Carney to present 'small, focused' cabinet of less than 30 ministers and up to 10 secretaries of state

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will be at Rideau Hall on Tuesday to unveil the team that he promised in his victory speech on election night would “do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.” Carney will be presenting a “small, focused” cabinet of fewer than 30 ministers and up to 10 secretaries of state, with half of the entire team being “fresh faces reflective of the change mandate” given to Carney, said a source within the Prime Minister’s Office. The secretaries of state will be members of the Privy Council and will be responsible for key issues and priorities within a federal department, added the source, but will only be invited to cabinet meetings when decisions associated with their responsibilities arise. Liberal insiders think Carney will be marking a clear contrast to former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways” by ditching the pomp and circumstance associated with a big cabinet reveal and will instead present a team solely focused on implementing his ambitious agenda. That means finding the right balance between the current, more experienced ministers, such as Dominic LeBlanc, Mélanie Joly and François-Philippe Champagne, and the dozens of new MPs elected under the Liberal banner who were hopeful of being named to cabinet. Among the names to watch for are Tim Hodgson, who worked with Carney at the Bank of Canada and at Goldman Sachs, Carlos Leitao, a former Quebec finance minister who delivered a surplus in the province, and former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson. But factoring in regional representation of all parts of the country and respecting gender balance might have caused some disappointment for many hopefuls. “This might be one of the more complicated cabinets to put together, especially because one of Mark Carney’s biggest challenges is he has to make sure that this does not look like a Justin Trudeau cabinet,” said Laura D’Angelo, a vice president at Enterprise Canada. “He has to make it very clear that he is a new prime minister with a new government.” Carlene Variyan, associate vice-president at Summa Strategies, said Trudeau had decided to forgo the junior cabinet roles — which come with a smaller salary and staff budget — to elevate roles such as minister for the status of women to a full cabinet position. “In that era, because it’s 2015 and everything, he really thought that it was pretty hypocritical to have a minister for the status of women who wasn’t paid as much as the other ministers,” she said. But Variyan, who had senior roles in the Liberal government, said she cannot help but remark on how Carney’s approach and thinking around assembling his cabinet in 2025 “could not be more different” than Trudeau’s conditions after his majority win in 2015. “I think Carney and his team are responding to the moment that the country finds itself in, and what Canadians are looking for, which is stability and a leader who could demonstrate a calm hand that can guide the country through all of this,” said the former Liberal staffer. Already, D’Angelo said Carney’s first official press conference at the head of a re-elected Liberal government gave a clear indication of his tone and style. “It was much more like a chair of a board… He did not mince words. He didn’t spend time with slogans or flowery language or over-explaining things. He was telling us very clearly what was going to happen, what he was going to do, and what the priorities were.” Carney has laid out his packed agenda, which includes strengthening relations with trading partners in Europe and Asia, building millions of new housing units, turning Canada into an “energy superpower” and lifting all federal barriers to internal trade by July 1. Jonathan Kalles, a former adviser to Trudeau who is now vice president, Quebec, at McMillan Vantage, said he expects to see a more “decisive executive” under Carney. “Mark Carney is very well-known for hearing everybody out, really wanting input from everybody,” he said. “But then when he makes a decision… he expects it to be implemented quickly, and he’s going to be frustrated when it’s not, if it’s not.” Carney also has the advantage of having served as a senior bureaucrat in the Department of Finance before he was appointed as governor of the Bank of Canada, noted Kalles. “That means somebody who not only knows how the system works, from a general perspective, but also understands how to actually implement things, where the roadblocks are, and how to get past them,” he explained. “He’ll have short runway to get key things done, like any government does, and then hope, they don’t get bogged down. That’s the nature of the beast.” National Post calevesque@postmedia.com

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