in E is Gilles Paquet's contribution to this waning tradition. These essays are exercises in critical thinking. They aim to exorcise a number of mental prisons about aspects of governing, and at denouncing pathologies in our ways of thinking and governing ourselves, by exposing their toxic nature. Silence on such matters connotes tacit agreement with toxic nonsense and, therefore, guilt by association for the ensuing mal-governance. Pasquinade is a satire or critical comment traditionally posted in a public place in ancient Rome; in particular, on the statue of Pasquino. Pasquinades in E is Gilles Paquet's contribution to this waning tradition. These essays are exercises in critical thinking. They aim to exorcise a number of mental prisons about aspects of governing, and at denouncing pathologies in our ways of thinking and governing ourselves, by exposing their toxic nature. Silence on such matters connotes tacit agreement with toxic nonsense and, therefore, guilt by association for the ensuing mal-governance.

Pasquinade in E - Slaughtering Some Sacred Cows

Toward principled governance for Canada's immigration regime Canada has engaged in an immigration policy experiment of momentous importance over the last 25 years: it has almost doubled the flow of new immigrants. This has not only strained Canada s absorptive capacity and the common public culture, and increased the costs of immigration for Canadians, but it has also led the more recent cohorts of immigrants to experience much greater difficulty integrating into their new homeland, causing them to fall more and more below the level of income of the Canadian-born. Canadians have been disinformed by officials, the intelligentsia, and the media about the real impact of mass immigration on the economy and about its potential capacity to counter the effect of the aging of Canadian population. Canadians have been hoodwinked into accepting that maximum diversity is optimum diversity.

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