Canadian Government Executive - Volume 22 - Issue 3

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30 / Canadian Government Executive // March 2016
The Prime Minister is now well into the consolidation
phase of his transition from electioneering to govern-
ing. In practical terms, it means that he is confronting
the enormous challenges of delivering on his more than
300 election promises.
While the first 100 days are typically very busy for a new prime
minister, they have been particularly eventful for Justin Trudeau.
During his first month in power, he presided over the swearing
in of a gender-balanced Cabinet, attended four international con-
ferences, paid his respects to the victims of the Paris terrorist at-
tacks, prepared a Speech from the Throne, presided over the first
post-election meeting of members of parliament in the House of
Commons, confronted the devastating effects of plummeting oil
prices, and met with the premiers. Not bad for a neophyte prime
minister with limited management experience.
Based on his high activity level, Canadians are beginning to de-
velop a view on how the prime minister is going to govern the
country for the next four years. One important characteristic of
his governing style has been his reliance on inclusive consulta-
tive processes to help guide his decision making. His preference
for a “whole of government approach,” which includes cities and
provinces, is likely to be a defining characteristic of his govern-
ment and stands in stark contrast to the approach taken by his
recent predecessors, Harper and Chretien.
One prime example of the faith he has placed in the value of
inclusive processes was the creation of the Cabinet Committee
on Agenda and Results. This centrally situated cabinet commit-
tee replaces the Priority and Planning Committee that served
to facilitate Harper’s ability to manage the day-to-day activities
of individual ministers. Instead, Trudeau has moved away from
this centralized control and has placed his faith on developing a
system that measures and reports on program outputs and out-
comes. By relying on the explicit instructions described in the
ministerial mandate letters and focusing on results rather than
control over ministerial behaviour, he is gambling that his min-
isters will ‘deliver the goods’ under the watchful oversight role of
the Agenda and Results Committee.
The Agenda and Results Committee is the latest manifestation
of a prime minister emphasising outcomes over inputs. While
the federal government has dabbled with similar models since
the 1970’s, the Trudeau government (and the PMO staff) has bor-
rowed extensively from the experiences of the McGuinty govern-
ment in Ontario. Former Premier McGuinty also attempted to
take a whole of government approach to education and health
policies – an approach that was modeled on former UK Prime
Minister Tony Blair’s creation of the Prime Minister’s Delivery
Unit in 10 Downing Street.
The new Cabinet Committee on Agenda and Results was creat-
ed on November 4th when the Cabinet was sworn into office and
its work has been reinforced by many of the directives contained
in the individual Ministerial mandate letters. For example, Scott
Brison, the President of Treasury Board has been directed ‘to set
up a mechanism to conduct rigorous assessments of the perfor-
mance of key government services and to report findings pub-
licly’. In addition, he has also been asked to take a leadership
role ‘to review policies to improve the use of evidence and data in
program innovation and evaluation, more open data, and a more
modern approach to comptrollership’. Finally, the Prime Minister
asks the minister ‘to instill a strengthened culture of measure-
ment, evaluation, and innovation in program and policy design
and delivery’ in the public service.
Moreover, the Cabinet Committee on Agenda and Results is
now supported by Matthew Mendelsohn, a veteran Queens Park
Deputy Minister and close colleague of many of the current PMO
staff. His experience in Ontario and his familiarity with the Prime
Minister and those around him should minimize the inconsistent
behaviour of new governments which occurs early in their man-
date when there is an initial lack of trust and mutual respect be-
tween public servants and politicians.
The emphasis on outcomes arrives at a crucial time in the life
cycle of the government. Due to the many costly spending prom-
ises made during the election and the uncertainty of the global
economy, there is a critical need for the government to sharpen
its pencil more than anticipated to reflect lower tax revenues.
Fortunately, over the past years the public service has been ac-
tively preparing the groundwork. In particular, the public service
has been involved in four cost cutting exercises and there are a
number of major opportunities that arise from this work. As well,
the recently released Departmental Performance Reports (DPR)
reveal valuable information about the performance of all govern-
ment programs. Finally, Treasury Board’s updated evaluation
policy will soon have many summative evaluations coming on
stream that will reveal the value of many government programs.
Public management veterans will see many potential risks in
the PM’s approach. For one, there is the risk that the Cabinet Com-
mittee might exercise too much oversight and make the decision-
making process too complex by spending an inordinate amount of
time on consultations. Second, outcomes are hard to measure and
it is not clear at this point how valuable the DPRs and the summa-
tive evaluations will be in making spending decisions. And third,
up to now there has not been a strong commitment to making
spending decisions based on program performance so the culture
around outcomes and spending needs to be developed in a short
period of time.
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
The Cabinet Committee on Agenda and Results
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