Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled it is full steam ahead for the Liberals with no major course corrections as he carried out a mini-cabinet shuffle on Monday. The small shuffle indicates the prime minister is confident about the public face of his government and his key players heading into an election year.
In other words, the Liberals think they already have their recipe for success and have opted for minor tweaks rather than a drastic overhaul.
The cabinet shuffle was the result of Scott Brison, one of the government’s most experienced and high-profile ministers, resigning his post as president of the Treasury Board and announcing he would not seek re-election this fall.
The prime minister could have simply filled Brison’s post but instead took the opportunity to shake things up a bit and fix a few problems, putting fresh faces on controversial files and introducing a new cabinet post in a bid to appeal to rural voters feeling neglected by the Liberals.
The most notable move is Jane Philpott’s promotion to Treasury Board president. The decision reflects the prime minister’s confidence in Philpott, who is widely seen as one of the most competent and reliable ministers in the Trudeau government.
WATCH: Global News coverage of Scott Brison’s resignation from Treasury Board post
A political rookie when she arrived on Parliament Hill, Philpott quickly learned the ropes and managed to deliver on one of the most complex and challenging portfolios in government — Indigenous Services.
Philpott has a reputation for being hands-on and action-oriented, attributes that served her well on a file with a massive to-do list and will be useful in her new role overseeing large parts of government spending and the public purse strings.
Beyond meeting her own government’s goals, Philpott earned the respect of many of her stakeholders, who believed she was genuinely committed to improving the lives of Indigenous people in Canada.
WATCH: Jane Philpott replaces Scott Brison as president of the Treasury Board in cabinet shuffle
Philpott has some exposure on the much more financially and bureaucratically oriented Treasury Board position, as she was the vice-chair of the Treasury Board cabinet committee. But what remains to be seen is whether she will share Brison’s blue streak of fiscal conservatism compared to some of her Liberal cabinet colleagues.
Promoting Philpott recognizes her success but also presents a risk for the government in moving a strong, established minister off a critical file on which the Liberals cannot afford to fail, given their promises of reconciliation and vastly improved services for Indigenous communities.
Philpott has laid out a clear road map for her successor, Seamus O’Regan, but there are many potential rough spots in the road ahead, where a mistake or failure could be devastating in this key portfolio.
The Liberal government has made big promises to Indigenous communities in Canada, and while O’Regan is known for being approachable and compassionate, he has suffered from foot-in-mouth syndrome during his time at Veterans Affairs Canada. O’Regan does not have the same stellar reputation for a strong work ethic that Philpott enjoyed with the public service, and his tenure oversaw a series of negative news stories and underwhelming announcements about veterans programming.
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To be fair, O’Regan bore the wrath of some veterans advocates even though he was not the decision maker on many of the policies that triggered outrage from those who have served. The Liberals made a series of campaign promises to honour veterans and offer them better services. Among those promises was a return to the lifelong pension and faster access to service, and the prime minister vowed that no veteran would have to fight the government in court.
WATCH: Seamus O’Regan becomes new Minister of Indigenous Services in cabinet shuffle
Under O’Regan’s watch, all of those promises have been, at best, watered down. The government likes to tout the $10 billion it put into veterans programming, but even internal government services show that veterans are still waiting longer than target times to access services. The government fought the Equitas case for lifelong pensions all the way to the Supreme Court and won.
When it comes to that lifelong pension? The government introduced a “return to pension,” but the Library of Parliament’s own numbers show that veterans get less under this system than the old pension system to which the Liberals vowed to return.
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Combine those policy pressure points with tone-deaf comments from the minister, who said — and repeated on many occasions — that he understood transition troubles from military to civilian life given his own transition from TV host to politics, and the blaring headlines over the VAC decision to cover convicted murderer Christopher Garnier’s PTSD treatment after he killed a police officer despite having never served a day (his father did) while veterans struggle to access care for their psychological wounds, and the file was on fire.
Given the history of gaffes and stakeholder dissatisfaction, the decision to appoint O’Regan to the complex Indigenous Services file is an interesting one. Liberal insiders insist that O’Regan has a strong personal interest in and connection to Indigenous people in Canada, having grown up in Labrador, and therefore is a good fit for the file. He has witnessed first-hand the challenges of isolated northern living that Metis and Inuit people in Canada face.
Between O’Regan’s personal empathy and the achievements of Philpott, more than one senior Liberal has claimed all O’Regan has to do is carry out the plans his predecessor put in motion without creating too much controversy.
The veterans file is probably the most difficult portfolio in government and has been seen as such since the Harper era implosion of then-Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino.
Now it is Jody Wilson-Raybould who finds herself taking the biggest hit in the shuffle, as she was moved in what most political insiders consider a demotion from justice minister to veterans affairs minister.
The government has bristled at suggestions the veterans affairs file is a step down, trying to imply anyone who saw Wilson-Raybould’s move as a demotion was denigrating veterans and the importance of the work the department does. The reality is there are a few plum posts that are seen as high-profile rewards: finance, foreign affairs, justice… but veterans affairs has never been among them.
WATCH: Jody Wilson-Raybould takes over Veterans Affairs in cabinet shuffle
The veterans affairs file deserves nothing but the best, as those who have served our country do, but for Wilson-Raybould to go from attorney general to the difficulties at VAC with no substantial new money or programs to offer is a one-way ticket, and it’s not a promotion.
Wilson-Raybould was billed as a Liberal superstar, but multiple Liberal sources had been complaining behind the scenes about what they viewed as a less-than-stellar performance on the justice file, where she had juggled key issues like the legalization of marijuana and major changes to impaired driving laws. The minister often seemed to be missing in action during heated debates on the issue, which frustrated some of the Liberal caucus.
How the minister will handle the challenges of the volatile veterans affairs file, which requires extensive public engagement, remains to be seen.
Two new faces are also making their first appearance in cabinet: David Lametti makes his cabinet debut as justice minister. He is fluently bilingual and a legal scholar. Both qualifications will come in handy, as the provincial government in Quebec, with the CAQ in power, increasingly takes aim at the federal government on key charter issues.
Quebec isn’t the only province mounting legal challenges against the feds. The carbon tax promises to be a major legal headache, and if Jason Kenney wins in Alberta so will equalization payments. Having a minister who knows the law backward and forward will be a huge benefit.
Last but certainly not least is cabinet first-timer Bernadette Jordan, the first female cabinet minister from Nova Scotia. Jordan is well known and liked among her caucus colleagues, and she brings a key characteristic to the table in the wake of Brison’s departure: she is a Nova Scotia minister. The Liberals swept Atlantic Canada in the last election and needed to keep regional representation at the table to keep that Atlantic red wave in place.
Jordan takes on a newly created portfolio of rural economic development as the Liberals try to shore up a weakness: their popularity in rural Canada. Particularly as issues like gun control move front and centre in the coming weeks and months ahead of the election, rural Liberal MPs have been warning the Prime Minister’s Office they must do more to flank the Conservatives or be perceived as out of touch with rural Canadian communities and voters.
What, exactly, Jordan will be expected to achieve in her new role is unclear, as no mandate letter has been produced yet.
Finally, it’s worth noting who did not move or change: Minister of Natural Resources Amarjeet Sohi and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
The Liberal government has met with the scorn of many Albertans for failing to do more as the oil industry continues to struggle and gasp. Trudeau appointed Sohi in the hopes a minister from Alberta might help send a signal that Albertans were being listened to, but Sohi’s home province has had little effect on the frustration of Alberta voters. At the end of the day, the Liberals have very few seats at the table in Alberta, and moving a minister would pull their only Alberta presence in cabinet — it seems wasn’t worth it.
McKenna has also rubbed some the wrong way with her relentless messaging on the environment and intensely critical partisan rhetoric, but the powers that be support her messaging and her approach so she stays on her file.
This is the front bench that will now take the Liberals into the fall election, the top players who the grits believe can deliver another majority government in 2019. No drastic changes, some key tweaks — enough to encourage backbench MPs they could still one day make cabinet while quietly taking care of some rough edges. It is a shuffle that signals the Liberals think they know what it will take to win, and that is more of the same.
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