Ray Novak, Stephen Harper’s gay lover - Principal Secretary in Canada's PMO - Protégé of Tom Flanagan (U. of Calgary) - Corporate Canada's Catholic Cabal
Source: BC Blue: One BC Conservative's view on it all…
Holy smokes... Wherry article that is Conservative-friendly
July 20, 2010 — BC Blue
Ray Novak with a Blackberry, a coffee, dark circles under his eyes
Aaron Wherry of Maclean’s writes a great profile piece on PM Stephen Harper’s right-hand man Ray Novak here.
I’ve worked with Ray and he is not only the nicest guy you will ever meet in politics, he is also the most competent.
Responses:
wilson says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:13 PM
Readers must be getting bored with Wherry’s juvenile blogs on the long-form census, so he had to throw out a thoughtful piece.
BC Blue says:
July 20, 2010 at 12:25 PM
In another piece, he says that he did a story on Ray during his run for university politics.
Stephen Joseph Harper, 22nd Prime Minister of Canada
Source: Maclean's
Who knows what Harper is really thinking? Ray Novak.
He used to live above Stephen Harper’s garage. Now he may be the second most powerful man in Ottawa.
by Aaron Wherry on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 9:48am - 35 Comments
The class was Political Science 230, an overview of Canadian politics for second-year honours students at the University of Western Ontario, and the professor had just misstated the results of the 1997 federal election, accidentally transposing the seat counts of the Progressive Conservatives (20) and New Democrats (21). One student in the class of 125 interjected to note the mistake. “It’s gutsy to correct a prof,” the professor recalls now, “and I appreciated being called out.” Within a decade, both the professor, Ian Brodie, and the student, Ray Novak, would be members of the Prime Minister’s Office as senior aides to the new prime minister, Stephen Harper.
Ian Brodie, past professor of political science (University of Western Ontario), PMO Chief of Staff (2006-2008)
From that fateful interjection does a minor legend follow. More than a decade after, Novak is one of the most intriguing players in Ottawa, as widely praised by those around the Harper government as he is little known to the public. “If you were building a perfect political aide, you would end up with Ray Novak,” says Jim Armour, a former Harper aide himself. “He’s perhaps a perfect combination of trusted loyalist, strategist, interpreter, and maybe even horse whisperer.” What’s more is how integral he has become to the life and business of Stephen Harper.
Four and a half years into Harper’s reign, Novak has risen to the rank of principal secretary in the PMO, outranked by just the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and maybe then only in the technical sense. Two weeks ago, as Harper took his place on the world stage at the G8 and G20 summits, Novak was at his side, as he has been for nearly a decade. A week ago, when Harper announced the appointment of a new governor general [David Johnston], it was the culmination of a selection process overseen by the 33-year-old aide. “Ray is effectively the Prime Minister’s closest confidant,” enthuses one government official. “Not only as a member of his staff, but as a personal and intimate member of the Prime Minister’s life.”
In 2010, the Governor General Consultation Committee held a conclave, grey smoke rose, and the electors emerged with the name... David Johnston!?
There is effusive praise when Novak, who declined to speak with Maclean’s
for this story, is the subject of discussion, but this particular bit
is not mere conjecture. For nearly four years while Harper was
opposition leader, Novak, then with the title of executive assistant,
lived in a small loft above the detached garage at Stornoway – the
opposition leader’s official residence – eating meals with the family
and growing close to Harper’s two young children. This is the detail
that has come to define an aide who, by some tellings, knows Harper
better than all but the Prime Minister’s wife and mother. “Ray was with
him more than anybody else for years and years and years,” says Brodie,
who served as Harper’s chief of staff for three years. “They were
literally hardly ever apart.” [“Are you saying the Stornoway garage was just a very large closet?” –reader Kay L. Davies]
Aerial view of Stornoway, official residence of the Leader of the Opposition (Ottawa, Ontario)
Originally from the Ottawa Valley, Novak was president of the campus
Reform club at Western. Preoccupied with student fees, he staged an
impressive, if unsuccessful, campaign for student council president. He
rode the Reform youth bus during the 1997 election, then interned with
Preston Manning’s office in the summer of 1998 and Reform MP Rob
Anders’s office in 1999. During his post-graduate years at the
University of Calgary, he met, among other key players, Tom Flanagan,
another professor who would serve as chief of staff to Harper and who
led Harper’s Canadian Alliance leadership campaign. Novak was a finalist
in Magna’s
“If I Were Prime Minister” essay contest in 2000 – his submission
called for pension and health care reform – then worked as a researcher
for the National Citizens Coalition,
a conservative advocacy group then led by Harper. When Harper returned
to federal politics in 2001 to pursue the Alliance leadership, he tabbed
Novak as his assistant.
Tom Flanagan, University of Calgary political science professor, "Calgary School" Svengali
Political intriguers Belinda (daughter) and Frank Stronach (father)
of Magna International, North America's largest automotive parts
manufacturer
The job of executive assistant is mostly associated with menial labour –
carrying the briefcase, ensuring the politician is properly watered and
fed – but Novak seemingly exceeded the title, both as close counsel and
trusted manager. In addition to living with the Harper family at
Stornoway, he oversaw Harper’s tour operations, coordinated with his
security detail and served as the Prime Minister’s envoy to the families
of the Air India bombing. “Ray will get it done,” says a former member
of the PMO. “And he will do so with total discretion.” Novak served in
that role through another leadership race, two federal elections and 2½
years in the PMO. When Guy Giorno, Harper’s current chief of staff,
succeeded Brodie in July 2008, Novak was named principal secretary. He
is now the longest-serving member of Harper’s inner circle.
His influence is said to spread from the operations of the PMO to
foreign and domestic policy. As principal secretary, Novak travels with
the Prime Minister abroad, oversees the speech writing department and
coordinates the visits of other heads of state and dignitaries (for
organizing the recent royal visit, the Queen made him a lieutenant of
the Royal Victorian Order,
an honour bestowed for service to Her Majesty). During the G8 and G20
summits, he listened in on the leaders’ meetings and sat in on Harper’s
bilateral discussions with individual leaders. For the last several
weeks, he has ensured the committee charged with advising the Prime
Minister on the next governor general was able to go about its quiet
work. He toils, by one account, from about 5 a.m. to midnight.
He is described as a populist, a monarchist and a libertarian with a
sharp anti-Communist streak, the latter perhaps attributable to the
influence of his late father, who fled Czechoslovakia in 1968 after the
Soviet Union-led invasion. He is not noted as an overbearing partisan.
“Ray is the common sense around the table,” says one government
official. Adds a former ministerial aide: “He’s one of the least
obnoxious people you will ever meet in Ottawa.”
Indeed, the adjectives used to describe Novak by those in and around
this government are uniformly fawning: trusted, selfless, rational,
efficient, smart, thoughtful, polite, patient. “It will sound to you
like I am gushing, but I think you would have to look very, very, very
hard to find anyone who will say a negative thing about him,” says that
ministerial aide. Adds Dimitri Soudas,
the PM’s director of communications and a close friend: “Ray is one of
the very few truly genuine people you will encounter in the world of
politics.”
He would seem to personify the Prime Minister’s preferred ideals:
loyalty, discretion and an ability to, in the favoured parlance of this
government, get things done. He is willing and able to serve quietly, an
important prerequisite for most prime ministers, especially one, such
as Harper, who so values the control of information. And not to be
discounted are his roots in the Reform Party.
“There is a sort of programmatic, political point to be made that still
drives folks from that group forward,” Brodie says. The result is an
unrivalled history. “Their relationship is close enough that the PM, I
think, feels he can speak freely and as plainly as possible to Ray and
have Ray understand exactly what he is driving at and to pass along his
views to others as a result,” Brodie says. “That’s actually trickier
than it sounds. Because he understands the PM’s thinking very
intimately, he understands the historic roots of the PM’s evolution of
his thinking and evolution of his relationships and evolution of his
political history in a way that lets him understand immediately what the
PM’s talking about.”
All of which may come back to a common theme in the testimonials to
Novak’s place in Harper’s world: calm. During the coalition crisis of
December 2008, Novak is said to have been a “beacon of stability.” Even
in less dramatic times, that is antithetical to the atmosphere in
deepest Ottawa. “It’s a macho business,” says that former member of the
PMO. “It’s a field where you’re allowed to be bombastic on the public
stage and that tends to result in people being bombastic privately
within offices. It’s very useful to have somebody who is a calming
influence, a stabilizing influence and a focused influence who simply is
there to get the job done and to carry things through to completion.”
In the middle of it all, ensuring the numbers add up, is Ray Novak. “In some respects,” the former member of the PMO says, “he’s the youngest old wise man in Canadian politics.”
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