Free Resources from How Government Works

We offer a series of free resources here that we hope you will find useful in your work:

Ministry & Mandate - A Handy Compilation and Guide to the Federal Cabinet and the Prime Minister’s Mandate Letters to Ministers (Dec 2015)

Contributors: J. Phillip Nicholson, Jane Coghlan, and Glen Milne

In Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Ministry―given the exclusion of Senators from the Government caucus in the House―there is no longer a Minister in Cabinet who is Leader of the Government in the Senate. There are also no Ministers of State, only “full” Ministers.

We have developed and organized this compendium of information on the federal Ministry, the composition and functions of Cabinet Committees, and the Prime Minister’s directions to Ministers on their overarching goals and top priorities as a shareable tool for free use by our clients and colleagues in the broader public policy community. A pro bono publico contribution.

While all of the basic information in this package is available on official Government of Canada sites, this customized format is designed to make the material more user-friendly and accessible for ready reference.

Download the English version of Ministry & Mandate
Download the French version of Ministry & Mandate

Facilitation Guidelines

Glen Milne offers this set of general guidelines on what can be achieved with a facilitation session and how it can be successfully planned and executed. The dozen guidelines are not comprehensive, perfect or applicable in every situation, but they can give you a running start at organizing and executing a successful session. They can also serve as rough performance standards for facilitation services.

Click for the full Facilitation Guidelines >