Des Rosiers gets cabinet gig as Wynne gets set for vote
Rookie Ottawa-Vanier MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers is Ontario’s new natural resources minister, part of a cabinet shuffle Wednesday that removed some of Premier Kathleen Wynne’s top loyalists because they aren’t part of the Liberals’ scramble for another term in June’s election.
Deb Matthews, the deputy premier, minister of advanced education and Wynne’s right hand since she became premier in 2013, is out. Liz Sandals, the president of the treasury board, is out. Brad Duguid, the minister of economic development, is out. The Liberals are completing their shift from running the government into campaign mode.
Wynne emptied her cabinet of impending retirees once, in spring 2016, when Des Rosiers’ predecessor Madeleine Meilleur left the cabinet and then resigned her seat, but in the last 18 months some more have cropped up. Matthews, Sandals and Duguid have been capable ministers for Wynne — whatever you think of the Liberal program, they’ve executed it faithfully — but they’re exiting in June, no longer part of the package Wynne is presenting to voters as she seeks re-election.
Des Rosiers is part of the new package, so she’s getting a big promotion. So are Brampton MPP Harinder Malhi (to minister for the status of women) and Kitchener MPP Daiene Vernile (to Minister of Culture and tourism).
Education Minister Mitzie Hunter moves to Matthews’ advanced-education ministry (handling colleges and universities) and Child Care Minister Indira Naidoo-Harris takes over education (overseeing the public schools). Steven Del Duca moves to economic development and Kathryn McGarry takes over from him at transportation, which opens her spot at natural resources for Des Rosiers.
Other big-name ministers are staying in place:
Charles Sousa at finance (with one more big pre-election budget to deliver), Yasir Naqvi as attorney general and the government’s house leader (with lots of legislation to herd through before the election call, including a rewritten Police Services Act), Eric Hoskins at health (despite his clashes with doctors and criticism he’s taken over Ontario’s response to opioid overdoses), and Glenn Thibeault at energy (despite everything).
That Bob Chiarelli is also keeping his job as infrastructure minister when others decamp for the backbenches should put paid to speculation that he’ll retire. Chiarelli has said flatly that he’s running again, but he is 76, hasn’t been formally renominated by his local riding association yet, and would have a potential successor for his Ottawa WestNepean seat in Bay Ward Coun. Mark Taylor. This was his last chance to go without looking like he’s fleeing and he’s not taken it.
Marie-France Lalonde of Ottawa-Orléans, is also staying put at community safety, in charge of policing and jails.
The Liberals have six MPPs in Ottawa and, with Des Rosiers, four of them are now in the cabinet. That’s an extraordinary ratio.
Natural resources isn’t an obvious fit for Des Rosiers, a law professor and civil rights advocate. She’s the first Eastern Ontarian to hold the post since the early 1960s.
“At first glance, her riding of Ottawa-Vanier appears to have neither natural resources or forestry,” the Progressive Conservatives pointed out, in a statement on “the updated but same tired and bloated Liberal cabinet.” Well, there’s the Vanier sugar bush, some of the Rideau and Ottawa rivers and a bit of Greenbelt. But basically, this is true. Also, the sugar bush is, strictly speaking, agriculture.
The ministry oversees Crown land in the North, vast tracts of wilderness and industry. Understanding what the ministry regulates is obviously important, and Wynne is betting that Des Rosiers won’t say clueless urban-academic things to people whose livelihoods come from the land. Plenty of Des Rosiers’ predecessors, Liberal and Tory alike, have been southern, from such hinterland depots as Cambridge, Brampton, Mississauga and Niagara Falls, but there’s been a tilt toward MPPs from Thunder Bay and Cochrane for obvious reasons.
Still, most health ministers aren’t doctors or nurses; most transportation ministers aren’t planners or road builders. The Ministry of Natural Resources’ function is mostly setting regulations and applying them, not cutting trees and catching fish. The provincial environment commissioner criticized the ministry last fall for failing to protect species at risk, lying down before industry; rural landowners criticize the ministry constantly for stifling private citizens and small businesses with environmental rules meant for bigger targets.
These are basically legal issues, rights issues, enforcement issues. The government could do worse than having an elite lawyer with a civil libertarian history in charge of them. Also, unless Des Rosiers shows a startling affinity for the gig, it’s likely temporary even if the Liberals win the spring election, a tryout to see how she handles ministerial duties.
In the meantime, Wynne gets to show off a relatively new MPP who was a bona fide star candidate in her 2016 byelection.
I don’t want anything from these people, I just want to avoid the prospect of having innocent people in this ordeal again.
HASSAN DIAB, who says he won’t seek compensation for his extradition. STORY, A11