On the Ledge: Jessica McDonald
What can be said about Jessica McDonald? Her rapid ascent, according to a consultant who has done time in government, was “like taking someone seen as a good but not spectacular player from the junior league and putting them on the all-star team… People were taken aback – really shocked.”
The job of deputy minister to the premier has only ever been occupied by the big guys, in every sense of the word. McDonald replaces Ken Dobell, who is sticking around as an advisor, and follows heavyweights like Norman Spector, David Emerson, David Poole and Bob Plecas. She’s not from the same mould. She’s slender, soft-spoken – and, of course, a woman in what is often seen as a big boy’s club. But don’t underestimate her grit. McDonald was diagnosed with cancer in her early 20s, and a friend planned to meet her at a Vancouver hospital for her first chemo treatment. When the friend arrived, McDonald was sitting on the curb outside. She’d gone into the clinic, and had seen that all the pictures on the wall were in memory of people who had died. That’s not what patients need to see, she said. Take them down or I don’t come back in. And they did. “To me, that is Jessica,” says the friend, who still works in the public sector and, like most people interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified.
Maybe that’s because McDonald still seems very much a work in progress. Ken Dobell’s place in the pantheon was never in question. The same cannot be said of his successor. Eight months into the job, she’s still being watched warily by people inside and outside government. So far she’s earned as much praise as criticism from a tough audience. But one question she hasn’t been able to shake is: Just who is she?
Finding the answer can be a little like chasing Howard Hughes. McDonald has refused to talk to reporters through her first two years in the premier’s office, insisting politicians should be the ones in the public eye. This interview with BCBusiness was initially out of the question; then it was on, then off again, as various intermediaries pleaded the magazine’s case. Finally, McDonald said she would sit down to talk, but wanted to limit her comments to the public service.
McDonald’s office is above Campbell’s in the West Annex of the legislature, a two-storey sanctuary connected to the main building by a dramatic stone bridge. Just outside her door, a circular staircase lets people dash between floors without having to go through the small lobby with its ever-present security person. The tape recorder had barely started rolling when McDonald made it clear that she wasn’t going to talk about herself. “I understand there’s a readership out there that has interest, but I’m not crazy about the idea of doing sort of a ‘look at me’ article,” she says. “I’m not inclined to answer questions about my personal life.” She was not, she added, willing to talk about policy, that being the preserve of the politicians. But McDonald’s job puts her at the point where politics and policy come together. She’s the head of the bureaucracy, but she’s also Campbell’s deputy minister, advising him on options and all the ramifications of decisions. “There is another discrete side of this office which is the political side of the administration, and certainly I guess I’m as close as you can get to working there,” she says.
McDonald’s rise began 15 years ago when she was fresh out of UBC with an arts degree and some pretend political experience as the student ombudsman, leading a campus campaign against racist and homophobic graffiti. The office was revitalized under McDonald, successor Carole Forsythe noted, adding that to put in that kind of effort “you have to be nuts.” McDonald headed straight into a legislative internship after graduation, a move that took her back home to Victoria, where she went to high school, and plunged her into the heart of one of B.C.’s wildest political rides. One of four interns assigned to the Socred caucus in 1990, McDonald slogged away on research assignments while the Vander Zalm government self-destructed. She had a bleacher seat for the infighting, chaos and collapse. It was good training – one of those regular B.C. public spectacles on how not to run a government. And the stint produced some good connections. Martyn Brown, now Campbell’s chief of staff and top political advisor, was only three years out of the same internship program and already the Socred’s research chief, doling out assignments to McDonald. Now the two – along with deputy chief of staff Lara Dauphinee – are the people Campbell relies on most.
Connections matter. McDonald isn’t just a bright person who happened to catch the eye of a premier looking for someone to take on a huge job, one of those Horatio Alger success stories.
Back when McDonald was moving through the internship and into the public service, she was Jessica Mathers. The McDonald name comes from husband Mike, one of Campbell’s key supporters since his days as Vancouver’s mayor. McDonald did his stint as a legislative intern two years after Jessica – notice a pattern here? He went from there to a job as a political aide to then-mayor Campbell, and has been part of the inner circle since. McDonald directed Campbell’s campaign for the Liberal leadership and worked for the Liberals in different roles. He resigned as director of caucus communications when Jessica was hired in the premier’s office, talking about being a stay-at-home dad to daughter Charlotte. But that’s left him time to manage Liberal election campaigns and run his own consulting company, Rosedeer Strategies, from their home in the country south of Nanaimo. The company, to no surprise, is known for having a uniquely superb understanding of how things work in the B.C. government.
Of course, it’s never been suggested that Jessica McDonald got her top job because her husband has been a full-time Campbell supporter since university. But for the 35,000 government workers who didn’t know either of the McDonalds, her sudden ascent has raised a lot of questions that aren’t answered by the sketchy six-sentence bio released by the premier’s office.
Untangling her story begins with understanding why McDonald headed straight into a government job after her internship – and the Socred years – ended in 1991. She signed a BCGEU membership card and starting work as a researcher. Politics wasn’t the lure. “I wanted a career in the public service because of my curiosity about public policy issues,” McDonald says. In government she got the chance to work on a wide range of issues quickly, she says, from international business and immigration to family justice review to Crown land management and pricing. McDonald made steady upward progress over seven years working in government, but nothing suggested she was on track to become the big boss.
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