Liberal cabinet shuffle looming

She’s gone from a junior minister, to a minister with a $4-billion budget to spend, to a minister holding down two different portfolios.

Now Kirsty Duncan, minister of science and minister of sport and persons with disabilities, finds herself at the centre of speculation as talk heats up about a cabinet shuffle.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will shuffle his cabinet sometime in the next week, sources tell The Canadian Press. With the NATO leaders’ summit in Europe now behind him, his focus is shifting to putting the final touches on a Liberal cabinet that will carry his government through to the 2019 election.

As word spreads among the government that the changes imminent, political staff are anxious about their own futures and some cabinet ministers are looking at flight options in case they get a call to return to Ottawa immediately.

That call will only come if they are affected, so don’t expect all 29 ministers to make an appearance in the nation’s capital.

A year before an election, replacing ministers who won’t run again in 2019 could be one plan — though there are no ministers among the dozen MPs who have already signalled they won’t be on the ballot next time around.

Splitting Duncan’s duties back into two jobs is expected to be one of the moves, since Trudeau is believed to be planning his first expansion cabinet since taking office, and he needs jobs to give the new faces.

Duncan has been the minister of science since the beginning of the Trudeau government. In January, she was sworn in as minister of sport and persons with disabilities just days after Kent Hehr, her predecessor in that post, was forced to resign from cabinet over harassment allegations from his time as a member of the Alberta legislature.