Transcript
Transcript: Deputy Minister Leadership Reflections Series: Louis Ranger
CSPS Descriptive: Retired DM Series – Louis Ranger
[00:00:00 Video opens a montage of views of the CSPS building, and the crew setting up their equipment for the interview. Louis Ranger takes a seat in an historic room. Inspiring music plays throughout. Text on screen: Deputy Minister Leadership Reflections, with Louis Ranger.]
[00:00:20 Text on screen: Louis Ranger Joined the Public Service of Canada in 1974 and retired in 2009 as Deputy Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities where he was responsible for two departments, 16 Crown Corporations and more than 40 shared-governance organizations.]
[00:00:32 Text on screen: He has extensive and varied experience in policy development, program design and implementation, negotiation across sectors, corporate governance and management of large, coast-to coast organizations.]
[00:00:45 Louis Ranger appears full screen. Overlaid text on screen: Where were you born?]
Louis Ranger: I was born in Eastern Ontario, in a small village called St. Eugène, which was about just a few miles away from Rigaud, from the Quebec border, on a family farm.
[00:01:03 Overlaid text on screen: How was your childhood?]
Louis Ranger: I had a wonderful childhood until the age of eight,
[00:01:16 A photo of M. Ranger's father and two of his children. One becomes highlighted to indicate Louis Ranger.]
Louis Ranger: when my dad became very ill and passed away when I was nine.
[00:01:24 Louis Ranger appears full screen.]
Louis Ranger: And I guess I didn't realize what was happening to me at that time, but it was really a turning point, as I look back. It probably set the stage for my entire destiny.
So, my mother was much younger than my dad. She was in her mid-thirties, with four kids, with my youngest sister still being in diapers. So, she was overwhelmed and decided my older brother, who was a couple of years older than I was, should become a priest.
So, she sent him off to a private school in Ottawa, the Ottawa Minors Seminary. So, there I was at the age of nine or ten, the man of the family, with a mother who truly needed help. And when I look back, it's quite amazing. At the age of 10, 11, 12, I was basically managing the family farm. And I feel today that I became an adult by the time I got to be twelve years old.
As the story goes, when I was twelve, my mother says, Louis, you're going to stay with me. You're going to go to high school in Vankleek Hill, which is the town next door, and you'll run the farm. I'll give you the farm. And I thought about it. It was a tough call to make it when you're twelve. And I said, no, I'd rather go and become a priest because I wanted to get an education. I didn't articulate it that way, but I guess that was a turning point and my mother respected that entirely.
So, at the age of 12, 13, I left home and joined the Ottawa Minors Seminary, which is kind of a total transformation. Being sort of lonely on a farm and then joining a college with 300 boys, living, sleeping in dormitories, eating in cafeterias, playing team sports.
[00:03:47 Overlaid text on screen: Where did you go to university?]
Louis Ranger: It was a natural next step to go to Ottawa U.
[00:03:56 Exterior image of Ottawa University.]
Louis Ranger: And again, looking back, I got a fantastic education at Ottawa U.
[00:40:03 Louis Ranger appears full screen.]
Louis Ranger: I just wanted to study in something quite practical, so economics sounded like the right thing to do. But this was during the Vietnam War.
[00:03:47 Overlaid text on screen: The Vietnam War started on November 1st, 1955, and ended with the fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975.]
Louis Ranger: So, there's a whole bunch of draft dodgers, from Princeton and MIT and Harvard,
[00:03:47 Overlaid text on screen: Throughout its duration, various countries, including the United States, France, China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos and others would become involved in the war.]
Louis Ranger: who just flew to Canada and became teachers, professors at Ottawa U. So, I have fond memories of those years because I was kind of blessed by very high calibre professors, which I didn't realize at the time.
[00:04:42 Exterior image of Université de Montréal.]
Louis Ranger: And it's only when I went to the University of Montréal later, that I realized that,
[00:04:46 Louis Ranger appears full screen.]
Louis Ranger: hey, I had a pretty good basis
[00:04:48 Overlaid text on screen: Why did you go to University of Montréal?]
Louis Ranger: for my masters. And the reason why I went to the University of Montréal – I'm drawing linkages with other events – but Mirabel airport was a big deal.
[00:05:04 Overlaid text on screen: Montreal-Mirabel International Airport was supposed to become the main international airport in eastern Canada. Opened in 1975, it had the largest surface area of any airport in the world.]
Louis Ranger: A very big deal. We don't seem to appreciate that in the early sixties, Montréal was the third or fourth largest agglomeration in Canada and the United States, certainly in the northern part, after New York, Chicago, maybe LA, then Montréal, sort of halfway between Europe and a big US market. And somebody decided we should have a humongous airport in Montréal. This was a big deal.
And the person who'd come up with the justification for Mirabel was a professor called Benjamin Higgins, the teacher at University of Montréal. And I wanted to be on his courses. That was the main driver. Also, I wanted to validate my education at Ottawa U by going to another university. And it was a piece of cake at the University of Montréal.
[00:06:06 Overlaid text on screen: What was your first job in the Government of Canada?]
Louis Ranger: So, we're talking about 1973, 74, Ottawa desperately needed Francophones. I had a master's in transportation economics, quite rare at the time. First master's thesis from a new research centre, University of Montréal. So, they were recruiting on the spot in Montréal, and I just showed up and told them who I was, and they made an offer. And they offered me a big pile of money, like $10,000 a year. And I negotiated $10,500. I was very pleased with that.
And I came to the Canadian Transport Commission at the time,
[00:07:03 Overlaid text on screen: Louis Joined the Canadian Transport Commission in 1974 as a junior economist.]
Louis Ranger: which was the place to be, not Transport Canada.
[00:07:10 Overlaid text on screen: He then worked in West Africa as a transportation advisor between 1978 and 1980.]
Louis Ranger: It's a long story, but basically all the policy development was being done at the Canadian Transport Commission, being at arm's length from government. And there was a huge research group there with about 70 or 80 researchers and all the support staff, and good budgets, working with a network of universities that also were doing research in transportation, it was a big deal. So, that's when I got exposed to the first study: high speed rail in the Windsor/Quebec corridor.
[00:07:47 Overlaid text on screen: What was your first job at Transport Canada?]
Louis Ranger: Ah, first job?
[00:07:53 Overlaid text on screen: He joined Transport Canada in 1981 as a Senior Analyst at Urban Transportation.]
Louis Ranger: I spent many years in looking after VIA Rail, rail passenger services.
[00:08:01 Image of a VIA Rail Canada sign. Overlaid text on screen: He then became Director for the VIA Rail Subsidy Program, from 1983 to 1987.]
Louis Ranger: Many, many years. And then an opportunity came
[00:08:06 An image of a VIA Rail train, and then back to Louis Ranger full screen. Overlaid text on screen: VIA Rail Canada Inc.'s mandate is to operate the national passenger rail services on behalf of the Government of Canada, offering intercity rail services and ensuring rail transportation services to regional and remote communities.]
Louis Ranger: to do a radical change in the way rail passenger services were offered. It was not my call, but there was a first program review type of exercise where the department had to cut $300,000 million dollars. 300 million. And the Deputy of the day decided it was going to come from one single place, and it was going to be rail passenger.
And I was at the right place at the right time and the right guy, I suppose, because I knew my stuff. With a very small team, we designed all kinds of scenarios on how to cut by half because VIA Rail was getting over $600 million a year, and it was a true haemorrhage. And over a period of six to nine months, with a very small team, like three or four, we crafted different scenarios and came up with the $300 million.
[00:09:11 Overlaid text on screen: How did you become an assistant deputy minister?]
Louis Ranger: The story goes like this.
[00:09:18 Overlaid text on screen: He was Director General of the Economic Research Branch, in 1988 and 1989.]
Louis Ranger: The system felt that I was due for
[00:09:25 Overlaid text on screen: Then he became Director General of Air Policy and Programs, from 1990 to 1994.]
Louis Ranger: a stage in my life where I had to diversify, and I was sent to PCO. I was invited to go to PCO. There was an exchange.
[00:09:32 An image of the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council building. Overlaid text on screen: Which led to his role as Director of Operations for the Privy Council Office in 1995 and 1996.]
Louis Ranger: I was still an EX3 DG.
[00:09:40 Louis Ranger appears full screen.]
Louis Ranger: And so, I became Director of Operations, sort of a balancer for a cabinet committee, for two years. And it was very exciting because it validated what I had learned the hard way on how the system worked. I realized that I knew how the system worked, but I had to validate from the inside.
I found it very exciting, but at the same time very frustrating because it was not my cup of tea to go over ten cabinet documents every week; brief the chairman of the committee, and then flush it all out and start over again the next Monday with another batch of ten topics. It certainly broadened my horizon, but I didn't find it very rewarding in terms of having a true accomplishment. Yes, we locked in a decision, yippee, but I think I was doing a good job.
And then there was an opening for an ADM policy at Transport Canada,
[00:10:43 Overlaid text on screen: Then he transitioned to Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy) at Transport Canada from 1996 to 2001.]
Louis Ranger: and the clerk at the time was Jocelyne Bourgon. And Jocelyne Bourgon could not believe that I wanted to go back to Transport, that this was a big mistake. And I said, I want to become an ADM. And she says, Louis, you will become an ADM. Just give yourself a break. And I said, I respect that, but I'm still going to compete. And I won and went back to Transport.
[00:11:20 Overlaid text on screen: How did you become an associate deputy minister?]
Louis Ranger: My experience, which I'd like to share with others, because you can't become the victim of your own ambitions. I remember at one time getting a call, it's always on a Friday afternoon, saying, Louis, we're thinking of appointing you as Associate in another department. Do you want to think about it? And I said, no, because it's in line with – I'm an economist, and made sense to go to that other department – they said, okay, so you may share this with your wife, but nobody else, because for sure, if a rumour gets out, then for sure you won't get the job. And I said, sure.
So, I opened a bottle of wine with my wife that evening, and that was it. But I never got a call. I waited 18 months before getting the next call. And during those 18 months, a few weeks later, another person was appointed in that job of Associate. And I think you have to accept that. That something probably happened on that weekend and there was a better candidate for that job.
And so it is – you don't control that.
[00:12:39 Overlaid text on screen: How did you become a deputy minister?]
Louis Ranger: I still believe it's being the right person at the right place at the right time, which is why I consider myself so fortunate. When I was Associate, a big turning point was 9/11.
[00:12:59 Overlaid text on screen: The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11, 2001.]
Louis Ranger: Where, as I happened to be one of the few, I was alone with the Minister in a staff room when it happened and played a very critical role on 9/11 and the days and months that followed. And Margaret Bloodworth, the Deputy, was appointed to Defence. And I've always assumed that because I knew what the job at hand was, that I was asked to just step in.
[00:13:32 Overlaid text on screen: He became Deputy Minister of Transport Canada in 2002.]
Louis Ranger: And I was totally stunned when that happened
[00:13:39 Overlaid text on screen: And then transitioned to his last role in the Public Service as Deputy Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities from 2006 to 2009.]
Louis Ranger: because it's quite unusual.
[00:13:41 Overlaid image of a news release, dated February 7, 2006, announcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper's changes in the senior ranks of the Public Service.]
Louis Ranger: Let's face it, it's quite unusual that somebody from the same department would come up all the way. And I was a Deputy for a fairly long time, I made the longest tenure in the last 50 years, I still have the record of the longest tenure of Deputy of Transport.
[00:14:00 Overlaid text on screen: What was the biggest day in your public service career?]
Louis Ranger: September 11. Beautiful day. It's a Tuesday. I'm standing in front of Palais des Congrès, in Montréal.
[00:14:14 Overlaid image of Palais des Congrès.]
Louis Ranger: There's a huge conference in Montréal with about 2000 airport managers from all over North America attending this conference in Montréal, ironically.
[00:14:24 Louis Ranger appears full screen.]
Louis Ranger: I'm waiting for the Minister to arrive because he's delivering a speech around 8:30. The Minister arrives. Good morning, Minister. Great speech, Louis. I'm very comfortable with it. Let me introduce you to the organizers. We walk in that huge auditorium, very dark, with the stage very high. And the Minister is comfortable, I set him up. He's asked me to be in the front row, but the stage is quite high, at least almost 2 metres high.
And I'm sitting there in the dark. The Minister starts a great speech, makes jokes, 2000 people listening to him. And then I feel a presence next to me. I'm alone in the front row and it's one of the organizers who says, Louis, a plane has hit an office tower. I don't know what to do. Over to you. The Minister is delivering his speech, and I said, a plane has what? And he's left already.
And I didn't know what to do because the first thing that crossed my mind, it happens sometimes that a small airplane would hit a building and yes, the pilot dies, but it happens.
And the first thing I said was, am I going to interrupt? I have no idea what the size of this accident is, I don't know where it is, nothing. Am I going to make a fool of myself and stop the Minister and interrupt this great speech? And then I looked back in the room, and I could see at the back of the room already, people were standing up and leaving the room, so there's something major.
And I couldn't get to the Minister because of this physical barrier. And I took the back of my speech, and I wrote, Minister, a plane has hit a tower. Wind up your speech. Do not talk to reporters, talk to Louis. And I handed this over to the facilitator on the stage, and he brought it to the Minister. And by that time, I had managed to get around and go through security and get to the Minister.
But by that time, the Minister already was exiting, and there was a huge crowd of reporters, Montréal reporters, already interviewing the Minister about what happened. And sure enough, Ministers never missing an opportunity to talk to reporters, started to say, well, we don't know, but if it's a terrorist attack... and by that time, what you see on the screen is an arm going around the Minister's shoulder and yanking him out of the screen, that was Louis, because I didn't want my Minister to expose himself and say things that he may regret.
[00:14:14 Overlaid images of the explosions on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre on 9/11.]
Louis Ranger: But essentially, by that time, we knew it was the World Trade Centre, the first tower. And as we walked away from Palais des Congrès, somebody shouted, another plane has hit the south tower.
[00:17:57 Louis Ranger appears full screen.]
Louis Ranger: And it was totally unexpected, and we really didn't know what was going on. What was clear is that the Minister was supposed to be taken back to Dorval airport, and we'd fly to Toronto for another event. And as we got in that van, it was obvious that we had to drive back to Ottawa.
As we drove out of Montréal, we're on the phone with the Deputy Minister, Margaret Bloodworth, and it was very clear that there were about 500 planes over the Atlantic. Half of them had enough fuel to be asked to turn back and go back to their point of departure. But there were another 223 aircraft that were too advanced over the Atlantic that had to be taken care of, and the Americans had closed their airspace.
So, needless to say, we didn't go into a long discussion, but option A is to let all those aircraft dive into the ocean and have 33,000 people die, or option B: ground them at the nearest place.
[00:19:10 Overlaid image of the many grounded airplanes at the Gander, Newfoundland airport.]
Louis Ranger: This was not a question of doing the right analysis. It was a question of being very decisive in a very urgent moment.
And as we were driving, and the radio was on, and we kept hearing about another plane crashing on the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashing in Pennsylvania. And each time we were hearing that, the poor driver was accelerating by 10 km. By the time we got to Casselman, we were flying at about 160 km an hour. And I said, we've got to get to Ottawa in one piece.
But it's when we arrived in Ottawa, and telling the driver, turn right, turn left, because he's never been to Ottawa, and I got to my tower and that was the first moment where I could watch on television
[00:20:03 Overlaid image of the second plane about to crash into the south tower of the World Trade Centre on 9/11.]
Louis Ranger: those aircraft hitting the World Trade Centre in a loop. All day, all you could see is this. And it's the first time that it hit home how terrible this was, because we had made all those decisions without really knowing what was going on.
[00:20:20 Overlaid text on screen: What was your biggest challenge when communicating during a crisis?]
Louis Ranger: The biggest challenge for me, on 9/11 when I got back, as Margaret was taking care of the rest of the town, which is an essential job, I was trying to deal with communications. And we knew what was going on, we knew how many people had been grounded. But rightly or wrongly, we could not get any clearance to issue any press release.
So, we missed the 6:00 news, everybody in the country had made public statements, including the Mayor of Red Deer. Everybody. The Prime Minister had given one scrum and issued a short press release. The Governor General, all the Premiers, offering their condolences to the American people. But people didn't know what was going on and we had all those facts.
And honestly, when I look back, I really had to fight to extract authorization to actually issue a press release that gave some basic facts which hit the 10:00 news and did miracles, because then people realized that nobody got hurt. We grounded all those aircraft; people were safely spending the night in Canada, and it really changed the situation.
I think we learned a lot from that in managing other crises. That, even if you don't know, that you tell people what you know, and that there's more to come. And as we learn more, we will brief them.
[00:22:12 Overlaid text on screen: What did you learn from managing crises?]
Louis Ranger: What I discovered, in managing crises, is you really leave your emotions aside. And in a sense, when you work at Transport Canada, I'm afraid to admit that you are exposed to accidents almost every day. And when I look back, there are several events that had prepared me for 9/11. Three years before, there was the terrible accident with Swissair flight 111
[00:22:12 Overlaid text on screen: Swissair flight 111 crashed on September 2, 1998, off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing all 229 on board. The subsequent investigation determined that faulty wires caused the plane's flammable insulation to catch fire.]
Louis Ranger: that dived on the shore of Nova Scotia, killing over 200 people. And the Deputy was away, and I was Acting. And I remember managing, quote unquote, that crisis.
And you learn very quickly two things: leave your emotions aside; and be resourceful. And that's another strength that I discovered I had. I discovered the hard way.
[00:23:20 Overlaid text on screen: What does leadership mean to you?]
Louis Ranger: It means doing your homework; knowing what you're talking about; getting results. So, in the so-called leadership competencies, there's six competencies, but some are more equal than others. Results, for me, is number one. If you are known to deliver results, it creates a relationship of trust with your supervisors and with your staff. They know you're determined to get results. So, commitment to results.
[00:24:05 Overlaid text on screen: There's a big debate within the government about whether generalists are more likely to reach higher positions than specialists. As a specialist, what is your view on this?]
Louis Ranger: My view on this has evolved a lot. I used to brag about the future belongs to subject matter experts. I think we'd be in big trouble if we just had subject matter experts. But the corollary is true as well. I think we'd be in big trouble if we didn't have subject matter experts. You need both.
And what I've learned also is that there are challenges in departments where you need a generalist, and there are challenges when you need a subject matter expert. And as I said, and I'm quite conscious of the fact that I was the right person at the right time, but there might have been other circumstances where you needed a generalist. And there were times where we needed a generalist.
When Jocelyne Bourgon joined the department in the mid-seventies and over a period of nine months, brought together ideas that had been brewing for 20 years; was able to package this and make this a unique proposal under program review. We needed a generalist to do that.
So, you need both.
[00:25:17 Overlaid text on screen: What did you learn from your mentors?]
Louis Ranger: I learned everything from my mentors. It was not a mentor/mentee relationship, but it truly was. And I say that, not just for the Deputies that I had the privilege of working with, but also Ministers. I know I'm going back, but when you work with someone like Jean-Luc Pépin, who was a teacher of political science, because he went into politics, it was very inspiring. But I had the privilege of working with people like Arthur Kruger, and Jocelyne Bourgon, and Margaret, and even colleagues from Morris Rosenberg, all people who, in their own way, truly inspired me.
[00:26:06 Overlaid text on screen: Is it lonely being a deputy minister?]
Louis Ranger: Yes, it is lonely to be a Deputy Minister, and largely when you decide – I'm not sure I like the expression – to speak truth to power. Speaking truth to power means [you're] very presumptuous. It implies you knew the truth. It was very presumptuous. But if you choose to speak truth to power, you isolate yourself. And I know colleagues are surprised when I say that. I was a Deputy for over seven years. And I would put my job on the line, on average, every six months. And as I say, when the pleasure is gone, the pleasure is gone. It's very capricious.
So, those are lonely moments. And to have the temerity or courage to do that, you have to know your stuff. You just can't go lightly on this.
[00:27:13 Overlaid text on screen: What advice would you give to a junior public servant just starting out their career?]
Louis Ranger: It is a fantastic place to be. I am the product of the public service. All the opportunities that I had were created by the public service. One success leading to another. Just putting your head down, working hard, people eventually recognize you.
It worked for me, and I had this strong bias that the public sector was far better than private sector, but really didn't know what I was talking about. But in the last ten years or so, I have spent time in the private sector, and I'm convinced more than ever that the public sector has so much more to offer. The subjects are more complex. It's much more difficult to get results. But once you achieve that in a complex environment, it's far more rewarding.
[00:28:14 Overlaid text on screen: Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?]
Louis Ranger: There's the myths and realities about the vision. It's presented to you as being very linear. You're a leader, therefore you have the vision, as if this was inspired by the Holy Spirit or something. And then you mobilize people, partnerships, you're innovative, and you get results.
But this thing about the vision is not something that happens instantly. Visions are developed over sometimes decades. It grows, and you cannot expect every leader to have a vision. It'd be total chaos. There has to be some growth in a vision, including carrying the vision and being the guardian of the vision when it happens. But being the guardian and the carrier of the vision is also part of being a leader.
[00:29:17 Video closes with the crew packing up their equipment from the interview.]
[00:29:23 The CSPS animated logo appears onscreen.]
[00:29:30 The Government of Canada wordmark appears, and fades to black.]
