Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne leaves after a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, on March 14.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
“Fresh energy, fresh ideas, fresh perspectives”: That’s the narrative Prime Minister Mark Carney is casting for his cabinet picks this week.
Yet for Finance Minister, arguably Ottawa’s second-in-command, he tapped François-Philippe Champagne, a veteran of the Trudeau government.
To some, the choice makes Mr. Carney’s promise of change seem absurd. Voters wanted something different, and the first thing the Prime Minister does is pick a guy who helped orchestrate the mess the new government is supposed to fix.
Insiders see it differently. The role of finance minister is a political beast, they say, and it is not for the uninitiated.
Because the finance department is so central to a government’s ambitions, its minister plays multiple roles: executing the prime minister’s agenda, while also pushing back on the PM; managing requests from caucus for money, but often telling them “no”; and leaning on the department’s experts, while also understanding the bureaucrats see fresh meat every time a new minister is named and pray they’ll get their pet projects green lit.
This consensus was voiced by seven sources who have worked for Liberal and Conservative governments over the last two decades, many of whom have held both senior ranking political jobs as well as high-level corporate roles.
The Globe and Mail is not naming the sources because they were not authorized by their current companies or by their parties to speak publicly about the federal finance minister.
Trudeau killed the ‘business Liberal.’ Carney’s bringing it back
For those who wanted wholesale change in Mr. Carney’s cabinet, the name Tim Hodgson was often batted around as a natural pick for finance minister. The newly-elected MP used to run Goldman Sachs Canada, had worked for Mr. Carney at the Bank of Canada and has served as a director on multiple corporate boards.
Yet Mr. Carney went with Mr. Champagne, and to explain why that made sense, the insiders often said the same thing: The Bill Morneau experiment did not pan out.
When Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister in 2015, he named Mr. Morneau as his finance minister, and Bay Street gushed over the appointment. Before running for office, Mr. Morneau was the chief executive of a public company, Morneau Shepell, and bankers said he was well-liked, a strategic thinker and a guy who gets business.
Over time, though, politics ate him up. Whatever the reasons he and Mr. Trudeau ultimately fell out in 2020 – and there are many theories – Mr. Morneau is seen in Ottawa as someone who struggled to navigate the politics of the job.
Mr. Champagne, meanwhile, is a bit of a political animal. Since being elected in 2015, he’s been a cabinet minister for four different portfolios, and that offers something insiders say is a crucial skill of any finance minister: being an episodic expert on a wide range of files. One year you’re delivering a health care budget, the next you’re saving the economy from a once-in-a-century pandemic.
Mr. Champagne is also deft at navigating the media, which is a much bigger deal in Ottawa than many outsiders appreciate. Business executives operate in closed-off boardrooms. The finance minister leaves a cabinet meeting and gets bombarded by reporters in a scrum.
On Wednesday, Mr. Champagne emerged from the new cabinet’s first meeting and not only answered questions like a pro, but also announced that there won’t be a federal budget this spring. A newcomer could be alarmed by the fireworks that set off, but Mr. Champagne stood there like a maestro in front of his orchestra.
It also helps, of course, that business leaders tend to like Mr. Champagne – a guy who used to work in Canada and abroad for a global engineering firm – and Mr. Carney was also able to find a different place for Mr. Hodgson in cabinet, overseeing energy and resources.
But one insider stressed there is another variable that can’t be discounted. The demands of being finance minister are almost impossible to comprehend, and to have the fire to do it, someone has to aspire for something even higher.
On this front, Mr. Champagne’s has never shied away from his goal. In 2009, he was named a “young global leader” while working for London-based Amec Foster Wheeler plc, and in an interview with The Globe and Mail, said he would likely return home one day and seek elected office.
Next question: Will you be prime minister?
“Listen,” he replied at the time, “one has to try and if Canadians believe in what I can do, I will certainly give it a shot.”