James Moore

Sometimes there can be some, it can be really uncomfortable.

Sometimes more often than not, it's just kind of, you know, people venting and all that.

The prime minister typically would stay at the front, would make notes about everything that was observed and,

would wait until the end and then would comment one by one on each of the items to collect his thoughts uh and also to allow a bit of pressure to relieve you don't want to respond right away because you might actually have a back and forth moment that would not be helpful so that we it's wise for the prime minister to sit wait let everybody do their thing take notes and say i'll i'll make some comments at the end let the pressure come out of the room

20 minutes goes by, prime minister can then wrap up and say, you know, this member mentioned this, you know, here are some thoughts, or I'm going to follow up, this member mentioned this, I'm going to ask the finance minister to get back to you within the end of the week.

And so it's a gathering of everybody together to sort of get everybody on the same page, have a moment of venting, have a moment of sort of reconciliation, and then have a moment of moving forward.

Yes, it's meant to be.

That's not always the case, obviously, depending on, frankly, depending on where you are on the polls, depending on how the follow-ups are followed up on or not, depending on whether or not the whole exercise is performative and garbage or whether or not it's actually meaningful and structured.

Caucus meetings are really important.

I know that Prime Minister Harper, I know it's true, or I'm told that it's true by too many people for it not to be true.

that Prime Minister Mulroney and others, the caucus meetings are enormously important because you might have a majority of 211 seats or 175 seats or whatever, but if five members of caucus stand in unison down in the press room and they say, this prime minister doesn't get it, they don't understand our region, they don't understand our region, it blows apart.

It all blows apart.

It doesn't take much.

It

It doesn't take many people to knock a government completely sideways and off message.

And so caucus meetings are enormously important.

And I know it's true of Prime Minister Harper.

Other prime ministers have their approach, but he would have his chief of staff in the room.

I frankly often sitting to the side, but sort of angled to the front so that the chief of staff could observe the room and the body language, not, not as like a nothing awkward, but to try to get a sense that they said their thing, the prime minister saying his thing, the house leader said his thing.

They're trying to reflect back and,