Prime Minister Mark Carney talked as if he was initiating a new era in Canadian politics, but when it came to nominating his first cabinet, it’s plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose with most of the same cast of incompetents, crooks, lickspittles, and fart-catchers. Justin Trudeau would feel right at home:
Prime Minister Mark Carney promised change, a new way of doing things at speeds never before seen. Yet to help him do this, he is relying on the same old, tired, incompetent ministers who got us into the mess we’re currently in.
The Liberals will trumpet the large number of new faces in Carney’s 28-member cabinet — there are 15 MPs who have never served before.
But the top tier of ministers — the ones sitting in the front row at the swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday — were all former Trudeau acolytes, cabinet ministers now committed to rescuing us from a crisis of their own making.
In the front row was Sean Fraser, our new justice minister and attorney general, and the man who, under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, was responsible for immigration and then housing, two files he spectacularly failed at. If we want to know how bad Fraser was in those jobs, we need only look to Carney’s election platform.
“The last time we faced a housing crisis at such a broad scale was after the Second World War”, read the platform. This crisis “has left younger generations facing rents, down payments and mortgage payments so high that it turned housing into a barrier to opportunity instead of a cornerstone of opportunity”.
What about Fraser’s record at immigration? According to the Liberal platform, the Trudeau government let immigration “grow at a rapid and unsustainable pace”.
In December, when Liberal fortunes were in the toilet, Fraser announced that, for family reasons, he was quitting politics. Strangely, after the party witnessed a reversal in the polls, he announced he was returning.
In Carney’s eyes, Fraser’s blundering on two key files qualifies him to become justice minister. The only thing worse than Fraser as a cabinet minister may be Carney’s judgment.
Also in the front row was Chrystia Freeland, who served as deputy prime minister and finance minister under Trudeau and is now returning to cabinet as minister of transportation and internal trade.
Freeland’s record is best summed up, again, by the Liberal platform: “Business investment in Canada has dropped from 14 per cent of GDP in 2014 to 11 per cent in 2024, undermining long-term economic growth”.
Meanwhile, long-time Trudeau lieutenant Mélanie Joly, whose reign at foreign affairs was about as successful as Fraser was at housing and immigration, moves to industry.
Well, if we’re stuck with Carney’s retreads, at least we can laugh about ’em. Through the tears:
Noah has some faint praise for the new minister of National Defence and the new Secretary of State for Defence Procurement:
Welp it’s official. Bill Blair is out.
I cant say that it’s overly shocking. I don’t think anyone truly expected Blair to be MND by the end of today. While I will give Blair some credit for holding the fort, most of you already know I wasn’t his biggest fan.
He was a great placeholder who was able to smoothly roll out the plans left to him. He also did have several good public showings, such as his efforts in Korea last year. I will give credit where it is due.
However, he was also uninspiring, too passive in his role, and while I have no doubt he took it seriously, was never going to be a great long-term option. He had long overstayed his welcome […] Now he’s out completely from cabinet and in his place we have not one but two new ministers on the defence profile!
David McGuinty, best known for his eight-year stint as Chair of the National Security and Intelligence Committee has taken the reigns as the new Minister of National Defence While Kelowna MP and veteran Stephen Fuhr will take on a new role as Secretary of State for Defence Procurement.
In this role Fuhr will work under McGuinty specifically to tackle the file of Defence Procurement ahead of the establishment of the DPA. He is one of eight new secretaries of state that will operate on a “junior” level in cabinet.
Now McGuinty wouldn’t have been my first pick. I will openly admit that, but it is hard [not] to argue that he is the most prepared for the role, and likely the best we have available.
McGuinty previously held the NSICOP chair from 2017 all the way until December when he was appointed Minister of Public Safety. He has a background in International Development before becoming a parliamentarian, including stints with UNICEF.
He isn’t coming into this without a background on the current security climate we’re facing. He certainly can’t be said to be ill-prepared to take the role at a time when CAF and the DND are at one of their most pivotal moments in restructuring.
