Trudeau is staying for next election, but setting table for his replacement
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent several strong signals Tuesday with the appointment of his new cabinet. First, his policy focus. Gone are the ministers of digital government and middle-class prosperity (drawing less attention to failed benchmarks), replaced instead with ministers for mental health, housing, and tourism. Former Équiterre founder Steven Guilbeault becomes the country’s environment minister, while top performers — Jonathan Wilkinson, Jean-Yves Duclos, and Marc Miller — change roles to highlight the government’s attention on climate change, health and reconciliation.
Second, more personal signals. Trudeau wants to be recognized for elevating capable women to positions of power.
Despite the prime minister’s emphatic response that he intends to lead the Liberals into the next election, he wants the race to replace him as leader of the Liberal party to be a fair fight. He’s willing to reward performance and offer a chance at redemption. At the same time, Trudeau shows he can be callous, and has chosen to surround himself with friends — even lesser performing ones — who are close to him, or his chief of staff, Katie Telford.
Aside from Chrystia Freeland, who was reconfirmed as his deputy and the country’s finance minister in September, the appointment of Oakville’s Anita Anand to national defence and Montreal’s Mélanie Joly to the prestigious foreign affairs portfolio are significant.
As Canada’s procurement minister, Anand oversaw billions of dollars in vaccine contracts with suppliers and the purchase of PPE. She was brought out on the campaign trail this summer to showcase the government’s handling of the pandemic.
Anand will become the first female defence minister since Kim Campbell to lead the department — at a time when the Forces are rocked by sexual harassment and assault allegations involving the country’s top brass.
Joly may be less well known to English Canada. A former lawyer, who ran in her early 30s to be Montreal mayor and came in a surprising second, she was part of Trudeau’s leadership team. In 2015, after winning a seat in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, she was swiftly appointed heritage minister. She seemed to embody everything the Trudeau government wanted to be about: youth and ambition. But after bungling a $500-million investment agreement with Netflix, which did not include any specific guarantees for French programming or a tax on the streaming service to help fund homegrown content, Joly was demoted in a 2018 cabinet shuffle to minister of tourism, official languages and La Francophonie. She was later slightly promoted to minister of economic development and kept the official languages portfolio — navigating a tricky balance with the Quebec government over the mandating of French-language laws on federally-regulated businesses. A strong organizer, Joly co-chaired the Liberals’ national campaign committee for the 2021 election. Now, she will be Trudeau’s fifth foreign affairs minister. Not an easy task when Ottawa must reestablish its relationship with its southern neighbour and redefine its relationship with China.
Joly and Anand’s appointments are one more indication that Trudeau is thinking of who will replace him. The prime minister must be aware there are rumblings he is showing too much favouritism toward Freeland. Leaving the gregarious, competent and ambitious François-Philippe Champagne in the innovation, science and industry portfolio can also be viewed through that leadership lens.
Rewarding performance explains Trudeau’s move to return Pablo Rodriguez to the heritage portfolio. Rodriguez wanted this job back — he previously held it in 2018, after which he was called to take over from Bardish Chagger, who was struggling in the House leader’s job. Rodriguez showed he could negotiate ably with different parties in the House, especially during the pandemic when he found consensus on some thorny issues. Now, he’ll need to demonstrate those skills as he navigates what are expected to be contentious bills on online hate and reforms to the Broadcasting Act.
Mark Holland, the former government whip, is another experienced Liberal who patiently waited his turn for cabinet, handling (cleaning up) tough files that landed on his desk, such as the electoral reform mess when he was a parliamentary secretary and more recently MPs’ personal/personnel matters. Now, he takes over from Rodriguez.
Intergovernmental Minister Dominic LeBlanc is a trusted Trudeau friend, he is also an experienced politician. There may be nobody in cabinet better or worse placed to dole out federal cash than LeBlanc as infrastructure minister.
While Joly’s story is one of redemption, so, too, is that of New Brunswick’s Ginette Petitpas Taylor, the new minister of official languages and minister responsible for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. In 2015, Petitpas Taylor was appointed deputy government whip, and later, in 2017, promoted to health minister, replacing Jane Philpott. Two years later, she was demoted back to deputy whip.
While there are promotions, there are also demotions.
Former public safety minister Bill Blair loses half of his portfolio, keeping only the less attractive emergency preparedness part. Blair spent much of the election campaign playing the good soldier, voicing successful anti-gun ads targeted to swing ridings. He sees little reward for his actions.
Waterloo’s Chagger, most recently the minister responsible for diversity, inclusion and youth, has been dumped entirely from cabinet. So has Winnipeg’s Jim Carr, although he is battling blood cancer.
No one may be more hurt than former foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau. According to two Liberal sources, Garneau was not told prior to the election that he might not be reappointed to cabinet. The former astronaut is proud and getting removed in such a public way, without any efforts to pre-position the messaging is no way you’d expect a prime minister to thank his former leadership rival or someone who has never been anything but loyal publicly.