EDITORIAL: PM’s cabinet grows 65% in two months

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We can only hope the size of Canada’s public service doesn’t increase the same way Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet did on Tuesday. 

Carney’s new cabinet, with 38 members, is 65% larger than the 23-member cabinet he announced on March 14, after being elected Liberal leader. 

That was 10 days before he called the federal election in which the Liberals won 170 seats on April 28 — two short of the 172 needed for a majority government. 

Carney has divided his new cabinet into two tiers  — 28 senior ministers, with 10 more Liberal MPs appointed as secretaries of state. 

There are two dozen new faces including 13 political rookies and a few prominent names from the Justin Trudeau era have been dropped, including Bill Blair as defence minister and Jonathan Wilkinson as minister of energy and natural resources. 

In the key cabinet portfolios — finance, trade, foreign affairs and industry — Carney is relying on holdovers from the Trudeau era, with Francois-Philippe Champagne remaining in finance, Dominic LeBlanc in trade, Anita Anand moving into foreign affairs and Melanie Joly transferring to the industry portfolio, as well as minister responsible for economic development in Quebec.  

Former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, who ran against Carney for Liberal leader and was the catalyst in the Liberal caucus revolt that forced Trudeau to resign, remains in her current Carney-assigned role as transport and internal trade minister. 

Only time will tell if Carney has put the most competent people in the best positions since other considerations go into cabinet-making. 

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Carney, for example, adhered to the Trudeau-era mandate of a “gender-balanced” cabinet, with 14 men and 14 women appointed to the senior positions, while four of the secretary of state positions will be occupied by women and six by men. 

Eleanor Olszewski, a political rookie and one of only two Liberal MPs elected in Alberta, becomes minister of emergency management responsible for Prairies economic development, while Buckley Belanger, the only Liberal MP elected in Saskatchewan, becomes secretary of state for rural development. 

Former CBC/CTV journalist Evan Solomon, elected in Toronto Centre and another novice, will serve as minister of a new department — artificial intelligence and digital innovation — as well as minister responsible for the federal economic development agency for southern Ontario.