Canada. Treasury Board Secretariat. Office of the Secretary and the Comptroller General : While the position of the Secretary of the Treasury Board originates in an order-in-council in 1868, and while the position has existed ever since as the deputy-head of the administrative unit supporting the Treasury Board as a Committee of the Privy Council, the modern Office of the Secretary of the Treasury Board is associated with the achievement of separate departmental status in 1966. Before that the position of Secretary was assumed by the Deputy Minister of Finance and then, after 1951, by a senior officer in the Department of Finance. Up to 1914, the Secretary to the Board performed a limited function as a one person administrative head to a Committee of Cabinet whose primary output were Minutes of decision. The Secretary coordinated the presentation of submissions, the recording and tracking of decisions and he managed the necessary direct correspondence with the Cabinet and departments at the level of Deputy Head. Apart from these very limited functions, there was no autonomous administrative activity on the part of the Secretary. As late as 1938, the establishment was made up of only eight persons, most of them preoccupied with the creation of the formal expenditure Estimates documents to present to Parliament. With the new departmental designation in 1966, the Secretary became a full Deputy Head of an entity with a dual mandate, to support the Treasury Board as a Committee of the Privy Council and to fulfill the statutory responsibilities of a central agency.
With the rapid expansion of jurisdiction and programs after 1966, it became necessary to provide the Secretary as Deputy Head with the support needed to coordinate the administrative functions of the Secretariat as a whole. As various times, the Office of the Secretary has incorporated within its purview the corporate communications function under various sub-entities, the submission control unit, and the administration of Access to Information and Privacy. Increasingly it has had the status of a tiny administrative secretariat designed to provide high level administrative coordination for the Treasury Board Secretariat as a corporate entity. With the reintegration of the Office of the Comptroller General into the Treasury Board and the Secretary and the Deputy Head of the merged secretariat bearing the Statutory titles of Secretary and Comptroller General, the name of Office incorporated the dual names as well.
