The CHH Initiative made a significant contribution to the field of heart health promotion in Canada, but it ended before it could have the impact that was intended. Governance issues were a key factor in its premature demise.

The paper sketches the contours of the emerging new public governance. Some key concepts of traditional public administration are now contested. The new paradigm calls for nothing short of a refoundation of public administration.

An approach to managing government policy priorities more horizontally is presented through one of the more prominent, large scale and somewhat successful attempts at managing horizontally, namely the Aboriginal Horizontal Framework.

The machinery of government metaphor has fed an ill-inspired propensity to rely on mechanical formal rules and monitoring bodies. Doubts are expressed about the proposals to formalize unwritten conventions, to limit prime ministerial discretionary powers, and to give a constitutional identity to the public service.

The difficult interface between politicians and bureaucrats, the texture of the public service as a nexus of moral contracts, the slow evolution from leadership to stewardship, and the new challenges facing deputy ministers – reflections emerging from conversations with executives in the federal public service.