Glassco Royal Commission

In September 1962, the Royal Commission on Government Organization (the Glassco Commission) released a 646-page report. It had been directed "to inquire into and report upon the organization and methods of operation of the departments and agencies of the Government of Canada, and to recommend the changes therein which they consider would best promote efficiency, economy and improved service in the dispatch of public business." The Commission called for a drastic decentralization of authority, and full accountability of that authority in pursuit of clearly established responsibilities and objectives.

Of vital interest to the National Defence Employees Association (NDEA) was the recommendation that departments be given "the requisite authority to manage their own personnel and be accountable for efficient performance." NDEA saw such a change as placing a greater responsibility on the departmental associations such as NDEA and thus scuttling the plans of those advocating one big association, in particular their old nemesis the Civil Service Association of Canada (CSAC).

Glassco further said that departments should therefore be left to devise their own machinery and work out patterns of representation acceptable to their own employees. Consequently, NDEA felt justified to assume a new and vastly enlarged role in embracing the absolute majority of National Defence employees. Splinter groups such as CSAC would no longer be allowed to "throw a monkey wrench into an efficiently working machine."

NDEA's re-energized mandate to sign up members obviously struck a nerve with CSAC, whose President Cal Best attacked NDEA for unethical organization tactics. For his part, Ken Green took it as a compliment concluding "The thing you fear most is that at which you first throw mud."