Introduction

The central executive in Canada consists of the “collective political and non-political elements of the executive who are engaged in generating and coordinating central policy” (Dunn, 2010, p. 85). While this includes a broad network of formal and informal relationships across a range of institutions exercising some measure of coordination within the core executive (Dunleavy & Rhodes, 1990, p. 3), we focus on the select group of elite and influential political and public service organizations traditionally considered central agencies, namely the Privy Council Office (PCO), the Prime Minister's office (PMO), the Department of Finance, and the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS). The PMO is often considered a central agency (for example see Campbell and Szablowski, 1979), but it in fact has no formal authority to act as the prime minister's agent; rather, it is a political office consisting mostly (and at times entirely) of ministerial exempt staff who provide service and advisory support from a political perspective to the prime minister in his or her various roles (Lalonde, 1971, p. 519). PMO's analysis is necessarily different than that offered by the non-partisan professional public service, but complements it in providing an additional perspective from outside of the public service, and one that considers the partisan-political aspects of policymaking (Savoie, 1999; Craft, 2016; Wilson, 2016a). Further, PMO has an important political coordinating role with other ministerial offices across government (Wilson, 2016b). The three formal public service central agencies—PCO, TBS, and Finance—have unique whole-of-government or enterprise-wide policy analysis roles. As part of their fundamental roles these central agencies contest, direct and coordinate policy analysis originating elsewhere in government.

In an interview, a senior Treasury Board official succinctly summed up the respective central agency roles as PCO setting policy, TBS setting rules, and Finance setting budgets. This shorthand is useful, although the characterization masks the overlapping analytical functions of central agencies and the significance of budgets and rules as forms of policymaking. However, it usefully draws attention to the distinct roles (see Table 7.1) and corresponding policy analysis functions of Canada's central agencies. The central executive enjoys significant resources and policy analysis expertise in, for example, economic and fiscal matters, organization of government machinery, implementation and risk management and, in the case of the PMO, insight into the partisan-political considerations that must be factored into policymaking.