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There were lots of loose ends (I witnessed on the editorial staff of the B&B Commission 1967-69): everybody got tired after several years work and the reforming political drive provided by Andre Laurendeau was sadly missed after his death (Feb. 1968.) Elements include: 1. Leadership in policy was a matter solely for the Commissioners, all part-time except for Laurendeau and Dunton, and several busy with their own careers. Royce Frith alone provided much extra voluntary effort to try to maintain energy and purpose among the Commissioners (whose meetings I attended as supernumerary only for a few months 1967-68.) 2. The output was to be (chiefly) the five volumes of recommendations the Commissioners agreed to produce and (secondly) publishing the best 80-odd of about 120 special studies contracted from individual researchers. It was for the latter list that I was hired when the editorial staff enlarged in late 1967, but I was individually seconded to work with Laurendeau and Research Director Meyer Brownstone on drafting Vol. 2 (Federal public service and Quebec economy.) The list of studies to be published grew shorter and shorter as time and money ran out, and incomplete studies delayed everything further: e.g. my main work in 1968, after completion of my work on Report Vol. 2, was supposed to be editing for publication the study volume on the Quebec economy, but the author had not yet delivered the later chapters of his manuscript . . . 3. Plenty of topics were mooted as deserving either a policy recommendation or a factual background study, e.g. languages in labour unions, symbolic language (as used in Expo 67 public signs, to obviate repeating material in English and French), e.g. differences between "other ethnic" groups that did or did not offer evidence to the Commissioners at their public hearings. (I forget now, but it was then noticed that either Chinese or Japanese Canadians voiced a middling degree of interest and the other group none at all. Another point was that the silence of Commonwealth immigrants, e.g. from India and the Caribbean, suggested they had no views on the B&B debate or no interest in it. The "other ethnic" groups that demanded reassurance that (identifying themselves as non-English and non-French) they were not "second-class citizens" were the Ukrainian, Polish and German communities, all white and largely Canadian-born. By contrast the Dutch, Italian, Greek and other (foreign-born) groups seemed indifferent.) The Commissioners seemed often to agree enthusiastically that such points should be brought to public attention, but as the years dragged on very little actually happened. 4. The Royal Commission had a simple managerial structure but no one could say it was managed in a businesslike way. The office had three groups, Research (mainly co-ordinating academics on their own campuses), Editorial (publishig and printing) and Support (mimeo room, steno pool etc.) It was always difficult for the Commissioners to define simple instructions to give any of these groups, and the Editorial and Support departments felt they had no discretion to act decisively without instructions. Except for Dr. Brownstone I remember no staff manager as generally efficient, let alone inspiring. Don Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)
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