Storeshaw Leaves Hill for Private Sector

par Kristen Shane

Tel que publié dans The Hill Times , 30 août 2010

A key member of the team that helped Finance Minister Jim Flaherty craft the earliest budget in Canadian history last year is bound for the private sector. Mike Storeshaw, Mr. Flaherty’s communications director and The Hill Times’ resident Conservative Spin Doctor, is spending the dying days of summer kicking back with his family at Niagara-on the- Lake, Ont., and getting things done around the house before he goes to work in a new communications job next week at the Ottawa headquarters of the national public relations firm Delta Media.

Mr. Storeshaw left his D.Comms post Aug. 13, after nearly nine years doing communications for the Conservatives or their predecessors, in government and opposition (except for a nine-month stint at another public affairs firm, Bluesky Strategy Group Inc., prior to the Tories’ 2006 election win).

With three-and-a-half-year-old and 11-month-old sons at home, it’s time to slip into a job more conducive to stable family life, said Mr. Storeshaw in a phone interview from his Ottawa home. “Anyone [who has] worked in politics for any length of time can tell you the demands on your family life—not only from the perspective of the hours you’ve spent, but also the uncertainty you face in your job going forward—is a difficult situation for any family,” he said.

His last two years spent alongside Mr. Flaherty were “fantastic, fun, fast-paced” but not easy, given that he arrived in September 2008 as the grip of the global recession tightened around Canada. Throw in a Parliamentary crisis, as the government faced in December 2008 when opposition parties joined forces and threatened to bring it down, and you’ve got a recipe for stress. “We worked right through Christmas time. We worked right through New Year’s. We had a day and a half each off during the Christmas season in 2008, to get the 2009 budget ready, the earliest budget in Canadian history,” said Mr. Storeshaw.

The budget, which included the blueprint for the recession-fighting Economic Action Plan, dropped about a month earlier than normal. But it was Mr. Storeshaw’s first budget, so he said he didn’t get a sense of the extraordinary circumstances. When you come into crazy and think it’s normal, the real normal seems relatively more manageable. The same can be said for his political career general.

After growing up in Medicine Hat, Alta. and graduating with a business degree from the University of Calgary in 2001, Mr. Storeshaw moved to Ottawa to do a junior communications job in the OLO under then-leader of the Canadian Alliance, Stockwell Day. On his second day, eight party members publicly called on Mr. Day to resign as leader. He promptly booted them from caucus. Later that week, Mr. Storeshaw’s boss, Mr. Day’s communications director Ezra Levant, resigned. “So it was a pretty hectic first week and a pretty brutal first summer,” Mr. Storeshaw recalled. “When you’re working for a party that’s basically at risk of disintegrating and you’re not sure whether the truck that you’ve packed up to move to Ottawa from Alberta is going to need to be packed to move back next week, when those are the circumstances to which you’re introduced to politics, I think you’re always able to take the good with the bad following that.”

He didn’t sweat the small stuff, even as he moved into a managerial role in the OLO comms shop, and later worked as communications director to Vic Toews when he was justice minister and Treasury Board president. Although an arm of the firm he’s joining does lobbying, Mr. Storeshaw says he’ll respect the five-year cooling-off period in the Lobbying Act and focus on communications.

His departure comes three months after Mr. Flaherty’s chief of staff, Derek Vanstone, left to become deputy chief of staff to the prime minister. “I wouldn’t chalk it up to anything more than the fairly standard churn of political staff that occurs every summer,” said Mr. Storeshaw. He said he’d still be happy to help his party win the next election, and his departure does not indicate he thinks it won’t. Plus, he’ll keep writing his weekly Spin Doctors column.

Meantime, Chisholm Pothier shifts from Mr. Flaherty’s director of media relations to communications, taking over Mr. Storeshaw’s spot, while press secretary Annette Robertson remains in that job. She handles day-to-day media management, while Mr. Pothier does message management through speechwriting and event planning. “Mike was great to work with and we’ll miss him. There are big shoes to fill,” said Mr. Pothier last week. But if anyone has the experience to do it, it’s him. He’s been with Mr. Flaherty since January 2007, after a brief stint as D.Comms to Bev Oda when she was minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women in 2006. Prior to that, he worked as a journalist and press secretary to former New Brunswick Progressive Conservative premier Bernard Lord.

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