Ian Brodie

For other people named Ian Brodie, see Ian Brodie (disambiguation).

Ian Brodie, (born July 25, 1967 in Toronto) is a Canadian political scientist and was Chief of Staff in Stephen Harper's Prime Minister's Office from Harper's ascension to the position of prime minister until July 1, 2008. The news that he was leaving the post came days before the release of a report on the Clinton/Obama NAFTA leak controversy. He is currently a visiting scholar at the McGill University Institute for the Study of Canada.

Brodie attended high school at the University of Toronto Schools. He earned a BA in political science from McGill University in Montreal, and an MA and a Ph.D from the University of Calgary.

In 1997, he became assistant professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario in London; promotion to tenured associate professor came in 2002. At Western, he specialized in Canadian politics, particularly Canadian conservative politics and law and politics.

His book Friends of the Court: The Privileging of Interest Group Litigants in Canada (State University of New York Press, 2002), a revision of his doctoral dissertation, discussed the treatment of interest groups seeking leave to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada. Friends posited that the court had come to favor a preferred set of interest groups, and explored the legal theory by which this had come about.

Political career

In 2003, he took leave from Western to become assistant to the chief of staff in the office of the federal leader of the opposition, first under Harper when he led the Canadian Alliance, then under Grant Hill's interim parliamentary leadership in 2004.

When Harper became leader of the successor Conservative Party of Canada, he appointed Brodie its executive director. In August 2005 he appointed Brodie his chief of staff. When Harper became prime minister after the 2006 election, Brodie became PMO chief of staff.

Clinton/Obama NAFTA leak controversy

In February 2008, Brodie became the centre of a political controversy when it was alleged in the Canadian press that he leaked a memo tied to the American Democratic political primary. According to the memo, Barack Obama's economic advisor Austan Goolsbee had met with Canadian consular officials in Chicago and told them to disregard Obama's campaign rhetoric regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a charge the Obama campaign later denied. In Canada, the leak was seen as an attempt by Conservative Prime Minister Harper's office to harm Obama's political campaign and help Republican candidate John McCain.

Brodie, during the media lockup for the February 26, 2008 budget, stopped to chat with several journalists, and was surrounded by a group from CTV. The conversation turned to the pledges to renegotiate the North American free-trade agreement made by the two Democratic contenders, Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Brodie, apparently seeking to play down the potential impact on Canada, told the reporters the threat was not serious, and that someone from Clinton's campaign had even contacted Canadian diplomats to tell them not to worry because the NAFTA threats were mostly political posturing. The Canadian Press news agency quoted that source as saying that Brodie said that someone from Clinton's campaign called and was "telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt." The Clinton campaign denies it. "We flatly deny the report," says Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer. "We did not sanction nor would we ever sanction anyone to say any such a thing. We give the Canadian government blanket immunity to reveal the name of anyone in the Clinton campaign think they heard from."

The story was followed by CTV's Washington bureau chief, Tom Clark, who reported that the Obama campaign, not the Clinton's, had reassured Canadian diplomats. Mr. Clark cited unnamed Canadian sources in his initial report. There was no explanation last night for why Brodie was said to have referred to the Clinton campaign but the news report was about the Obama campaign. Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, declined to comment.

The Prime Minister's communications director, Sandra Buckler, has said that Brodie "does not recall" discussing the issue. On March 4, 2008 Mr. Harper initially denied that Mr. Brodie was a source of the leak — but he appeared to be referring to a diplomatic memo that described the key conversation between an adviser to Obama and Canada's consul-general in Chicago, Georges Rioux. Harper did not appear to be distinguishing between the two leaks later in the day. Harper asked the top civil servant, Clerk of the Privy Council Kevin Lynch, to call in an internal security team, with the help of Foreign Affairs. Members of the opposition asserted that an internal inquiry is unlikely to look seriously at Mr. Harper's own high-level political aides and appointees, such as Mr. Brodie, or Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to Washington.

The Liberals have requested Ian Brodie and Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson step aside until the investigation into the leaks affecting the U.S. primaries is completed.

On May 22, 2008 several Canadian media outlets reported that Brodie would be stepping down within weeks. Officially, his departure is due to burnout after 2½ years of stressful work, but speculation connecting it to "Naftagate" is rife. Brodie is expected to be replaced by Guy Giorno, who served as chief of staff to former Ontario premier Mike Harris, effective July 1, 2008.

The Privy Council Office released its report on the affair on May 23, 2008. The report asserted that Brodie first saw the documents pertaining to NAFTA on February 28, two days after the alleged incident but may have spoken to CTV reporters about the subject of NAFTA and Clinton. The report claims that neither Brodie nor Wilson broke any confidentiality rules but confirms that the affair probably arose from comments by Brodie.

Liberal opposition leader Dion dismissed an earlier report into the leak by Privy Council clerk Kevin Lynch as "completely insignificant," pointing instead to information uncovered by the Toronto Star suggesting the Prime Minister's Office deliberately leaked embarrassing information to a Republican operative for distribution. Frank Sensenbrenner, the son of a right-wing Republican congress member who once worked at the Canadian embassy, was also identified as the conduit that officials in Harper's office used to leak the Canadian memo to the Associated Press in March. Sensenbrenner denied involvement.

Foreign Influence

In June, 2008, Mr. Brodie represented the Prime Minister's office when he attended the Bilderberg Conference in suburban Washington, D.C.

External links

• [1] Macleans profile from 2006, and the [2] 2008 update
• Ian Brodie, university homepage
• Friends of the Court, SUNY Press page
• Academic book review (Shannon Ishiyama Smithey, Law and Politics Book Review, August 2002)
• Popular book review (copied within a web post) (Rory Leishman, London Free Press, October 8, 2002)
• Canadian leaders deny trying to interfere with U.S. election IHT article on the Goolsbee memo controversy