Prime Minister Mark Carney on Parliament Hill on Thursday.Blair Gable/Reuters
Prime Minister Mark Carney has unveiled a long-awaited shuffle of deputy ministers that places new people in charge of the government’s priority files in areas such as economic growth and national defence.
The government is bringing in two outsiders to key positions: Marie-Josée Hogue, who headed the public inquiry into foreign interference in Canadian politics, to Justice; and John McArthur, a policy expert on sustainable development, as a senior adviser in the Privy Council Office.
Friday’s announcement places 12 new people in senior deputy minister-level positions, either in charge of federal departments or as senior officials in the PCO.
Eight senior officials are listed as retiring.
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While most of the names taking on new roles are career public servants, Ms. Hogue’s appointment was a surprise.
Ms. Hogue, a puisne judge of the Court of Appeal of Quebec, enters government as the new deputy minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada.
The shuffle was orchestrated by Privy Council Clerk Michael Sabia, whom the Prime Minister recruited from the private sector. Mr. Sabia previously served as the CEO of Hydro-Québec, BCE and Quebec’s pension fund.
He is also a former federal deputy minister, having led the Finance Department from 2020 to 2023.
Chris Forbes, who was deputy minister at Finance, has been moved to the PCO as a senior adviser. He is being replaced by Nick Leswick, a senior official at the Bank of Canada, which Mr. Carney once headed.
Mr. Leswick previously led Finance Canada on an interim basis after Mr. Sabia left the position in 2023.
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Prior to that, Mr. Leswick was associate deputy minister at Finance, a position that involved regular appearances before parliamentary committees to answer questions from MPs and senators about budgetary matters.
Christiane Fox, the deputy clerk at the PCO, is the new deputy minister at National Defence. She replaces Stefanie Beck, who is among the eight officials who are retiring.
Heading into a year in which negotiations with First Nations on major projects such as pipelines and critical mineral mines will be key to the government’s agenda, the Prime Minister promoted Michelle Kovacevic, associate deputy minister of Indigenous Services, to deputy minister.
As for Mr. McArthur, Mr. Carney recruited him from the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development to become deputy secretary to the cabinet on economic policy.
He is a former CEO of Millennium Promise Alliance, an international non-governmental organization.
Earlier this year, he co-edited a book at Brookings titled For the World’s Profit: How Business Can Support Sustainable Development.
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He has also been a member of a deputy minister steering committee that guides the federal government’s Policy Horizons Canada team, an in-house policy research organization.
Other new appointments include Francis Bilodeau, moving from associate deputy minister of Innovation, Science and Industry to deputy minister of Canadian Heritage; Isabelle Mondou, moving from deputy minister of Canadian Heritage to deputy clerk of the Privy Council and associate secretary to the cabinet; Alison O’Leary, who was associate deputy minister at Finance Canada, becomes deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs at the PCO; Greg Orencsak, the deputy minister of Health, moves to deputy minister at Natural Resources Canada; Shalene Curtis-Micallef, the deputy minister of Justice and deputy attorney-general of Canada, becomes deputy minister of Health; and Rob Wright, the associate deputy minister at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, becomes deputy minister of Labour.
The government announcement said additional changes to the senior ranks of the public service will be announced early in the new year.
Also among the eight departing officials is Gina Wilson, an Algonquin woman who has led Indigenous Services Canada since 2022, after three previous deputy minister roles.
Former Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick, who was also the deputy minister responsible for Indigenous issues for more than eight years during his public service career, said Ms. Wilson’s departure is “an enormous loss” for the government.
“She is the most important Indigenous public servant in the history of the public service. She was an incredible mentor and coach and quiet adviser to everybody, prime ministers on down,” he said.
Mr. Wernick said it is common in a year after an election for several deputy ministers to retire once they’ve overseen the transition process.
He said the appointment of Ms. Hogue to lead the Justice Department is an unusual move. Leading a department comes with considerable personnel management responsibilities, he said, which is not something judges typically deal with.
“The part that may be challenging for her is managing a bureaucracy full of lawyers,” he said. “So I think it’s a gamble. No reason to think she can’t do it, but it will be a transition in management style.”
Kevin Page, a former parliamentary budget officer and senior public servant who now trains federal officials as president and CEO of the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy, said the shuffle places new deputy ministers in files they know well.
“I like the strategy of promoting people with significant experience in their departments,” he said, pointing to Mr. Leswick’s background at Finance, Ms. Kovacevic being promoted from within Indigenous Services Canada and Ms. Mondou returning to the PCO to be Mr. Sabia’s second-in-command.
Mr. Page said in an e-mail that those types of moves should shorten the learning curve at a time when departments are implementing the major changes that flow from the Nov. 4 budget.
The budget outlined a plan to find $60-billion in internal savings over five years and to reduce the size of the public service by about 30,000 positions. At the same time, it also funded new organizations in areas such as infrastructure and housing in an effort to spur economic growth through new major projects.
This article was updated to add Shalene Curtis-Micallef to the list of new appointments. The former deputy minister of Justice and deputy attorney-general of Canada becomes deputy minister of Health.