Trudeau cabinet shuffle snubs southwestern Ontario
Posted Oct 26, 2021 10:45:00 PM.
Every cabinet shuffle comes with winners and losers.
The decision on who gets tapped to fill which role can be a tough on, and it's often made more difficult by the politics involved. On top of the egos and aspirations of the politicians themselves comes key considerations like regional representation, gender parity, diversity and more, plus all the outside lobbying.
“Every interest group in the country wants to have somebody who is congenial to their point of view in the cabinet,” said Peter Woolstencroft, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Waterloo.
Needless to say, with all that goes into the decision it can sometimes lead to some groups getting lost in the shuffle. Woolstencroft says that may be what happened to an entire region of Ontario as Waterloo MP Bardish Chagger lost her role as Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth and was dropped from cabinet entirely.
“Bardish obviously was damaged by the WE Charity, I mean, we have to acknowledge that two weeks after that program was announced it was withdrawn which has got to be a record for such a thing and there was a lot of tarnish to the lustre,” said Woolstencroft.
But with Chagger's demotion, it seems Southwestern Ontario as a whole also lost a seat at the table with no local MPs added to fill the void.
“I'm surprised our area doesn't have some cabinet representation because there's a lot of optics to this,” Woolstencroft said. “You know people in B.C. want somebody from Vancouver but they also want somebody from Vancouver Island and somebody from the interior.”
“In Ontario, we want somebody from Northern Ontario, somebody from Toronto, somebody from the GTA, somebody from Eastern Ontario and somebody from, yes, Southwestern Ontario.”
Meantime, Woolstencroft says there are plenty of other apparent winners and losers in this shuffle.
Oakville MP Anita Anand who was in charge of securing Canada's supply of COVID-19 vaccine as the Public Services and Procurement Minister has been tasked with taking over the role of Minister of National Defence.
“I think she has shown herself to be a rising star,” said Woolstencroft who points out many Liberals may soon be looking for change at the top. “And I can well imagine that she will be a serious contender for the leadership against the obvious front-runner, Chrystia Freeland.”
Freeland, meantime, is keeping the already large amount of political power she has in the party by staying put in both of her roles as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister.
Woolstencroft says another interesting move is the one facing now former Health Minister Patty Hajdu who is moving to Indigenous Services which could prove more difficult then heading health policy in a pandemic.
“The expectations are high (in Indigenous Services), and they ought to be, and the government's record has bee much less than its own expectations that it set for itself let alone the expectations of the indigenous communities.”
