How to plan a (cabinet) retreat
The cabinet retreat last year on Prince Edward Island.
Chief Strategy Officer Marci Surkes spoke with Politico’s Ottawa Playbook on how cabinet retreats are organized. The retreat takes place Aug. 25-27 in Halifax.
→ Booking a venue: The Privy Council Office gets final say on which venues are suitable for a retreat. A secure facility is a must, and not every city or town has one of those. PCO sends a short list to the PMO, which has spread the love across Canada since 2016.
Trudeau’s team has held retreats in all but two provinces: Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.
→ Building an agenda: The making of the three-day program is not a long-term project. “It’s a politically driven agenda, and for that reason alone it can shift with the winds — and very often is not settled until right before the date itself,” says Surkes.
Those tight timelines can create “a point of contention or nervousness in the system,” she says, because it differs from process-driven Cabinet business that often allows ministers and bureaucrats to project with some certainty what’s coming down the pipe.
→ Inviting experts: Cabinet often invites outside voices in the room for briefings — economists MIKE MOFFATT and FRANCES DONALD, and cross-border industry voices including auto parts honcho FLAVIO VOLPE.
We’re still waiting for confirmation of who scored an invite this time ‘round.
Those invitations are a PMO-PCO co-production, says Surkes. Whoever has the relationship does the outreach, and public servants take care of logistics.
→ What makes a good retreat? “The measure of success in a regular Cabinet meeting is usually a decision,” says Surkes. “The thing that’s really extraordinary about a Cabinet retreat is that there are no decisions being taken. The point is not to take decisions, in fact.”
→ The mark of a retreat that got the job done? “Ministers walk away feeling like they understand the game plan and are core to its implementation.”
— No devices allowed: “The phones get parked,” says Surkes.
The free-flowing discussions around the Cabinet table drift into the hallways, back to the hotel, and into the evening. Ministers catch up on family and summer holidays, but also check in with each other.
“They talk discreetly about what they heard, and what they think, and what they’re processing, and where something stands,” she says.
Read the Playbook online.
