Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to be gearing up for this 2019 election year with an early reset of his government — including a possible cabinet shuffle in the days ahead. Shuffle speculation has been heating up over the past couple of days in Ottawa in advance of next week’s cabinet retreat in Sherbrooke, Que. Trudeau has tended to use long breaks in the Commons to make adjustments to his cabinet and government, and this is effectively the PM’s last chance before the summer break that will also kick off the pre-election, followed by the official election campaign in the fall. While Trudeau’s office hasn’t confirmed any imminent shuffle, pointed inquiries about the possibility haven’t been dismissed or denied, either. Current bets are that it will happen early next week, before the Sherbrooke retreat. Other developments also indicate a significant 2019 reset — a raft of new deputy ministers in key posts related to provincial and foreign affairs, and a new head of issues management in the Prime Minister’s Office, Brian Clow, who was the lead adviser to the government on renegotiating free trade last year with the United States and Mexico. As well, the Prime Minister said in a year-end interview with me that he would not be doing a new Throne Speech before the election, as many had expected. Other prime ministers have used throne speeches to put a new face on their governments, especially before elections, but Trudeau seems to favour cabinet shuffles to serve that purpose. “The platform we got elected on was as ambitious and impactful a platform that any government had gotten elected on in a very, very long time,” Trudeau said, by way of explanation for why his government would be one of the rare ones in Canada to start and finish its mandate with only one parliamentary session. “Often you get to a point halfway through a mandate where someone’s ticked off all their election promises an ...
|
