Hill Climbers
Diving into the offices of secretaries of state Fuhr, Provost
Secretary of State for Defence Procurement Stephen Fuhr and Secretary of State for Nature Nathalie Provost currently have 10 staff in total between them, with a different mix of roles filled in each office.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 38-member cabinet team includes 10 secretaries of state—not counting Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez, who’s also secretary of state for small business and tourism—who are expected to have notably slimmer teams than their ministerial counterparts.
Fuhr’s office has a total of five staff, and Hill Climbers understands that no further hires are currently anticipated.
As first reported back in June, Mary-Rose Brown, a former chief of staff to then-public services and procurement minister Jean-Yves Duclos, has been hired to run Fuhr’s office, while Mujtaba Hussain—an ex-digital communications adviser to Duclos as then-public services minister—has landed the role of press secretary and issues manager to the secretary of state.
Three other staff have since joined Fuhr’s team: director of policy and operations Pavan Sapra, policy and operations adviser James Rourke, and private secretary and office manager Dianne Watkins.
By now a veteran staffer, Sapra has been working in various offices on the Hill since 2012, starting with an internship in then-interim Liberal leader Bob Rae’s office. Sapra was subsequently hired to work for former prime minister Justin Trudeau, starting in Trudeau’s office as then-third party Liberal leader and later in Trudeau’s office as the then-MP for Papineau, Que.
Sapra went on to work as an assistant to then-New Brunswick Liberal MP Alaina Lockhart, and scored his first ministerial job after the 2019 election when he was hired as an Atlantic regional adviser to then-economic development and official languages Mélanie Joly. He’s since been senior policy and Atlantic adviser to then-emergency preparedness minister and Privy Council president Bill Blair, and more recently tackled policy and Atlantic regional advice for Duclos as then-public services minister. According to his LinkedIn profile, Sapra’s last title was director of policy and senior adviser to the public services minister.
Rourke likewise comes from Duclos’ old public services team; in his case, he was first hired there as a West and North regional adviser in October 2023. Rourke is also a former assistant to Liberal MP Ron McKinnon—in both McKinnon’s Coquitlam–Port Coquitlam, B.C., constituency office, and his Hill office—and an ex-constituency assistant to then-British Columbia Liberal MP Gordie Hogg. Rourke spent this year’s federal election helping with McKinnon’s successful re-election bid.
Following a clear office trend, Watkins also comes from Duclos’ former shop, having been hired as executive assistant to the then-public services minister and his chief of staff this past January.
Jumping to Provost’s current five-member team, Jean-Sébastien Bock has landed his first chief-of-staff gig, and has been tapped to lead the secretary of state for nature’s office.
Bock was most recently director of strategy and planning to the public services minister, having first been hired to that office as a senior adviser to then-minister Duclos in March 2024.
A ministerial staffer since 2016, Bock started his Hill journey as a special assistant and assistant to the parliamentary secretary to then-national revenue minister Diane Lebouthillier in March of that year. Later promoted to policy adviser and special assistant to Lebouthillier, Bock exited in early 2018 to become a Quebec adviser to then-employment, workforce development, and labour minister Patty Hajdu. He went on to work as a Quebec regional affairs and operations adviser—and later policy adviser—to then-finance minister Bill Morneau.
After the 2019 election, Bock was hired to Duclos’ office as then-Treasury Board president; initially a senior policy adviser, he was promoted to director of policy in 2021. Following the 2021 federal election, Bock went with Duclos to the health portfolio, continuing as director of policy. Bock was later given the added title of deputy chief of staff, which he kept after Mark Holland took over as health minister in July 2023.
Hill Climbers understands that Julie Paré-Lépine is currently temporarily working on policy in Provost’s office, with a permanent policy hire expected down the road. Paré-Lépine’s CV includes experience working as a senior adviser at Natural Resources Canada, and for Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Canadian Wildlife Service.
Daniel Schnurr is on board as a senior parliamentary affairs adviser and issues manager to the secretary of state for nature.
Schnurr comes from then-citizens’ services minister Terry Beech’s old team, which Schnurr joined in September 2023 as a special assistant for Atlantic regional affairs and parliamentary affairs adviser. He previously covered the Atlantic desk for then-families, children, and social development minister Karina Gould, and is also an ex-assistant to Gould as the MP for Burlington, Ont. According to his LinkedIn profile, Schnurr was also among those working the hustings during this year’s federal election, in his case supporting Beech’s successful run for re-election in Burnaby North–Seymour, B.C.
Justine Lesage is director of communications and media relations to Provost. Lesage spent the recent federal election tackling communications for Liberal candidates in Quebec, but before then spent roughly a year and a half working for then-national revenue minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. First hired as an issues manager to Bibeau over the summer of 2023 after a year away from the Hill—which Lesage spent doing communications and press relations for the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal—Lesage was most recently director of communications to the then-revenue minister.
Lesage is also a former communications director to Lebouthillier as then-revenue minister and to then-environment minister Steven Guilbeault, and was previously press secretary to Bibeau during her turns as minister of international development and minister of agriculture. Beyond the Hill, Lesage is an ex-communications co-ordinator and press officer with Oxfam-Québec, among other past jobs.
Finally, rounding out Provost’s current team is operations adviser and executive assistant Dieynaba Sagna. A recent graduate of the University of Ottawa—where she earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science earlier this year—Sagna has spent the last roughly three years working part time as a correspondence officer with Natural Resources Canada.
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