Liberal MP Anna Gainey seemed to have been caught off guard the day after her victory in the riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce–Westmount in Monday’s by-election. Asked about the decline of French in Quebec, the former president of the Liberal Party of Canada did not want to comment. Visibly uncomfortable, she tried to answer with a joke instead. We have already seen better as a first impression.
Still only Mme Gainey has a strong chance of being appointed to the Cabinet. Almost everyone in Ottawa expects a cabinet shuffle this summer. Justin Trudeau wants to turn the page on the painful parliamentary session that has just ended and give new impetus to his government, which will soon be eight years old. Mme Gainey, whose spouse is a childhood friend of Mr. Trudeau, has the ear of the prime minister. Her infancy as an MP should not hinder her rise within the Liberal team given the crying need for new faces on the team.
Mr. Trudeau seems to have an infinite tolerance for mistakes made by his ministers. But the multiple blunders of the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, require urgent intervention. The transfer of the murderer Paul Bernardo from a maximum security prison in Ontario to a minimum security institution in Quebec was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Mr. Mendicino got entangled in implausible answers trying to explain why he only learned of the transfer of the notorious criminal after the fact had been accomplished when his office had been made aware of it three months earlier.
Mr. Mendicino survived his botched attempt to ban hundreds of models of assault weapons through the back door. He also managed to get away with misleading his fellow MPs by claiming that the police had asked Ottawa to invoke the Emergencies Act in the face of the convoy of truckers. This new misstep is unforgivable. Even for members of the Liberal caucus, who are now demanding his departure. It only remains to know if he will be removed from the Council of Ministers or simply demoted. His outright ousting would be in the order of things.
The same is true for the Minister of Civil Protection, Bill Blair, and the Minister for International Development, Harjit Sajjan. That they still sit on cabinet shows the inertia of the Prime Minister’s Office when it comes to human resource management. Mr. Sajjan has been hailed as one of the worst defense ministers in recent Canadian history. His unsatisfactory handling of the sexual harassment epidemic in the Canadian Armed Forces has already earned him a demotion in 2021.
Like Mr. Mendicino, he preferred to plead ignorance rather than assume his responsibilities in a case of unauthorized visas sent by a senator to Afghan refugees in the wake of the fall of Kabul. Senator Marilou McPhedran said she obtained permission from Mr. Sajjan’s office before sending the documents that she believed to be authentic. The minister tried to wash his hands of it by saying he hadn’t had time to read his emails. No one believed him.
As for Mr. Blair, Mr. Mendicino’s predecessor at Public Security, he also said that he had never heard of a note that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had sent to his office in the summer of 2021 making report on the Chinese government’s efforts to target Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family. Certainly, it would be difficult to punish Mr. Blair, when CSIS had sent the same information to the Prime Minister’s national security adviser at the time. MM. Blair and Trudeau both claimed to have learned that Mr. Chong was being targeted after his revelation in the Globe and Mailat the beginning of May.
If the departure of these ministers seems to be only a formality, a huge question mark hangs over the head of the Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland. Its star has faded considerably in the wake of the last federal budget. The one who has mainly made a career outside of Canada would be eyeing a position abroad. His name is still circulating among the candidates approached to become Secretary General of NATO.
However, his chances of landing this key position seem to be dwindling day by day. Canada’s poor record on military spending — the Royal Canadian Air Force is not even participating in the aerial exercise that other NATO countries are starting this week because of its limited resources — and Ukrainian roots by Mme Freeland are standing in the way of his nomination.
If Chrystia Freeland remains in government, it is not certain that she will remain in Finance. At the start of the school year, the Prime Minister’s Office will want to focus on the cost of living and housing, by far the most important priorities in the eyes of Canadians. What better than a new face in Finance to signal this change of course?