The [annotated] Agenda Binder sub-series was an innovation in tracking the activity of Treasury Board meetings. The series was so named because the documents were created before the actual meetings to facilitate business and outlined the intended order of proceedings to be conducted. However, from the beginning, the Agenda Binders were annotated to make them de facto minutes of proceedings. As minutes, the series was indeed informal because the minute function performed by the series was confined to informal annotations to a document prepared in advance and not a true minute of proceeding created during and after the event and later formally approved in a fashion that is transparent in the record. These records were maintained parallel to the very limited series of "Summaries of Decisions" recorded in small books and continuously maintained from 1929 to 2004. (See separate sub-series entry.) By 1970, these Summaries of Decision books were much reduced in comprehensiveness from what they had been before 1966.
At other times we know that Treasury Board employed Agendas; however, before 1966, the only formal agenda series to have survived is the limited remnant preserved in the "Agenda" sub-series for the years 1921-1923.
In 1981, the Treasury Board seemed intent on a more formal approach to creating minutes of actual proceedings with the introduction of yet another parallel series of "Minute Binders." (See separate sub-series entry.) These records come close to true and complete summary minutes of proceedings but their quality varies. For the period, January 1981 to early 1988, this is the most authoritative record of Treasury Board Committee activity. The entries for the years 1983-1988 appear to be particularly complete and consistent in content. These "Minutes Binders" appear to have been discontinued shortly after changes in procedure in 1988 enhanced the "Agenda Binders" to incorporate the details previously codified more systematically in the Minutes Binders.
In the years after 1991, the Agenda Binders were the main documentation of the proceedings of Treasury Board meetings (though a less than comprehensive "Summary of Decisions" continued through to 2004). The Agenda Binders have evolved since 1991 and continue to evolve into a much more formal summary accounting of the actual proceeding of meetings of the Treasury Board Ministers. From 1991 on, their title is actually misleading because they have become real and approved minutes of the meetings of Treasury Board, not merely agendas outlining intent.
In conjunction with the Index and Registry sub-series, the "Agendas" sub-series, the "Minutes Binders" sub-series and the "Summaries of Decision" sub-series," the "[annotated] Agenda Binder" sub-series demonstrates the evolving effort to interpret adequate levels of accountability for Treasury Board activity. In 2003 the Submission and Cabinet Document Centre incorporated a new "Record of Decisions" which further formalizes a detailed accounting of actual activity as well as an enhanced effort at accountability for accurate records of actual attendance (late arrivals and early departures included).
TB transferred the full series, 1970-2001, in a single transfer in 2007. Subsequent transfers may arrive under a different (and more logical) name but, whether arranged as a separate sub-series or not, the chronological increments for the period after 2001 will reflect an evolving series derived from the original "Agenda Binder" first created in 1970. A second transfer covering the period 2001-2009 arrived in 2012.
Much like other series related to Treasury Board decisions, this series provides an important supplementary finding aid for portions of the decisions sub-series. Treasury Board decisions after 1966 are arranged by sequential number and cannot be searched by date even if the date of approval is known. The Agenda Binders, like the Minutes Binders (1981-1991) and, to a lessor extent, the Summaries of Decision may be used for this period after 1966 to find a particular decision where the date of approval is known but not the decision number. The series may also provide some limited contextual information relevant to understanding details about a decision (such as which Ministers were present and which senior official from the Secretariat were present).
![[Annotated] Agenda Binders](/images/folder-40.png){kind=small}