For decades, through successive federal governments, executive and legislative powers in Ottawa have been centralized within the prime minister’s office (PMO). Today, government policy and some legislation is developed by PMO staff, not parliamentarians and public servants as a functioning Westminster model government would have it. This centralization of power leads to a perverted democratic parliamentary system where unaccountable individuals in the PMO dictate the government’s agenda to partisan MPs and note-taking bureaucrats. The government benches in parliament are occupied by trained seals and even cabinet ministers are window dressing, cogs in the PMO wheel. Although this sounds disrespectful and harsh to Canada’s well-meaning elected representatives, it is the reality and explains how individuals like Gerald Butts and Katie Telford – two people in Trudeau’s PMO who Canadians never voted for – wielded their power without reproach.
In the last few weeks, the full complement of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s newly assembled PMO staff took their seats to set and drive the government’s agenda in parliament and Ottawa’s bureaucracy. Carney has selected a triumvirate of men, who legacy media has heralded as a fresh start, a clean break from the increasingly scandalous Trudeau PMO backroom headed by Katie Telford and Gerald Butts. Canadians are to be reassured that the key advisors whispering in Carney’s ear are earnest and uncompromised: a former Canadian United Nations (U.N.) ambassador, a former justice minister, and the head of Quebec’s largest public utility company. However, as independent news media sources have ferreted out, there is much more to Carney’s unaccountable PMO heads than what the Liberals have shared and CBC News, the Toronto Star, and like media have reported.
Let’s consider Carney’s triumvirate, beginning with the new “second most powerful man in Ottawa” Marc-Andre Blanchard. Mainstream media broadcasted that the prime minister’s new chief of staff Blanchard comes from a senior executive position with the Quebec pension investment fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and, before that he was Canada’s ambassador to the U.N. The details of Blanchard’s past that were not shared were his intimate dealings in the backrooms of the Liberal Party supporting former prime minister Justin Trudeau. He was president of the Liberal party in Quebec before coming to Ottawa with Trudeau in 2015 to help with the Liberals’ transition of power. Blanchard personally vetted Trudeau’s first cabinet. After Blanchard’s Trudeau-appointed stint at the U.N. he came back to Ottawa in 2019 to become an economic advisor to Trudeau (similar to the position Carney held with Trudeau from 2020 to 2025).
While at the U.N. Blanchard was involved with advancing Canada’s support for the Global Compact for Migration. He was also the point person for advancing the initiatives of the U.N.’s sustainable development goals – and he was present when the work began at the U.N. on its Agenda 2030 (and the Migration Compact and the U.N. Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Blanchard was fully engaged with the political imperatives of the Trudeau Liberals’ climate change agenda, and he was responsible for orchestrating them on the U.N.’s world stage. Blanchard and Carney share many core beliefs relating to net zero goals and sustainable development initiatives to transition away from fossil fuels. Later in his CDPQ position, Blanchard championed energy transition and sustainability initiatives with the pension fund’s investments and corporate holdings.
Blanchard and Carney have had multiple dealings with each other in the corporate world as well. Just in the last year their respective companies, Brookfield and CDPQ, have teamed up to announce a $2.4 billion Catalytic Transition Fund for climate change investments, the CDPQ acquisition from Brookfield of 25 per cent of the U.K.’s First Hydro Company, the joint Brookfield-CDPQ $1.3 billion acquisition of Antylia Scientific, and the Brookfield $9-billion purchase of the U.S. company Colonial Pipeline, which was partially owned by CDPQ. The irony of the last two announcements relating to Antylia Scientific and Colonial Pipeline is that these were made public on May 28 and May 30 respectively; Carney announced Blanchard as his man in the PMO on June 1.
Another of Carney’s triumvirate, David Lametti, slipped into new principal secretary role this past Monday. Lametti is an old face from the Trudeau days. He served as Trudeau’s Justice Minister being was very adept at weaponizing Canada’s justice system for political purposes. Lametti will be remembered for replacing the PMO-abused minister Jody Wilson Raybould and then providing the “get-out-of-jail-free” card to embroiled SNC Lavalin. He was also responsible for evoking the Emergencies Act during the Ottawa freedom protests – which is now ruled “unconstitutional”.
Lametti’s record as Justice Minister is dubious at best. He is responsible for the Liberals’ soft on crime policies, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and weakening the bail system, all of which resulted in increased repeat offenders and a 50 per cent rise in violent crimes in Canada.
Lametti has demonstrated that he is unscrupulous when it comes to the application of law. Beyond playing footloose and being deceptive about SNC Lavalin and the need to evoke the Emergencies Act – he joked with fellow cabinet minister Marco Mendicino about bringing in tanks to turn back the protestors on Ottawa streets. Lametti is also responsible for countless judicial appointments made from Liberal Party donors and volunteer lists – something that to this day he boasts about: “I appointed judges at a faster pace than anyone in Canadian history,” exclaimed Lametti in a January 2025 CBC News interview.
Lametti is an old friend of Carney from university days where they served as co-captains of the Oxford Blues hockey team. One assumes that, as principal secretary, Lametti will keep his “elbows up” for the prime minister. It raises serious questions about his counsel on enacting the C-5 law that will support the major projects of national interest, or applying those measures found in the Borders Bill C-2 that violate Canadians’ personal freedoms and privacy.
The third member of the triumvirate is Michael Sabia, appointed by Carney as the country’s top civil servant, the new clerk of the privy council. Sabia is most recently the former CEO of Quebec Hydro. It was also underlined by Carney and in legacy media accounts of his announcement that Sabia served as deputy minister of finance. In his illustrious career he has been chair of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, CEO of Bell Canada, CFO of Canadian National Railway, and president of CDPQ.
Sabia has been depicted to Canadians as a no-nonsense executive who is known for being a big thinker and creative policy maker. Sabia’s reputation for demanding competency precedes him, as trumpeted by the headline in business and technology newspaper The Logic: “Michael Sabia is ready to kick Ottawa’s ass.” The Ottawa Citizen’s recent front page article was also foreboding for the federal bureaucracy: “The world waits for no one: The Michael Sabia era begins for the public service.” In that article, the Ottawa Citizen describes Sabia as “a disruptor who is corporate-minded and extremely smart.” This view is echoed in a recent Hill Times article, quoting Dan Lovell of Sussex Strategies: “He’s going to disrupt things for the public service… He knows how to navigate complex and challenging situations to try and get restitution, but also resolve.”
So, there is reason for hope that Sabia will prove to be a real change agent, that is until one learns that the Liberal spin doctors and government-sponsored media buried certain skeletons tied to the Trudeau Liberals. First, Sabia was deputy minister of finance during COVID when federal spending went unchecked and Canada recorded the worst financial record of all advanced nations. Second, he worked in concert with former finance minister Chrystia Freeland to direct Canada’s big banks to unlawfully freeze Canadians’ bank accounts. Third, Sabia and Carney have a not-often-mentioned history together at the World Economic Forum (WEF), where Sabia served as co-chair of the WEF’s infrastructure and development, while Carney was serving on the WEF board of trustees, alongside his close family friend Chrystia Freeland. So, all his accolades aside, the Liberal web of scandals is tightly woven around Sabia.
There are good reasons to be leery of Carney’s triumvirate. Consider this week’s political maelstrom about Mark Carney’s private investments, his “blind trust”, and the screening process that has been established by Carney and the government’s ethics commissioner to ensure Carney does not commit a conflict-of-interest relating to the 103 companies listed or the more than 500 companies he is invested in in his portfolio. The most offensive item in this whole sordid matter is the notion that Blanchard and Sabia will serve as the conflict of interest screen for Carney. Given Blanchard’s past business interests (and likely sharing similar investments) with Carney and given Sabia’s record of serving the best interests of his political masters and their scandalous activities, having these two as the gate keepers against conflicts of interest is most inappropriate.
Canadians need to be alert to a prime minister who has been less than honest to date about his corporate and stock investments, not to mention the use of tax havens to manage his $300-million net worth. Similarly, Canadians need to be alert to the prime minister’s appointed lead hands, all who have a personal history and vested interests with Carney that were not shared openly, nor covered in legacy media. All of this underscores the importance of making public the decisions and activities of this triumvirate — holding those regarded unaccountable, accountable.
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
