He’s the Greatest Energy Dealer in Canada Whom You’ve By no means Heard Of

All through the historical past of the Canadian authorities, few jobs have been as little publicized because the clerk of the Privy Council, quickly to be stuffed by the just lately appointed John Hannaford, a senior public servant and former diplomat. Whereas most Canadians could be onerous pressed to outline his new job, Mr. Hannaford is to not be underestimated.

“Except for the prime minister, the clerk of the Privy Council is essentially the most highly effective individual in Ottawa,” Donald J. Savoie, a professor at College of Moncton who research public administration, informed me. “So when a brand new clerk is appointed, it issues.”

When Mr. Hannaford formally takes over on June 24, he’ll grow to be, together with the deputy ministers below every cupboard minister, the gatekeeper chargeable for turning the politicians’ coverage concepts into motion.

The clerk manages the deputy ministers and has three duties that generally overlap. He’s the top of the general public service, which is made up of nonpartisan bureaucrats who keep of their jobs as politicians and political events come and go.

The clerk can be manages and coordinates the cupboard as its secretary, and maybe most essential of all, he’s the prime minister’s high adviser.

Professor Savoie mentioned that the clerk and the prime minister meet a number of instances every week and that every brings a separate agenda.

“A whole lot of key selections are made at these conferences,” he mentioned, including that these classes are sometimes extra essential than cupboard conferences. A cupboard minister, Professor Savoie mentioned, as soon as informed him that the cupboard had way back grow to be a “focus group for the prime minister.”

The pattern towards concentrating energy within the prime minister’s arms, and by extension the clerk’s, has been happening for many years below each Liberal and Conservative governments. And Professor Savoie mentioned that it’s not essentially an influence seize.

More and more, the federal authorities finds itself grappling with points, like local weather change, that contain a number of ministers, departments and companies, and the position of the clerk is to coordinate that work.

A part of this association is that the clerk and the general public servants he instructions maintain out of public view. The federal government was unable to supply me with a high-resolution {photograph} of Mr. Hannaford, and the Privy Council Workplace mentioned that he was not out there for an interview.

The pondering behind that intentional obscurity relies on the concept the general public service is there to help to the federal government of the day, no matter its political taste, and so it leaves politicians to be the federal government’s public face.

However a number of legal guidelines truly take away decision-making powers from cupboard ministers and place them with public servants. The outcome, Professor Savoie mentioned, is commonly conditions just like the latest backlogs in passport workplaces, as politicians needed to take the blame for selections through which they had been neither concerned nor even consulted.

Luc Juillet, a professor of public administration on the College of Ottawa, mentioned there was an inclination amongst politicians to concentrate on new insurance policies and packages quite than the much less glamorous job of creating positive that the equipment of presidency runs easily.

“It’s not essentially the type of factor that drives most politicians,” he mentioned.

Mr. Hannaford has a distinguished résumé as a coverage maker. A lawyer and diplomat who started his profession at what was then known as Overseas Affairs, he has been an essential participant in commerce talks together with the latest renegotiation of NAFTA; has handled local weather points, most just lately at Pure Assets Canada; and was as soon as a overseas and protection coverage adviser to Mr. Trudeau.

However absent from all that, Professor Juillet famous, is any intensive expertise in authorities operations.

To Professor Savoie, the appointment of somebody with Mr. Hannaford’s background in worldwide relations and protection is a sign from Mr. Trudeau of what he now views as the best challenges going through his authorities, that are largely worldwide. They embrace allegations of Chinese language meddling in Canadian elections, commerce coverage in the USA, world local weather change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The brand new worldwide order is filled with pitfalls, and the prime minister wants a serving to hand,” he mentioned.

Norimitsu Onishi went to Winnipeg to report on the Hudson’s Bay Firm’s donation of its former flagship retailer. Residents are debating whether or not it was an act of reconciliation with the Indigenous individuals who performed a crucial position within the firm’s historical past or an empty reward.

Once I went to Alberta just a few weeks in the past to report on this week’s provincial election, I discovered plenty of lifelong Conservative voters who had been delay by Premier Danielle Smith’s anti-vaccination stance and her libertarian agenda and generally inflammatory rhetoric. Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Occasion authorities was returned to energy, however with considerably fewer seats within the legislature.

Wildfires proceed to burn after blanketing Halifax in smoke, consuming homes and forcing 1000’s to evacuate inside the metropolis’s metropolitan boundaries.

Within the persevering with evolution of Canadian antismoking warnings, particular person cigarettes will bear messages printed on their paper, together with “Poison in Each Puff.”

A local of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Occasions for the previous 16 years. Comply with him on Twitter at @ianrausten.

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