A 1942 editorial cartoon depicting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s czar appointees/Library of Congress

By Brian Bohunicky

February 25, 2025

The political practice of appointing designated experts to handle key policy files and naming them “czars” dates back to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s appointment in 1942 of a team of czars to manage the wartime American economy, from a shipping czar to a rubber czar.

Over the decades since, as the term has migrated from its original association with assassinated Russian monarchs to a government troubleshooter’s title, many czars have served, mostly in Washington — from Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s drug czars to, most pricelessly, the Asian carp czar appointed during the Obama administration.

The recent appointment of former RCMP Deputy Commissioner Kevin Brosseau as Canada’s fentanyl czar in response to one of Donald Trump’s tariff justifications — doubly offensive for being both coercive and, as of this writing, futile — has revived interest in the term and the role.

A single appointment with a formidable title – if only it were that simple. It’s not. Every time someone suggests that a prime minister appoint a czar, imagine for a moment that there is already someone who is — or at least is supposed to be — doing the job the czar would do. In most cases there is, and they can usually found in the cabinet.

Brosseau’s appointment as fentanyl czar came just weeks after the appointment of a new, and able, minister of public safety, David McGuinty, who is responsible for federal law enforcement agencies, policies and programs including the Canada Border Services Agency.

Liberal leadership candidate Karina Gould has promised to appoint a defence procurement czar. Nobody opposes improving government procurement, including the Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada Jean-Yves Duclos, who is equally able.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has called for a border czar.

The idea of a single-mission, supernumerary taskmaster to bust heads on a high-profile issue is part of a suite of gimmicks that convey action without tackling the complexities of policy and implementation. The priesthood of political platform writers in Ottawa and capitals beyond know them too well: czars, national strategies, blue ribbon panels, cabinet committees, renamed government departments.

Yes, yes, the would-be czar-makers reply, but there really are too many silos of poorly-coordinated bureaucracy, and we need someone with an imposing title to make things happen.

The idea of a single-mission, supernumerary taskmaster to bust heads on a high-profile issue is part of a suite of gimmicks that convey action without tackling the complexities of policy and implementation.

But when things happen in government, it requires execution by people who work in government departments, and there is a member of the executive who is accountable in Parliament for their actions — a cabinet minister. That is how our system of democratic accountability works. Or used to. That is also how we get things done in the messy world of government. Or used to.

Working across silos is unavoidable. Almost everything an aspiring prime minister might want to accomplish implicates more than one ministry. Climate change, productivity, housing, cost of living, harnessing AI, income inequality, public health, international affairs…there is no single “department” for any of these. Problems in the real world do not organize themselves to conform with government departments. As government has grown in size and complexity, it hasn’t done much to solve that mismatch. And any fancy redesign of government departments will never perfectly match the problems in the real world today, let alone five years from now.

That’s not to say you can’t improve the organization of government departments. It is to say that whatever the configuration, we’re going to need our institutions to work better. That will require much more than an appointment here and a re-org there. It will require political leadership with an eye on the holy grail of governing —implementation. So, what would that look like?

First, if the issue is important enough for a czar, it should be one of the prime minister’s top priorities. So, aspiring PMs – articulate the priority, make it focused and fairly specific, and make it meaningful to citizens. And, crucially if you’re serious about priorities, have only a few of them. Five is a good number. Three or four is even better. Your government will do other things of course, but they can’t all be priorities.

Second, mandate a cabinet minister to lead the charge on the priority and hold them accountable for quantifiable results. Mandate the ministers for other implicated agencies (the other silos) to support that lead minister, and hold them accountable too. Bottlenecks will still occur. Silos exist for reasons. Different departments each have their own legal frameworks, competing pressures, stakeholder demands and resource constraints. When accountable ministers and their top officials can’t resolve a bottleneck, that’s when the PM (the only real czar) has to step in because he or she is the only source of executive authority that spans the whole government. The office sits above the silos.

Third, and more generally, the next prime minister should clear away some of the layers of internal processes, reporting, monitoring and scrutinizing that have piled up over years. It has become nearly impossible to act under the suffocating weight of process and risk-aversion in government. Let cabinet ministers lead on their files, provide high-level direction to the public servants in their departments, and be accountable for actually getting things done.

On the example of the fentanyl czar, while the issue is tragically real inside Canada, of course the czar appointment was a maneuvre to persuade Trump to change his mind on a ridiculous plan for tariffs. Was it worth a try? Maybe.

But with the lurid clown show that now passes for American leadership vandalizing institutions of democratic governance, it’s all the more reason for Canadian leaders to accentuate our differences. One good way would be to get serious about renewing our democracy, starting with cabinet government. The coming decade will demand all the seriousness we can muster.

Brian Bohunicky is a senior advisor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and previously an executive in the federal public service and senior political advisor in Canada.