Ms. Purchase, left, is leaving the Prime Minister's Office for a job in the offices of Microsoft Corp. chief executive officer Satya Nadella.Chris Wattie/Reuters
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is losing another long-time aide. Executive director of communications Kate Purchase announced on Tuesday she is leaving for a job in the offices of Microsoft Corp. chief executive officer Satya Nadella.
Ms. Purchase’s replacement has yet to be announced.
Other changes to the Prime Minister’s Office are expected by the end of the week, nearly two months after the Oct. 21 election. Mr. Trudeau has been under pressure to add senior voices from the Prairie provinces and Quebec.
A Liberal source said Mr. Trudeau tried to persuade Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, Marc-André Blanchard, to join the PMO as a senior adviser, but Mr. Blanchard has not accepted the position.
Ben Chin, who has worked in provincial governments in British Columbia and Ontario, will remain in the PMO as a senior adviser, the source added.
While a new senior official from Quebec is expected to be announced in coming days, the source said no new senior staffer is coming from Alberta or Saskatchewan, where the Liberals were shut out in the past election.
The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source to allow them to discuss internal staffing matters.
While PMO staffing is a work in progress, the Liberals have finalized their roster of chiefs of staff.
Jeremy Broadhurst, who ran the Liberal election campaign, will be the top ministerial aide to Deputy Prime Minister and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. In addition, Mr. Broadhurst will have a job in the PMO to co-ordinate the work of Ms. Freeland and Mr. Trudeau, the source said.
A senior adviser in the PMO, Elder Marques, will leave to become the chief of staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau.
Until recently, the top Quebec official in Mr. Trudeau’s office had been Mathieu Bouchard, who recently left to work at Canadian Heritage as chief of staff to the minister, Steven Guilbeault.
Ms. Purchase is another significant departure from the Prime Minister’s tight-knit circle of advisers. Along with chief of staff Katie Telford and former principal secretary Gerald Butts, she had helped shape the political style that defined Mr. Trudeau’s tenure after the Liberals won a majority in 2015.
She oversaw a communications strategy in which Mr. Trudeau appeared in international publications such as Rolling Stone and the New York Times.
During the recent election campaign, Ms. Purchase was in a position called chief content strategist, with a role in advertising, platform roll-out and debate preparation.
Mr. Butts resigned from the PMO earlier this year during the SNC-Lavalin affair. While he worked on the Liberal election campaign, he is not returning to the PMO. Ms. Telford is staying on as chief of staff.
Another senior aide who has left is former PMO policy director Mike McNair. He will be replaced by Marci Surkes, who worked on the Liberal election platform.
Ms. Surkes was chief of staff at Public Safety under Ralph Goodale, who lost his seat in Regina-Wascana in the Oct. 21 general election. She will be replaced at Public Safety by Zita Astravas, who was previously at Defence.
The new chief of staff to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan is George Young, who used to be in charge of relations with the Liberal caucus in the PMO.