Leblanc’s role becoming clearer
OTTAWA • Democratic Institutions may be gone as a separate ministry in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet but the issues it dealt with have not been forgotten.
They’ll be handled by Dominic Leblanc, who sits in cabinet as president of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada.
That’s just one of the details about the prime minister’s new cabinet that are starting to become clear after Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony, which left onlookers wondering what exactly some ministers will be doing.
More details will emerge when Trudeau eventually releases the mandate letters he’s written to each of his 36 ministers. But some additional information about the structure of cabinet and the roles of various ministers is starting to dribble out.
For instance, it’s clear the prime minister has bowed to pressure to ensure closer political involvement in the operation of regional development agencies — although not quite in the way many Liberals had hoped.
Traditionally, various regional ministers have been assigned responsibility for each of the six agencies across the country. But during his first mandate, Trudeau abandoned that approach and consolidated responsibility for them all under one minister, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains.
Many Liberals had hoped Trudeau would revert to having each agency overseen by a separate, regionally-appropriate minister.
But on Wednesday, Trudeau stuck with having a single minister responsible for all six agencies, although he changed the minister in charge to Montrealer Melanie Joly, who was named economic development minister.
On Thursday, however, Joly revealed that’s not the end of the story. Trudeau will appoint six parliamentary secretaries, a Liberal MP from each region for each agency, to work with her.
Leblanc’s role in cabinet was one of the murkiest since no one was clear what president of the Queen’s Privy Council of Canada meant.
Turns out, he’ll be plenty busy as it is, according to government officials.
He will be chairman of the new cabinet operations committee.
He will also be responsible for “supporting our public institutions,” including engagement with the more independent, less-partisan Senate, which may be more inclined to flex its muscles now that the Liberals hold only a minority of seats in the House of Commons.