Justin Trudeau’s newest adviser will take home more than $1,200 for each day he works in government, iPolitics has learned.

Serge Dupont, a former deputy clerk of the Privy Council Office (PCO), was named senior executive adviser to the prime minister in an order-in-council published on Dec. 6. The order fixed his salary at $1,250 to $1,470 per day.

An order-in-council is the legal tool formalizing an appointment made by the Governor General on the advice of the prime minister and cabinet, collectively known as the Governor in Council. The Governor General must sign the order for it to go into effect.

A spokesperson for the PCO told iPolitics that Dupont had been appointed on a “part-time basis” to help with the government’s response to an August ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal that quashed Ottawa’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Stéphane Shank said the former civil servant will support PCO with “policy coordination and oversight” of the response to ensure “coherence between officials across government.”

Dupont currently works as a senior adviser for international law firm Bennett Jones, in addition to serving as an executive fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. He recently concluded a term on the board of the Public Policy Forum (PPF), a non-profit think tank.

In October 2017, Dupont and PFF president Edward Greenspon wrote an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail calling for a complete “reset” of the review process for resource projects in order to restore the trust of Canadians. They said the review process needs to be more inclusive and transparent, and ensure “scientific rigour and good-faith discussions within a predictable, reasonable time frame.”

During his time in the public service, Dupont also served as the executive director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean on the International Monetary Fund, and as deputy minister for Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) from 2010 to 2014. He did not return email or phone messages by deadline on Monday, asking for more information about the appointment.

Dupont joined NRCan in 2008 as associate deputy minister, where he led the restructuring of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. and advised on Canada’s nuclear sector, according to his public biography on the Bennett Jones website. Before that, he spent seven years working at Finance Canada, including a stint as assistant deputy minister for finance-sector policy. He also spent three years in the mid-1990s as a finance counsellor at Canada’s mission in Paris.

With files from Kristen Smith

*This article has been updated to reflect that Serge Dupont will work out of the Privy Council Office, not the Prime Minister’s Office, and that his term on the board of the Public Policy Forum recently ended.