Department of Canadian Heritage. He worked on cultural policy issues, including disputes surrounding Canadian cultural protectionism, such as surrounding film policy, copyright, and the trade dispute with the United States regarding the Canadian government's excise tax on "split-run" magazines (where a title whose main edition is published in another country, such as Time Magazine or Sports Illustrated, is republished in Canada with a few pages of special Canadian content, in order to take advantage of Canadian advertising sales revenues), as well as the entry of Amazon into the Canadian book market and music policy in the face of disruption of traditional industry practices by the internet. In 2002 his first appointment at the deputy minister level was as associate deputy minister at Canadian Heritage. In 2003 he returned to the Privy Council Office as deputy secretary, where he supported the transition from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to Paul Martin and later from Martin to Stephen Harper in 2006. Wernick attended the last meeting of the Chrétien Cabinet, the first and last meetings of the Martin Cabinet and the first meeting of the Harper Cabinet. In May 2006 Wernick was appointed deputy minister for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, where he remained for eight years. On March 18, 2019, Wernick announced that he would be retiring from his position as the clerk of the Privy Council amid the SNC-Lavalin affair. He retired from the federal public service on April 18, 2019. Controversies University tuition protest email exchange Wernick was criticized for his comments made in an email among Carleton University board of Governors members regarding a university student tuition protest that disrupted and prevented the March 30, 2015 meeting of the Board from continuing. In the private email exchange which was leaked to the media by one of the Board members, he deplored the tactics as authoritarian, similar to those used by brown shirts and Maoists to intimidate their political opponents by disrupting gatherings and physically preventing the meeting from proceeding. This was reported in social media as labelling the protesting students as Nazis. The New Democratic Party called for Wernick to apologize for the comments, and the school's graduate student association called for Wernick to resign. Wernick was later elected to serve as Vice Chair of the Board of Governors for the 2016-17 term and the Board of Governors defeated a motion tabled in September 2016 to revisit