8 / Canadian Government Executive / Spring 2025 FEATURE Meeting with Deputy Ministers / Civil Servants An early meeting with the DM cadre is advised. This should take place during T3, not T2, ideally in the first week of the new government. The goal is to communicate priorities and set expectations for relationships with ministers, service to the public, and results for the government. Set out platform priorities. Initial chance to tell them what to work on and how to do their work. Assuage any lingering concerns about working with a new government and what comes next. Set standards for professionalism. ‘One-team government’. This meeting is not a briefing session for the premier; rather, it is a communications and team-building exercise by the premier. Use this to convey vision, priorities, and expectations on results, outcomes, ‘no surprises’ rule, etc. A subsequent virtual session with the whole civil service should follow later that same week. The goals are the same as for the DM meeting. But stronger focus on their public service ethic, getting results for people, and wanting their advice. Goal is to begin to create ‘one-team’ civil service. Mandate Letters to Ministers The previous Trudeau government issued mandate letters to ministers following their swearing-in to provide more detailed direction on specific priorities and issues within the minister’s portfolio. Mandate letters serve three key purposes: • First, they identify priorities and timeframes across and within the government to ensure greater public service focus and political cohesion. • Second, they provide the public with more information on government priorities, actions, and timeframes, increasing accountability. • Third, they give a common communications framework for new ministers as to what to say on specific issues, at various times to the media. Mandate letters are a key part of transition as they go down a level beyond often general platform commitments to immediately give the public service direction on what to work on first. They communicate focus and urgency to the apparatus of government. Controversially, mandate letters have become seen as a politically directed means of asserting control by the PMO over the whole of government. Meant to focus government’s attention, they can restrict it. Mandate letters should not ideally be so prescriptive that they prevent diligent ministers and deputy ministers from identifying: • new and emerging priorities requiring the government’s attention • how best to accomplish the government’s goals without ruling out innovative ways of doing so. A new PM should consider less intrusive mandate letters as one mechanism to restore Cabinet government and individual accountability. Cabinet Choosing a Cabinet is a highly personal and political task for an incoming prime minister. There is no ideal formula. PMs are restricted by who the voters choose as MPs in the governing caucus and where they won. Regional, linguistic, gender, and ethnocultural considerations all go into the mix. Generally, PMs seek to put their best political and communications performers into the most important portfolios. They take personality and operating style into account when matching with departments and DMs. Later, a shuffle of deputy ministers often occurs to get this alignment done even better. Prime Minister Carney’s first Cabinet shrunk the size of the ministry and changed names of some departments to convey his priorities. This is a reminder that Cabinet are not just governance exercises, they are communications exercises too. Political Staff Good political staff are essential for ensuring the government’s agenda - policy and political – is implemented. Recruiting and training political staff is therefore key to a government’s transition success. Political staff lie within the realm of ‘grey governance’. Not public servants and therefore not bound by the traditional hiring rules, they are still subject to various accountability frameworks. Transition is the time to train and orient them to good governance principles and practices. In practice this means organizing a twoday staff orientation early in the mandate to train-up the new team and instill proper political management skills and good governance accountability and ethics. A training agenda typically covers: • How government works • How Parliament works • Role of Ministers, MPs, and political staff • Role of public service • Working with deputy ministers and public servants • Communications, media relations, and issues management • Constituency relations • Expenses, travel, hospitality rules • Ethics, conflicts of interest, accountability guidelines. • Behaviour, harassment, and code of conduct norms and guidelines. Machinery of Government New prime ministers are often tempted to make changes to the overall machinery and structure of government right out of the gate. This can be counterproductive as it is disruptive internally and generates a disproportionate amount of public service time looking inward instead of focusing on pressing government priorities. Such changes are always more complicated than anticipated, often requiring legislative and regulatory changes as well as budgetary adjustments in what is presented to Parliament. And they have ‘interdependencies’ where a machinery change in one department has a spillover impact on another. Figuring this out takes time. Nevertheless, there is a good case to be made that the machinery of government needs a serious rethink post-pandemic, with big economic and financially transformative issues facing the country. Identifying this as a study priority with an internal deadline of 18 months, gives a new government time to assess what changes are needed. An external expert commission or task force would yield useful advice to the prime minister and Privy Council Office, which houses the machinery of government unit. The Liberal platform commits to a review process that could feed into this thinking, promising to “…launch a comprehensive review of government spending in order to increase the federal government’s productivity.” The review would focus on the following:
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