The second most powerful person in Ottawa is someone you’ve probably never heard of. Gerald Butts is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s longtime friend and college colleague. He’s now the PM’s principal secretary and closest adviser.
At the first meeting of the Liberal caucus after the election, Trudeau made Butts’ role crystal clear. He told his MPs and cabinet ministers that when Butts speaks to them, he is speaking for Trudeau.
Butts is widely acknowledged as the architect of Trudeau’s leadership win and of the party’s convincing electoral victory last October. He’s a skilled political strategist and the big picture man in the PMO.
He is sometimes referred to as PMB — Prime Minister Butts — because of his considerable influence over Trudeau and the apparatus of government. One Liberal MP labelled Butts the “policy ninja” of the party.
This friend/adviser role is rare, and the extensive power it holds is a source of concern to some critics. They point out that in a democracy this much power should not be in the hands of an unelected staffer.
Also, while Butts has demonstrated campaign policy skills, is he the right person to be advising the PM on running the government?
Butts and Trudeau have come a long way since their days together at McGill University in the early 1990s.
Both were English majors. Both were on the debating team. But it was Butts who twice won the national debating championship and now sits on the McGill board of governors.
They remained close friends after university. Butts helped Trudeau with his emotional eulogy at his father’s funeral in 2000. They canoed together over the legendary route that Pierre Elliot Trudeau covered through the Northwest Territories.
They differ in their upbringing. Trudeau is from a privileged background; Butts is from a working-class Glace Bay, N.S., family.
Butts began his career in government as an aide to Dalton McGuinty in the years leading up to the Ontario Liberal majority win in 2003.
He urged much the same strategy for McGuinty in that election as he did last year for Trudeau: Run a positive campaign. No attack ads.
Reject the politics of division. Be prepared to run modest deficits in order to advance key policy priorities. McGuinty won again in 2007 with a similar strategy.
Yet some of the policy advice Butts gave McGuinty has contributed to persistently high Ontario deficits and soaring electricity rates.
In 2008 Butts moved on to head up the World Wildlife Federation Canada (WWF).
There he helped to negotiate the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement with the forestry sector, protecting more than 29 million hectares of woodland caribou habitat. He left the WWF in 2012 to become a full-time adviser to Trudeau.
Scott Reid writes in The Walrus: “He is the most important Liberal in Canada today who doesn’t share a surname with the country’s 15th prime minister. This isn’t simply because he is Justin Trudeau’s most senior adviser. It’s because of the unique relationship between the two men.”
Over time this relationship will be tested.
mo
Ottawa’s second most powerful person | The London Free Press
At the first meeting of the Liberal caucus after the election, Trudeau made Butts’ role crystal clear. He told his MPs and cabinet ministers that when Butts speaks to them, he is speaking for Trudeau.
Butts is widely acknowledged as the architect of Trudeau’s leadership win and of the party’s convincing electoral victory last October. He’s a skilled political strategist and the big picture man in the PMO.
He is sometimes referred to as PMB — Prime Minister Butts — because of his considerable influence over Trudeau and the apparatus of government. One Liberal MP labelled Butts the “policy ninja” of the party.
This friend/adviser role is rare, and the extensive power it holds is a source of concern to some critics. They point out that in a democracy this much power should not be in the hands of an unelected staffer.
Also, while Butts has demonstrated campaign policy skills, is he the right person to be advising the PM on running the government?
Butts and Trudeau have come a long way since their days together at McGill University in the early 1990s.
Both were English majors. Both were on the debating team. But it was Butts who twice won the national debating championship and now sits on the McGill board of governors.
They remained close friends after university. Butts helped Trudeau with his emotional eulogy at his father’s funeral in 2000. They canoed together over the legendary route that Pierre Elliot Trudeau covered through the Northwest Territories.
They differ in their upbringing. Trudeau is from a privileged background; Butts is from a working-class Glace Bay, N.S., family.
Butts began his career in government as an aide to Dalton McGuinty in the years leading up to the Ontario Liberal majority win in 2003.
He urged much the same strategy for McGuinty in that election as he did last year for Trudeau: Run a positive campaign. No attack ads.
Reject the politics of division. Be prepared to run modest deficits in order to advance key policy priorities. McGuinty won again in 2007 with a similar strategy.
Yet some of the policy advice Butts gave McGuinty has contributed to persistently high Ontario deficits and soaring electricity rates.
In 2008 Butts moved on to head up the World Wildlife Federation Canada (WWF).
There he helped to negotiate the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement with the forestry sector, protecting more than 29 million hectares of woodland caribou habitat. He left the WWF in 2012 to become a full-time adviser to Trudeau.
Scott Reid writes in The Walrus: “He is the most important Liberal in Canada today who doesn’t share a surname with the country’s 15th prime minister. This isn’t simply because he is Justin Trudeau’s most senior adviser. It’s because of the unique relationship between the two men.”
Over time this relationship will be tested.
mo
Ottawa’s second most powerful person | The London Free Press