White Paper: Issues and Tensions in Selecting Ministers for Cabinet

Selecting cabinet ministers is never as easy as it might appear to interested outsiders, like us. An important political dynamic is that concern for provincial or regional representation can, at times, outweigh or even overwhelm concern for political knowledge and experience in cabinet selection. Simply put, if a province returns only one government MP, that person, regardless of education, background, and experience, is almost guaranteed a seat in cabinet thanks to the representational principle. At the same time, if another province has returned a large contingent of government MPs, such as Ontario’s 100 Liberals from 103 ridings in 2000, the vast majority have no realistic hope of ever getting into cabinet. Caucus members from the larger province, disadvantaged by this representational logic, may begin to look at the single caucus member from the other province, now holding a cabinet position, with quiet resentment. The left-out members may feel, with some justification, that they are each individually better suited for the job than the cabinet member who holds the position only by virtue of province of origin.

There are two basic lessons to be derived from this. One is the importance of regional representation in cabinet composition. The other is that cabinet selection often breeds resentment and rivalry between the “ins” and the “outs.” It is a fallacy that government parties always unite loyally behind their cabinet. While the government demands that unity and loyalty be the public face of the party, more often than not, behind closed doors the governing party is marked by divisions and rivalries between caucus members and certain ministers. And while most caucus members usually can be counted on to demonstrate loyalty to the PM, such a display of loyalty and support will not be extended equally to all other members of cabinet.

Ministers as Member of Parliament

Ministerial roles and responsibilities extend beyond department and cabinet responsibilities (Savoie 1999, 240–48; Tardi 2010, 31–32). A minister remains an MP and a caucus member and becomes a much more significant actor within the governing party. Ministers must continue to bear all the duties expected of MPs: they take part in Question Period, parliamentary debates, and parliamentary committee meetings, especially in relation to their departmental responsibilities; they continue with routine constituency work, fulfilling the role of local representative for the home riding and ombudsperson for constituents seeking assistance with the federal bureaucracy. All ministers k

now, or should know, they must assure local electors that, notwithstanding their larger national responsibilities, they remember where they came from, whom they directly represent in parliament, and whose support they need in the next election.

Ministers also remain members of the government caucus and are expected to maintain a close and open relationship with it, being available to discuss government policy and administrative matters, maintaining and building backbench awareness of and support for the activities of government. This liaison is significant to the long-term success of any minister, especially if he or she hopes to be promoted to more important cabinet positions, with even more advanced and demanding leadership requirements. Ministers who ignore the caucus do so at their political peril.

Ministers are seen as primary or secondary party leaders, depending on their portfolios and experience, as loyal lieutenants to the prime minister, and some as future party leaders. Ministers are definitely perceived as spokespeople within cabinet for their home province and region, some indeed owing their presence in cabinet to that role. Other ministers also represent the concerns of women, visible and ethnic minorities, religious minorities, people with disabilities, or Indigenous people. Whatever role a minister has must be effectively performed not only within the government but also within the party. In practice this means the minister must attend innumerable caucus and party events to promote everything from regional concerns and policy interests to the program ambitions of the social groups the minister is deemed to represent.

It seems a crushing workload. As ministers have long recognized, they could devote 24 hours a day, seven days a week to their portfolios and still not accomplish everything they want to. And what about the pressing demands of constituents, parliament, caucus, and the party? In this environment of competing obligations, time is often a minister’s most precious commodity. And of course, ministers also have personal lives. Most yearn for more time with family and friends, cherishing time away from the glare and heat of public responsibilities. And at worst, as Steve Paikin (2003) has documented, the demands of public life can lead to such stress-related problems as the alienation of friends and family members, marriage breakdown, and self-destructive behaviour such as alcohol and drug abuse.

When you think of ministers, reflect for a moment on the stresses and time demands they face, and the sacrifices they must make as their private lives are reconfigured by public duties.

White Paper: Departmental Hierarchy, Size, and Magnitude

All departments are hierarchical and pyramidal. They are multilayered bureaucracies with an operational base much larger than their middle-management layer of directors and directors general and an even smaller number of senior managers—associate deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers—who constitute the leading administrative and policy actors within the department headquarters in Ottawa. At the apex of department power and authority stands the minister and, just below him or her, the deputy minister: the most senior public servant within the department. This hierarchical structure is common throughout all governments both in this country and abroad.

The institutional form is valuable for its ability to provide both a clear line of managerial command and control from the top down and, in theory, a clear line of information from field-level operations and regional offices up to senior management in the headquarters. Of course, Canadian government history is replete with examples of communication breaking down for various reasons, leading to all sorts of government and political problems. In 2010–11, for example, a senior aide in Prime Minister Harper’s own office, Bruce Carson, was allegedly involved in influence peddling and conflicts of interest. More troubling was that Carson was a disbarred lawyer who had been convicted of fraud. The prime minister had to admit that he did not know how Carson passed his security clearance and that he would not have approved his hiring had he known about the aide’s past. The prime minister also claimed that officials in the PMO had failed to communicate effectively among themselves and to the prime minister (CBC 2011). In a similar fashion, in 2013, Prime Minister Harper’s office corroborated media reports that the PM’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, had personally given Conservative senator Mike Duffy (who was facing allegations of unethical conduct), $90,000 to pay back questionable expenses. This revelation set off a media storm that went on for more than three years, witnessing a police investigation into Wright’s actions, corruption charges being brought against Senator Duffy, and a cloud of suspicion hanging over the behaviour of the prime minister (CBC 2015). Yet no government has tried to fundamentally transform this system of organizing government work. As is often said within government, the system is fine—the problems are with the people who run it.

In understanding departments, it is useful to consider size and operational magnitude. Most service departments by necessity possess a massive staff of junior and middle managers spread across regional and local offices. Departments such as Agriculture and Agri-Food and Employment and Social Development Canada employ thousands of public servants, most of whom work in offices found in all the major and in many minor urban locations across the country. Other departments, such as Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, also employ thousands, with field-level employees assigned to more territorially specific parts of the country—the east and west coasts for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the major urban centres and international entry points for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Likewise, officials in the Departments of Environment and Climate Change Canada; Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada; and Transport Canada are dispersed across the country, as are most of the service personnel in National Defence.

Senior management faces a real challenge in showing leadership, maintaining effective communications, and generally exerting command and control of large numbers of staff over a country this size. Though the advent of modern telecommunications has clearly helped, the issue is always of concern to those at office headquarters in Ottawa–Gatineau. Often those at both ends of the chain lament the inability of the “other side” to fully comprehend and appreciate the organizational and administrative difficulties they face.

The sheer magnitude of ordinary departmental decision making also poses an enormous challenge. Any service department operates dozens of separate programs, providing services to the many individuals, interest groups, and/or businesses within its purview. On any given day, a department interacts with thousands of citizens/clients and its officials make thousands of decisions about

• entitlement to services;
• the nature of services owed to any given citizen, group, or corporation;
• the delivery or non-delivery of services;
• the obligations of citizens, groups, or corporations to the department; and
• the future needs of citizens.

Service departments thus interact with clients routinely, and their staff and junior management make most of the decisions about how to apply the programs that flow from policy directions received from supervisors and more senior management. Senior management, for its part, routinely fine-tunes the programming and assesses program and policy strengths and weaknesses, administrative and managerial capabilities, new initiatives, and ongoing financial and personnel management issues. In short, senior management is occupied with scores of pressing matters requiring countless decisions on a daily basis. And this is also the case with the support departments, although on a smaller scale.

Any department is thereby awash in decision making, from the most bureaucratically routine to the most politically significant. The departments are, in both theory and practice, the key actors for linking a government to the country it serves, and departmental decision making constitutes a significant proportion of the substance of public sector management.

Case Study: The Trudeau Cabinet, 2022

The Trudeau Cabinet, March 2022, in Order of Precedencer

Person	Position
Justin Trudeau	Prime Minister
Chrystia Freeland	Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
Lawrence MacAulay	Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence
Carolyn Bennett	Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, and Associate Minister of Health
Dominic LeBlanc	Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities
Jean-Yves Duclos	Minister of Health
Marie-Claude Bibeau	Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Mélanie Joly	Minister of Foreign Affairs
Dianne Lebouthillier	Minister of National Revenue
Harjit S. Sajjan	Minister of International Development and Minister Responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada
Carla Qualtrough	Minister of Employment, Workforce Development, and Disability Inclusion
Patty Hajdu	Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister Responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario
Francois-Philippe Champagne	Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry
Karina Gould	Minister of Families, Children and Social Development
Ahmed Hussen	Minister of Housing and Diversity Inclusion
Seamus O’Regan Jr.	Minister of Labour
Ginette Petitpas Taylor	Minister of Official Languages and Minister Responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
Pablo Rodriguez	Minister of Canadian Heritage and Quebec Lieutenant
Bill Blair	President of the Queen’s Privy Council and Minister of Emergency Preparedness
Mary Ng	Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development
Filomena Tassi	Minister of Public Services and Procurement
Jonathan Wilkinson	Minister of Natural Resources
David Lametti	Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Joyce Murray	Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard
Anita Anand	Minister of National Defence
Mona Fortier	President of the Treasury Board
Steven Guilbeault	Minister of Environment and Climate Change
Marco E.L. Mendicino	Minister of Public Safety
Marc Miller	Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations
Daniel Vandal	Minister of Northern Affairs, Minister Responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, and Minister Responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency
Omar Alghabra	Minister of Transport
Randy Boissonnault	Minister of Tourism and Associate Minister of Finance
Sean Fraser	Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Mark Holland	Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Gudie Hutchings	Minister of Rural Economic Development
Marci Ien	Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth
Helena Jaczek	Minister Responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario
Kamal Khera	Minister of Seniors
Pascale St-Onge	Minister of Sport and Minister Responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec

On October 26, 2021, Governor General Mary Simon swore in the cabinet that will assist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he leads his minority government in the 44th parliament. This cabinet consists of 38 ministers plus the prime minister.

The composition of this cabinet makes clear that the prime minister was very conscious of most of the ideas regarding cabinet selection outlined in Thinking Government.

Regional Representation

This cabinet boasts members from every region and most provinces, with the exception of Saskatchewan.

Ontario	16
Quebec	11
British Columbia	4
Alberta	1
Manitoba	1
Saskatchewan	0
New Brunswick	2
Nova Scotia	1
Prince Edward Island	1
Newfoundland and Labrador	2

Note the dominance of Ontario: the 16 ministers from Ontario represent 41 per cent of the total cabinet. The 11 ministers from Quebec constitute another 28 per cent of the cabinet. So fully 69 per cent of the cabinet’s membership comes from just two provinces. As these two provinces are the most populous provinces in the country, this is not surprising but it does highlight the political weight carried by Ontario and Quebec in federal governmental decision making and where the Trudeau government is looking to make electoral gains in the next election. The regional disparity evident here also signals a dangerous fault-line in Canadian politics and government, one that the Trudeau government must be aware of as it is called to govern in the interests of the entire country.

Female Representation

Eighteen women have cabinet posts, making this the second gender-balanced cabinet in Canadian history. The first was Justin Trudeau’s first cabinet appointed at the outset of his majority government elected in 2015. When asked, on the day that first cabinet was sworn-in, why he had appointed so many women, Justin Trudeau famously responded, “Because it’s 2015.” The year 2021 shows that, thankfully, nothing has changed on that front. Women continue to hold some of the most significant cabinet portfolios: Foreign Affairs, National Defence, Indigenous Services, Treasury Board, Public Services and Procurement, Agriculture, and Employment and Workforce Development. And a woman, Chrystia Freeland, is both the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister.

Dispatch Box: Mandate Letters

Dispatch Box: The Shifting Size of Cabinets

Dispatch Box: What Does a Department Do?

White Paper: The Evolution of the Departments of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Indigenous Services Canada

1. What are the key powers and responsibilities of a prime minister?

In answering this question make reference to and explain the following roles and responsibilities, illustrating your responses with both recent and historical examples of a prime minister exercising these powers:

• head of government
• governing party leader
• cabinet leader
• chief government policy maker
• chief architect of government structure
• responsible for appointment of senior executive and judicial officials
• special direction and oversight relationship with the clerk of the Privy Council respecting the management of the federal public service
• special relationship with the governor general, especially in relationship to calling elections
• government leader in parliament
• chief communicator for the government
• chief international representative of the country

2. What are the key powers and responsibilities of a minister?

Your response should encompass the following approaches:

• Explain the role of the minister as the head of a department.
• Compare the concepts of individual and collective ministerial responsibility.
• Highlight the importance of a minister as a member of caucus and the minister’s enhanced role and importance within the party.
• Assess the minister’s continuing responsibilities to his or her constituency and comment on the workload of ministers.

3. Who sits in a cabinet, and what does the cabinet do?

Your answer should address membership, selection, and purpose.

With respect to membership and selection:

• Distinguish between ministers and ministers of state.
• Note the importance of ministers being elected members of the House of Commons but note the exceptions to this convention.
• Note the various considerations that prime ministers bring to cabinet selection, such as experience; ideology; party politics; regional, linguistic, religious, ethnic, and gender representativeness; and merit.

With respect to purpose:

• Highlight the role of cabinet as the central decision-making body in government.
• Note the cabinet’s role in policy and program development.
• Note the cabinet’s function in supporting prime ministerial leadership.
• Devote attention to the changing role of cabinet as prime ministerial power has increased. See the discussion of this in Chapter 4.

4. What is the purpose of a Crown corporation and what does it do? Give an example.

Your response should explain the following:

• Crown corporations are relatively independent of government.
• They are not headed by a minister but have boards of directors.
• They are not subject to departmental systems of accountability, financial management, or personnel administration.
• They provide commercial services to Canadians and operate in a corporate fashion.
• They promote a public purpose in a given field of commercial activity, such as economic nationalism, cultural promotion, national service delivery, and new economic development.
• Examples of federal Crown corporations are the CBC, Canada Post, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and VIA Rail.

5. What is the purpose of a regulatory agency and what does it do? Give an example.

Your response should explain the following:

• Regulatory agencies are relatively independent of government.
• They are not headed by a minister but can have various types of management boards.
• They are not subject to departmental systems of accountability, financial management, or personnel administration.
• Regulatory agencies develop, implement, and at times adjudicate disputes respecting the application of regulatory policies and programs to given individuals and firms.
• Regulatory agencies can be involved in economic, social, or environmental regulation.
• Economic regulation deals with such matters as price and tariff setting, product supply management, market entry and conditions of service, and methods of production.
• Economic regulatory agencies include Investment Canada, the National Energy Board, and the Canadian Transportation Agency.
• Social regulation deals with matters such as labour standards, health and safety provisions, protection of human rights, and support for Canadian culture.
• Social regulatory agencies include the Canadian Industrial Relations Board, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and the CRTC.
• Environmental regulation focuses on the establishment and enforcement of rules to protect the environment. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency is the prime regulatory agency in this field.

1. To form a cabinet the prime minister may

• a. select former leadership rivals
• b. choose from either the elected or the unelected
• c. neither a nor b
• d. both a and b

2. Which of the following is a consideration in cabinet selection?

• a. religious representation
• b. regional representation
• c. private sector representation
• d. a and b

3. Which of the following is not a special agency?

• a. Elections Canada
• b. Investment Canada
• c. CSIS
• d. RCMP

4. Which of the following is not a prime ministerial power?

• a. appointing the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
• b. appointing the clerk of the Privy Council
• c. appointing the speaker of the House of Commons
• d. appointing the lieutenant governor in the province of Quebec

5. Individual ministerial responsibility means that ministers are expected to

• a. be individually responsible to parliament for the operations of their department
• b. promote and defend all government policies and programs in public
• c. a and b
• d. neither a nor b

6. The functions of a department include

• a. policy development
• b. record keeping
• c. program administration
• d. all of above

7. Which of the following are support departments?

• a. Environment
• b. Health
• c. Justice
• d. b and c

8. What terms best describe typical departmental structure?

• a. circular
• b. non-hierarchical
• c. interwoven
• d. pyramidal

9. Identify a Crown corporation that has been privatized.

• a. Air Canada
• b. Marine Atlantic
• c. Export Development Canada
• d. Treasury Board

10. Which of the following is not a federal regulatory agency?

• a. National Parole Board
• b. Canadian Dairy Commission
• c. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
• d. Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

Chapter 3 Answer Key

• 1. d
• 2. d
• 3. b
• 4. c
• 5. a
• 6. d
• 7. d
• 8. d
• 9. a
• 10. c

Table 3.1 from Thinking Government 5e— Cabinet Membership by Province and Territory, 2021

Table 3.2 from Thinking Government 5e— Federal Government Departments, 1867, 1984, 2021

Figure 3.1 from Thinking Government 5e— The Political Hierarchy

Figure 3.2a from Thinking Government 5e— The Harper Cabinet, 2011

Figure 3.2b from Thinking Government 5e— The Trudeau Cabinet, 2021

Figure 3.3 from Thinking Government 5e— The Responsibilities of a Cabinet Minister

Figure 3.4 from Thinking Government 5e— Departmental Structure

backbencher
A member of parliament (MP) who is either a member of the governing party but not in cabinet or a member of an opposition party but not an official critic for a given portfolio.

cabinet
The collection of ministers selected by the prime minister to provide leadership to government departments and agencies and to advise the prime minister on the development of policies and programs.

cabinet committee
One of the functional groups into which a prime minister will divide cabinet ministers to assist in the conduct and development of policy and program decision making. As of September 2016, the Trudeau cabinet included 11 full cabinet committees: Agenda; Results and Communications; Treasury Board; Open Transparent Government and Parliament; Growing the Middle Class; Diversity and Inclusion; Canada in the World and Public Security; Canada-United States Relations; Intelligence and Emergency Management; Environment, Climate Change and Energy; Defence Procurement; and Litigation Management. See also cabinet.

cabinet minister
A person selected by the prime minister to be the political head of a government department and participate in the decision making of the government overall. Usually MPs of the governing party, ministers must exercise their duties in accordance with the rules of individual and collective ministerial responsibility. See also cabinet; ministerial responsibility.

cabinet selection
The process by which a prime minister constructs a cabinet. The formal appointment to cabinet is given by the governor general. See also cabinet.

caucus
All the members of parliament representing a given party. With respect to the governing party, members of cabinet remain caucus members and are expected to keep their caucus colleagues updated on the work of their portfolios.

central agency
A specialized support agency that provides expert policy advice and program assistance to the cabinet and prime minister in an institutionalized cabinet system. The key central agencies of the Canadian government are the Prime Minister’s Office, the Privy Council Office, the department of Finance, and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. See also institutionalized cabinet system.

clerk of the Privy Council
The highest ranking public servant in the federal public service. The clerk is also the secretary to cabinet and, as such, acts as the deputy minister to the prime minister. The clerk is the official head of the public service of Canada and has the non-partisan function of giving expert advice to the prime minister and cabinet with respect to the operational dynamics of policy making and program implementation within the federal public service. The clerk supervises departmental deputy ministers and advises the prime minister on matters respecting deputy minister promotions, transfers, and removals.

Crown agency
Any Crown corporation or regulatory agency, as distinct from a government department.

Crown corporation
A commercial enterprise established and owned by either the federal or the provincial state but possessing relative operational autonomy from the government. A Crown corporation is not a department and thus is not headed by a minister but by a board of directors appointed by the government.

department
The chief form of institution through which a government organizes its policy and program activities and delivers services either to the public or to other governmental institutions. Every department is headed by a cabinet minister who is the political leader of the institution, the link between the department and the cabinet and parliament. See also service department; support department.

deregulation
The process of reducing or eliminating outright the legal rules that control and direct the behaviour of firms in the private sector. Deregulation is typically seen as a conservative policy to free enterprise from excessive, unnecessary, and costly state intervention in private behaviour.

institutionalized cabinet system
The system of cabinet organization prevalent in Ottawa from the 1960s on and noted for often intricate systems of cabinet committees supported by an array of central agencies. Institutionalized cabinet systems are designed to facilitate more rational and systematic policy making by requiring it to arise from a decision-making system involving planning, prioritization, and programming based on consensus among a plurality of cabinet committees and central agencies. Such a system is intended to heighten the influence of elected ministers in decision making by lessening the political and administrative influence that any senior unelected official can have.

ministerial responsibility
The principle that cabinet ministers, as legal heads of departments, are individually responsible and answerable to parliament for all matters dealing with the running of their departmental portfolios. Collectively, ministers are responsible for all policy and program decisions made by cabinet on behalf of the government. All ministers are expected to participate in setting strategic policy and to support the strategic and tactical initiatives of the government.

ministry
The term given to the collective comprising the prime minister, cabinet ministers, and ministers of state without portfolios.

pay equity
The policy concept that women are to receive the same pay for work of equal value as that received by men. The government must take corrective action wherever there is a demonstrable imbalance in pay rates for women and men.

portfolio
The field of jurisdiction of a cabinet minister. A portfolio refers to the department for which a minister is constitutionally responsible as well as all agencies, boards, commissions, and policy responsibilities that fall under the purview of that department.

prime minister
The leader of the governing party in parliament and thus the head of government. The prime minister possesses the top leadership role in the federal system as the head of the cabinet and is responsible for the strategic policy and program direction of the government.

privatization
The process by which governments divest themselves of Crown corporations. Privatization can occur through the outright sale of a Crown corporation to a single private buyer or through share offerings to multiple investors on the stock market.

Privy Council
The formal, constitutionally mandated advisory council to the governor general with respect to the exercise of executive power in the federal government. The Privy Council per se is an honorary body with hundreds of members, but its executive cabinet, consisting of the prime minister and his or her ministers, has lead governmental authority.

regulatory agency
A government institution that operates semi-independently from the government of the day in order to engage in socio-economic regulation. Regulatory agencies apply legal rules of conduct to individuals, corporations, and other institutions of government with respect to a given field of activity.

service department
A federal government department whose key policy and program responsibilities are to provide services directly to citizens, corporations, interest groups, and other clients. The majority of federal departments are in this category. See also support department.

special agency
A federal government institution that operates semi-independently from the government of the day to provide a unique service to the government or to Canadians generally. Examples of such agencies are the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Border Services Agency. This service delivery necessitates such independent status and leadership and is based on a board of directors or commissioner model.

support department
A federal government department whose key policy and program responsibilities are to provide organizational and operational support to the government itself, its institutions, and its policy and program capacity. See also service department.

Crown corporations

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

Canada Post

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Wheat Board

Export Development Canada

Royal Canadian Mint

Regulatory agencies

Canadian Industrial Relations Board

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission

Immigration and Refugee Board

National Transportation Safety Board

Special agencies

Elections Canada

Public Service Commission of Canada

Royal Canadian Mounted Police