Cutting the deck

It's what happens before a shuffle, silly

Because it was 2015

I thought I would beat the rush on cabinet-shuffle analysis by delivering the analysis before the shuffle. I’m grateful for solid cabinet-shuffle speculation, informed by some inside-the-PMO info, from The Star’s Tonda MacCharles. I have made no similar calls because I’m not sure I could control the urge to laugh bitterly at inappropriate places. But I remain a non-ironic fan of access journalism, a field I’ve often dabbled in myself, and I’m glad the calls are getting made. To the extent anyone in the government will tell anyone what they’re thinking, it’s always good to know what that is.

Turns out they’re thinking pretty much what you suspected they were thinking. The government’s “real goal,” Tonda infers, “is to craft a cabinet that perks up communications.” How? “By putting more effective voices in key portfolios.” Why? “To highlight what has already been done…”

(Here I dig out Le Devoir reporter Borix Proulx’s quarterly attempt to find any progress on Justin Trudeau’s promise to plant 2 billion trees, while checking the Canada Growth Fund’s website to see if any details have replaced the promise that “more details will follow shortly” — spoiler warning: Nope!)

… and I see the government has perhaps seen this sort of criticism coming, because its real goal is apparently also to “deliver outcomes or results tied to big promises that have not yet been filled.”

Immediately we are reminded that cabinet shuffling is tricky. If you shuffle more effective voices into key portfolios to highlight what has already been done… by ministers who will, at that point, no longer be occupying the key portfolios where they apparently got so much done… okay, maybe that won’t work so great. “Minister Has-Been was so effective! We’re sure gonna miss him!”

If, on the other hand, your goal is to “deliver outcomes,” maybe your actual problem isn’t insufficiently perky comms. (Allow me to refer you to my recent voluminous writing on the false god of perky comms, about which more in a minute.)

I shouldn’t tease. This is hard work. Cabinets need shuffling from time to time. It is probably unwise to put too much hope into the shuffling. I actually liked Justin Trudeau’s early attitude toward the task, which was that he would make changes to address immediate problems — a resignation, a change in the external environment like the election of a surprising new US President — but not strive too hard to “put a fresh face on the government.” Canadians don’t generally put much stock in the complexion of a government’s face. They don’t normally know who’s in the cabinet. And they don’t normally change their voting intentions because Freeland has Morneau’s old job, or Joly Garneau’s.

A government that is motivated by face-freshening soon runs into challenges summed up by a question the legendary Quebec premier Robert Bourassa used to put to his advisors when one of them had a bright idea: “Et le lendemain, on fait quoi?” What do we do the day after we execute your bright idea? The Venn intersection of [perky communicators] and [people who aren’t really needed in their current jobs] tends to be small. It’s often the case that being effective in their current jobs is what makes them perky communicators — and that a zesty round of musical chairs takes the perk right out of a once-perky minister. Jane Philpott was a perky communicator. Too soon?

There are other problems with fresh faces. Soon they run out of freshness. Usually within a few weeks. After that, what matters is whether they have strong results to announce. Nobody’s looking for a strong communicator to explain what happened on cannabis legalization. Cannabis was legalized. It takes three words to tell that story. Nobody’s wondering whether a strong communicator can be found for Marc Miller’s portfolio because everyone knows that when the minister has his portfolio well in hand, the work is the message.

The temptation to live in denial remains strong. Tonda reports: “Key players think the Liberal party did not chart a path down a long enough runway ahead of the last two campaigns in 2019 and 2021 with strong players or strong messaging on key files.” Here again, it’s probably for the best that key players didn’t share these thoughts with me. I might have said: In 2019, you had four years of “runway,” and you knew you did because you had a majority and a fixed election date. By 2021, you were up to six years of “runway,” and you had complete sovereignty over your dumb decision to call an early election. Maybe “runway” wasn’t your problem.

The last time Trudeau fielded a substantially overhauled cabinet, it was right after the 2021 election. That was when Marc Garneau learned he was out of runway. The prime minister called his new cabinet “a team of familiar faces and new faces that are ready to put all their strengths, all their hard work toward delivering for Canadians in the coming years." In the CBC report on that post-election shuffle, a “senior Liberal source” said the PM had lately wondered “whether the government could move faster and more ambitiously to deal with challenges like climate change and the housing shortage.” That’s almost two years ago. Is two years enough “runway” for new and familiar faces, guided by a PM who was newly fascinated by imperatives of speed and ambition, to deal with challenges? Guess we’ll find out.

Two more thoughts on cabinet shuffles.

I’ve illustrated this post with a photo of Trudeau’s first cabinet in 2015. By my count, 19 ministers in the photo are no longer in the cabinet, against 11 who have stayed there since the government’s first day. I don’t know whether that’s a higher attrition rate than usual for governments that last this long. I just know it’s high. McKenna, Bains, Brison, Morneau, Monsef, Wilson-Raybould — all gone, often for very different reasons. It’s easier to crack wise about this work than to do it. Best of luck to all concerned, as they spend one more weekend wondering.

Finally: I’ve seen the party stripe of the federal government change three times in my adult life. Conservative to Chrétien in 1993, Liberal to Harper in 2006, Conservative to Trudeau in 2015. Each time, many factors led to the outcome, but I strongly believe that part of the winner’s success was a fairly widespread perception that the eventual winner could field a strong government. Bench strength mattered, beyond the appeal of the challenging party’s leader or fatigue with the incumbents.

So one of John Turner’s problems, when the Liberals seemed to have a shot during the tumultuous 1988 election, was that it was hardly clear who’d serve in his government. He had other problems, but that part didn’t help. By 1993, Chrétien was running alongside Alan Rock and Paul Martin and Marcel Massé and a few other obvious strong potential ministers. In 2004 Stephen Harper led the hardy survivors of two broken parties and lost. In 2006 he had Jim Flaherty and John Baird and Vic Toews and some others. In 2015, Trudeau had Morneau and McKenna and Wilson-Raybould and a bunch of other interesting people who seemed ready-ish to lead from a government’s first day. Even I don’t think this sort of stuff determines an outcome, but it helps confirm voters in the feeling that their vote will improve governance, rather than simply registering frustration.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you. Whatever happens in the Trudeau cabinet shuffle and the year or so that follows, one of the questions voters will have in their heads will be, Which government would replace this government? That leads to questions about who a Conservative foreign minister, and defence minister, and finance minister, and Indigenous Affairs minister would be. As of today, I’m not sure the answers are particularly impressive.

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Response to my four-part End of Media essay series has been overwhelming. I’ve heard from so many readers who believe I found fresh things to say about the decline of traditional big media, the rise of social media, and the effects of these changes on the way we’re governed. Hundreds of people voted with their wallets, taking out new subscriptions. Discussion online and in person has been robust. I’m so pleased that so many of you found something in the series that spoke to you.

My thoughts on communications and governance were part of the latest episode of The Herle Burly podcast, with Andrew Coyne, Joyce Napier and host David Herle, which you can find on various platforms here.

I know many of you want a fifth instalment in the essay series. I’ll write something, in the next several days. I’m not sure it will entirely satisfy anyone’s yearning for a happy ending, but it’ll contain some further thoughts.

For those who are just catching up, the End of Media series can be found here: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4. Subscribers who choose paid subscriptions will always have access to these four pieces, as well as to every other free and paywalled piece in what is becoming a robust archive. Here, let me make it easy for you:

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I spent part of last week in Toronto doing the reporting for a feature story about the Acceleration Consortium, a fascinating gathering-place for people who want to change the way science discovers new materials. It’s led by a Mexican chemist named Alán Aspuru-Guzik, who I think is one of the most memorable characters I’ve ever met at work. This year Aspuru-Guzik and his colleagues received the largest federal research grant any university has ever received. Other colleagues have written about the Acceleration Consortium’s work. I’m entirely confident my story will be worth reading even if you’ve seen the other stories. That’s coming here next week. Of course your support makes reporting trips possible, and your oft-demonstrated ability to handle curve balls makes me confident that you’ll get a kick out of this offbeat and fascinating story.