Cabinet shuffle shows PM still learning on the job

National Affairs / By Susan Delacourt

For weeks, rumours circulated that Mark Carney could be doing a major shuffle of his cabinet before the end of this year.

The shuffle that happened on Monday last wasn’t the one people were talking about – or expecting.
The prime minister had to hustle over to Rideau Hall to fill the hole left when Stephen Guilbeault abruptly stood down in objection to the deal Carney signed with Alberta.

But Carney replied with a surprise of his own, which also flies in the face of rampant speculation about how this Liberal government rolls.

Just when it seemed that Carney was gradually shedding as much of Justin Trudeau’s legacy as he could, he’s brought one of Trudeau’s oldest friends, Marc Miller, back into cabinet to take on Guilbeault’s old role as minister of culture and identity.

Miller’s exclusion from Carney’s cabinets so far has been a bit of a mystery. Long regarded as a top-tier minister, expert communicator and a steady hand, Miller will bring those skills back into a government that seems to need them.

The reason that the rumour mill keeps spinning with talk of a cabinet shuffle is that Carney, new to the job and elected politics, is still making course adjustments.

He has demonstrated that he can be bloodless about them – several ministers in his first cabinet didn’t make the cut for his second one, such as Toronto’s Nate Erskine-Smith.

It’s all contributed to a perception – not entirely a bad one if you’re interested in getting things done – that every minister is on probation in Carney’s Ottawa.

Carney’s reputation as a tough, demanding boss is now well steeped into the lore around this new prime minister, as evidenced by one humorous shot Pierre Poilievre took at him at the recent press gallery dinner.
Poilievre compared Carney to Mr. Burns, the legendary corporate villain in “The Simpsons” TV franchise.
Poilievre appeared at the Saturday-night event alongside an impersonator from CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Minutes.”

Carney, Poilievre joked, “wanted to have an impersonator of his own, but then he discovered that Mr. Burns is a cartoon.”

Jokes aside, Carney does occasionally reveal that he rules with a heavy hand.
Asked for instance about whether he was worried about losing Guilbeault, he replied, “I’m the prime minister, and my role is to make decisions in the interests of Alberta and Canada.”

Carney’s negotiating skills are also a bit difficult to assess right now, merely because we haven’t seen a whole lot of them.

Any negotiations with Donald Trump have been invisible and are now off, while the president still keeps trade talks in a deep freeze. Carney says he does talk to Trump but he keeps that communication informal and private, and summarily declared there was nothing newsworthy in one of his latest conversations.
In the lead-up to the budget and the subsequent vote of confidence – which the Liberals, with a minority government, could well have lost – opposition parties said they were baffled about the lack of negotiation from Carney’s Prime Minister’s Office. The New Democrats, who had enjoyed much more of a back and forth with Carney’s predecessor, were struck by the difference.

Any negotiating that Carney did to get people onside for the budget came only after it had been presented as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

The same approach also surfaced around the big energy and environment deal with Alberta. B.C. Premier David Eby pronounced himself stunned, as did Indigenous leaders, to merely be presented with a deal that has profound impact on their citizens and communities.

A pattern, in other words, is emerging. Whether it was the major projects bill in the spring, giving the government power to plow past consultation, or the budget, or on the big Ottawa-Alberta deal, Carney is running a government that seems bent on barrelling on, potential naysayers be damned.

Now, maybe this is what is needed in tough times. Carney said repeatedly in his leadership campaign and in the election campaign that he would be the antidote for a system that moved too slowly. Nor, as mentioned, is it an entirely bad thing to set the bar high for competence with ministers, MPs or public servants.

But politics, a new territory for Carney, is also about the art of compromise and consultation, especially in a minority government. As long as he’s moving fast and breaking things, to borrow that old motto from Facebook, this prime minister is going to have to course correct.

The course corrections aren’t over. The mini-shuffle that happened last week is a direct product of a prime minister still learning on the job about the art of politics – and the art of negotiation.

Speculation about the bigger cabinet shuffle, then, will continue to swirl around Parliament Hill.