But his management approach, rather than his communications advice, made the most immediate impact. His predecessor, Ian Brodie, a former political science professor, was a veteran campaigner and party organizer who had known Harper for many years. But Brodie had never held a senior government job before serving as the Prime Minister’s first chief of staff. Giorno’s experience under Harris meant he came fully loaded with ideas about how to run a government, along with a hard-earned understanding of how Conservatives in power need to push to get what they want from bureaucrats.
That underlying tension broke to the surface when the top federal mandarin, Kevin Lynch, quit as clerk of the Privy Council last spring. Giorno’s demand that billions in economic stimulus, meant to ease the recession, must be spent fast ran up against Lynch’s insistence on careful approval processes.
Government officials describe the clash in terms of Giorno riding the public service harder than Brodie ever had. “That caused some chafing with Kevin Lynch,” says Teneycke. “He was used to a different dynamic with Brodie.”
Not surprisingly, senior bureaucrats regard Giorno uneasily. Harper’s political staffers, on the other hand, tend to see him as a more benign figure. One reason is that he doesn’t monopolize the PM’s attention. He’s no gatekeeper: inside the Langevin Block, the PMO nerve centre across Wellington Street from Parliament, Giorno chose an office at the east end of the second floor, instead of one near Harper’s at the west end. He also ended the practice of allowing only a few top officials into Harper’s first morning briefing, letting about a dozen aides into that key agenda-setting session. And he rarely travels with the Prime Minister, leaving it to Harper’s principal secretary, Ray Novak, to be at the PM’s side when he’s on the road.
By allowing more advisers more direct access to the boss, Giorno has earned a fair degree of loyalty from them. He’s also shown some sensitivity to rank-and-file MPs, strictly limiting the number of unelected political operatives who attend their weekly caucus sessions with Harper, for example, to make it less intimidating for backbenchers to speak their minds. Giorno’s reputation among cabinet ministers’ aides is mixed. When things go wrong, he’s a lightning rod for their off-the-record criticism—as those who give prime ministers private counsel usually are. That makes any chief of staff’s job security uncertain, and speculation about how long Giorno will last swirls regularly.
Among cabinet ministers, he’s considered closest to those who share his roots in Harris’s Ontario government, including Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Industry Minister Tony Clement, and, particularly, Transport Minister John Baird, whose prominence has risen steadily since Giorno’s arrival in Ottawa two summers ago. Still, Teneycke says that far from being Torontocentric, Giorno was open to Prairie populism even back when Preston Manning was dividing Canadian conservatives. “He was the one Reform party sympathizer at Queen’s Park during the Harris years,” Teneycke says, “other than Harris himself.”
Tories tend to look most favourably on Giorno’s blend of sympathies and experience when their poll numbers climb. Lately, they’ve been up. Harper’s messy firing of Helena Guergis from cabinet—a decision in which Giorno played a forceful part, according to a senior aide to the Prime Minister—hasn’t hurt Conservative popularity. Neither has House Speaker Peter Milliken’s landmark ruling that the government must turn over uncensored documents on Afghan detainees to a committee of MPs from all parties. Both cases tend to support Giorno’s view that voters tune out debates that are mostly about process rather than outcomes. “People have as much faith in strategies,” he once remarked, “as they do in studies, task forces and committees.”
Muttart stresses Giorno’s guiding hand on economic matters above narrower files like the Guergis affair and the Afghan detainee controversy. Although the Finance Department is usually seen as taking the lead on economic policy, he describes Giorno’s involvement as “very hands-on” in the combined “policy and communications exercise.” And he points out that last year’s recession damaged the standing of governing parties in the U.S., Britain, and much of Europe—but not in Canada. “The Harper government’s success in weathering the storm was not a fluke,” Muttart says. “It was due in large part to the strategy pursued by Giorno.”
The abortion issue, though, is less about strategy than public perception of what the government cares most about. For Giorno, the mounting controversy has the potential to shift interest from his strategic acumen to his contentious convictions. After nearly two years working where he prefers, comfortably behind the scenes, he is in danger of becoming a man whose picture is readily recognizable.
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