Throughout the history of Canadian government, few jobs have been less public than the secretariat of the Privy Council, which will soon be filled by a new appointee. John Hannaford, a senior civil servant and former diplomat. While most Canadians have a hard time identifying his new job, Mr. Hannaford is not to be underestimated.
“Apart from the prime minister, the secretary of the Privy Council is the most powerful person in Ottawa,” Donald J. Savoie, a professor of public administration studies at the University of Moncton, told me. “So when a new secretary is appointed, that’s very important.”
When Mr Hannaford officially takes office on June 24, he will, along with the deputy ministers under each cabinet minister, become the gatekeeper responsible for turning politicians’ policy ideas into action.
The secretary manages the deputy ministers and has three duties that sometimes overlap. He is the head of the public service, composed of nonpartisan officials who continue their work as politicians and political parties come and go.
The secretary also manages and coordinates the cabinet as its secretary, and perhaps most importantly, he is the prime minister’s top adviser.
Prof Savoie says the secretary and prime minister meet several times a week and each has a separate agenda.
“A lot of important decisions are made at those meetings,” he said, adding that those sessions are often more important than cabinet meetings. Prof Savoie said a minister in the cabinet had told him that the cabinet had long been “the prime minister’s focus group”.
The tendency to centralize power in the hands of the prime minister, and more broadly in the hands of the secretary, has been going on for decades under both Liberal and Conservative governments. And Professor Savoie says it’s not necessarily a power grab.
Increasingly, the federal government finds itself grappling with issues, like climate change, involving a number of ministers, departments and agencies, and the role of the secretary is to coordinate that work. .
Part of this arrangement was that the secretary and the civil servants he commanded stayed out of public view. The government was unable to provide me with a high-resolution photo of Mr Hannaford, and the Privy Council Office said he was not available for an interview.
The thinking behind that deliberate obscurity was based on the idea that the public service was there to support the government of the day, whatever its political flavor, and so it left the political become the public face of government.
But some laws have in effect removed the decision-making powers of cabinet ministers and given them to civil servants. The result is often situations like the recent backlog at passport offices, where politicians are held accountable for decisions in which they are not or even not involved, Prof Savoie said. consulted.
Luc Juillet, a professor of public management at the University of Ottawa, says politicians tend to focus on new policies and programs rather than on the less attractive task of making sure government runs smoothly. minus.
“That’s not necessarily what motivates most politicians,” he said.
Mr. Hannaford has an excellent resume as a policymaker. As a lawyer and diplomat who began his career in the then-department of the State Department, he played a key role in trade negotiations including recent negotiations. . NAFTA renegotiation; has handled climate issues, most recently at Natural Resources Canada; and served as a foreign and defense policy adviser to Mr.
But lacking all of that, Professor Juillet notes, is any extensive experience in government operations.
For Professor Savoie, the appointment of someone with a background in international relations and defense like Mr. Hannaford is a signal from Mr. Trudeau about what he now sees as the biggest challenges facing Prof. His government, largely international, faced. These include allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections, trade policy in the United States, global climate change, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The new international order is full of pitfalls and the prime minister needs a helping hand,” he said.
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Norimitsu Onishi went to Winnipeg to report on the Hudson’s Bay Company donation of its former flagship store. Residents are debating whether it was an act of reconciliation with the natives who played a important role in the company’s history or an empty gift.
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When I went to Alberta a few weeks ago to cover this week’s provincial election, I saw a number of lifelong Conservative voters who are delayed by Premier Danielle Smith’her anti-vaccination stance and her libertarian agenda and sometimes provocative rhetoric. Mrs Smith’s United Conservative government is back to powerbut with significantly fewer seats in the legislature.
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Wildfires continue to burn after blanketing Halifax in smoke, burning down homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of people within the city’s urban boundaries.
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In the ongoing evolution of anti-smoking warnings in Canada, each cigarette will carry messages printed on their paper, including “Poison in Every Puff.”
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has covered Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
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