OTTAWA, Ont. — With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set to unveil his inner circle Wednesday, experts predict there won’t be much of a shakeup in cabinet posts in Atlantic region.
All of the region's ministers were re-elected in October, and Cape Breton University political science professor Tom Urbaniak said Monday that demoting and promoting people would not be in the government’s best interests.
“There is a certain stability that comes with continuing with the people in place if they're doing a reasonably good job. So for example, I think Bernadette Jordan will stay in the cabinet. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Lawrence MacAulay, they're likely to have a very good chance to stay,” he said.
But with many predicting a larger cabinet, in part to deal with regional divisions, and in the absence of Liberal seats in Alberta or Saskatcewan, Urbaniak said he wouldn’t be surprised to see an extra minister appointed from the region. Dominic LeBlanc’s health challenges make that even more likely.
Previously, there had been two ministers from New Brunswick, Petitpas Taylor, who was health minister, and LeBlanc who was in the intergovernmental affairs portfolio, but LeBlanc stepped away from cabinet to focus on his fight with leukemia back in the spring.
A second Nova Scotian?
St. Francis Xavier University politics professor Jim Bickerton said he could see a scenario where there was a second minister out of Nova Scotia, the most populous of the four Atlantic provinces. Jordan was the only cabinet member, holding the relatively minor portfolio of rural economic development, a post just created in January following fellow Nova Scotian and former treasury board president Scott Brison’s departure.
“I don't expect to change in terms of the representation from P.E.I. or Newfoundland. I think Seamus O'Regan is pretty solid there and I don't expect a second Newfoundlander, and they lost three seats in New Brunswick,” he said.
“I wouldn't be surprised, maybe another Nova Scotian in the cabinet. I don't know who that might be, whether (he) wants to promote someone young who's shown potential like Sean Fraser.”
The real challenge for Trudeau will be getting the balancing act right, says Don Desserud with the University of P.E.I.
“There are no specific rules about who can go in cabinet and who not go in cabinet. It's pretty wide open. But having said that, prime ministers often feel constrained by past practices. And what's interesting is that over time, there have been so many of those past practices that the constraints are now quite severe,” Desserud said,
Things like gender and ethnic diversity and regional representation are all things Trudeau will have to consider.
That means Trudeau will also have to figure out how to make sure his cabinet choices don't worsen the growing sense of western alienation by ensuring there is representation from Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“If they don't find another way to appoint a minister from Saskatchewan and Alberta, then you'll see a scenario where senior special advisers are regularly attending cabinet meetings, and are given a public role, almost as if they were cabinet ministers,” Urbaniak said, pointing to Anne McLellan, a Nova Scotia-born Alberta MP who served as deputy prime minister under Paul Martin who has been recently hired as an adviser by Trudeau.
As for concerns about the resurgence of the Bloc Quebecois and any alleged rise in Quebec separatism, Desserud suspects there will be less focus placed there.
“My suspicion is that he is more concerned with Western alienation,” he said.
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