Rob Fonberg, former Deputy Minister of National Defense will teach MUN102 in 2017.
DANIELLE PAL
The Munk One Program is excited to welcome Rob Fonberg, former Deputy Minister of National Defense. Rob will be teaching MUN102H: Building Policy Solutions in the 21st Century. We recently had the chance to sit down with him and discuss his career and decision to bring his vast experience in public service to the classroom.
Q: Tell us a little bit about your career.
A: I worked as an applied economist in the government in the early part of my career. Somewhere along the line I developed a passion for public policy – and not just writing about it – but crafting and shaping the advice that goes to our ministers, the cabinet and the prime minister for decision.
I spent the last 15 years of my public service career as a Deputy Minister – in the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board, the Department of International Trade and National Defense. I’ve had the opportunity to work on challenging and high profile policy decisions, like the Smart Border Initiative, which looked at reopening and improving traffic flows across the Canadian and US border following the 9/11 attacks. Being appointed to work with the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Manley, to lead an important file like this at such a critical time was a privilege and a highlight of my career.
Q: What are some of the key lessons you have learned from working in the public and private sectors?
A: The challenges that we face in the public sector are inherently more complex than the private sector. Making money, which is what the private sector is about, is relatively straightforward. Decisions in the public sector are at their root about the future of the country, so you have to be very careful about making mistakes. Given the nature of decision making and accountability, leadership in the public sector is more challenging than in the private sector. You don’t have the same vertical chain of command as you do in the private sectors; there is more ambiguity in the leadership space. There are partisan and non-partisan interests, the electoral cycle, and other factors like stakeholder management that make policy advice and decision making more challenging.
Q: What would you say are your areas of expertise?
A: I am not an expert; I am a generalist. Being an expert will only take you so far in trying to craft solutions and get results in public service. There aren’t that many experts out there who you would also look at and say, that is a brilliant policy person; that person got great results. Most stuff requires knowledge and analytical capabilities, but you don’t need to be an expert to be a great policy person.
One observation from sitting in on Joseph Wong’s Munk One class stands out in my mind:
The readings for that day were two different articles by “academic experts” on climate change; one was borderline a climate change denier, the other was a borderline climate change alarmist. At the end, the class had no choice but to question the role of expertise. They were both experts, but had fundamentally different conclusions. Policy development and advice in the public sector has to find a path through the views of experts with very different views.
Q: What do you hope to bring to the Munk One program?
A: I hope that I will be be able to start to kindle some passion. I also want to be able to help the students understand that passion without results is different than passion with results. For me, the end game and the ultimate objective is for passion to turn into results. Passion without results is a little hard to sustain.
Achieving results, especially policy results, is very complex. The decision making space is complex. Getting results takes time, thought, and sound analysis. It takes foresight, understanding pressure points, and navigating through challenges. But in the end, working for the public interest is so rewarding because it is ultimately all about building our community and our country.
Q: What do you see are key contributions that youth can make to public life in Canada?
A: Youth today can bring unbridled passion to issues. They also tend to see the world in a much more holistic way, certainly more than I did when I started in University. They have the world at their fingertips through technology, and have the ability to communicate using this technology. They don’t just see social policy, economic policy, and so on. They see it in a more integrated and holistic way that is important to the kinds of contributions they can make.
If there is something that you care about at this stage of your academic career, you can leverage your voice by broadening it through your network. Find people who care enough about your issue to do something about it. We often talk about how today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders. But today’s youth are not just tomorrow’s leaders. Today’s youth are today’s leaders, and they need to see themselves as just that.
Q: What piece of advice would you give to first year students who are passionate about global challenges and making an impact?
A: First and foremost, don’t ever lose your passion. But, if you don’t figure out how to temper your passion for the reality of how life works, you will get frustrated. You need to see the pursuit of your passion and see where it fits into the political reality. You need to be aware of your environment and the context in which you’re trying to generate solutions. Be savvy. Be thoughtful. Be opportunistic. Try to understand how decisions are made, and how tough issues progress to decisions.
Q: What is something you wish you knew as an undergraduate?
A: This is a hard one. I just followed my gut. I was in engineering for 4 days, but then I went to one class and realized I’d probably fail – partly because my math wasn’t strong enough and partly because it didn’t ‘grab’ me. So I followed my gut again and went into economics and then grad school, then into the public service. Economics worked for me – it gave me a lens into what what was going on in the world that made sense for me. I never really thought too much about any of these decisions. They just happened instinctively. It all seemed to make sense and eventually this passion emerged. So you could say that my career was based on a long series of fortunate accidents. If I could give anyone advice at the undergraduate level, I would not counsel them to “get serious.” I would tell them to follow their instincts for what interests them, and hopefully passion will follow.