A council of ministers of the Crown chaired by the Prime Minister, the Cabinet is the senior echelon of the Ministry; the terms Cabinet and Ministry are sometimes used interchangeably, a subtle inaccuracy which can spark confusion. Although the membership of the Ministry and the Cabinet are often coterminal, currently there are five members of the Ministry that are not members of the Cabinet. Technically, the Cabinet is a committee of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada; in practice, it is the executive committee of the Canadian government.
For practical reasons, the Cabinet is referred to in relation to the Prime Minister in charge of it, though formally it is more common to refer to the number of ministries since confederation. The current cabinet is the Harper Cabinet, which is part of the 28th Ministry.
The Cabinet proper currently comprises 32 ministers. Each minister is responsible not only for advising the Monarch, Governor General, Prime Minister and other ministers on any and all political matters, but also for the general administration of at least one government portfolio.
A Minister of the Crown is usually the formal head of a corresponding federal department or agency, although there are exceptions: positions such as the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada have no corresponding department, while some Ministers of the Crown (such as the Minister for International Cooperation) head agencies under the umbrella of a department run by another Minister. The Prime Minister is entitled to appoint ministers without portfolio, but this has not been done since 1978.
Ministers of state are assigned specific responsibilities on a more ad hoc basis, which they fulfill from within a department under a full minister. The portfolios of ministers of state are considerably more transient, as positions may be created and dissolved to suit specific short-term government priorities or the specific qualifications of candidates without alterations to the departmental structure. In recent years, prime ministers have occasionally named individuals as minister of state but not specified any particular responsibilities, effectively making them ministers without portfolio. Unlike many other Westminster-model governments, ministers of state in Canada are full members of Cabinet rather than members of the Ministry outside it; this has the effect of making the Canadian Cabinet considerably larger than its British equivalent, despite the fact that the British Ministry has a total membership far in excess of the Canadian version.
Secretaries of state, also often dubbed "junior ministers," are similar to ministers of state in that they too are assigned specific responsibilities on a more ad hoc basis, which they fulfill from within a department under a full minister. Unlike ministers of state, secretaries of state are members of the Ministry but not of the Cabinet, and technically they can attend cabinet meetings by invitation only. Appointing secretaries of state rather than ministers of state has been done in the past by governments conscious of including more MPs in their ministry without attracting public outcry for "expanding cabinet," however technical this distinction might be in practice. Secretaries of state fulfilled most of their tasks carried out by ministers of state from 1993 to 2003; consequently there were only a handful of ministers of state during this time. In 2007 Stephen Harper resumed the practice of appointing secretaries of state.
Parliamentary Secretaries also assist members of Cabinet, usually with their duties answering questions in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Paul Martin had his Parliamentary Secretaries sworn to the Privy Council, but they are members of neither the Cabinet nor Ministry. Martin is the only Prime Minister to have had his Parliamentary Secretaries sworn into the Privy Council.
Deputy Ministers are neither MPs nor Cabinet Ministers but are the senior civil servant in a governmental department and assist the Minister both by giving non-partisan advice and by assisting in the administration of the department. Each ministerial position in a government has an associated deputy ministership, such as Deputy Minister of Health. The chief civil servant who both leads the other deputy ministers and provides non-partisan advice to the Prime Minister is the Clerk of the Privy Council, who is essentially the Deputy Minister of the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister often assigns a minister to be responsible for a specific problem or initiative that may cut across departmental boundaries. This is usually described as having the
Different positions have widely varying levels of prestige. The most important minister, following the premier, is the Minister of Finance. Other high profile ministries include Foreign Affairs, Industry, Justice, and Health.
Throughout the 20th century Cabinets had been expanding in size until Brian Mulroney's government, which hit the 40-minister mark. A reduction in the number of departments initiated by Kim Campbell began to reduce this number, and Jean Chrétien excluded approximately 10 members of the Ministry from the formal Cabinet, so that by 1994 there were only 23 members. This number has crawled upwards again, and when Paul Martin reincorporated all members of the Ministry into his first Cabinet, it again resulted in the figure of 39 being reached. The number 40 appears to be something of a psychological barrier to further expansion. Cabinet membership stands today (2008) at 32.
It is within Cabinet that many of the most important debates on Canadian policy take place. All cabinet meetings are held behind closed doors and the minutes are kept confidential for thirty years. Cabinet members are forbidden from discussing what occurs in cabinet meetings. Decisions made in cabinet must be unanimous, though this often occurs at the Prime Minister's direction. Once a decision is made all Cabinet members must publicly support it. If any of these rules are violated, the offending minister is usually removed by the Prime Minister. If the disagreement within the cabinet is strong a minister may resign, as did John Napier Turner in 1975 on the subject of wage and price controls, and Michael Chong in 2006 over nationhood for "the Québécois."
Cabinet itself (or "full Cabinet") is further divided into committees. The Treasury Board is one of the most important, as it oversees the expenditure of government money within every department. Since 1966, a specific minister has been named President of the Treasury Board, owing to the especially taxing nature of the duties associated with chairing it and supervising the related bureaucracy. Other committees (see )currently include Government Operations, Social Affairs, Economic Affairs, and Foreign Affairs and National Security. Each committee is chaired by a senior minister whose own portfolio normally intersects with the mandate of the committee. A Priorities and Planning Committee, or "Inner Cabinet," , chaired by the Prime Minister, has been sporadically utilized; in recent years Jean Chrétien did not strike one, while Paul Martin briefly brought it back before eliminating it once again. Stephen Harper has revived the Priorites and Planning Committee for his government. During the Chrétien Ministry, the number of cabinet committees was greatly reduced. They were increased by Paul Martin and have been reduced again by Stephen Harper.
| Portfolio | Secretary | |
|---|---|---|
| Secretary of State (Chief Government Whip) | Hon. Jay Hill | (2007-) |
| Secretary of State (Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity) | Hon. Jason Kenney | (2007-) |
| Secretary of State (Small Business and Tourism) | Hon. Diane Ablonczy | (2007-) |
| Secretary of State (Foreign Affairs and International Trade) (Sport) | Hon. Helena Guergis | (2007-) |
| Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific Gateway) (Vancouver-Whistler Olympics) (Official Languages) | Hon. James Moore | (2008-) |
See also: List of Canadian Parliamentary Secretaries
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