After Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's press secretary, Peter Donolo, in 1998 unaccountably announced through a media story that the prime minister's office was considering the abolition of the monarchy as a millennium project, Chrétien stated that he was open to a public debate, but never pursued the matter and expressed concerns about resulting divisions, saying that he "already had enough trouble on hands with the separatists of Quebec, and didn't want to take on the monarchists in the rest of Canada, too."