Additionally, the new Prime Minister has indicated that “Canada’s new Ministry is built to deliver the change Canadians want and deserve.” Every Minister is “expected and empowered to show leadership – to bring new ideas, a clear focus, and decisive action to their work.”
If the empowerment of Ministers to show leadership, make decisions, and move files forward becomes the modus operandi of the new Government, this will be a very welcome change.
Past governments – both the Trudeau Liberals and Harper Conservatives – were managed centrally through their respective Prime Minister’s offices (PMO). In practical terms, this meant that many of the less public issues rarely received the attention and decision-making they required with the public service often being left with little meaningful direction or bouncing around from one “issue of the day” to another.
Consequently, many issues – including regulatory modernization such as our industry has been seeking for over a decade – remained in limbo, and many opportunities to improve Canadian competitiveness were lost. This was particularly the case in the period following the Covid pandemic when the Trudeau government appeared to wind down to almost a halt in meaningful decision-making. Examples from our industry include failure to complete the Self-Care Framework modernization, the two-year delay in introducing the cosmetic animal testing ban (which had unanimous industry and animal advocacy support), and Health Minister Holland avoiding making a decision on the China GMP certificates.
Let us hope that Ministers will live up to the new Prime Minister’s expectations and we will be able to move forward many of our files in the weeks and month ahead.
