New Prime Minister and New Cabinet!

Friday March 14 was a big news day in Canadian federal politics, and we now have a new Prime Minister and new federal cabinet. I wanted to share some updates and some context on these developments.

Mark Carney is now officially Prime Minister, even though he doesn’t yet have a seat in the House of Commons. Typically in this situation a sitting MP from the same party will step aside to allow a new leader to run. In this case, it is likely that the new Prime Minister will call a national election before Parliament is due to resume one week from today, on Monday March 24th.

This new cabinet is much smaller than many recent federal cabinets, both Liberal and conservative. It’s not uncommon for new Prime Ministers to start with smaller cabinets and grow them over time, as they add issues to the agenda and try to build a broader consensus. Prime Minister Carney’s cabinet has 23 ministers, the most recent Trudeau cabinet had 37. There are a number of political and strategic reasons for the new Prime Minister to have appointed a much smaller cabinet. He is trying to distinguish himself from the former PM, and present a pared down cabinet, an image of a leaner, more focused federal government ready to take on the serious challenges Canada is facing. It is likely that this cabinet will last only about 10 days. In this case, there will barely be time for a full briefing of new ministers or the issuing of mandate letters.

Some of the changes to the federal cabinet are very concerning to many progressives, particularly given the current global context, particularly the dropping of Cabinet positions (and potentially ministries) focused on Women and Gender Equality (including 2SLGBTQI+ issues), the removal of a Labour ministry which has been replaced with jobs and the folding of the International Development portfolio into the broader portfolio of Foreign Affairs under Minister Melannie Joly.

If this is a pre-election cabinet, as is widely suspected, it can certainly be viewed in the context of election strategy. Perhaps Carney is signalling a move to the centre designed to attract potential Conservative voters. At the same time, he has to strike a careful balance as to not alienate progressives who might peel support away from the Liberals to the NDP.