No retreat, baby

Carney and his ministers gather in the woods to think biggish

Mark Carney at the cabinet meeting thing, Wednesday

When I came on the scene, in a previous century, Jean Chrétien’s staff was calling these two-day ministerial getaways outside Ottawa “cabinet retreats.” Every government since has followed suit, until now. Mark Carney prefers “cabinet planning forum.” It’s what you call a cabinet retreat that’s strongly discouraged from wearing brown shoes.

Justin Trudeau’s early retreats were largely team-building and whiteboard-brainstorming sessions to season a cabinet whose ministers had, in most cases, no previous federal government experience and who had, at first, barely even met. This one, Carney told reporters on his way into the meeting, comes wrapped around a formal cabinet meeting at which one or more decisions will be made. Which decision(s)? We’ll need to wait for somebody’s memoirs or Bob Fife’s next byline.

But these “planning forums” are often designed to get governments out of the daily grind and think a bit about the bigger scale and longer term. This can involve inviting insiders in for presentations and chats. In a welcome burst of glasnost, Carney’s PMO sent us the guest list for the week’s briefings and panel discussions. Just as an index of the government’s current thinking and (sometimes surprising!) Rolodex, it’s worth going through the names.