Susan Delacourt: Here’s how Mark Carney could harness even more of corporate Canada’s talent - Toronto Star
Maybe it's time to loosen the restrictions of the Harper-era Accountability Act, Susan Delacourt writes.
Prime Minister Mark Carney and former prime minister Stephen Harper share a laugh during a ceremony to unveil Harper’s official portrait in Ottawa on Feb. 3, 2026.
Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on X: @susandelacourt
It should come as no surprise that Mark Carney’s government — the most corporate one we’ve seen in some time — is reaching into the private sector for executives to help get its major national projects off the ground.
All of those who have complained for years that Ottawa should be run more like a business are certainly seeing those wishes fulfilled now, under a prime minister who’s increasingly been cast as CEO of Canada Inc.
If Carney’s government is serious about increasing the traffic between the private and public sectors, it may first have to reckon with a law Stephen Harper now admits he got partly wrong.
The Accountability Act, now 20 years old, did a lot to curb enthusiasm in the corporate sector for doing a stint in government because of the strict fence it erected between public and private employment.
Under the act, designated public office holders, from ministers to staff to public servants, were made subject to a five-year ban on dealing with Ottawa afterward — and that law is still in place.
“We may have been somewhat zealous in making it a five-year lobbying ban. For instance, some of my former staffers wondered why they were barred from lobbying the Liberal government after ours was defeated in 2015,” Harper writes in his newly released memoir.
Leaving aside how this landed with Conservatives, it is simply true that the five-year ban has been making a lot of people reluctant to put a pause on their private careers to do some public service.
The government had previously declined to identify the companies providing employees.
