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The Office of Premier of Ontario 1945-2010: Who Really Advises?
Peter P. Constantinou; Patrice Dutil

This article focuses on the composition of the Ontario Premier’s office and uses an institutionalist approach to put the influence of advisors in context. It looks at expenditures attributed in the Public Accounts to the Premier’s Office and staffing. It assumes that the number of advisors and their placement in the decision-making hierarchy should have a material impact on the quantity and quality of the advice being received by the Premier. Among other things the articles shows that the classic policy/administration divide was not clearly defined in Ontario. Instead it exhibits a back-and-forth habit of experimentation that depended on the personality of the prime minister, the capacities of political and bureaucratic advisors, and the stages of the governmental cycle. There have been discernible cycles in the hiring of political staff and in the growth of expenditures that would indicate the Premier’s Office was more concerned with campaign preparations and externalities than it was in rivaling bureaucratic influence. Compared to Ottawa, where the structures of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office have been far more distinct in this similar time frame, the Ontario experience reveals itself as one of constant experimentation.

For almost two generations, observers of all sorts have almost unanimously lamented the growth in influence of prime ministerial advisors. Members of parliament and public servants have complained that brash young advisors have been presumptive in claiming to speak on behalf of “the power” and in holding that their “spoken truths” had more relevance and importance than any other advice. Scholars have chimed in with the conclusion that the strength of the PM’s advisors are indicative of a will to “steer from the centre.” In Canada, the most distinguished advocate of this model has been Donald Savoie who diagnosed a growing tendency to “govern from the centre” and the emergence of a new form of “court government” that required an important cadre of advisors.1

In her study for the Gomery Commission, Liane Benoit noted that political staff (or “exempt staff”) played a valuable role in advising Prime Ministers. Paul Thomas was far more critical of political aides, arguing that they needed regulation and accountability.2 More recently, Ian Brodie defended the work of political staffers, but conceded that training for their roles might be advantageous.3 In the case of Ontario, Graham White chronicled the evolution of the informal function of advising the premier, but did not examine closely the nature of political aides.4

On the heels of the findings presented by Savoie and then of the Gomery Commission on the sponsorship scandal which pointed to unwarranted political intervention in a government program,5 Peter Aucoin presented a new construct: the New Political Government, which featured “the concentration of power under the Prime Minister and his or her court of a few select ministers, political aides and public servants.”6 Aucoin observed that these pressures, which stemmed from increasing demands for accountability, consistency, transparency and openness, put an unprecedented strain on the Prime Minister.7 The Aucoin model captured what many journalists have been observing for decades, but was not supported by empirical evidence. How is the “concentration of power” to be measured? Can the “enhanced presence and power of political staff” be proven? Can it be shown that Premiers today spend more time examining the qualification of the mandarins that ultimately report to him or her? Is there proof that public servants are more pressured today than in the past to toe the government line, or show enthusiasm for the government’s plans and priorities?

Public Sector Leadership in the Premier’s Office

In the immediate post-war period, the “Office of the Prime Minister” was easily ensconced in the east wing of Queen’s Park. George Drew, Premier of Ontario from August 1943 to October 1948, had a small clerical staff. The top-ranked public servants reported formally to the Provincial Secretary, a cabinet position, not to the Premier.

Thomas Kennedy’s short stay in power marked a clear change in the structure: a formal “Cabinet Office” was created within the Provincial Secretary’s Department, and Lorne R. McDonald was named Deputy Minister and Secretary of the Cabinet. Technically, McDonald (he was heretofore known as the Assistant to the Provincial Secretary) reported to Dana Porter, the Provincial Secretary. An important point must be made here in that titles, while important, have always been subject to manipulation and can be misleading. What clearly mattered was the individual giving advice, not the title being occupied.8 McDonald, in marked contrast to his predecessors, was increasingly advising the Premier directly.

Leslie Frost assumed the Premiership in 1951 and significantly expanded his office, both in terms of employees and budget, so as to receive better advice systematically. McDonald was formally recognized as “Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister and Secretary of Cabinet”; it was now clear that he reported to the Premier. The earlier post of “Clerk of the Executive Council” (H. A. Stewart), which was part of the Provincial Secretary’s Office, was also integrated into the office of the Prime Minister. In effect, the Premier’s Office had become the cabinet secretariat, signaling a desire to centre cabinet decision-making in Queen’s Park’s east wing (Frost even added the Ontario Racing Commission to his office in 1952-54, in order to deal with the issues himself).9

In 1954, W.M. McIntyre replaced McDonald as Secretary to Cabinet, but did not inherit the title of Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister. Instead, Frost added a new “Executive Officer” to his office, D.J. Collins, in 1955. In 1958 Frost himself formally took the title of “President of the Council.” The Premier, according to Allan Grossman, a minister without portfolio in the last year of the Frost government, “ran a one-man show.”10 In 1960 an Assistant Secretary of the Cabinet was added and in 1961 an adjustment was made to the title of the most senior civil servant – W. M. McIntyre became Secretary of the Cabinet and Director, Executive Council Office.

John Robarts became Premier in 1961 and initially adopted the Frost tradition. In 1963, McIntyre now was formally recognized as wearing three hats: Secretary to the Cabinet, Deputy Minister, and Director of the Executive Council Office. A year later, a new Department of the Prime Minister was established, which would formally divide the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Office. McIntyre, as senior deputy minister, would be its administrative head, but would focus his work on his duties as secretary of the cabinet.

In 1965, a new position was created: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Keith Reynolds, another public servant, was hired. He would in effect lead the prime minister’s personal and advisory staff. In particular, he would co-ordinate the flow of demands on the prime minister, “in such a way to ensure a minimum demand on the Prime Minister with a maximum result.”11 Like Frost, however, Robarts liked to seek advice widely. As noted by one of his biographers, Robarts’s “policy network extended beyond the cabinet to include his political group as well as his personal office staff.

Whereas Frost had had a few advisers and many acquaintances, Robarts tended to cast his net more widely, having a larger circle of advisers over whom he exercised much less control.”12 As a result, the PO was kept at consistent levels in terms of full time employees, with the office’s budget showing increases that did not go much beyond inflation. The creation of the CEO position created some tension as Reynolds became the “go to” person to handle political issues, and he acquired a great deal of influence with the Premier, even if he technically reported to McIntyre. When the latter retired in 1969, Robarts promoted Reynolds to the job of Secretary to cabinet and abolished the CEO position thus ending the experiment of two key advisors in his office. Keith Reynolds was listed as “principal assistant” and veered in political decision-making. In the spring of 1970, Reynolds was discussing cabinet postings directly with cabinet ministers.13

That year, the report of the Committee on Government Productivity (COGP) noted that the Premier’s Office’s purpose was to serve the Premier in his three roles: as “first minister of cabinet”, as “leader of the government and its chief legislative spokesman,” and as “the elected representative of his constituents.” The report emphasized that the Premier’s Office was mainly concerned with the latter two functions, i.e. not as first minister of cabinet. The key advisor to the Premier was the Deputy Minister of the Office of the Premier, while the role of serving the “first minister of cabinet” belonged to Cabinet Office, which was headed by the same individual who acted as Deputy Minister of the Office of the Premier. “This merging of responsibilities into a single position facilitates the functional relationship between the Cabinet Office and the Premier’s Office.”14 The functions of the Premier’s Office were clearly laid out to provide “advisory support on policy matters and administrative support service to the Premier.”

When Robarts retired in 1971, his office’s structure was very similar to the one he had acquired in 1961 (the real exception was the creation of the communications function). In reality, the Premier’s Office was nothing more than an extension of the Cabinet Office, a trend that would continue for another fifteen years. The structure convinced many that because cabinet office was mostly staffed by public servants, even the political appointees to that body were providing dispassionate, politically neutral advice. Still, Robarts grew weary of the bureaucracy’s counsel. In 1970 when a new, more rigorous treasury board was planned, so that it looked more like the federal government’s (with a strong staff) Robarts hesitated. Even though the legislation had been drafted and office spaces even allocated, he instructed that the bill had to be sidelined because the project was “being pushed by empire builders, meaning obviously [Carl] Brannan [secretary to cabinet], even perhaps JKR [Reynolds].”15 For Robarts, the bureaucratization of the Premier’s Office had gone too far.

Davis signaled a dramatic new approach to the Office. Upon his election in 1971, he added three “Special Assistants”; there were now five “Executive Officers”. Keith Reynolds was retained as Deputy Minister to ensure the transition, but the job of Secretary to Cabinet was given a separate function and occupied by C.E. [Carl] Brannan. Indeed, a formal “Cabinet Office” was recognized for the first time, but was still formally a part of the Office of the Premier. James Fleck, a York University professor and the key architect of the COGP, was brought into the Premier’s Office in 1972 as CEO (the title of Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister being abolished) and ordered that his office should vet all speeches by Cabinet ministers before they were delivered (and largely ignored).16

The Office of the Prime Minister, now twenty-people strong, including eight executive officers, was renamed the “Premier’s Office” in 1972. Clare Westcott was named Executive Director and Executive Assistant to the premier, and “special assistants” changed their titles to “special assignments”, suggesting a deliberate application of resources to what could be deemed partisan activities. To further harmonize horizontal collaboration between ministries, Edward E. Stewart, a former deputy of education who knew Davis intimately, would assume the position of Deputy Minister to the Premier in the summer of 1974 while Fleck was named Secretary to Cabinet. By 1975, thirty people worked in the Premier’s Office as the government readied for an election, but the contest went badly for Davis’s Big Blue Machine, losing 27 seats and its majority (it now held only 51 of 125 seats). The prospect of facing a resurgent NDP under Stephen Lewis in the official opposition created an urgent need for more coordination at the centre, much like the 1967 election had shaken the Robarts administration. As Edward Stewart noted, “the Premier began to broaden the consultative process on other fronts […].”17

Davis retooled the office. First, he renamed it “The Office of the Premier and Cabinet Office.” Fleck, who had little patience for politicians, was removed as a result of numerous complaints from the caucus. Davis turned to his former Deputy Minister of Education, Ed Stewart, and placed him in the position of Deputy Minister and Secretary to Cabinet. Ed Stewart then hired Hugh Segal, Davis’s campaign secretary in the recent contest, because he had worked in Robert Stanfield’s office and had experience in dealing with parliamentary minority position. Segal was placed in the Cabinet Office, reporting to Stewart, not Clare Westcott. Notwithstanding his posting, Segal was hired as exempt staff (i.e. while he was an employee of the crown, he was not hired as a civil servant.)

Wescott, for his part, reorganized his office, hiring Sally Barnes as Director of Communications and hiring seven “public liaison” and four “special assignment” officers. Stewart was an anomaly. Clearly seen by many as a stalwart, non-partisan public servant,18 he was entirely devoted to the personal success of Bill Davis and the Progressive Conservative Party.19 As Hugh Segal put it, “When Ed Stewart replaced Fleck as deputy in the premier’s office and, subsequently, as secretary to the cabinet, the stage for real repositioning and pragmatic, hands-on political decision-making was set.”20 Indeed, Segal was also Secretary of the Progressive Conservative Policy Committee. By ensuring that his principal assistants were fixtures in the Cabinet Office, Davis effectively hard-wired the central agency of this government so it would work harmoniously with his personal office.

Davis called an election in June of 1977, and increased the government’s number of seats in the legislature, but still fell five seats short of a majority. The Premier made more changes to tighten the coordination of his team. Stewart was named Deputy Minister to the Premier and Secretary to Cabinet and Clerk of the Executive Council in 1978, and, as he himself pointed out, “the two operations were linked once again.” He proceeded to build capacity: ironically it was the head of the public service that was building up the structures necessary to provide political advice.21 As Edward Stewart noted later, the PO’s operation “was thought to be another serious problem area, particularly as it related to the Premier’s availability to those who wanted or needed to see him.”22 More than a decade later, Stewart could still justify this reuniting of the political and administrative.

The March 1981 election finally gave the PCs the majority it had sought since 1975 and Davis made more a few more changes. He created two jobs on assist the streaming of political advice. Keeping Clare Westcott as Executive Director, he appointed John Tory as Principal Secretary to the Premier (a title borrowed from Ottawa). Davis created a new model that would persist for the next thirty years in appointing two leading political advisors with a variety of titles: executive director, principal secretary, or chief of staff. The division of labour between the two positions depended entirely on the skills and background of the individuals. While some were more focused on party affairs, others favoured policy issues and both emphases would change as electoral mandates grew near their deadlines.

David Peterson brought about significant changes to the Office of the Premier and Cabinet Office after the election of 1985. Structurally, the government abandoned the practice of giving the position of Secretary to Cabinet and Deputy to the Premier to one person. The Cabinet Office would be led by the Secretary to Cabinet, Robert Carman, a career public servant. The Premier’s Office would be led by the Principal Secretary to the Premier, Hershell Ezrin, a former federal public servant, who oversaw formal departments of policy, legislation and communications (he was succeeded by Vince Borg, a long-trusted aide to Peterson, in 1988; and then Daniel Gagnier, who took the title of Chief of Staff in 1989). By the time the Liberal Government was defeated in 1990, 38 people worked in the Premier’s Office.

The largest growth in the Premier’s Office took place under the Premiership of Bob Rae, who was deeply suspicious of the public service, and who had no faith that it could carry out his government’s wishes.23 Within months of its installation, the Premier’s Office almost doubled from 38 to 69 in 1991, 102 in 1992, and 109 in 1993. Rae abandoned the “Chief of Staff” designation for his chief political advisor, and named his long-time aide David Agnew as Principal Secretary while also appointing an executive director. Rae also reluctantly kept Peter Barnes, the cabinet secretary appointed by David Peterson, for two years. In 1992, borrowing from the practice of NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Rae appointed Agnew as Secretary to Cabinet and Clerk of Executive Council, hoping to ensure more compliance from the bureaucracy. Agnew ended his membership in the NDP at that point.

The tide was again reversed three years later. Elected in 1995, the Mike Harris government aimed at reducing the size of government and government spending, and the PO did not escape cutbacks. In the first full year of the first term of the Harris government, the Premier’s Office staff complement was cut by two thirds, matching the levels of the early years of the Davis government.24 In 2003 the Liberals under Dalton McGuinty reduced the staff complement in his office to 48.

The Evolving Budget

Advisors can be hired, but they can also be rented, so it is important to consider how much money was actually spent by Premiers on their offices. In 1945, the first year of examination in this study, $127,798 was spent on the Office of the Prime Minister ($1.7 million). In the next two years, expenditures more than doubled, growing to $292,900 per year. Drew clearly spent a colossal sum of money (even by 2010 standards) on occasional staff and to meet people and collect their advice. Frost also used his budgets to do more than put people on payroll. As the election year of 1951 approached, expenditures in the Prime Minister’s Office grew to $399,142 with a staff of only seven people. Most of that public money went to defray the cost travel for the premier and his key cabinet ministers and staff and for political advice of all kinds. Over the following years the expenditures were reduced until the election in 1955 when they grew again to $371,511. The PO’s expenditures dropped dramatically to $121,576 the following year and remained similarly low until the election of 1959 when they were raised to $192,917. After Frost was elected for a last time in 1960, expenditures were again reduced slightly to $160,248, but raised to $178,694 in 1961, his final year in office, as the government prepared for an election with a new leader.

By 1970, after nine years under Robarts, the Premier’s office counted ten employees but was spending a great deal more, $500,000 ($2.9 million). Within a year, those numbers were doubled as Bill Davis invested massively in the office. By the time the Tory Dynasty ended in 1985, the budget of the PO amounted to nearly $3 million ($5.8 million). A year after the Peterson government had come to office, there were 31 people employed, growing to a complement of 38 and expenditures of $2,251,132 in 1990. The Rae government invested heavily in the Premier’s Office and in 1991, the budget went from $2,251,132 to $3,611,438 as various government liaison offices were integrated into the Premier’s Office. (PO operations would not cost this much again until 2004 when the Liberals returned to power and $5,392,121 was spent.) Within a year there were 109 staff – a 63% increase in one year – although the budget did not follow. Indeed, the budget fell as staff numbers increased, indicating again that the government, as in Frost’s day, was seconding staffers who were being paid for by other departments. That practice was abandoned by 1995 and a measure of equilibrium was reestablished as the government tried to reduce expenditures, the number of staff was reduced to 80 in 1994 and 77 in 1995, although expenditures were still more than $2m.

In his first year in office, 2003, Premier McGuinty reduced the staff complement in his office to 48, but expenditures went from $3,831,077 to $5,392,121, a dramatic explosion that went far beyond staff salaries. Staff numbers grew to 63 prior to the election of 2006, and grew again in 2007 to 82 – a 30% increase, before settling to a complement of 75 people.

Conclusion

Premiers in Ontario have always required political advice. Over time, depending on circumstance and their own character and needs, they found counsel among a series of concentric circles: Family, old and trusted friends, political allies within their party, ministers, leaders in the public service, members of parliament, business magnates, labour leaders, interest group representatives, local authorities (both political and grass-roots). As Premiers faced more complicated questions brought about by the economic, social and environmental consequences of infrastructure building, the vast expansion of government services, and state regulation of a wider variety of socio-economic activity, they required more and better briefings to face down oppositions that were well prepared, knowledgeable and well connected to civil society, they have had to hire political advisors to work in their office.25

The experience of the Ontario government in evolving towards a “new political governance” over the past fifty years shows a number of realities. First, it involved a growth in the office of the Premier’s Office, both in terms of full-time employees and in terms of budget. Over the 55 year period under study, the budget changes correlated loosely with staffing growth. There were many years, however, where governments clearly seconded staff to the Premier’s Office. This was shown when staff numbers where high relative to budgets. Alternatively, Premiers’ Offices spent moneys far greater than what was required for payroll. These moneys were spent on myriad items, typically in election years, to pay for polls, consultations, travel. It is remarkable that in constant dollars, the Premier’s Office actually has spent less in the last five years than in the 1940s and 1950s and through most of the 1970s and 80s.

As government operations grew, so did the staffing of the Premier’s Office, but not in a direct correlation. The relative growth of the premier’s staff resists easy conclusions. When the government of Ontario’s budget hit the $1 billion mark in 1960, less than 10 people worked in the Prime Minister’s Office. Forty years later, the government of Ontario’s budget hovered around $120 billion (a near 12,000% increase). By contrast, the Premier’s staff has only grown by 650%. At the height of government hiring in the early 1990s, when the number of Ontario employees reached 90,000, 110 people worked for the Premier directly, a ratio of .001:1. In 2010, with roughly 60,000 people on the government payroll (not counting the employees in the 635 agencies, board, commissions and foundations of the government of Ontario) and 75 people working in the premier’s office that ratio is likely less than the same: .001:1.

The numbers of staffers in the Premier’s office have been relatively small, no matter how they are looked at, and with the exception of the dramatic, if short-lived, staff growth of Premier Rae’s office or the equally dramatic and spontaneous growth of the budget of the Premier’s office in early 2000s, the growth has been steady and undramatic.

Judging from the data of the last 55 years, it is clear that the budgets of the Premier’s Office almost always increased in election years (1945, 1948, 1951, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1971, 1975, 1977, 1981, 1985, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007), an indication that the priority of the Premier’s office was to communicate externally when the electorate was most responsive rather than in exercising influence on the bureaucracy. The cycle of hiring that accented ends-of-term allow us to put forward a tri-partite model for political aides in the Premiers Office that contrast with the accepted observation that these hires were made for administrative purposes. On the contrary: Most were hired as propagandists, i.e. to inform various constituencies of the government’s accomplishments and intentions. Others were used as funnels, i.e. as liaison officers that would make sense of the information on what stakeholders considered positive and negative about the government’s priorities and actions. They were specialists in managing a process where the views of a wide range of actors could be amassed and presented of in a package that could be absorbed by busy political executives. The dual role of political staffers made them young ambassadors of sorts for the “court.”26

The third group was composed of a very small number of advisors who were expected to generate political counsel on policy proposals or policy advice on political or administrative issues. Over time, very few could be relied upon to actually generate policy advice on their own and wield the influence necessary to veto initiatives, but they could be depended upon to provide a political filter to the ideas and advice advanced by others and ensure that there were “no surprises.”

We argue that while some advisors (either inside the Premier’s Office or outside) are individually more influential than others, there is no evidence of a trend indicating that they are more influential today than they have been in the past. Numbers, in this case, tell an important story. Since the 1940s, the Premier’s Office in Ontario has hired a number of advisors that roughly corresponded with the growth of government. But not all advice is hired–some of it is also purchased. The evidence demonstrates that Premiers have in the past outspent their successors considerably to get political advice. We see no evidence that advisors today are any more influential than they were in the past. Certainly, there are more of them than before, but then again government is involved in more files than in the past and is larger than it was in the past.

Our third argument is that Ontario followed international trends in terms of building up the office of the chief political executive and that in many ways it paralleled and sometimes anticipated the centralization of power in Ottawa that has been identified by others in the 1970s and 1980s.27 The Premier’s office slowly started to change in the 1960s as it increasingly hired professional political aides in response to the accelerating news cycle. As the years progressed, and as the bureaucracy grew dramatically, Premiers maintained the need for a counterbalance by seeking out the outside views. For the public service in Ontario, serving the premier (or ministers) with briefings about political consequences of government policy was seen as legitimate. Indeed, the very structure of a combined Deputy Minister (Premier’s Office) and Secretary to Cabinet facilitated the combination of advice. Political advice also came in the form of “kitchen cabinets”, interviews with individual MPPs, caucus meetings and field trips. In sum, there has been a great deal more consistency since the Second World War than disruption in the office of the Premier of Ontario. Naturally, the numbers of staff have grown as government has taken on more responsibility. But the numbers show that Premiers also have devoted high levels of funding to their offices over the past half-century. Together, these factors add some complexity to the discussion of the rise of a “new political governance” by pointing to the reality that a native “Ontario style” may be just as important as international trends of governance.

Notes

1 See Donald Savoie, Governing from the Centre (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999) and Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

2 Paul Thomas “Who is Getting the Message? Communications at the Centre of Government,” by Paul G. Thomas. In Public Policy Issues and the Oliphant Commission: Independent Research Studies. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, Ottawa, 2010.

3 Ian Brodie, “In Defence of Political Staff”, Canadian Parliamentary Review, Vol 35, No. 3, 2012, pp 33-39.

4 Graham White,”Governing from Queen’s Park: The Ontario Premiership,” in Leslie A. Pal and David Taras (eds), 1998. Prime Minister and Premiers: Political Leadership and Public Policy in Canada (Toronto: Prentice-Hall).

5 Liane Benoit, “Ministerial Staff: The Life and Times of Parliament’s Statutory Orphans,” In Restoring Accountability: Research Studies Volume 1: Parliament, Ministers and Deputy Ministers. Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, Ottawa, 2005.

6 Peter Aucoin, “Improving Government Accountability,” Canadian Parliamentary Review Vol. 29, No. 3, 2006 p. 23.

7 Ibid. pp 23-24. See also his posthumous article “New Political Governance in Westminster Systems: Impartial Public Administration and Management Performance at Risk” in Governance, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp 177–199, April 2012. Jonathan Boston and J.R. Nethercote are very critical of Aucoin’s perspective in the same journal. See their “Reflections on ‘New Political Governance in Westminster Systems’, pp 201-207.

8 F.F. Schindeler, Responsible Government in Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969) p. 45.

9 See Roger Graham, Old Man Ontario: Leslie Frost (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19 ), pp 259-62.

10 Ibid., p. 173.

11 Ibid., pp 133-34.

12 Ibid. p. 88.

13 Allan Grossman Diary, cited in Peter Oliver, Unlikely Tory: The Life and Politics of Alan Grossman (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985) p. 236.

14 Committee on Government Productivity.

15 Ibid., pp 239-240.

16 Peter Oliver, p. 295. Eddie Goodman, Life of the Party: The Memoirs of Eddie Goodman (Toronto: Key Porter, 1988), p. 222. Goodman indicates that Fleck was promoted by John Cronyn, a London-based senior executive at Labatt’s Brewers.

17 Edward E. Stewart, Cabinet Government in Ontario: A View from Inside, (Halifax: Institute for Research on Public Policy), 1989, p.55.

18 Goodman, p. 261: Goodman literally advised Premier Davis not to consider moving to the federal stage in part because “Stewart is not going to be with you in Ottawa”.

19 See for instance, Ian Scott (with Neil McCormick), To Make a Difference: A Memoir (Toronto: Stoddart, 2001), p. 119. Scott describes Stewart as nothing else than “Davis’s right-hand man”.

20 See Hugh Segal, No Surrender: Reflections of a Happy Warrior in the Tory Crusade (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 57; Goodman, pp 224, 237.

21 Stewart, p. 41.

22 Stewart, p. 20.

23 Bob Rae, From Protest to Power: Personal Reflections on a Life in Politics (Toronto: Viking, 1996), p. 130.

24 David Cameron and Graham White, Cycling into Saigon: The Conservative Transition in Ontario (UBC Press
Location: Vancouver, 2000), p. 112.

25 John Halligan, “Policy Advice and the Public Service,” in B.G. Peters and Donald Savoie, Governance in a Changing Environment (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995).

26 Donald Savoie, Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Michael Prince parses differences between advisors who “speak truth to power” and those who “share truths with multiple actors of influence” in “Soft craft, hard choices, altered context: Reflections on Twenty-five years of policy Advice in Canada” in L. Dobuzinskis, M. Howlett and D. Laycock, Policy Analysis: The State of the Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

27 Marc Lalonde, “The Changing Role of the Prime Minister’s Office” Canadian Public Administration, Vol. 14, No. 4, December 1971, pp 509-537.