Deputy Minister

Deputy Minister

A deputy minister is generally an officer of the public service appointed as managerial and administrative head of a department or ministry of the federal or provincial governments. A deputy minister is the official primarily responsible for the co-ordination and flow of policy and program advice and technical analysis to the minister or CABINET and for management of the department and program implementation.

The appointment of deputy ministers, based in statute law and customary practice, is federally the prime minister's responsibility and provincially that of the premier, although at the provincial level ministers may exercise greater influence in the selection. Because tradition and convention have established that they should be politically nonpartisan in their work, deputy ministers are entitled to continue in office even with a change of government, although in recent years there have been demands for the politicization of such ORDER-IN-COUNCIL appointees, after the American model.