Carney Cabinet 2.0 Liveblog: Let’s Get This Shitshow Started

Working Through The New Cabinet

There is no way this Cabinet Shuffle - or, sorry, the appointment of the new Carney Ministry - will go well. It is a fucking shitshow, starting with the appointment of Gregor Robertson as the new Housing Minister and the firing of Nate Erskine-Smith. I wrote about the decision to get rid of Nate last night, and having slept on it my only regret is I wasn’t stronger in my praise of Nate. (We’ll get to the Gregor of it all below.)

As usual with these liveblogs, I’ll go until there’s not any more news, or until 2PM, because I am recording a PGA Championship preview with my old boss for the Scrimshaw Show, because sometimes I do things for me. It’s been a long year so far, let me have this. (My pick, for the 7 of you who care: Ludvig.)

However, on Operation Shitshow, it’s already bad. Chrystia Freeland was being angled out, offered High Commissioner in London, until she apparently said no and got a Cabinet job anyways. CTV got burned on that one, reporting she was being dropped from Cabinet while the CBC was correct about it. A win for public broadcasting, though I’m not sure in a Cabinet shuffle about rejuvenation that Chrystia makes any sense. It also makes no sense to keep Steven Guilbeault in Cabinet, but he’s allegedly safe. Thank God we fired Nate, though.

Let’s be real: this liveblog will just be me crashing out about this in (essentially) live time. I will be more rational about this government in time, and for all the crashing out I have done and will continue to do on the Gregor/Nate of it all, I still easily believe that the worst Carney government is better than the best Poilievre one. But this has all the makings of an utter shitshow and I’m frankly not going to pretend it’s going to be anything else.

If you’d like to donate to the Scrimshaw Crashout Fund, formerly known as the Scrimshaw Strategic Booze Reverses, consider a paid subscription. All my work will remain free, as always. Updates will populate at the top, every 5-10 minutes.

1:50 PM - Poilievre never ended up speaking, but Carney’s up at this point - he’s not saying anything of particular interest so far but whatever. I’m trying to revive some optimism.

1:05PM - Poilievre is about to speak about the new Cabinet, I’ll update this if there’s anything worthwhile or notable.

12:35PM - apparently there’s a Carney presser in an hour, so I’ll liveblog that too, but let’s do a review of the whole cabinet in totality. There’s definitely some good in this - Anand to Foreign Affairs, Bill Blair out, Joky demoted, the fact that we’ve signalled that crime reduction is a priority - but the mistakes are pretty glaring.

Putting aside the Nate/Gregor of it all, we’ve kept Guilbeault in Canada as Minister for Canadian Identity, which is only true if hating Guilbeault is a Canadian Identity. We’ve demoted International Development to a Junior Ministry. We’ve let Chrystia Freeland say no and keep a Cabinet job. We’ve kept Melanie Joly in Cabinet despite running every shareholder she dealt with at Foreign Affairs crazy. We’ve fired Jonathan Wilkinson to make room for … I don’t really know, since BC only has two proper Cabinet Ministers (plus three Secretaries of State). We chose the wrong Albertan, we didn’t give Saskatchewan a full Cabinet Minister… the errors are big.

Now, it’s possible this Cabinet is surprising in its talents, but judging the names merely on their fit doesn’t inspire confidence. The priorities on buzzwords like Government Transformation and AI and Digital Innovation and One Canadian Economy don’t inspire confidence either.

Again, the worst Carney cabinet is better than the best Poilievre one. But that’s not enough for me to give him a pass. It’s a bad day for progressives in this country. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not.

12:10PM - Two points here: Anna Gainey is a worthy Secretary of State and has earned her place, regardless of the fact that her husband is Carney’s Principal Secretary, and I’m proud to see my old Hill boss Wayne Long swear an oath.

12:05PM - a Secretary of State for Combatting Crime is weird on its own merits (isn’t that the Ministers of Justice and Public Safety’s jobs?) but it’s the kind of thing I’m happy to see. It’s a sign that crime reduction is a key priority for the government, and I’m happy to see it take a step up the priority list.

12:00PM - Solomon getting a Cabinet job right away - even if it’s mostly a fake job without any real purpose - when he was literally fired by the CBC for shady art dealings while anchoring Power And Politics is really funny. For all the shit we’ve given some people, this going completely under the radar is hilarious.

Also, again, Minister for AI and Digital Innovation is DEI for Tech Bros.

11:54AM - Can someone throw tomatoes at Gregor?

11:45AM - Between a Minister for Government Transformation, a Minister for One Canadian Economy, and a Minister for AI and Digital Innovation, Mark Carney is doing DEI for Tech Bros with his Ministry titles. (I don’t have strong opinions on Lightbound, other than the fact that it was hilarious to me his mild COVID criticisms were treated as some crisis.)

11:40AM - this is one of the worst decisions in this Cabinet. Tim Hodgson is a smart guy, I’m sure - you don’t become as successful in the private sector as he is by being an idiot - but the role of Energy Minister isn’t just about Energy. It is a politically important and sensitive job that requires a tactical understanding of the matters of National Unity that are on the table here.

Corey Hogan was the obvious choice here, both because of his actual experience on the energy file in Alberta but also because of the symbol to Alberta. It is the PM’s job to build bridges to Alberta, and making Laurentia’s finest elite Energy Minister is a fuckup.

11:28AM - I don’t have a strong opinion on Dabrusin like many people do, but I don’t think this is a move that is going to ratchet down the temperature in Alberta. As a committed progressive who needs some good news out of this Cabinet, this is good, but I don’t think the west is going to love a downtown progressive Environment Minister, especially when the Energy and Natural Resources Minister is a downtown Liberal repping Markham-Thornhill.

11:25AM - the list has been tweeted, so we now have some fun things like “Evan Solomon Minister for AI” to come moving forward.

Former Mayor of Yellowknife Rebecca Alty is a decent shout for Crown-Indigenous Affairs, and it’s good to see Rebecca Chartrand get a job for sending Niki Ashton to the unemployment line. But at the end of the day these are not the jobs that make or break Cabinets.

11:15AM - the demotion of MacKinnon to House Leader is a mistake. MacKinnon is a steady hand and much better than many people given bigger portfolios, and it is a concerning sign that we’re demoting competence at a time when we’re putting so many untested rookies into big jobs.

David McGuinty at Defence is reasonable, if only because he’s not Bill Blair and I can’t come up with a better name for the job.

11:08AM - wait, why do we have a Minister for Internal Trade and a Minister for One Canadian Economy? What the fuck are we doing here? Are we fucking serious?

11:05AM - seriously, what kompromat does Guilbeault have on people? With all the strong options out of Quebec, why are we stuck with him? And no, Rosie, there’s no evidence Guilbeault is why Carney did well in Quebec, and there are many others who aren’t being rewarded who did more to help.

Also are we sure that starting with 7 straight Trudeau Ministers is a great look, if Carney wants to show a different face?

11:00AM - Anand at Foreign Affairs is the best move of the shuffle, and the kind of move that makes the rest of this crap more tolerable. Anand is one of the best Ministers of the Trudeau era, a competent hand at the tiller, and I’m very happy to see a great Minister in that job.

10:57AM - Joly should not still be in this cabinet if you want to draw a line under the Trudeau era but at least we now have a Minister who doesn’t believe it is colonial to appoint Ambassadors.

10:45AM - I see Carney is following through on a long honoured tradition to being late to events, a true bipartisan commitment to pissing off TV news anchors and producers.

Also, having seen a list from some sourcing, Anita Anand to Foreign Affairs is a coup, but some of the rest of this list is … it’s not good guys.

10:39AM - CBC just mentioned that Melanie Joly is our Industry Minister, which is a win for Carney in that he got Joly out of Foreign Affairs but is also not the economic heavy hitter I wanted at Industry. Still, gotta take the wins where I can get them today.

10:33AM - Given the list of names helpfully tweeted out this morning, Bill Blair has been fired, which is a victory for humanity at least. Of the other notable firings, Rachel Bendayan is mildly surprising, though Montreal Woman was a coveted slot.

Also, pour one out for Kody Blois, whose reward for sticking around when Fraser left is a firing.

10:25AM - there’s no point I am going to push back on more than “Carney deserves a chance, Canadians voted.” First, they voted on the record as it existed when they voted, which is not the prospectus we are getting. The decision to fire Nate Erskine-Smith now after keeping him in March has angered plenty of Liberal voters for whom the decision to keep Nate was a deciding factor in voting Liberal in April.

More importantly, however, this idea that Carney deserves our deference is crap. Carney is a grown man who made choices, and is now facing the consequences of those choices. I didn’t make him hire a dogshit Mayor as Housing Minister. I didn’t make him keep Chrystia Freeland and Stephen Guilbeault. I didn’t make him do any of these things. The idea that somehow he should be immune from criticism is nonsensical.

10:19AM - I will go to bat strongly for the return of Junior Ministers, and actually would love a full turn towards British-style governance where there are ~25 Cabinet Ministers and and there are multiple Ministers below them per department. The idea that we are benefited by some Ministers having sprawling responsibilities is nonsensical, and giving them qualified junior ministers - whatever the title - makes a lot of sense.

It’s also a way to more effectively give rising stars a chance without throwing them in the deep end, and a good training ground.

10:08AM - So being good at your job as Housing Minister but an utter catastrophe at Immigration makes you Attorney General and Minister of Justice at a time when we are unpicking the reforms of the last decade, but being good at your job as Housing Minister without a previous failed attempt at a Ministry gets you fired. Sure, okay.

Sean Fraser had leverage and he fucking used it, good for him, but let’s not pretend this isn’t a risky pick of someone with plenty of good and even more bad.

Introduction: Gregor, No

Here are some facts about Gregor Robertson’s time as Mayor of Vancouver. He raised Development Charges by 141%, house prices more than doubled, he criticized the “racist tones” of someone trying to investigate how many buyers were foreign before criticizing the flood of foreign capital, and he once said in 2016 that he “wouldn’t have dreamed the crisis would get this intense”.

Now, if you’d like to be nice to Gregor, you’d point out that some of the issues - foreign money and immigration - were out of his hands. It’s not like Toronto’s DC increases in the equivalent decade were meaningfully better. Price increases in his tenure were roughly equal across the Lower Mainland. That’s all fine if you’re having a retrospective conversation, but none of that changes the fundamentals here for a simple reason - I’m not arguing to make John Fucking Tory or the corpse of Rob Ford Housing Minister.

The case for Robertson, if you’re being really charitable, is that he’s kinda shit but it’s okay because everyone was shit at the time. It’s not okay, actually, if the question is whether or not you deserve to be the Minister of Housing. And that’s the generous reading. The less generous one is that he did nothing because it helped his donors. From his 2014 campaign, he received donations of more than $50k from 4 real estate companies, plus a very cool $37.5k from Lululemon founder Chip Wilson - yes, the same Chip Wilson who called David Eby a communist on a sign outside his (allegedly) $75M waterfront mansion last year. Great job everyone.

Do I think there’s no Ministry where Gregor could be fine? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t care if he was being put at Environment or something. He's not, he’s being put in a department that’s incredibly important. How will he have any credibility going to municipalities demanding cuts to DCs when he was the patron saint of jacking them up to make his budgets work? He won’t!

This is an indefensible decision that will set back this government on both policy and political grounds. It’s a disgrace from Carney, though by the looks of it not the first and not the last of this shuffle. It’s unacceptable, it’s not good enough, and everyone defending it should have to explain why Chip Wilson’s preferred Mayor who got the big calls on housing wrong as Mayor should now be Housing Minister. You can’t. If the best you got is “In Carney I Trust”, that’s your right, but don’t conflate that with an actual argument this isn’t insane.