Ian Shugart, former clerk of the Privy Council, dies at age 66
Sen. Ian Shugart, a former clerk of the Privy Council and a career public servant, has died at the age of 66.
“It is with immense sadness that I inform you that the Honourable Ian Shugart, P.C. has passed away,” Raymond Gagné, the Speaker of the Senate, announced in a media statement released Wednesday.
Shugart was appointed to the Senate in September 2022. He had been battling cancer since 2021.
Shugart was a policy adviser to Progressive Conservative leaders Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney from 1980 to 1984, when Clark and Mulroney were leaders of the Official Opposition. After the PCs formed government, Shugart became a senior adviser to Jake Epp, who served as minister of national health and welfare and then minister of energy, mines and resources.
Shugart moved to the public service in 1991 and served as executive director of the Medical Research Council — which became the Canadian Institutes of Health Research — from 1993 to 1997. He went on to serve as a deputy minister in the departments of health, environment, employment, social development and foreign affairs, under governments led by Jean Chretien, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau made Shugart clerk of the Privy Council — the most senior position in the public service — in 2019, That put Shugart in a position to help lead the federal government’s unprecedented response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Because of his health challenges, Shugart was only able to deliver his maiden speech in the Senate this past June. As his topic, he chose the health of Canadian democracy and argued for restraint and dialogue. In his final remarks to the Senate, delivered a day later, he encouraged his colleagues to take up the issue of omnibus legislation.
