Prime Minister Carney survived his first budget vote with his vision of a new Canada — and a smaller, leaner, more efficient public service. So, is this the moment when Carney, with advice from Privy Council clerk Michael Sabia, will finally put his mark on the senior ranks?
The pair have had six months to size up their bench. Throughout, the rumour of a DM shuffle has circled. “This is the longest-rumoured deputy shuffle in history,” one senior official said. “If I were a betting man, I’d have lost at least five times.”
The vote on the federal budget, Nov. 17: Carney (right) with François-Philippe Champagne (standing). THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
The comings and goings of deputy ministers are like tea leaves for Ottawa’s insiders. They’re read for clues about power: where is it, whose is rising, and what does it say about the future of the public service?
So, will the next shuffle be a reset? Will it be the big shake-up of a government trying to change course and leadership? Or will it just be a chain reaction triggered by a long-building wave of retirements? (And, of course, it can be a bit of both.)
So, let’s dig in.
Today:
Add a DM: Lose some accountability.
Post-transition: A lot of DMs might be ready to go.
The domino trigger: When the heavy hitters leave, things really move.
The virtue of waiting: New deputies need time to settle in.
SO, YEAH: SHUFFLES What’s tricky about this next big one
The fascination with a shuffle has been building since the day Sabia became clerk. One was expected over the summer, but just as the PM and ministers were getting to know their deputies, the government launched an expenditure review calling for 15 per cent in cuts — which some saw as a quiet test of the existing cadre. Then came the fall and budget planning, which didn’t feel like the moment to move people around.
Now, with the budget behind them, rumours are back. But so are all the reasons it still might not happen right away.
Moving a bunch of DMs at the start of a downsizing push is tricky: bringing in deputies who weren’t part of the decisions about what to cut makes execution harder.
“I would think the prime minister has bigger things to do than sign off on a deputy shuffle right now,” said one former senior official. “But I would say it’s getting to be the time. I’m not sure this is the time but it’s getting close.”
Most shuffles are routine. They fill holes left by retirements and backfill the dominoes that follow. But this one is drawing far more interest because Carney has made it clear he’s taking a tougher line on performance. He arrived signalling he’s ready to move, sideline, or replace anyone who can’t deliver.
Carney took the unusual step of attending the post-budget deputy ministers’ breakfast, where he laid out his budget priorities and plans for the public service. As one former senior bureaucrat put it: “If I were the prime minister with this budget, I might want to show up and look at the whites of the eyes of my deputy cadre and say, ‘I expect you to deliver and not take forever to do it.’”
A big part of that delivery is reducing spending by $60 billion and cutting 40,000 public service jobs. Which is exactly why some say now is a risky moment for a shuffle.
Accountability could take a hit. The Harper-era review was pure cuts. This one is more complicated: cutting, saving, and shifting money to new priorities. This shrink-and-sprint approach is new. The real question is whether people feel they can manage deep cuts while still delivering on a big agenda, said one senior bureaucrat — a factor that could determine who chooses to go.
Others add that the deputies who designed these plans should be the ones implementing them — and they should be on the hook if things go sideways. Shuffle them out now, and you’re dropping new deputies into departments to execute cuts they never recommended. Then who’s accountable?
WHO'S READY TO GO? The retirement wildcard is in play
No one knows how many deputy ministers are planning to retire. Some may have intended to leave at the end of the Trudeau era but stayed through two transitions — Carney becoming prime minister and then winning the election — and then stuck around for the expenditure review and the budget. Many who did might now be ready to go.
In any given year, at least eight deputy or associate deputy ministers leave, though it’s often more, especially if they stay on “for the sake of stewardship” to guide their departments through a transition, be it an election, budget, or downsizing, former PCO clerk Michael Wernick says.
The town’s guessing game. The timing of deputy-minister retirements is closely guarded. DMs usually inform the clerk months in advance. But they generally keep it quiet to avoid being seen as a lame duck and to respect the prime minister’s prerogative to pick a replacement. Once word leaks, speculation runs wild and everyone starts guessing who might move where.
Who’s going. Annette Gibbons, deputy minister at Fisheries and Oceans, and Paul Ledwell, deputy at Veterans Affairs, recently announced their departures. Tina Namiesniowski just retired as thesenior associate DMat Employment and Social Development Canada.
Neither Fisheries nor Veterans Affairs is central to Carney’s economic agenda — especially now that the Coast Guard has moved to National Defence. Still, both can cause political headaches if mishandled.
Veteransmade headlineslast week over botched benefit payments. Fisheries and Oceans has a history of controversies — from Tunagatein the 1980s tolobster disputes, overfished cod stocks, and illegal fishing. Fisheries’ legislation is also full of tripwires that could slow or complicate Carney’s major projects.
Deputy minister Annette Gibbons (left) and associate DM Kaili Levesque.
The chain reaction. The dominoes really start to fall when one or two key players step aside. “There’s no need for a big shuffle unless one of the big players retires,” said one long-time bureaucrat. “That’s what triggers the chain reaction.”
Wernick said the government has two choices when a senior deputy leaves: promote an experienced deputy or bring in someone in from outside.
The outsider option is exceedingly rare. But the Carney government hasn’t shied away from putting outsiders in charge of new agencies such as the Major Projects Office, Build Canada Homes, or the Defence Investment Agency.
Performance will count. Carney/Sabia could also make strategic moves — moving or replacing deputies to change leadership style or capability. “If deputies blotted their copybook — didn’t play ball on the budget, didn’t hit their targets — they’ll get the axe,” one official said.
Forbes at a Senate National Finance Committee in Ottawa in May 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
The heavy hitters. Any departures in Carney’s key economic and priority files could really change the board. Chris Forbes at Finance would be a good example.
Forbes’s retirement has been rumoured for over a year. Steady and well-liked, he navigated the expenditure review and Carney’s first budget under the scrutiny of two former Finance chiefs – a prime minister who’s a former Finance associate DM and Bank of Canada governor, and a PCO clerk who headed Finance.
Drouin ahead of a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Sept. 25, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
Nathalie Drouin, deputy clerk and National Security and Intelligenceadvisor, is another example. She is a former deputy minister of Justice – the first woman in the role – followinga careerin the Quebec public service. If she were to leave, someone from the security and intelligence community will have to be pulled up to fill her role, leaving a vacancy that would trigger another move and so on.
Then there are the seasoned veterans.Bob Hamiltonhas been CRA commissioner for a decade and could retire anytime. Before CRA (which is under heavy scrutiny for “rock bottom”service delays), he held deputy posts at NRCan and Environment and a string of executive jobs in Finance and Treasury Board.
Others who might be eligible to retire include Coast Guard commissioner Mario Pelletier, who joined in 1985, and Ron Hallman, Parks Canada’s president and CEO with 25 years in the public service. Given their long tenure, these are the kind of departures that could have a big impact on their departments.
Pelletier on Oct. 10 at the Canadian Coast Guard base in Dartmouth, N.S., at a ceremony formally welcoming the Coast Guard to the National Defence team. On the right: chief of the defence staff, General Jennie Carignan. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese
The last major shake-upwas under the Trudeau government in January 2022 as Canada emerged from the pandemic. A wave of retirements had piled up over the previous year, and two key openings — Treasury Board and the PM’s national security adviser — were enough to trigger the largest shuffle in memory.
One small shuffle at ESDC. Word came yesterday that deputy minister John Ostrander is leaving. In January, he’ll take a deputy-minister job with the Ontario government. Ostrander was a managing partner at IBM who was brought in to help steer Benefits Delivery Modernization.
De-layering. Ostrander won’t be replaced by another DM. Instead, BDM gets folded under Service Canada’s COO, Cliff Groen. Canadian Digital Service head Paul Wagner lead the file as a senior assistant deputy minister.
THE CASE FOR WAITING Is anyone ready to hit it out of the park?
Now the question is what happens this time — and when. Some say shuffling deputy ministers in the chaotic weeks before the Christmas break is just a bad idea. Ottawa goes into overdrive. Everyone is trying to ram files through cabinet and Parliament before the House rises mid-December, all while departments scramble to map out how they’ll reorganize to implement cuts.
The smarter move, insiders say, is during the break, say in January: give new deputies a couple of weeks to settle, meet their teams and get briefed before Parliament returns and the machinery kicks back into high gear. (Now,if there’s a cabinet shuffle,it’s not ideal to move DMs and ministers at the same time)
The looming cuts change the dynamic.
Ideally, deputy ministers would stay put for several months after finalizing plans for cutting and reorganizing departments. That’s time to set priorities, figure out departures and retirements before the heavy lifting of layoffs and workforce adjustment falls to managers.
Another challenge is readiness. Are there enough associate deputy ministers ready to step up? A top candidate might need a year or 18 months to get up to speed, but departments don’t have that kind of time with this government.
“I doubt there’s a list of associates who could hit it out of the park better than their deputy tomorrow,” said one long-time bureaucrat. “So maybe the government isn’t super happy with some of the people they have, but they don’t have better alternatives they’re confident can deliver quickly.”
Associates on the move could end up leaving vacancies that won’t be filled because of the pressure to de-layer.
Under the gun. The new senior management team will face intense pressure to deliver. Sabia has been consistent from day one: the government has seven priorities, and the public service’s job is to focus on them, simplify and streamline to move faster, take more risks, and be accountable.
Increasingly, it looks like Sabia’s role isn’t to spell out how the public service should fix itself. It is to push it to the point where he doesn’t need to. Without a reform plan on paper, Carney expects the public service to deliver his agenda. This is shaping up to be a new era of reform by doing, not thinking about doing.
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A bit about me. I write The Functionary as part of my work covering and analyzing the federal public service for Policy Options, where I am the Accenture Fellow on the Future of the Public Service. I've been reporting on the public service for more than two decades, covering parliamentary affairs and politics for the Ottawa Citizen and iPolitics. My work has been recognized with a National Newspaper Award and a Canadian Online Publishing Award.
