Cabinet committees as strategies of prime ministerial leadership in Canada, 2003–2019

Representation and Ministerial Influence on Cabinet Committees in Canada

“…The random effect estimates indicate how much the intercept varies as a function of committee period, expressed in standard deviations of the outcome measures: 0.56 for the centrality model and 0.39 for the influence-share model. This between-period variation is difficult to interpret in the absence of comparable models but does suggest important differences in how these prime ministers have distributed influence among ministers, an argument explored in Ie (2019).…”

“…As shown below, empirically these measures identify intuitively influential ministers reasonably well. Moreover, as the review above suggests, cabinet committees are important sites of policy making in Canada, and prime ministers use these choices strategically, not arbitrarily (see Ie, 2019; Brodie, 2018). While not perfect, position within cabinet committee structure is one of the few objective, measurable manifestations of relative ministerial importance.…”

“…Cabinet committees have largely superseded cabinet as a tool for collective decision making in Canadian government (Ie, 2019; White, 2005: 148–49). Indeed, since the late 1960s, cabinet committees have been delegated significant authority to take decisions on behalf of cabinet; such decisions have rarely been challenged in full cabinet (Savoie, 1999: 128; White, 2005: 148).…”

“…At the same time, the system of committees allows the prime minister and Privy Council Office, through which committee business operates, greater oversight. Thus, committees serve two different but complementary purposes: they allow ministers to have meaningful input and influence, while increasing centralized control and countering departmentalism and fragmentation (Ie, 2019). Committees may also be politically useful as a “way of reassuring the public, and government, of the executive's commitment to address important issues” (Catterall and Brady, 2000: 161) 1 .…”

“…1For further discussion of the development and functioning of cabinet committees in Canada, see Koerner (1989), Savoie (1999) and Ie (2019). …”