Mark Miller stands with Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and Prime Minister Mark Carney after being sworn in as Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture in Ottawa on Monday.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
More than eight months have passed and it’s now safe to bring friends of Justin Trudeau back into the cabinet.
Marc Miller was one of the Trudeau-era ministers tossed over the side of the ship of state when Mark Carney became prime minister, when the political imperative was making Canadians see his government as something new and different.
Mr. Miller was also a Friend of Justin, one of the former prime minister’s closest friends, in a government that had more than one. New Brunswick’s Dominic LeBlanc was staying in a senior role. There was only room for so many.
But hey, things don’t feel the same now.
Carney taps Marc Miller as Culture Minister in cabinet shuffle
Mr. Carney lured a Conservative MP across the floor. He cut the feminist out of Mr. Trudeau’s feminist foreign policy. He made a deal for a pipeline and regulatory easing with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who, judging by the remarks she made Monday, viewed the resignation from cabinet of Trudeau-era environment minister Steven Guilbeault as a signing bonus.
The coast is clear. Open the cabinet door for Mr. Miller.
Mr. Carney and his entourage probably didn’t think about it in quite those terms. But they would have in March.
That’s when Mr. Carney replaced Mr. Miller, then the immigration minister, with Montreal-area MP Rachel Bendayan, who had just two months in the job, including an election campaign, before being in turn replaced by Halifax MP Lena Diab, who has managed to hide in a high-profile cabinet for most of the past six months.
As immigration minister from 2023 to 2025, Mr. Miller had been a rare kind of doer, reversing course on Liberal policy to fix a mess made under his predecessors but still eating the criticism for those huge failures. He hit the brakes on the surge in foreign students that had fuelled a spike in population and set targets to reduce temporary residents aimed at pausing population growth.
He had kept a low profile as a backbencher in Mr. Trudeau’s first term but held two Indigenous-affairs portfolios after 2021, and gradually emerged as a politician willing to face questions − as well as responding to the criticism of Quebec Premier François Legault or firing bolts at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
But Mr. Miller didn’t fit the narratives of Mr. Carney’s previous cabinet shuffles. The story of Mr. Carney’s first cabinet, in March, was supposed to be about a smaller team focused on trade and economics. The story of Mr. Carney’s second − and bigger cabinet, in May, was about bringing in new blood to balance a front bench still dominated by faces from Mr. Trudeau’s team. There was a lot of copywriter’s ink spilled to sell the Liberals as Canada’s New Government.
Monday’s shuffle was really a patch, one without much of a broad theme, bringing in one minister to replace another because of a resignation. Now Mr. Miller is Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture.
Two other ministers were brought into the shuffle almost needlessly, as if the scriptwriters for this swearing-in ceremony felt it was thin on minor characters and needed filler to stretch it out to 22 minutes.
Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault resigned from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet on Thursday to protest his government's new pact with Alberta on a proposed new pipeline.
The Canadian Press
Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin was also given jurisdiction for Nature, a minor political fiefdom that had been carved off for Mr. Guilbeault in May. More importantly − at least inside the halls of power − was the transfer of Mr. Guilbeault’s role as Quebec lieutenant to Public Works and Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound, a Quebec City MP who has impressed as a rookie minister.
This was just the little shuffle before the bigger one that is still to come, the one that clears out the mistakes made in naming Mr. Carney’s postelection cabinet in May and the folks that haven’t pleased the demanding PM.
In that limited cabinet repair, Mr. Miller’s return could be seen as a simple, pragmatic fix − filling the hole left by a departing minister with a competent hand who won’t turn out to be a weak link that has to be replaced in the next shuffle.
Mere months ago, however, he had to be left out, to draw a bright line between Mr. Carney and Mr. Trudeau. Now, that doesn’t seem to be such an obsession.