II   Cabinet Government and the Prime Minister

Canada is a constitutional monarchy. This means that the executive government and authority of and over Canada is vested in the Crown which is personified by the Queen and represented by the Governor General. The Governor General almost invariably acts on the advice of Ministers who have seats in Parliament and who are responsible to the House of Commons; this forms the basis of Canada's system of responsible government. In their constitutional capacity as advisers to the Crown, Ministers are sworn as members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and hold office at the pleasure of the Sovereign as represented by the Governor General.¹ Those individuals holding ministerial office at a particular point in time comprise the Ministry of the day.

The individual and collective responsibility of the members of the Ministry to Parliament form the basis for responsible government in Canada. Ministers are legally responsible for the policies, programs and administration of their departments, and answer personally to Parliament for their decisions and actions in carrying out their portfolio responsibilities. Ministers together are responsible to Parliament for the policies of the Government overall, and for the policies and programs of each Minister as a member of that Government. Individually and collectively, Ministers remain in office only as long as they retain the confidence of the House of Commons.²

The practical result of the principles of ministerial responsibility is that Ministers can fulfil their personal duties and functions and their obligations as members of the Ministry only by acting in concert. Effective government ultimately requires consensus among Ministers about the goals, policies, and programs to be undertaken. It is in the forging of this consensus that the Prime Minister plays a pivotal role in making Cabinet government work.

The Prime Minister

The Prime Minister's principal duty is to create and sustain the unity of the Ministry required to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister oversees the activities of government to ensure that the individual responsibilities of Ministers are exercised in a manner acceptable to the ministry as a whole. The leadership provided to the Ministry by the Prime Minister is thus central to the existence of a stable and cohesive government.

The roles and responsibilities of the Prime Minister in maintaining unity among Ministers have evolved as part of the broader evolution of the Cabinet system of government in Canada. The Prime Minister is mentioned in very few statutes, and does not have specific statutory powers, duties and functions comparable to those of Ministers in individual portfolios.³ At root, the position of the Prime Minister rests on the exercise of powers in three interrelated areas:

• recommending the appointment of individuals to key positions;
• organizing the Cabinet, including portfolio composition and mandates; and
• providing leadership and direction to the Government.

In utilizing these powers, the Prime Minister relies on a broad base of advice and support. The advice and assistance provided by colleagues in the Cabinet is clearly integral to the effective performance by any Prime Minister. In this regard, the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministers in the Prime Minister's portfolio⁴ also play a pivotal role in assisting the Prime Minister in effectively carrying out his many functions.

Support for the Prime Minister

The Prime Minister is supported directly on a day-to-day basis by staff working in two organizations within the Prime Minister's portfolio. The personal, political staff of the Prime Minister comprise the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), with the PCO providing public service support to the Prime Minister across the entire spectrum of policy questions and operational issues facing the Government.

Together these organizations provide advice and support from different perspectives on the issues of daily concern to the Prime Minister. The maintenance of the appropriate relationship between the political staff of Prime Ministers and their public service staff is particularly important. As described in 1971 by Gordon Robertson, then Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet:

"The Prime Minister's Office is partisan, politically oriented, yet operationally sensitive. The Privy Council Office is non-partisan, operationally oriented yet politically sensitive.... What is known in each office is provided freely and openly to the other if it is relevant or needed for its work, but each acts from a perspective and in a role quite different from thes other.5"

Although separate organizations, a close working relationship between the PMO and the PCO is essential to ensure that consistent, timely advice is provided on the subjects of greatest importance to the Prime Minister:

- The Prime Minister's Office supports the Prime Minister in carrying out the functions demanded of a head of government and of a leader of a political party and Member of Parliament. The political staff of the PMO provide advice on policy development and appointments, draft speeches and other public statements to be delivered by the Prime Minister, brief the Prime Minister on matters related to proceedings in the House of Commons and manage the relations of the Prime Minister with Ministers, with caucus and with the party in general. The PMO also plans the Prime Minister's schedule, organizes the Prime Minister's public announcements and relations with the media, processes prime ministerial correspondence and handles matters arising in the constituency of the Prime Minister.

The Privy Council Office is the public service department of the Prime Minister. As outlined below, under the leadership of the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, the PCO provides direct support to the Prime Minister across the range of functions and responsibilities of the head of government.

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   ¹ Constitutionally, the Queen's Privy Council for Canada is the advisory body to the Sovereign, and Privy Councillors remain members of the Privy Council for life. In practice, however, the full Privy Council only meets on rare occasions. Only those Privy Councillors currently holding ministerial office operating as the Committee of Council, i.e., the Cabinet act as advisers to the Governor General in the constitutional meaning of the term.

   ² An extended discussion of the foundation of responsible government in Canada is provided in a companion publication, Responsibility in the Constitution (Ottawa: Privy Council Office, 1993).

   ³  A Minute of Council first issued in 1896 and last re-issued in 1935 enumerates some of the Prime Minister's prerogatives, including calling meetings of the Cabinet, recommending the convocation and summoning of Parliament, recommending the appointments of privy councillors, lieutenant governors, chief justices, senators, and other senior office-holders, and making recommendations in any department. This minute recognizes the Prime Minister's prerogatives, but does not confer them.

    ⁴ The Prime Minister has overall responsibility for the portfolio of the Privy Council. This includes the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office, and offices of the Deputy Prime Minister, the President of the Privy Council and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, and the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Other quite separate organizations such as Commissions of Inquiry also appear within the "Privy Council" program in the Estimates because the responsible Minister is the Prime Minister or a Minister in the portfolio. The Prime Minister and other Ministers in the portfolio are also the Ministers responsible for several other organizations (e.g. the Canadian Centre for Management Development, the Public Service Staff Relations Board).

    ⁵ R.G. Robertson, "The Changing Role of the Privy Council Office," a paper presented to the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada on September 8, 1971 and published in Canadian Public Administration, XIV, 4, 1971, p. 506.