Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22 - Issue 2

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30 / Canadian Government Executive // February 2016
Prime Minister Trudeau is off on one of the most intense
first 100 days of any Canadian prime minister. Appoint-
ing his Cabinet and senior staff, leading four internation-
al government delegations abroad, meeting Parliament
for the first time, chairing his first Cabinet meeting, responding to
the refugee crisis, and hosting press conferences were just some
of the new prime minister’s activities before the year-end break.
All of this was accomplished without the benefit of previous man-
agerial or Cabinet experiences.
By any measure, Trudeau has laid out an ambitious array of
short and long term aspirations for himself and his government.
During the 78-day election campaign, his team made more than
300 electoral promises in their platform document, Better Service
for Canadians. The promises cover a wide range of policy areas,
some of which are targeted to addressing particular policy areas
while others are designed to change the basic governance struc-
ture of the country such as Senate and electoral reform. All of
them will require careful planning and flawless implementation
if they are going to succeed, particularly within the normal elec-
toral four-year cycle.
At the heart of the plan to implement its wide ranging policy
agenda is the prime minister’s decision to create the Cabinet
Committee on Agenda and Results. Prime Minister Trudeau
will chair this crucial committee of eleven members, and he has
stocked it with the most critical ministers: Finance, International
Trade, Leader in the House of Commons, Public Safety. Its princi-
ple purpose is: to “set the government’s forward agenda and track
progress on priorities.” In other words, it is designed to make
sure that the government delivers on its promises and also to as-
sess the effectiveness of existing programs in order to move un-
derperforming program spending to areas of high priority.
The Trudeau team has been quietly signalling to Canadians
that they are determined to achieve policy results and want to be
held accountable for their actions. Their messaging was very con-
sistent in their election platform, the speech from the Throne and
the mandate letters, all of which has signaled the commitment to
transforming government into a far more effective and efficient
organization. As an example, the mandate letters for President
of the Treasury Board, Scott Brison, and Minister of Democratic
Institutions, Maryam Monsef, directs them to, “establish new per-
formance standards…and set up a mechanism to conduct rigorous
assessments of the performance of key government services and
report findings publicly. As well, develop a new service strategy
that aims to create a single online window for all government
services with new performance standards.”
In this case, the new government is drawing on the experiences
of many of the senior PMO staffers who worked previously for
former Premier Dalton McGuinty. At that time, the Premier’s
office became aware of the newly elected Blair government’s ef-
forts in the UK to streamline government and to make it more
effective by rigorously measuring outcomes and creating deliv-
ery units under the leadership of Michael Barber in the prime
minister’s office. Many of the best features of the UK model were
implemented by Tony Dean, then Cabinet Secretary of Ontario,
who has captured his assessment of how to improve and manage
government services in a recently published book, Building Better
Public Services.
It is not surprising to learn that Dean has been advising the
Trudeau team about his experiences in Ontario where he worked
closely with many of the same people who are in the current PMO.
As one of Canada’s most savvy administrators, Dean would have
advised the prime minister that the success of his ambitious policy
agenda would depend on his ability to: limit his priorities to only a
few, set performance targets based on measurable outcomes, hold
ministers and deputy ministers to account for their areas of respon-
sibility, and regularly and publicly report on results.
In order to ensure that the public service is an integral part of
this new emphasis on results, the government recently announced
Matthew Mendelsohn’s appointment as Deputy Secretary to the
Cabinet (Results and Delivery). He joins the Privy Council Office
from the University of Toronto and the Government of Ontario
where he served as a Deputy Minister when Gerald Butts was
Principal Secretary to the Premier. With the Mendelsohn’s ap-
pointment the government is now well into the consolidation
phase of their transition to power by completing the personnel
and machinery changes that will drive the whole Cabinet process
for the next four years.
Many of the elements of this results driven approach are remi-
niscent of the 1970’s work of the Planning Branch at the Treasury
Board Secretariat. At that time, Prime Minister Trudeau, the el-
der, adopted a similarly strategic approach that emphasized the
importance of effectiveness and efficiency in government. Sadly,
after only a few years of operation, Trudeau abolished the Branch
when its work revealed the ineffectiveness of a number of the
government’s sacred programs and embarrassed the government
in a pre-election year.
This Trudeau government starts with a much stronger commit-
ment to getting government right, has proclaimed a strong belief
in open government, and has also hired experienced people who
have implemented a similar system in a provincial jurisdiction.
Like the success of Program Review in 1995, it, in the end, all de-
pends on the determination of the prime minister to make the
tough decisions. The entrenched interests inside of government
and in the wider policy community will inevitably rally around to
protect programs that are no longer working in the public inter-
est. Let the governing begin.
David Zussman is a Senior Fellow in the Graduate School
of Public and International Affairs at the University of
Ottawa and is Research Advisor to the Public Sector
Practice of Deloitte.
The Last Word David Zussman
Transition: New Ideas, New People
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