The Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat’s 2024–25 Departmental plan at a glance

The Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, P.C., K.C., M.P.
Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs

A departmental plan describes a department’s priorities, plans and associated costs for the upcoming three fiscal years.

• Vision, mission, raison d’être and operating context
• Minister’s mandate letter

[Read the full departmental plan]

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Key priorities

• Ongoing support of Federal-Provincial-Territorial Government Priorities
• Achieve Service Excellence
• Build and Maintain a Healthy and Strong Workforce
• Efficient Management of Resources

Refocusing Government Spending

In Budget 2023, the government committed to reducing spending by $14.1 billion over the next five years, starting in 2023–24, and by $4.1 billion annually after that.

While not officially part of this spending reduction exercise, the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat (CICS) will respect the spirit of this exercise by doing the following:

• By the nature of its mandate, CICS works to provide economies of scale and an effective and competitive conference service model. The Secretariat maintains 75% of its total reference level as expenses for its program, intergovernmental conference services, and 25% for internal services. Additional favourable impact is expected to be achieved through reinforcing the conference model, promoting the hybrid format, creating an archive data retrieval tool, implementing a conference policy, and completing a comprehensive program evaluation to reduce any inefficiencies.
• The Secretariat has implemented technologies and processes to enable remote simultaneous interpretation for all in-person and hybrid conferences. This eliminates the travel costs associated with interpreters attending conferences, and contributes to CICS’ sustainable development strategy.
• CICS will conduct a Program Evaluation with the goal of learning about innovative conferencing technologies, finding efficiencies in processes, and optimizing resources utilization. The Secretariat will leverage insights gained to influence the future of conferencing in the Government of Canada, with the objective of helping reduce conference spending across the nation in the long-term.
• The Secretariat will continue to facilitate hybrid conferences, which are comprised of in-person meetings with virtual participation. Hybrid conferencing reduces travel costs and environmental impacts by allowing observers, presenters, and participants to connect remotely from anywhere in the world.

The figures in this departmental plan reflect these reductions.

Highlights

A Departmental Results Framework consists of an organization’s core responsibilities, the results it plans to achieve, and the performance indicators that measure progress toward these results.

Intergovernmental Conference Services

Departmental results:

• Facilitate productive federal-provincial-territorial and provincial-territorial discussions through centralized planning and professionally supported conferences.
• Continuous innovation in process and service delivery to meet evolving client needs.

Planned spending: $5,936,923

Planned human resources: 30

The Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat (CICS) is fully committed to delivering quality, cost-effective conference services to federal, provincial and territorial governments. Our impartiality, expertise in service delivery, and commitment to official languages make us the conference service provider of choice for senior-level intergovernmental conferences. We are determined to maintain this unique status.

The agency is also committed to carrying out its role as official custodian of the information shared and discussed during federal-provincial-territorial and provincial-territorial conferences. To this day, the Secretariat is custodian to nearly 57,000 documents that offer a high-level snapshot of all the intergovernmental issues tackled over the course of the 4,600 conferences served by CICS since 1973.

The previous fiscal year was a year of agility and growth for the Secretariat; We had to be focused on innovation to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving conference environment. CICS also received additional funding via Budget 2023; The 3-year funding, which started in fiscal year 2023–24, allowed the agency to better meet demand and continue serving its clients. The upcoming fiscal year will be a year of examination for the Secretariat in terms of program, policy, and infrastructure to ensure the continuity and long-term stability of CICS’ services. This will be achieved through creating an archive data retrieval tool, implementing a conference policy, recommending a cost allocation and recovery model, and completing a comprehensive program evaluation to reduce any inefficiencies.

Through 2024–25, the Secretariat’s initiatives will focus on remaining agile, maintaining our capacity to respond to high demand, and supporting the following four priorities:

• Support of Federal-Provincial-Territorial government priorities by achieving longer term agency sustainability through a comprehensive program evaluation exercise, and by recommending a cost allocation and recovery model.
• Achieve service excellence through meticulous planning by way of an integrated conference policy, development of a planning mechanism for effective and innovative conference services, and creation of an accessible data retrieval tool for archives.
• Build and maintain a healthy and strong workforce that is diverse and inclusive, and has capacity to execute CICS’ full mandate by harmonizing the identification and retention of federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) staffing mechanisms, and through the FPT interchange framework.
• Efficient management of resources, and implementation of operational efficiencies.

More information about Intergovernmental Conference Services can be found in the full departmental plan.