Well, the day for the swearing in of a new government in Canada has come and gone, leaving us the residents of our brave new Trudeaupia. So, who made it into Canada's New Government (a phrase I'm sure Canadians are thoroughly allergic to after the last guys drove it into the ground), and what can we derive from it?
So, after a few weeks of speculation (including by yours truly), the new Cabinet is here. 31 people in all -- or 30, if you consider the Prime Minister as separate from the Cabinet, which is dubious as a matter of legal principle, but entirely valid as a matter of practice, and evenly split between men and women, as Trudeau promised (again, assuming you don't count Trudeau himself; but then, an odd-numbered cabinet can't be split 50/50 anyway).
Newfoundland and Labrador
1. Judy Foote - Minister of Public Services and Procurement
Formerly the Ministry of Public Works and Government Services. Foote, the designated minister from Newfoundland and Labrador, has been handed a pretty big portfolio here, responsible for overseeing all government purchases. As you might imagine, this has traditionally been a job associated with patronage and a not-incidental amount of corruption in many past governments, given the amounts of money involved. Of particular interest, she'll have to start working with the new Defence Minister to untangle the trainwreck that military procurement has become under the last few governments.
Prince Edward Island
2. Lawrence MacAulay - Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food
As a native of Prince Edward Island, this particular appointment made me incredulous at first. Lawrence, first elected in 1988 (indeed, he's the second-longest-serving member of the current House of Commons overall, and the longest-serving Island MP ever), was a minister in varying capacities (ACOA, Labour, Solicitor General) under Jean Chretien from 1994 to 2002, making him the third-most experienced member of the new cabinet, but I don't think anybody would argue he was an exceptional talent. He's an amiable fellow, but all of the other Island MPs are arguably of greater talent. What MacAulay does have, though, is a background as a farmer, which is very rare in a Liberal caucus that is overwhelmingly urban (indeed, there's only 4, I believe, out of 184 MPs), and was enough to get him back into Cabinet for the first time since he was dropped by Jean Chretien in 2002 over a nonsensical scandal. I like Lawrence, and I'm happy for him, but I wouldn't expect any radical innovations in agricultural policy under his tenure.
Nova Scotia
3. Scott Brison - President of the Treasury Board
The designated Nova Scotia minister in government, Brison previously held the aforementioned Public Works portfolio under Paul Martin (he was Canada's first, and to date only, openly gay cabinet minister). He's been an MP for all but a few months since 1997. The Treasury Board gig will put him in charge of overseeing all government spending and making sure the budget is actually being implemented. It's not as high-profile a job as some of the other economics portfolios, but it's a key job nevertheless.
New Brunswick
4. Dominic LeBlanc - Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
LeBlanc's father Romeo was a longtime government minister in the cabinet of Trudeau's father Pierre, so history repeats itself. House Leader is another of those jobs that doesn't attract much attention, but LeBlanc has in fact been entrusted with the job of organizing the passage of the government's agenda through the House of Commons, a not inconsiderable job that requires a close working relationship with the Prime Minister, which he has (he used to babysit him, in fact, back in the early 1980s).
Quebec
5. Justin Trudeau – Prime Minister of Canada & Minister of Intergovernmental and Youth Affairs
Trudeau is his own Intergovernmental Affairs minister, which I don’t really understand, since that job was created to be an advisor to the PM on constitutional matters and as an extra pair of hands to help coordinate with provincial governments. Having the PM himself do it kind of defeats the purpose. Granted, with the unity wars of the 1990s a distant memory, the job has been very low profile for a long time; we’re a long way from the days when Stephane Dion could become a political star during his tenure while going toe to toe with Quebec separatists. Speaking of whom:
6. Stephane Dion - Minister of Foreign Affairs
Dion's tenure as Liberal Party leader (2006-2008) was less than illustrious, but it should not be allowed to overshadow the fact that he is one of the sharpest men in public life in the last two decades, and his integrity is beyond reproach. I myself had been predicting a return to Environment, the job he held under Paul Martin from 2004 to 2006, but instead he lands one of the real prestige jobs, at Foreign Affairs. For those hoping that this new government will make a meaningful contribution to the fight against climate change, this is a positive indicator, as Dion is passionate about that cause, and has also been appointed to chair the cabinet committee on environment issues.
7. Marc Garneau - Minister of Transport
The first Canadian in space gets the Transport portfolio, surely inspiring many predictable jokes. Not much to say about this one, at this point; Garneau's a smart man, and will presumably do well.
8. Melanie Joly - Minister of Canadian Heritage
The fourth and final Montrealer to serve in the new Cabinet, Joly was tagged as a rising star in the Liberal Party ever since she declared her candidacy last year, with many suggesting her as someone with leadership potential. Canadian Heritage is not the most high-profile job, but for a fairly young rookie minister it's a place to start.
9. Marie-Claude Bibeau - Minister of International Development
This is one of the appointments I called exactly. Bibeau was an obvious choice to be in Cabinet, because Trudeau needed female ministers from Quebec outside of the city of Montreal (where four of Quebec's seven ministers, Trudeau included, reside), and Bibeau and Diane Lebouthillier (see below) are the only female Liberal MPs with any real distance from that city. And, as luck would have it, Bibeau worked for years with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the now-defunct international development agency that the Minister for International Development oversees in its new form (as part of a merged department). The commentary around Trudeau's gender balance pledge attracted lots of pooh-poohing about how merit was supposedly being discarded (ignoring, of course, that no Cabinet in Canadian history was ever selected solely based on merit), but here's an obvious case of a candidate who is clearly qualified for the job and also ticks two important boxes on the diversity chart (gender and region, the latter being, in this case, the Eastern Townships of Quebec).
10. Diane Lebouthillier - Minister of National Revenue
Lebouthillier was elected MP for Gaspesie-Les-Iles-de-la-Madeleine, which is about as far east as a Quebec constituency goes. With the core Liberal ministers in Quebec concentrated in the city of Montreal (as already discussed in the Bibeau entry), Lebouthillier was an obvious candidate to bring additional geographic diversity to the Quebec delegation while also meeting the gender quota. She's been made Revenue Minister, responsible for supervising the collection of taxes, so she's sure to be popular with her neighbours going forward.
11. Jean-Yves Duclos - Minister of Families, Children and Social Development
And we have our first wholly new portfolio of the evening! Duclos, an economist and the former head of the economics department at the University of Laval, also serves as the cabinet minister representing Quebec City in cabinet. He was very vocal during the campaign in criticizing the NDP's proposed national childcare plan. Here, I guess, he will have his chance to implement whatever the Liberals propose to do instead. Duclos has impressed me in the interviews I've read of his.
Ontario
12. Dr. Carolyn Bennett - Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs
Multiple news reports in the days prior to the announcement suggested that Bennett wouldn't make it into Cabinet at all, but here she is, though not as Health Minister, a portfolio many had assigned her on the basis of her being a physician in her prior career (she was first elected in 1997, so it's been a while). Bennett was the Liberal critic on Aboriginal Affairs issues (the portfolio has been renamed as of today, for the second time in about a decade, I believe, as until fairly recently it was Indian Affairs, then Aboriginal Affairs, and now Indigenous Affairs) in the preceding Parliament, and has logged a lot of hours on these issues, and in particular has formed relationships with many of the families in the missing and murdered women inquiry. She was a junior health minister in the Martin government, but here's her crack at the big-time, in what has historically been one of the least-rewarding jobs in the Cabinet.
13. Dr. Jane Philpott - Minister of Health
Like Bennett, Philpott was formerly a family doctor, and also an activist on HIV/AIDS issues. She did the House of Commons a service by vanquishing Paul Calandra, Stephen Harper's odious parliamentary secretary, in the preceding general election.
14. Catherine McKenna - Minister of the Environment and Climate Change
The job of "Minister of the Environment" has very pointedly had "and Climate Change" tacked onto it, sure to annoy and/or alarm some on the right end of the political spectrum. McKenna, a social justice lawyer, was a somewhat unexpected winner in the 2015 election, ousting popular NDP incumbent Paul Dewar from the Ottawa Centre riding he had held for almost a decade (fun fact: McKenna's riding includes the House of Commons itself). Much like Dion's prominence in cabinet, people hoping for meaningful action on the environment should be heartened by her presence, which is unexpected in cabinet because there was generally assumed to be room for only one Ottawa-area minister in Cabinet, and it was in turn generally assumed that that was going to be former General Andrew Leslie. But Leslie's on outside looking in, and McKenna's in the room.
15. Chrystia Freeland - Minister of International Trade
As far as omens go, this is an interesting one. Freeland, a member of Trudeau's economic advisory team, is one of the MPs closest to him (look no further than the group cabinet photo, where she scored the spot right next to him), and is probably the highest-profile International Trade minister to date. The Tories dropped the TPP trade deal into the middle of the last election, though it ultimately didn't make all that many waves during the campaign itself, given that there were few details about it. The new government has inherited this deal, and expect Freeland to be front and center in the coming discussion about it.
16. Bill Morneau - Minister of Finance
A multimillionaire businessman and former head of the C.D. Howe Institute, a right-leaning think tank, Morneau raised a few eyebrows when he signed up to campaign for the Liberals', whose economic platform is not exactly in line with many of the things he previously advocated (deficit spending, to name one, but also things like their pledge to claw back on tax-free savings accounts). But hey, that would hardly be a first. Anyway, this is often thought of as the #2 job in the government, after the PM, and it's not normally handed over to a rookie (albeit a rookie who has strong ties to the business community, so it's not like he's unfamiliar with monetary policy).
17. John McCallum - Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
In another symbolic renaming, "Citizenship and Immigration" has become "Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship".
McCallum, who like Bennett was the subject of many media reports suggesting he would be left out of cabinet, is handed one of the toughest new assignments, because during the campaign Trudeau opted to match the NDP's pledge to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year, i.e., within the next two months. There's a healthy body of opinion that this goal is unmeetable. McCallum, who held various senior ministerial offices from 2002 to 2006, will have to try to prove them wrong.
18. Navdeep Bains - Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
Trudeau opted to rename the Minister of Industry job, for whatever reason - I think the old name was more succinct. Anyway, Bains is a veteran party organizer and previously served in Parliament from 2004 to 2011. He's close to Trudeau. I don't know that his appointment says anything in particular about industrial policy; I guess you could read into the name a focus on new forms of industry over traditional manufacturing, since the latter seems increasingly headed the way of the dodo, if you were so inclined.
19. Maryam Monsef - Minister of Democratic Institutions
One of the biggest jokes of Stephen Harper's premiership was naming his obnoxious parliamentary secretary Pierre Poilievre as Minister for Democratic Reform. Here, the reconceived portfolio has been handed to Maryam Monsef, the new MP for Peterborough, Ontario (thus, representing people in central Ontario outside of Greater Toronto). Monsef, the first Afghan-Canadian MP and cabinet minister, is also the youngest member of the new cabinet, at 30, and arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1996, fleeing the Taliban. So, like the song says, another immigrant comin' up from the bottom.
Monsef is certainly a fresh and likeable face. What remains unanswered is what the new government truly intends to go on the democratic reform front -- many are understandably skeptical about what sort of electoral changes are planned, when the government won absolute power under the current system.
20. Dr. Kirsty Duncan - Minister of Science
Another newly-invented (or, I guess, revived, since it existed back in the 1990s) portfolio, which is similar to the Minister of State (Science) portfolio that existed in Stephen Harper's government -- with the notable improvement that it's not held by a creationist. Also note that due to the renaming of the Industry portfolio, we have two ministers of science. What exactly Dr. Duncan will be doing in this job remains to be seen, but she's a sharp person, so I'm glad to have her onboard.
21. Patty Hajdu - Minister of Status of Women
Grammar nitpick, that really should be "Minister for the Status of Women". Anyway, this is a portfolio that has existed since the 1970s, but has bounced between being its own ministry, being a junior ministry, or being an adjunct responsibility held by another minister. Here it's been given full independent status. Hajdu, the newly-elected MP from Thunder Bay, is the regional minister for Northern Ontario. In her prior career she was a specialist in homelessness, harm prevention and drug addiction (she last ran a homeless shelter), so she's potentially well-positioned to advance women's rights in those contexts.
22. Bardish Chagger - Minister of Small Business and Tourism
The newly-elected MP for Waterloo, Chagger is one of the younger members of the new cabinet, at 35. She was formerly an executive assistant to the previous Liberal MP for Waterloo, Andrew Telegdi, and avenged her old boss by defeating the guy who defeated him. This is another new ministry; it's hard to say much about it beyond that Chagger is another rookie marked as a potentially significant presence in the party in the future. She also acts as the representative for Southwestern Ontario.
Manitoba
23. Jim Carr - Minister of Natural Resources
The other side of the environmental issues coin is, of course, this job, dedicated to the management of the country's natural resources. The job has gone to a western, though not an Albertan, as Carr hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He's a former provincial Liberal MLA with a strong business background.
24. MaryAnn Mihychuk - Minister of Employment, Workforce and Labour
Another overly complicated renaming; what was wrong with "Minister of Labour"? The new name pretty much just says the same thing three times.
Anyway, Manitoba (or more specifically the city of Winnipeg) gets two ministers in this cabinet. Happy days are here again, Winnipeggers! Mihychuk is a former NDP provincial cabinet minister, so she's a good get for Trudeau, as far as experience goes.
Saskatchewan
25. Ralph Goodale - Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Goodale, the most experienced man in the cabinet (and, as the only Liberal elected in Saskatchewan, guaranteed a cabinet spot) -- having served continuously from 1993 to 2006 in various capacities, including as Finance Minister from 2003 -- was expected by many to land an economic portfolio again. I don't think anyone was predicting Public Safety, in particular because many assumed that was going to go to newly-elected MP Bill Blair. Blair spent a decade as police chief of Toronto, where his handling of the G20 protests in 2010 was controversial, to say the least. But like Andrew Leslie, he's left out, and Goodale is in. Given Trudeau's pledge to make major revisions to the Tories' national security laws, a steady hand like Goodale is certainly equipped for the job.
Alberta
26. Kent Hehr - Minister of Veterans Affairs' and Associate Minister of National Defence
I confess I don't know why they bothered with that second title; Associate Minister of National Defence is a junior ministry whose erratic existence is generally used to bring somebody extra into cabinet. Here it's been given to somebody who already occupies a full ministry. Though the two jobs are linked in that they were both held by Julian Fantino in the prior Harper government, and, in his inimitable style, he made a hash of both (to the extent that it's possible to make a hash of the latter, anyway; in the former he did everything in his power to piss off veterans, which is not a winning political strategy). Hehr, the representative for the city of Calgary in the new cabinet, will have the important task of trying to repair the relationship between the government and the veterans community, and the parallel task of trying to convince Calgarians that they should vote Liberal regularly in the future (since he is, along with Darshan Kang, the first Liberal elected there since 1968).
27. Amarjeet Sohi - Minister of Infrastructure and Communities
The second Albertan MP, in this case representing the city of Edmonton, Sohi has been handed another newly-invented portfolio. He was previously a well-regarded municipal councilor in Edmonton, and won his seat in Parliament by only 92 votes, the closest of any Liberal elected. The Liberals ran heavily on a pledge to spend a lot of money on new infrastructure, so one imagines this sets Sohi up to play a consequential role in the new government.
British Columbia
28. Jody Wilson-Raybould - Minister of Justice and Attorney General
This is one of the predictions I made that I was most confident about. Firstly, Trudeau made a very public pledge that he wanted a gender-balanced cabinet, and it would be hollow if such a pledge didn't place some women in the top-tier jobs -- yet at the same time, most of the caucus veterans are men, and many provinces' top figures are men, and so many of them will attract top-tier jobs. Wilson-Raybould, a former Crown prosecutor, is eminently qualified to be Justice Minister. And even more significantly, Trudeau has talked at length and, I think, sincerely, about wanting to really make progress on indigenous peoples' issues -- their disproportionate occupancy rate in Her Majesty's prisons is a pretty big part of that; and the government has also pledged a national inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women, which will now be overseen by the nation's first Aboriginal attorney general. Speaking of which:
29. Harjit Sajjan - Minister of National Defence
One of the bigger surprises of this cabinet cycle was the omission of Trudeau's erstwhile chief advisor on military matters, General (ret'd) Andrew Leslie, in favour of Lt. Col. (ret'd) Harjit Sajjan, a decorated veteran of the Bosnian and Afghan deployments and the first Sikh to command a regiment in the Canadian Army. Sajjan now takes over the National Defence Department at a time when military procurement is in a shambles (as mentioned in Judy Foote's entry). Trudeau has made some major commitments in this area, promising to scrap the F-35 fighter program in favour of a less expensive aircraft and to rebuild the navy. The Tories talked a good game on defence, but they pretty systematically neglected the actual armed services.
30. Carla Qualtrough - Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities
The third minister from British Columbia, and the only one from outside the city of Vancouver (though it's Delta we're talking about, so it's not too far away), Qualtrough has been handed a portfolio more or less tailored to her individual biography. She's a disabled Paralympian, and hence she's in charge of sport and disability rights matters. In her prior career she was a distinguished human rights lawyer (as well as an athlete), so one expects she'll bring a valuable voice to cabinet meetings.
The Territories
31. Hunter Tootoo - Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard
There are a few meaningful renamings of cabinet jobs in this cycle; appending "and the Canadian Coast Guard" to the job of Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is not one of them.
That aside, Tootoo, the former speaker of the Nunavut legislature, is now the northern Territories' voice in cabinet, is one of two Aboriginal appointees to the new cabinet.