Spring 2025 // Canadian Government Executive / 9 FEATURE • Amalgamating service delivery so there is one point of access for Canadians in how they interact with government programs • Consolidating grants and contributions that serve similar purposes and are delivered to the same organizations across multiple departments • Better leveraging technology to improve the automation of routine tasks and inquiries from the public and reducing the need for additional hiring (AI) • Significantly reducing reliance on external consultants, while improving the capacity of the public service to hire expertise inhouse • Better managing litigation and contingent liabilities and improving asset management practices. The Carney government has also signalled some significant machinery changes, including establishing a separate Defence Procurement Agency and Build Canada Homes. Defining Transition Success Transition is both a highly public and a highly private process. It is also highly political and highly bureaucratic. Success is therefore multiplex, not singular. For the governing prime minister and party, success comes in the form of public approval for what it is doing and how it is doing it. For the public service, success comes in the form of the smooth implementation of government direction and its agenda. Framing transition priorities and success within designated time frames, such as a parliamentary session, is part of determining political success. This includes setting out priority legislation and announcing platform commitments kept. Governments take platform commitments seriously, tracking and reporting on them for the most part. An analysis published in Policy Options found this: For the public service, success has both a professional and personal dimension. Public servants will welcome the new government with overt professionalism. They take pride in helping new ministers take on the complicated, demanding, and myriad tasks of running a government and country. Briefing information on every conceivable topic can be found. Most important, though, in shaping that success is the briefing information provided by the public service on the government’s most important election priorities. If advising on implementing the incoming government’s agenda is job one, building effective working relationships – the personal – is job two. Successful ministers forge good working relationships with their deputy ministers and senior public servants. Transition offers the most crucial time to do so. These private interactions will help determine the public success of transition for the new government. And they will help determine the political longevity of individual ministers. Conclusion There is no official end point to transition. A new government is simply governing at that juncture. Sometimes outside events – a pandemic, a recession, a war – will upend any government’s transition intentions and timetable. What matters is appreciating that transition is a dynamic process with high stakes for all involved. Successful governments see it as an extended process well beyond the swearing-in. They understand it is a political priority-setting and communications exercise as much as anything else. If a five-week election campaign seems long to leaders and candidates, a four-year governing mandate seems short as issues and events pile up. Transition is their first, best chance to assert themselves for the direction and agenda they were elected to implement. How they manage transition in year one will have a lot to say whether they get re-elected in year four. David McLaughlin is Executive Editor, CGE Media. David has over 30 years of senior-level public governance experience at both the federal and provincial government levels. He is a former Clerk of the Executive Council and Cabinet Secretary in Manitoba, deputy minister to the premier in New Brunswick, and chief of staff to the federal finance minister and prime minister of Canada. “Justin Trudeau’s second Liberal minority government (2021-2025) fulfilled 44 per cent of the 354 promises made during the 2021 election, while 32 per cent were partially fulfilled and 24 per cent broken. In total, 76 per cent of promises have been fully or partially fulfilled, a higher percentage than the average for Canadian governments since 1993 (70 per cent). However, only 44 per cent of promises were fully kept, below the average of 56 per cent.” “Canadian political parties keep more promises than you might think” Lisa Birch, Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard, April 23, 2025, Policy Options
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