Want to get into the Senate? This is the guy (left) you've got to get by first. His name is Dave Penner, an energetic, no-nonsense guy, not yet 40, just over 40, with a young family who hails from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. Penner is best known to journalists as the 'wagon-master' during the last few election campaigns. It's Penner's job to keep Harper's buses and planes moving and on schedule and he is ruthless about that. Once, during the 2005-06 campaign, we woke up at a downtown hotel in Vancouver and he ordered the buses to leave even though I and Senator Marjory LeBreton had not yet boarded. We had been chatting about something on the curb outside the hotel and had not noticed that it was departure time. Too bad for us, the buses left for the morning's campaign event in Burnaby.
The Senator and I hailed a cab and beat Penner and the buses to the campaign event but we had learned our lesson. I'm proud to say I'm now one of first to report to the buses every morning (and I think Senator LeBreton is pretty punctual about that now, too!) I snapped this picture of Penner during the 2008 Leaders' Tour while we were stopped for a campaign event in Farnham, Que.
When Harper took office in 2006, he named Penner his Director of Appointments, the same job that Senator LeBreton had, as it turns out, when Brian Mulroney was prime minister. Penner's title nowadays is slightly different — Director, Personnel, Administration and Appointments — but the function is still largely the same: Finding, vetting, and nominating the right people for the nearly 500 appointments the PMO has made this year alone.