Chris Selley: Please, spare us from another impotent, image-obsessed cabinet, Mr. Carney
Last weekend on NBC's Meet the Press, President Donald Trump kiboshed the notion that he might seek a third term as president. That doesn't mean he won't go on CBS's Face the Nation next weekend and say the opposite, of course, but it's a reminder that Trump, who's currently breathing most of the oxygen in Canadian politics, won't be around forever. And when he's gone, all the problems that gave credence to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's 'Canada is broken' narrative will still be around. Housing. Law and order. The opioid crisis. Foreign interference in our politics. Landlocked natural resources. We are an inefficient and economically dysfunctional federation, to the point where breaking down internal trade barriers is a tall order.
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If Prime Minister Mark Carney wants to go down in history as something other than the federal version of former premier Kathleen Wynne — who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat for the Ontario Liberals, then four years rode them into the ground like Major Kong in Dr. Strangelove — he is going to need help, and I don't mean from a bunch of self-styled communications geniuses. The government-by-comms era has to be over if Carney is going to leave the country any better off than he found it.
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Carney needs to cobble together a solid cabinet, which is to be unveiled Tuesday, that is noticeably different than Justin Trudeau's cabinet was. Based on April 28's election results, turning the page on Trudeau was clearly the Number 1 priority for huge numbers of Canadians. There are voices we just don't need to hear from anymore: Bill Blair, Steven Guilbeault, Mélanie Joly and the narrowly re-elected Sean Fraser come to mind, but three of those made it into the provisional cabinet Carney quickly assembled in March.
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Blair has no business there after his alleged meddling in the RCMP's investigation into the 2020 massacre in central Nova Scotia, or after taking 54 days to sign a warrant allowing CSIS to investigate foreign interference in Canadian politics. Really, his handling of the G20 debacle in Toronto in 2010, during which he was chief of the city's police force, should have long ago thwarted any political ambitions he had in the first place.
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Guilbeault is popular in Quebec, but he makes very little sense to the rest of Canada (and seemingly vice versa). His current position as Carney's Quebec lieutenant might make sense going forward. His reinstallation by Carney in March as heritage minister — now dubbed Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity — does not make any sense. He was a disaster there before, failing completely to defend Trudeau's anti-internet agenda in English Canada, and there is no reason to believe he would be any better at it now. (Ideally, of course, Carney would simply abandon Trudeau's anti-internet agenda.)
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Former housing and immigration minister Fraser, who decided not to run again to spend more time with his family, then changed his mind when he saw Carney's numbers suddenly improving — and then nearly lost Central Nova to the Conservatives — is always mentioned as one of the most talented communicators in the Liberal caucus. Communicating, alas, doesn't actually get anything done. It doesn't build houses, for example, and it doesn't un-bugger up immigration.
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