Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Priorities and Planning, Privy Council Office
Siobhan Harty is Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Priorities and Planning, Privy Council Office, since October 2020. In this role, she is responsible for supporting meetings of the Cabinet, the government’s overall policy agenda through the Speech from the Throne, and the development of policy advice for new governments. Prior to this, she was Assistant Secretary, Government Operations, Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada (2018-2020), where she briefed Treasury Board ministers on a range of ministerial proposals, such as defence procurement, Information Technology, national revenue, real property and contracting. She has also served as Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet, Parliamentary Affairs, Privy Council Office (2016-2018), where she provided support to the Government House Leader on the introduction of legislation and served as secretary to a cabinet committee. Siobhan has also held senior executive-level positions at Employment and Social Development Canada (Director General, Social Policy) and Public Safety Canada (Senior Director, Emergency Management Planning). Prior to joining the federal public service in 2002, Siobhan was a tenure-track professor of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University. She holds a PhD in Political Science, McGill University, an MPhil in Latin American Studies, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA (Hons) in Political Science, Concordia University.