Canada’s 45th general election has returned a Liberal (almost) majority government.   

That new government – and it is new with a new a prime minister and agenda – must now prepare for office and power. That process is called ‘transition’. There is both mythology and mundanity to it. The most extraordinary event – a peaceful transition of power in a democracy – yields an ordinary procedural quality to it. One government is out, another is in. In truth, it is far more consequential, even for a re-elected government familiar with the corridors of power.   

Understanding Transition  

Transition is not a one-off event, the period leading to the swearing-in of a new prime minister and cabinet. That is only one of three crucial phases, if the most visible and symbolic. Transition is a continuous process that commences with pre-Writ planning with no formal end date. It consists of three distinct phases:  

  • Phase I – Planning; pre-Writ up to E-Day (T1)  
  • Phase II – Implementation; E+1 to Day 1 of new government including Swearing-In (T2)  
  • Phase III – Consolidation; Day 2 Onward (T3)  

Transition is both procedural – taking over the machinery of government – and political – asserting the brand of the new government and setting direction and early decisions for longer-term success. Transition planning needs to take both elements into account if it is to be successful.  

What the new government decides to do cannot be separated from how it decides to do it. New processes, from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to the Privy Council Office (PCO) to Cabinet to ministers’ offices, are all up for grabs. Both the incoming prime minister and his team and the permanent public service, are uneasy partners in this initial phase. They know they should work together and may even want to work together, but time is sometimes needed to figure out how that will be done.   

Unlike Vegas, what happens in transition does not stay behind the scenes. It is very public in its application and results. Transition carries over into voters’ perceptions of the new government and prime minister. Mishandled, it can establish deep and damaging views of the new government’s competence that will be hard to shake. Done well, it can give a new government exceptional momentum to achieve its political and policy goals for the country.  

Goals and Strategy  

Transition should have one overriding strategic goal: to quickly and effectively get a grip on the decision-making apparatus of government and begin to successfully implement the agenda of the new government and prime minister.  

This is, after all, about governing. But there are several important sub or tactical goals:   

  • Generate political momentum – converting election enthusiasm into political momentum to implement the new government’s agenda.  
  • Establish policy priorities – tell Canadians and the public service what the new government will focus on first, and why, to set the table for results and begin to orient the machinery of government in the desired direction for longer-term action and results.  
  • Communicate a new leadership style – show the public the leadership style of the new prime minister, using this as a tool to both generate momentum and build political capital.   
  • Build the team – putting the internal team in place – Cabinet and political staff, first; Clerk and deputy ministers to follow – to implement the new government’s agenda, giving it purpose and direction.  

Audiences  

There are two distinct audiences that matter during Transition: the public and public servants. Both are important but for different reasons.   

A transition process that focuses exclusively on government bureaucrats in the first two weeks before the swearing-In, will find a confused and suspicious public once the new prime minister and Cabinet resurface. Electoral momentum from the win will be dissipated. The public is legitimately interested, and perhaps trepidatious, about what comes next, so deliberately engaging with them will help reduce anxiety and, more importantly, build political support for the government’s decisions.   

The purpose of thinking about audiences is that transition is the first step in the new PM and government forging the relationship it wants. Secrecy and mistrust will undermine any relationship, beginning with a new government’s honeymoon.   

Accordingly, it is crucial to prepare and implement a two-track strategy of engaging with public servants while, at the same time, informing the public of goals, priorities, and timing. This requires a complementary communications strategy for the incoming prime minister, with purpose-built events and activities along the way from E+1 to Swearing-In Day, as part of Phase II transition.  

Within the public service, there are multiple sub-audiences: deputy ministers and senior officials in line departments; ABCs (agencies, boards, and commissions) senior officials and governance board members; as well as rank-and-file public servants. While it is impossible to meet with all these sub-audiences during Transition Phase II, targeted messages via public media and video messages across the whole public service during Transition Phase III can suffice. Follow-up meetings as required and on a proper schedule then cement the relationships and messaging.  

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 two-day 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:  

  • 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 in-house  
  • 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:   

“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  

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.