Ontario’s ministries stuck in a perpetual name game
The real news in this week’s cabinet shuffle isn’t the changing faces among no-name ministers.
Instead, pay closer attention to the renamed portfolios, which signal the changing face of Ontario’s government as times change.
A new “Minister Responsible for Digital Government” is a way to telegraph (sorry, blast out) the transformation. Because it’s 2016.
Remember the old Industry Ministry — and all those industrial workers who lost their jobs? Today, it’s the “Ministry of Economic Development and Growth” (the growth bit only works in good years, when GDP is on a roll).
That’s an outgrowth, so to speak, of the old Ministry of Commerce and Development (circa 1950s); which begat Economics and Development in the 1960s; followed by Industry, Trade and Technology; and then Economic Development, Trade and Tourism; and perhaps the most grandiose iteration (in the dying days of Tory government in 2003), Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation.
The iteration of innovation is an Ontario perennial: Former premier Dalton McGuinty awarded himself Research and Innovation in 2005, before handing it off to a junior minister and college dropout who styled himself a rocket scientist (Glen Murray). Bundled a few years later with Colleges and Universities, the ministry was detached this week yet again — and reformulated as Research, Innovation and Science (the last redundant bit befitting the bona fide nuclear physicist with a PhD, Reza Moridi, who helms it).
Colleges and Universities are also passé in the new nomenclature of cabinet. Now, it’s “Advanced Education and Skills Development.”
The old Ministry of Highways would look out of place in an era of mass transit talking points. The post of Solicitor General is long gone, along with the Ministry of Reform Institutions, replaced by Community Safety and Correctional Services to keep us safe. Sometimes new names convey powerful symbolism. Other times it’s merely the optics of politics — akin to Kremlinology at Queen’s Park as it is in Ottawa: The federal Liberals famously rebranded the old Foreign Affairs Ministry (formerly External Affairs) as Global Affairs Canada. Mostly, it’s just keeping up with the times. Either way, tradition be damned — and just as well.
Today, indigenous is in, aboriginal is out. Before becoming premier in 2013, Kathleen Wynne held that portfolio under its old name. Now it has been renamed Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, conveying the higher purpose of recognizing and resolving problems inherited from our troubled past.
If Wynne strolled past the sombre paintings of her predecessors hanging outside the premier’s office, to the gallery of fading photographs from cabinets of the past, she would travel back in time to an era when the current gender parity imperative seemed unfathomable. The black and white photographs of all-male ministries are leavened only by the occasional female faces starting in the 1970s, under thenpremier Bill Davis.
This week, Wynne raised female representation to an unprecedented 40 per cent. But to achieve that milestone she had to boost an already bloated cabinet of 27 ministers to a supersized 30.
That’s a far cry from the handful of all-male ministers in cabinets of a century ago, dominated by the Commissioner of Crown Lands, the Commissioner of Public Works, and the Treasurer.
Now, the Treasurer has been upgraded to the Minister of Finance. The old Lands and Forests Ministry is now Natural Resources. Public Works has become “Infrastructure” which, like “Innovation,” keeps getting bundled and unbundled from other portfolios. And Climate Change has been tacked on to the Environment Ministry.
The old Public Welfare Ministry has been softened to Community and Social Services. One of the most long-winded portfolio permutations, coined by the NDP government of the early 1990s — Minister of Citizenship Responsible for Human Rights, the Disabled, Seniors and Race Relations — was long ago carved up and redistributed.
Travel and Publicity (truth in advertising, so to speak) transmogrified to Tourism and Information in the 1960s, later transitioning to Tourism, Culture and Recreation, then Culture and Communications. As of this week, for good sport, it’s being publicized anew as Tourism, Culture and Sport.
In politics, as in government, everything old is new again. And everything new is destined to be recycled after the next electoral cycle — or cabinet shuffle. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn