An old Liberal front bench bolted to a new Carney mission

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Even before Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new ministers were unveiled to the country, there was a sign of how complicated his cabinet-making was.

The now-former natural resources minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, posted a statement about being left out, complete with a long list of his accomplishments.

Perhaps that provides a clue as to why Mr. Carney didn’t remake the face of the Liberal cabinet as extensively as advertised.

The first dozen ministers sworn in at Rideau Hall on Tuesday were familiar faces from Justin Trudeau’s front bench. The new faces did not come up till toward the bottom half of the batting order.

Yes, Mr. Carney talked about change. Yes, there were rookies. But not in the biggest roles.

The new minister with the biggest portfolio was Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, the former chair of Ontario‘s Hydro One who was once an adviser to Mr. Carney at the Bank of Canada.

Certainly, the tasks Mr. Carney set out for his cabinet were very different from his predecessor’s agenda. When he emerged later from Rideau Hall, the Prime Minister talked about defining a new relationship with the U.S., working with provinces to advance big resource and economic projects, building a new housing industry, and combatting crime.

But in the end, Mr. Carney bolted half of a new cabinet onto Mr. Trudeau’s front bench and set them off on a new mission.

Mark Carney’s new cabinet: A look at the ministers who are in and out

It turned out the tightly-focused, action-oriented 24-member interim cabinet the Prime Minister unveiled in March had been a narrative device for the election campaign that followed. The real cabinet he formed Tuesday was bigger and full of compromises with post-election politics.

This time, there were 28 full ministers, plus Mr. Carney, and 10 secretaries of state – junior ministers who won’t attend all cabinet meetings. No matter how much Mr. Carney pretends his cabinet is small, that’s a big set of limo-riding members of the executive.

Notable names were left out, such as Mr. Wilkinson and former defence minister Bill Blair. Former Liberal leadership candidate Karina Gould was not brought back in. There were inevitable resentments.

“It’s impossible not to feel disrespected and the way it played out doesn’t sit right,” Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who‘d been housing minister for the past five months, posted on X.

But many big players were kept. Mr. Carney decided he had to keep key ministers on U.S.-Canada relations. He kept key leadership-race supporters such as Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Mélanie Joly.

He had asked Ontario‘s Anita Anand and Nova Scotia’s Sean Fraser to run again, so both got major portfolios. He didn’t push out former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland. There wasn’t a lot of room for prominent new faces.

Certainly, this cabinet is thematically different from his predecessor’s.

In 2015, Mr. Trudeau had strolled up the lane at Rideau Hall alongside a group of Liberal ministers who were supposed to symbolize environmental activism and inclusion, with a gender-balanced cabinet “because it’s 2015.”

In 2025, Mr. Carney kept the gender parity but organized his cabinet around trade, working with provinces on the economy and building things.

Canada-U.S. trade is key, which is why former trade minister Dominic LeBlanc, the all-purpose firefighter in Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, was made the minister responsible for that portfolio.

Knocking down internal trade barriers is also a focus, so Mr. LeBlanc is also Minster of Intergovernmental Affairs and of One Canadian Economy. But Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is friendly with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, is somehow also Minister of Internal Trade.

Now that the election is over, the requirements of regional ward-heeling had to be fit into the new cabinet, especially if Mr. Carney wants to work with provinces on the economy.

Quebec delivered a lot of seats to Mr. Carney’s Liberals, and now has the two biggest economic portfolios, with Mr. Champagne and Ms. Joly, now the Industry Minister.

Alberta and Saskatchewan now have representatives. The governments of both provinces wanted Mr. Wilkinson and former environment minister Steven Guilbeault kept away from anything to do with resources policy – and got their wish.

Mr. Carney has made the economy the mission, and he’s aiming to get all parts of the country in on the job. But he also campaigned as an agent of change, and after the election, the complications of cabinet-making kept him from dramatically changing the face of the Liberal front bench.