Doing the Shuffle - Live!

So I’m sitting here at my desk at the Fraser Institute, and it happens to be lunch hour just as the Cabinet shuffle is occurring. So I’m blogging live from my cubicle, where I’m sharing a headset with fellow intern Candice Malcolm. The earphone wire is not very long, and I’m leaning down just to get it into my ears. Anyhow, with that said, here we go.

Time – New Position – Name (Old Position)

12:54 - Minister of Indian Affairs - Chuck Strahl (Minister of Agriculture)
I guess to put this into context it’s good to get Strahl into Indian Affairs. It allows Gerry Ritz to be the fresh face to put renewed effort into abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board. It doesn’t seem like this is much of a demotion – it appears at this point that this is a lateral move.

12:55 - Peter MacKay - Minister of National Defence/Minister of Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (Minister of Foreign Affairs)

Not really much of a change, except it makes his agenda more focused on Afghanistan specifically. He was already dealing with it in Foreign Affairs, and now he has to buckle down and focus solely on Afghanistan. Lateral move.

12:57 - Minister of National Revenue - Gordon O'Connor (Defence)
Definite demotion. Who knew much about Carol Skelton? Not most Canadians. You won’t be hearing about Mr. O’Connor very much from now on.

12:58 - Minister of International Cooperation (CIDA) - Bev Oda (Heritage)

What can I say about Bev Oda? I don’t have any particular problem with her, except to say that we’ve strengthened the Heritage portfolio by bringing in someone who can speak French in Josee Verner. On the flip-side, Verner’s English doesn’t seem too great. I could be wrong, though. It’s just when I went to Quebec City to hear her speak earlier this year, her English was not impressive.

12:59 - Nothing funny has happened yet. I guess this is pretty serious.

12:59 - Minister of Industry - Jim Prentice (Indian Affairs)

Promotion! Although I thought Bernier should have been kept here or promoted (gasp!) to Finance. Bernier was a true small-c conservative, as far as I know, and we need to have more people trying to reduce the size and scope of government into cabinet. Prentice deserves a promotion though, and the more positions are announced, the more it is clear that Harper is getting his best performers forward for a potential election.

1:01 - Minister of Foreign Affars - Maxime Bernier (Industry)

Would have liked to see him continue in some way in which he could implement small-c conservative ideas. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he’s not going to be on point for reducing corporate welfare or pressuring for program spending to decrease or pushing for tax cuts. However, he will be extremely useful in talking to Quebeckers about the Afghan conflict when an election is called, whenever that may be. I suppose this indicates the truth behind the Globe and Mail article titled 'Cutting taxes not the priority: Harper'

1:02 - Josee Verner - Minister of Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages (International Cooperation)

See my comments under Bev Oda.

1:05 - Gerry Ritz - Minister of Agriculture (Sec. of State – Small Business and Tourism)

As someone from a farming family, Gerry brings a fresh perspective and a new face to continue pushing for reforms in the Canadian Wheat Board.

1:06 - Diane Ablonczy - Sec. of State - Small Business and Tourism (Back-Bencher)
Finally, a surprise. Chatter all around had been saying there would be no back-bench promotions, but here we see a deserving back-bencher being promoted. Even CPAC wasn’t expecting it – they didn’t get their captions up for a long time after she was called forward. Definitely a good choice. She's been waiting a long time (first elected in 1993), and would have made the top of most lists that ranked which backbencher deserved to be brought into Cabinet.

1:11 - Everyone sings O Canada. It’s over!

No huge surprises. Diane Ablonczy was nice to see, but there were no re-dos of Cabinet entirely. Colby Cosh writes an insightful editorial in the National Post. I enjoyed it quite a bit. You can find it here.