GUNTER: Carney cabinet as radically ‘green’ as Trudeau's

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The Parliamentary press gallery is all aglow over Mark Carney’s new cabinet. It’s so much smaller than Justin Trudeau’s last cabinet, they beam. And its full of so many rookies. Surely that proves Carney intends a clean break with the Trudeau past.

Umm. How about ‘No.’

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It’s true, there are “just” 28 ministers in Carney’s cabinet, versus 40 on Trudeau’s last roster. But Carney also appointed 10 secretaries of state — a sort of junior minister — who have specific duties within senior ministers’ portfolios.

There are secretaries of state for children and youth, seniors, sport, international development and labour, among others. If those sound like familiar titles to you, it’s because all of them have been senior portfolios in earlier cabinets.

Secretaries of state get paid more than MPs (but less than senior ministers), they have political staffs, departmental bureaucrats and drivers, and some of the same statutory authority as ministers, but typically only get invited to cabinet meetings when the agenda includes items from their area.

It sounds more like a 38-member cabinet than a 28-member one.

And much, too, is being made about the fact that just over half of the ministers are newbies — never before sworn into cabinet.

So? A fresh face doesn’t guarantee new ideas or a higher level of competence.

And ideologically, this new group of ministers looks pretty much like the old Trudeau crew.

Chrystia Freeland is still the transportation minister, for instance. And Melanie Joly and Anita Anand have simply switched jobs at industry and foreign affairs, respectively.

Even Steven Guilbeault, Trudeau’s controversial environment minister, remains Quebec lieutenant and minister of culture, with responsibility for official languages and internet censorship (although the latter isn’t called that).

And Sean Fraser has been made minister of justice and attorney general, even though in Trudeau’s cabinet Fraser was first appointed as minister of immigration and presided over the mass flood of new Canadians admitted during Trudeau last term, then was made minister of housing to try to clean up the wreck his immigration policies had made of Canada’s housing market.

He failed at both.

Now Fraser will be responsible for federal drug policy, bail rules, gun regulations, hate-crime prosecutions and sentencing of criminals. What do you think the odds are he achieves even a tiny reduction in violent crime levels?

However, perhaps the best example of how new faces mean nothing new is Prime Minister Carney’s pick as Environment Minister, Julie Dabrusin.

Dabrusin, a downtown Toronto MP, was parliamentary secretary to Justin Trudeau’s much detested Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. And that apple has not fallen far from the tree.

(Sorry, that’s the pesticide-free, organic, fair-trade apple didn’t fall — of its own free will — far from the sustainably cultivated tree.)

Dabrusin bills herself as a strong supporter of carbon taxes, a vehement opponent of oilsands expansion and a deep believer in the need to transition from fossil fuels to a low-carbon economy. She has even boasted about being instrumental in having most plastics designated as “toxic.”

Next time you get a bamboo “spork” with your takeout meal, you’ll know who to blame — the new environment minister.

Recall that Prime Minister Carney is himself very “green.” He has written two books (the release of the second was delayed by the recent election) in which he has, like Dabrusin, insisted oil that is currently in the ground must stay there. It should not be pumped out, exported or consumed.

So much for Carney’s “reset” with Alberta.

During his early days as Liberal leader, Carney talked about building a “transportation corridor” that most Canadians assumed meant an East-West pipeline that would ultimately carry Western oil to European and Asian markets.

But in the last few weeks of the federal campaign, Carney never mentioned oil and gas. Now he has appointed someone every bit as radically “green” as Guilbeault.

What do you think the chances are that Canada gets another pipeline?