Prime Minister Mark Carney gestures as he arrives for a press conference, outside Rideau Hall, in Ottawa, on May 13.Blair Gable/Reuters
David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in Manitoba, and past CEO of the Institute on Governance.
Change is hard – Prime Minister Mark Carney is finding that out. His second cabinet is a departure from his first cabinet, which in turn was a departure from all of Justin Trudeau’s cabinets. Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet peaked at 40, while Mr. Carney’s first cabinet had just 24 ministers. Now that number is back up to 29 (including Mr. Carney), with another 10 secretaries of state, adding up to 39, similar to Mr. Trudeau’s numbers. Mr. Carney has departed from his departure.
That may not matter. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously remarked that, “Fifty yards from Parliament Hill, MPs were nobodies.” The same could be said for much of Justin Trudeau’s ministry, and likely the Carney cabinet too.
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What does matter is what they do and how they do it. Mr. Carney’s policy mantra is “Build, baby, build.” He needs a governing mantra to match it.
Lean and focused was the message telegraphed by his first, smaller cabinet. Now, not so much. It is bulkier and more performative than some expected. Mr. Carney heard the siren call of identity politics and reinstituted ministers responsible for women and gender equality, seniors, children and youth.
A two-tier cabinet is a return to normalcy, pre-Justin Trudeau. Past prime ministers had a priorities-and-planning cabinet committee that institutionalized an inner and outer cabinet. This is where the most important decisions were made. So, maybe (just maybe) Mr. Carney’s reprise of this model via a secretary-of-state designation for truly junior ministers marks a return to traditional cabinet government where ministers are ministers.
What‘s in are some new faces. What‘s out is sentimentality. With a fresh and fairly convincing election win behind him, the new PM determined that this would be seen as his first term, not Mr. Trudeau‘s fourth term. That meant channelling his inner William Gladstone (of 19th-century British prime ministerial fame) who said, “The first essential for a prime minister is to be a good butcher.” Mr. Carney wielded his butcher knife with some abandon, cutting 10 former ministers from his first cabinet.
Politics being politics, he could not leave it there. Tending to constituencies, electoral and otherwise, is a fact of life in modern politics.
None of this will ultimately matter to Canadians if his government produces results. His predecessor increasingly styled his cabinets and ministerial titles to produce political results; Mr. Carney needs them to produce actual results – on the economy, on housing, on infrastructure, on tariffs. Canadians want policy change to go with leadership competence.
The alignment of personal competence with ministerial competencies can be a tricky proposition. Doctors don’t always make the best health ministers, for example. But you do place your best performers in the most important portfolios. Mr. Carney opted for current experience in this case (François-Philippe Champagne at Finance, Anita Anand at Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly at Industry, Dominic LeBlanc at Intergovernmental Affairs) rather than newer, bolder choices from outside the ancien regime he inherited.
This reflects a truism uttered by Canada’s original cabinet maker, Sir John A. Macdonald. “Give me better wood and I’ll build you a better cabinet.” More simply put, you work with what you got.
The real test for results will not be who sits in cabinet but how cabinet is governed. Prime ministers are always primus inter pares – first among equals. They decide what governments focus on or not. They set the cabinet agenda. They sum up cabinet consensus by putting their stamp on decisions. Thirty-eight versus one might matter in football, but not in cabinet.
Mr. Trudeau ignored his cabinet in favour of a highly centralized and politicized Prime Minister’s Office. His last ministry had eight full cabinet committees, including two by the same name, Economy, Inclusion and Climate, distinguished only by an “A” and “B”. Mr. Carney’s final cabinet committee list, yet to be released, will reveal more about his actual governance approach. Mr. Trudeau embraced deliverology, a results-oriented management approach, as a governance ethos for a while. He even had a cabinet committee on “agenda and results.” The agenda always got bigger, results less so. Deliverology failed to deliver.
That‘s not just on the prime minister and his cabinet. As an institution, the federal government is under-performing, risk-averse, consumed by process, and increasingly unaccountable for results. Without big change inside, the new PM’s agenda will be held hostage by a sagging bureaucracy.
Mr. Carney needs his cabinet to deliver, and soon. To paraphrase his predecessor: Because it‘s 2025.