Michael Sabia, left, former justice minister David Lametti and former UN ambassador Marc-Andre Blanchard are part of Prime Minister Mark Carney's circle of advisers.The Canadian Press
Political power, it goes without saying, has become overly concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office in recent decades. It’s the unelected appointees, the Katie Telfords, those who have the prime minister’s ear daily, who wield the power. They’re the inner circle – cabinet, the outer circle.
We shouldn’t expect it to be much different under Prime Minister Mark Carney. Under him there will be a triumvirate who, while quite out of sight, will be the big players. They are his chief of staff, Marc-André Blanchard, his Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Sabia, and his principal secretary, David Lametti.
They are, like the 60-year-old Mr. Carney, all aging white guys. They are, like him, of long and deep experience in the private sector and government. They are, like him, of high scholastic pedigree. They are about as populist as you can’t get.
Mr. Carney is the knowledge Prime Minister, and he wants advisers of erudition, of seasoning, of sound judgment and wide networks. No partisan political hacks. No lack of adult supervision. A new professionalism.
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Mr. Blanchard, who turns 60 this year, is a former ambassador to the United Nations (from 2016 to 2020), and was more recently head of the giant law firm McCarthy Tétrault and a senior executive with Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt pension fund.
Mr. Sabia, 71, served as deputy finance minister during Mr. Trudeau’s stewardship, as CEO of Hydro-Québec and Bell Canada Enterprises, as well as director of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
More controversial is the appointment of 62-year-old principal secretary Mr. Lametti, a former McGill law professor, former minister of justice in the Trudeau government, an old Oxford school chum of Mr. Carney. He was dropped from the Trudeau cabinet, accused of being soft on crime.
The three men represent a generational break with the main players on Mr. Trudeau’s team, who were two decades younger when they took power and lacked the guidance and expertise of elder statesmen. But there is less of a break from the Trudeau years otherwise, as the new team also all served under him.
Anyone looking for youth and diversity won’t be too happy with the new team. A strong female voice is also missing. But Mr. Carney has helped fill that void with the reappointment of Kirsten Hillman to the key post of Ambassador to the United States, while also giving her the vital added responsibility as lead trade negotiator to the Trump administration. No previous ambassador, not even Allan Gotlieb, has had that sort of power.
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It was expected that Mr. Carney would appoint a high-powered politician to the post. But he opted for a bureaucrat with knowledge and experience. After practising law in Montreal, Ms. Hillman, who grew up on the North Dakota border, had a 25-year career with the government, specializing in trade law and helping negotiate a revised North American free-trade agreement. She also served as chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
She became the first woman named to the almost-100-year history of the U.S. ambassador post in 2020. “For me, what’s important,” she told McGill News at the time, “is that I’m very well prepared, I am a very good listener and I’m pretty tough.” She learned to be tough after a rough start in what was then a heavily male legal environment. Back in the 1990s, she recounted in an op-ed in 2023, her law-firm colleagues invited her to lunch. Not to a classy restaurant, but a strip club. She didn’t go. On their return, going back into the boardroom with them, she felt unsafe.
Ms. Hillman’s big test comes now as she tries to reach a trade deal with the Trump administration within the 30-day deadline discussed at the G7 summit in Alberta. Ottawa wants all tariffs removed but it’s “too soon to tell” if that’s possible, she told the CBC.
In addition to the seasoned players in Mr. Carney’s inner circle, there are the cabinet holdovers from the Trudeau government – ministers like Dominic LeBlanc, Mélanie Joly, Anita Anand, François-Philippe Champagne – who now have many years of experience under their belts.
While Mr. Carney has no experience as an elected politician, his background in government, high finance and power circles is extensive. It helps explain why he looks sure-footed thus far.
A good question for historians is whether there has ever been a government coming to power under a new prime minister with the combined experience at the executive and cabinet level as the senior players on the Carney team.
Whether experience and knowledge translate to competence is the question. If it does, the country stands to have improved governance over the next few years.