PM’S spokesman finds new job
Macdougall departs for U.K. as Harper seeks to reboot team
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper is losing his chief spokesman as the Conservative government struggles to manage a string of controversies and a sense of policy drift in the crucial twoyear run-up period before the next election.
Andrew MacDougall, Harper’s seventh communications director, will depart in September amid a retrenching of senior staff. After this summer’s cabinet shuffle, Harper is seeking to once again hit the reboot button on his government.
The bilingual MacDougall will join Publicis Groupe in London, part of MSL GROUP, as a senior strategist, the British firm announced in a release on Tuesday.
After16 months as Harper’s spokesman, MacDougall leaves during a difficult period. Harper’s trade agenda has stalled, key oil and gas pipeline proposals are stumbling amid widespread protests, and the uproar has grown over Senate expenses.
But MacDougall’s decision was portrayed as largely personal in his note to staff, in which he said his desire to move to London “is long-standing and deepseated.”
It leaves the prime minister, who lost trusted chief of staff Nigel Wright in the Senate affair, searching for his eighth communications director since he took power in 2006. That’s not counting the three that Harper employed as leader of the Opposition.
“The alumni club is getting so large we’re going to have to rent the Partridge family bus for our reunions,” quipped Ottawa lobbyist Jim Armour, a former Preston Manning staffer who worked as Harper’s communications chief while in Opposition.
Armour, vice-president of Summa Strategies, said while the top communications job is a key position for Harper to fill, “what’s lacking right now” is a clear direction in the government’s agenda.
The prime minister has lately resorted to falling back on trusted, longtime advisers, promoting Ray Novak to chief of staff, and seeking the advice of Jenni Byrne, who runs the Conservative Party’s political operations.
Well-mannered, wry-humoured and a skilled golfer, MacDougall was regarded by journalists in the parliamentary press gallery as an effective spokesperson for the Conservative government.
MacDougall sent a note to staff shortly before he broke the news on Twitter, thanking PMO employees, his predecessors and Harper for his trust.
“I am grateful for the prime minister’s confidence. It has been a rare privilege to watch firsthand how the prime minister has led Canada through these tough economic times. To have been a small part of this endeavour will forever rank as one of my proudest accomplishments.”