Don Newman

October 27, 2021

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has unveiled a cabinet he says is the right team for the moment. The time when hopefully the COVID-19 pandemic is receding, the economy is recovering and Canada is about to come “roaring back” from the health and economic crisis of the last two years.

The only problem with billing the new cabinet that way is that the team unveiled at Rideau Hall in Ottawa look an awful lot like the team that preceded it. Rather like the September 20th election that returned a House of Commons almost the mirror image of the previous Parliament in terms of number of seats for each party, the new cabinet that will govern the country for at least the next two years and perhaps longer, looks a lot like the one it is replacing.

However, there are significant differences while maintaining a similar look.

Nine Ministers including Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland are staying in their portfolios. Other than Freeland, who had already been announced, the most notable of the “remainers” are François-Philippe Champagne  in Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and David Lametti as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General.

But the biggest group that makes the cabinet look the same – yet also different – are the 21 ministers who are holdovers but have different jobs. In many ways the cabinet swearing-in was also a big cabinet shuffle.

The biggest names in this musical chairs of portfolios were Anita Anand and Mélanie Joly. Anand has received the dubious promotion of becoming Minister of National Defence, not to strengthen our alliances or put the fear of God into the Chinese and the Russians, but to clean up the sex scandals that have riddled DND and left it leaderless, demoralized and scorned.

Anand won the promotion by putting in a strong performance acquiring vaccines at the height of the pandemic as Minister of Public Service and Procurement. About the only consolation as she assumes the new role is that the only other woman to serve as Defence Minister was Kim Campbell in the Brian Mulroney Progressive Conservative Government. Campbell went on to succeed Mulroney and become Prime Minister — though only for a few months.

Joly’s elevation is a little harder to fathom. She is young and attractive but her cabinet career has been spotty at best. She began as Heritage Minister but was in over her head. She was demoted to Minister of Tourism, Official Languages and La Francophonie, before raising her game as Minister of Economic Development. Now she has one of the traditional top jobs in the government, although instant communications, globe trotting jet travel and the inclination of PMs to handle a lot of the foreign affairs file themselves has made the job less important, though still prestigious.

On the Liberal election priorities, the things they say they really want to do, Trudeau has shuffled the deck there, too, but left people with cabinet experience in place.  The climate change file has been adjusted. There is a new Environment and Climate Change Minister, Steven Guilbeault. He is an environmental activist from Quebec who wanted the portfolio when first elected in 2019. He had to settle with being Heritage Minister, partly on the argument that it is a problem any time you put an activist into the portfolio that is their specialty; like a doctor in Health or a soldier in Defence.

But now he has overcome that reservation and bumped Jonathan Wilkinson from the job. Wilkinson is now Minister of Natural Resources and he and Guilbeault and meant to work together saving the world. We will see how that works, perhaps as soon as next month, at the COP26 United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow. Co-operation and smooth execution will be essential on such a high Government priority.

The other top priority for the Trudeau government is Indigenous reconciliation. Trudeau has promoted Marc Miller, who until now was the second minister on the file. Now he has the top job as the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations. Into to his previous job as Minister of Indigenous Services the Prime Minister has placed former Health Minister Patty Hajdu.  Miller replaced Carolyn Bennett, who is now Minister of Mental Health and Addiction and Jean-Yves Duclos has become Minister of Health. Musical chairs.

The cabinet announcement had a whiff of Shakespeare’s Macbeth about it, rather as he described life being a “poor player, that walks and struts its hour upon the stage….signifying nothing.”  This new cabinet does signify something, it is a new start, sort of. But it’s an open question as to how effective it will prove to be.

Jean Chrétien was the most successful Liberal prime minister since the Second World War. He is releasing a book of his recollections and political advice this month.  In it he says that Trudeau has not once approached him for advice, and as Chrétien might, he says many of the mistakes the current government has made over the last six years could have been eliminated or softened with experienced advisers weighing in. That point seemed to be underlined by two of the three people dropped from the cabinet. Jim Carr has suffered from poor health, but had recently returned to work, and Marc Garneau was pushed from Foreign Affairs to make way for Joly.  They are both grey haired, seasoned and experienced. It is hard to believe they won’t both be missed.

Contributing Writer and Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the order of Canada and a lifetime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He is Executive Vice President of Rubicon Strategy, based in Ottawa.