Chantal Hébert: Trudeau plots a steady course with his cabinet shuffle
(The Star Fashion & Style)

Monday’s federal cabinet shuffle is the work of a government that remains relatively confident it can navigate to a second term next fall without altering its current course.It was not designed to rock the Liberal pre-election boat.In that spirit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau passed on his last opportunity to play musical chairs with the government’s ministerial hot seats.From finance to foreign affairs and including the environment, natural resources and immigration, he has elected to leave the portfolios that are expected to be particularly politically sensitive between now and the October election in the same hands.Observers parsing the tea leaves will also look in vain for manoeuvres designed to shore up the government’s defences on the increasingly volatile Alberta front. That may be as much by default as by design.With only three MPs from Alberta, it is not as if Trudeau had a lot of cards to play with. The latter statement applies to the shuffle as a whole. Read more:Justin Trudeau shuffles cabinet, Philpott takes over as Treasury Board presidentPhilpott urges doctors to help improve health of Canada’s ‘most vulnerable people’The Liberals rose from third place to government little more than three years ago. As a result, both their caucus and their cabinet feature a high proportion of first-time MPs. That only compounds the tendency of first-term governments to boast low attrition rates.Prime ministers do not habitually remove ministers who are about to run for re-election from the cabinet. In the aftermath of Scott Brison’s decision to retire, all of Trudeau’s remaining ministers sound like they are staying put.If that were to change, it might be as a result of one of Monday’s moves.At the time of her swearing-in as Canada’s first Indigenous justice minister three years ago, Jody Wilson-Raybould was widely seen as one of the more promising stars of the Trudeau cabinet.Since then though it had be ...