Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks with media on Parliament Hill following a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Canada-U.S. Relations and National Security, in Ottawa, March 27.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
It’s an unlikely, somewhat nonpolitical name for a cabinet committee – “quality of life and well-being” – but its focus will be on some of the Liberal government’s biggest social issues.
Among the likely files in the new committee, which did not exist in the Justin Trudeau government, are the Liberal platform’s commitments to add thousands of new doctors to Canada’s health care system and to improve access to mental health care; to advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples; and to protect the French language.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office released the cabinet committee list last week after the swearing-in ceremony for his new cabinet. In all, there are nine committees. Mr. Trudeau had 10 at the time of his resignation, along with three sub-committees and two ministerial working groups.
Except for the Treasury Board, which has a legally set membership and mandate, cabinet committees are organized at the will of the prime minister and they often give insight into the government’s key priorities.
The committee on quality of life and well-being will probably focus largely on social policy, and it will likely have a broad mandate because there are now fewer committees overall, according to Marci Surkes, who advised former prime minister Justin Trudeau on cabinet affairs from 2019 to 2022, and former Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick.
Ms. Surkes said the Treasury Board Secretariat has been tracking quality of life key performance indicators for several years.
As an alternative to traditional indicators such as gross domestic product, she said, quality of life measures how Canadians are performing in a social sense: aspects such as social cohesion and being a productive member of society.
“It’s interesting to acknowledge that this alternate mechanism has value that is now transcending from a process at one of the central agencies to being a core measure for the entirety of the government,” she said in an interview.
Other notable cabinet committees under Mr. Carney include build Canada, which looks at issues related to strengthening the economy; government transformation and government efficiency, which coordinates efforts to reduce expenditures and improve services; and secure and sovereign Canada, which looks at Canada-U.S. relations and other foreign-affairs issues.
Cabinet committees are a way of getting decisions on issues, said Mr. Wernick, who is now with the University of Ottawa. They relieve a prime minister from having to chair every meeting and several can be running at the same time, he said.
“It’s just a very effective tool to work through the many, many issues,” he said in an interview.
Most issues come to a committee as a proposal from one or more ministers, Mr. Wernick said, and then colleagues weigh in on the politics and the policy. There is due diligence on aspects such as costing, legal risk and implementation issues, so that proposals are stress tested before becoming decisions, he said.
In the past, a cabinet committee decision would normally have to go to either a full cabinet meeting or a committee called priorities and planning for ratification, Mr. Wernick said. That committee now seems to be called priorities, planning and strategy.
Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault will chair the quality of life and well-being committee, while Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin serves as vice-chair.
The chair is often chosen based on who is good at running meetings, Mr. Wernick and Ms. Surkes said. The protocol has also usually been that the chair is a minister with a portfolio who is less likely to be presenting proposals to the committee, Mr. Wernick said. If that minister is presenting, the vice-chair would then become the chair for that part of the meeting.
Mr. Carney also chairs two committees: priorities, planning and strategy, and the national security council. He would also be expected to chair the incident response group, which deals with significant events such as security threats or natural disasters.
Mr. Wernick said it is typical that the prime minister chairs these committees.