Principal Secretary (Canada)

In Canada, the principal secretary is a senior aide, often the most senior political aide, to a head of government. Formerly, the position of principal secretary was the most senior one in the Canadian Prime Minister's office (PMO). However, since 1987, it has been second to the chief of staff position.

The Leader of the Official Opposition and most premiers also have a principal secretary.

The role of the principal secretary may vary, depending on how the prime minister or premier structures the workflow in their office. This has sometimes led to ambiguity in clearly defining the distinction between the roles of principal secretary and chief of staff to the general public.<ref>Shannon Proudfoot, "In Trudeau’s PMO, what exactly is a principal secretary?". Maclean's, February 20, 2019.</ref>

History and list of principal secretaries to the prime minister

Depending on the personal approach and preferences of the prime minister, the duties of managing, administrating and co-ordinating the activities of the PMO may belong to the principal secretary, the chief of staff, or another key advisor. The Government of Canada does not maintain official public records of those who held leadership positions in the PMO. The Parliament's official website has a non-exhaustive list of "Leadership of the Prime Minister's Office", with likely no defined criteria for inclusion (as evident by the inclusion of a large numbers of "senior advisors" in Justin Trudeau's PMO while omitting the two deputy chief of staff who ranked above them).

This list is broken into three portions. The first section lists the prime ministerial aides that were identified by historical sources as the leading aide or most influential advisor to the prime minister before political aides to prime ministers were formally instituted. The second portion, from 1968 to 1987, lists the partisan appointees serving formally while the title was formally and consistently used to denote the principal political advisor to the prime minister and the formal head of the PMO staff. Finally, the third portion lists the title holders since 1987, when the title chief of staff formally supplanted principal secretary as the top ranking post in PMO.

Before 1960s - Prime Ministers' senior private secretaries

The list in this sub-section consists of prime ministerial aides who were identified as the primary or most politically influential aides or advisors to the prime ministers they served. Following the political practice in the UK, they were mostly titled as private secretaries. While the title principal secretary is listed for some of the entries, they are mostly based on informal reference in biographies published or documents produced decades later to denote their leading status, with few contemporary source corroborating any formal usage.

The cadre of partisan appointees serving as aide to senior political leaders in their private offices and the formal separations of them from career civil servants are both fairly recent phenomenon, reflecting the gradual shift from Whitehall political practice in the United Kingdom (where partisan temporary appointees serving as aides to cabinet members, titled "special advisors", was not instituted until 1997, and remain fewer than 150 as of 2025) toward the political practice in the US. While there were always partisans among those who served as assistants to the prime minister, there were little formal distinction between them and career civil servants prior to the 1960s, and many individuals traversed the two spheres.

No.	Name	Title	Term of Office		Political Party		Ministry
1	Hewitt Bernard	Private Secretary	1867	1873	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal-Conservative	1 (Macdonald)
2	William Buckingham	Secretary	1873	1878	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	2 (Mackenzie)
3	Fred White	Private Secretary	1878	1882	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal-Conservative	3 (Macdonald)
4	Joseph Pope	Private Secretary	1882	1891	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal-Conservative
—	Vacant				Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal-Conservative	4 (Abbott)
5	Douglas Stewart	Secretary	1892	1894	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal-Conservative	5 (Thompson)
—	Vacant				Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative	6 (Bowell)
6	Austin Ernest Blount	Private Secretary	1896	1896	Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative	7 (Tupper)
7	Ernest Joseph Lemaire	Private Secretary	1904	1912	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	8 (Laurier)
8	Austin Ernest Blount	Private Secretary	1911	1917	Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative	9 (Borden)
—	Vacant				Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative (Unionist)	10 (Borden)
9	Arthur Merriam	Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister	1920	1921	Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative (Unionist)	11 (Meighan)
10	Laurent Beaudry	Private Secretary	1921	1922	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	12 (King)
	Fred A. McGregor	Secretary	1921	1922	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
11	Leslie Clare Moyer	Private Secretary	1922	1926	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
12	Ralph Campney	Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister	1925	1926	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
—	Vacant				Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative	13 (Meighan)
13	Howard Measures	Personal Secretary	1925	1930	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	14 (King)
14	Leslie Clare Moyer	Private Secretary	1926	1927	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
15	Harry Baldwin	Principal Private Secretary	1929	1930	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
16	Rob Finlayson	Principal Senior Secretary	1930	1935	Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative	15 (Bennett)
17	Howard R. L. Henry	Private Secretary	1935	1935	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	16 (King)
18	Arnold Heeney	Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister	1938	1940	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
19	Walter J. Turnbull	Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister	1940	1945	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
20	Gideon Matte	Private Secretary	1945	1948	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
21	Pierre Asselin	Private Secretary	1952	1958	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	17 (St-Laurent)
	Dale Thomson	Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister	1952	1953	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal
22	Derek Bedson	Private Secretary	1957	1958	Template:Canadian party colour |	Conservative	18 (Diefenbaker)
23	John (Jack) Syner Hodgson	Secretary to the Prime Minister	1966	1968	Template:Canadian party colour |	Liberal	19 (Pearson)

1968-1987 - Principal Secretary as top ranking member of Prime Minister's Office

Marc Lalonde, an associate of Pierre Trudeau in the early 1950s, was recruited to be Lester Pearson's policy advisor in 1967. He was credited for a significant roles in orchestrating Trudeau's bid for leadership,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and was formally conferred the title Principal Secretary following Trudeau's victory at the 1968 leadership convention. A distinct staff of partisan aides was formalized during the early years of Trudeau's premiership, and PMO staff grew from a handful of aides to dozens of political operatives. The rapid development of this staff was partially due to the unique circumstances brought by October Crisis, requiring Lalonde to build a larger team within PMO to handle operations that may not be tenable have assigned to civil servants.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Lalonde's role representing the prime minister to Quebec premier Robert Bourassa and Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau during the crisis also significantly solidified the chief aide's formal authority in speaking on behalf of the prime minister. At Trudeau's urging, Lalonde ran for and won a seat in the election following the crisis and immediately entered cabinet. The succession by Martin O'Connell, recent Labour Minister who was defeated at the same election (who went on to regain his seat in parliament and in cabinet later), as principal secretary further solidified the role's formal authority.

Principal Secretary		Term of Office		Ministry
1	Marc Lalonde	1968	1972	rowspan=4 Template:Canadian party colour |	20th (Trudeau)
2	Martin O'Connell	1973	1974
3	Jack Austin	1974	1975
4	Jim Coutts	1975	1979
—	Title not in use			Template:Canadian party colour |	21 (Clark)
(4)	Jim Coutts	1980	1981	rowspan=2 Template:Canadian party colour |	22 (Trudeau)
5	Tom Axworthy	1981	1984
6	John Swift	1984	1984	Template:Canadian party colour |	23 (Turner)
7	Bernard A. Roy	1984	1988	Template:Canadian party colour |	24 (Mulroney)

Since 1987 - Principal Secretary as senior counsellor

During Bernard Roy's tenure as Brian Mulroney's principal secretary, the title of Chief of Staff was formally instituted and supplanted the principal secretary as the top ranking member of the Prime Minister's office.

Roy, a personal confidant of Mulroney who had held the title of principal secretary since Mulroney's election in 1984, was seen as an ineffective administrator lacking strong political instinct, and was blamed for the precipitous drops of progressive conservative's Quebec polling numbers (from 50% in the 1984 election to 17% in 1987), a province Roy was responsible for. His background as one of Mulroney's closest friends was also inconvenient fodder when the opposition focused their attack on cronyism and sleaze. Mulroney, who famously extoled personal loyalty as a cherished virtue announced in March 1987 that Derek Burney, a career diplomat who was at the time an assistant under-secretary of state at the Department of External Affairs (comparable to a modern-day assistant deputy minister in Global Affairs Canada), would be seconded to PMO to be the Prime Minister's chief of staff, and Roy would retain the title but would relinquish administrative leadership of PMO to focus on or more political matters.

Since 1987, the principal secretary title remained in use intermittently, and usually by a trusted personal confidant of the sitting prime minister with seniority comparable to or just below the chief of staff's. Prime Minister Jean Chretien did not name a principal secretary during his decade-long premiership. Prime ministers Stephen Harper appointed close associate Ray Novak (who famously lived rent-free above the garage at Stornoway when Harper was leader of the opposition) to the role, and left the role vacant after Novak was promoted to the top job. Similarly, Justin Trudeau named no replacement in the six years following the departure of principal secretary Gerald Butts, a close confidant since their university days. Template:Table alignment

Principal Secretary		Term of Office		PM (PM's Ministry)		Note
(7)	Bernard A. Roy	1984	1988	rowspan="2" Template:Canadian party colour |	Mulroney (24th)	Continued in role, but relinquished the formal leadership of PMO staff in March 1987.
8	Peter G. White	1988	1989
9	Jean Riou	1993	1993	Template:Canadian party colour |	Campbell (25th)
—	Title not in use			Template:Canadian party colour |	Chrétien (26th)
10	Francis Fox	December 2003	October 2004	Template:Canadian party colour |	27 (Martin)	Former MP for Blainville—Deux-Montagnes (1972–84) and cabinet minister (1976–78, 80–84) in P. Trudeau ministries (20th, 22nd)
11	Ray Novak	2008	May 2013	rowspan="2" Template:Canadian party colour |	Harper (28th)
—	Vacant
12	Gerald Butts	November 2015	February 2019	rowspan="2" Template:Canadian party colour |	Trudeau (29th)
—	Vacant
—	Tom Pitfield (interim)	May 2025	July 2025	rowspan="3" Template:Canadian party colour |	Carney ( 30th)	Son of Michael Pitfield, former Clerk of the Privy Council and Senator; husband of Anna Gainey, MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount and secretary of state in the Carney ministry
13	David Lametti	July 2025	September 2025	Former Minister of Justice in the Trudeau ministry (2019–23) and MP for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun (2015–24).
14	Tom Pitfield	September 2025	present	The circumstance of the transitions between Pitfield and Lametti remains unclear and was subject to much speculation and intrigue. Pitfield likely continue to exercise the authority of principal secretary when Lametti was formally in the role.

See also

• Canadian Secretary to the King
• Secretary to the Governor General of Canada

External links

• Principal Secretaries to the Prime Minister – Parliament of Canada website