At Issue - What does Carney’s cabinet say about his priorities?

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

In a special edition of At Issue: Prime Minister Mark Carney unveils his lean new cabinet but what do his picks reveal about his priorities? Plus, how does Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre adjust his campaign for the Carney era? Rosemary Barton hosts Andrew Coyne, Althia Raj and Aaron Wherry.

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But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for a special Friday, March 14th.

At Issue tonight, March 14th. At issue tonight, the Carney era. Mark Carney is sworn in as the 24th prime minister and unveiled his smaller cabinet to respond to Donald Trump's trade war. Canada's new government will be action oriented, driven by a smaller but highly experienced team made to meet the moment we are in. So we're asking what will Mark Carney's leaner cabinet mean for the trade war? Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj and Aaron Wary

in for Chantelle Bair. Join me to talk about that. Plus, how are opposition parties responding to this version of the Liberal government? So what does Mark Carney's cabinet tell us about his priorities? What will they mean for Canada's response to Donald Trump? I'm Rosemary Barton here to break it down.

The beginning of the Mark Carney era on At Issue Tonight. Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj, and Erin Wary is in for Chantelle Baer. Good to see you all for a second night and Erin to see you again. So a much smaller cabinet as we predicted, sending some strong signals about things and his first move today to get rid

of the consumer carbon tax. Andrew, just give me your thoughts initially on what you saw in the cabinet in terms of the consumer carbon tax. Andrew, just give me your thoughts initially on what you saw in the Cabinet in terms of the size and who he has tapped to do fill some pretty important roles. Andrew Coyne-Gilbert, Ph.D. Well, it's a lot more stand path than I think we were necessarily given to understand beforehand. The hype beforehand was it might be under 20 ministers. You heard rumors that there would be all sorts of star candidates unveiled,

or maybe even a conservative or a new Democrat. In the end, what you got is 24, which is certainly smaller than the bloated cabinet we had before. It takes us back to the early days of the Crétien era, which is not exactly prehistory. And it's drawn, as the conservatives were quick to point out, almost entirely from the existing cabinet. Only three new faces in the cabinet, I think only three or four who were dropped from the cabinet. But of course, you didn't have to do much in the way of change because so many ministers had already either resigned or signaled that they weren't running again. So to get down from 36 or 37 or whatever it was down to 24, it didn't take a lot of hacking and hewing. And so yeah, you've got some of the main ministers who were handling some of these files to do

with Donald Trump, particularly staying in their portfolios, probably appropriately, probably this is not the time to be making major changes there. The only really significant change in portfolios was FrancoisPhilippe Champagne taking over at Finance, possibly predictably. In the end, what you get is maybe a slight tilt to a more centrist perception than the more left of Senator Trudeau, cabinet, but, you know, much more stand pad and much more conventional than I think possibly some of us were hoping or some were fearing. A very consolidated department, though, and a lot of the language in terms of what those

ministers' titles are does signal, I think, Althea, what Andrew's talking about, a move further into the centre and away from some of the more progressive language that Justin Trudeau would have used. But give me your thoughts. I guess on that front, there are a few indications that that's where he wanted to go, at least was trying to position himself, but still kind of protecting the left flank. I think the fact that Karina Gould, there's no room for her in this cabinet is noteworthy. But there are still progressives in that cabinet.

Patty Haydou, for example, is not a blue liberal at all. Neither is Nate Earthkin Smith. So they didn't make room. Yeah, for, I'm almost Yogi Boy, I think, at some point, as the conservative pointed out today, has once described himself as a socialist. So, yes, there is room for people that are on the center left, even on the left, to be part of Mr. Carney's team. I think that the fact that he decided not to have a gender balance cabinet is perhaps a signal that he is different than Justin Trudeau, that he's not going to be consumed with identity issues.

But caveat, he did include somebody who was never in cabinet, the chief whip. There's no reason why we need to have a chief whip in cabinet. Parliament is not even sitting. He gave that job to the former small business minister. Had he not done that, we would not have 48% of women in cabinet. We would have 43% of women in the cabinet. Probably there would be more people who would be raising this as an issue. I think in that way, there were little symbols. I also think maybe he kept too many of the old Justin Trudeau ministers.

Like, yes, Dominique LeBlanc, Melanie Jolie, that makes sense, but did you need to keep David McGinty? Did you need to keep Stephen McKinnon? Did you need to keep Rousseff? I mean, I'm probably—they would have been there anyways, but it just struck me as they made a conscious decision to keep people. And maybe, we never talked about this, but maybe that's a security-related thing. You can't vet people properly with the short time that they had.

So I do wonder if, is this really a temporary cabinet and there will be a very different looking cabinet if the Liberals win in the next election? Maybe. What message do you think he was trying to send with it, Aaron, in terms of message to Canadians about what kind of Prime Minister he is going to be? I mean, I think the main message he wanted to convey was simply change. I think he used the word new about 12 times in his opening statement, even referred to Canada's new government, which is sounds like a bit of a throwback to the Harper years actually. I think, you know, working with caucus or, you know, working within caucus, if he wasn't going to go out and find unelected cabinet ministers, he could only do so much.

I think, you know, what he did, there were some fairly significant moves. You know, obviously, Krista Freeland is back, but she's in, you know, a relatively secondary role. Stephen Guibert was out at environment. Mark Miller, Justin Trudeau's boyhood friend, is out of cabinet entirely. I think, though, that the larger idea of change, if he's going to represent that, is going to be more in sort of what goes on outside of his cabinet picks, right?

I mean, I think just listening to him in a news conference, it's pretty apparent that we're not dealing with Justin Trudeau anymore. You know, noting that there, I don't believe there were any, there was any hugging going on today at the S-Faring Inn is a sign that we're not dealing with Justin Trudeau anymore. But I think this really is gonna come back to the actions he takes now. We saw a bit of that later in the afternoon.

And I think that's, you know, more than what we get out of this cabinet. And I think Althea's right. There's a big question here of whether this is really the cabinet or whether this is the cabinet for now. It's going to be in the policy choices and the ideas that he brings forward. Andrew, yeah. I'm not even clear whether this is, I mean, this is the cabinet for now, but there's other shoes to drop, surely. So there's no mention, for example, of women and gender equity. There's

no mention of the regional development agencies. But unless I'm wrong... That's in heritage. And these are going back to industry and innovation. Yeah. Some of them are like put inside departments. But go on, go on. That's your point. Yeah. Well, I just wonder whether at some point we're going to find there's going to be ministers of state that will be responsible for these things, either before the election or after the election, most likely after the election. Will this actually be the cabinet that's going to govern the country or is this just to get them through the next couple of weeks? Let's talk about the action because that's the other word that he used a lot. We're action-oriented,

we're focused on doing things and he did sort of have a let's get down to business approach to today I think, Althea. the fact that he did assign an order to get rid of the consumer carbon tax, keep the rebate in place at least for one more quarter, how significant is that in terms of signaling a break with with Justin Trudeau? Well this day was all about imagery. I mean it's not really that much about substance and the image that came out was what he called an experience instead of an old cabinet, an experienced cabinet, and a day where he got things done.

It's a lean cabinet that is action-oriented, and so he needed to show something, I think. So what he did is really just, through regulation, bring down the price to zero. So the carbon tax basically doesn't exist, but eventually, if the liberals are reelected, they will have to change the law, repeal the law so they don't open themselves up to lawsuits. But it does effectively get rid of the carbon tax, and he ran on that. So you can say, you know, promise made, promise delivered. He takes away the largest baton that Pierre Poilieff has been using for the last two years, clobbering Justin Trudeau on the head with, and even ministers that were not super keen

with this idea of getting rid of the consumer price. Everybody was suggesting that they basically had lost the war and they needed to move on, and they would try to find other ways of making their mission targets. Yeah, Aaron, on that point? Yeah, I think if you go back to 2015, the first act of the Trudeau government

was at least symbolically, announcing that they were bringing back the long-form census. That's right. That feels like a long time ago now. But that, I think, is sort of a comparison point for this. It's a sort of big gesture right off the bat to say this is not the previous government. It does raise questions for the Liberals, for the other parties as well, about what you're going to do instead. But it may be, you know, we can talk about the demise

of the carbon tax forever, but it may be at this point had to go so that there could be a real debate about climate policy in this country and get back to, or get to some kind of conversation about what exactly these parties are going to do in terms of emissions rather than whether or not they were for or against the carbon tax. Just like 30 seconds to you, Andrew, on that. Well the sad and bizarre part is it's not as if people are not, unless we don't have

any carbon policy at all, there's going to be a carbon policy, it will cost things and it will cost consumers. The only, there won't be a rebate anymore. So the idea that we're actually going to be letting people out of some sort of hardship as a result of this is completely bogus. It's going to mean we're going to have a more expensive, less efficient system without rebates that ultimately will the cost will get passed on to consumers. They just won't know it.

And that is basically what the compromise, the agreement that's been made amongst all the parties now is let's just keep the public in the dark. Okay. We're going to leave this here. But when we come back we'll talk about how Pierre Poilier, Jagmeet Singh, the opposition parties are responding to Mark Carney and his new cabinet. People are worried about losing their jobs and what Mark Carney has shown is that he has not made a priority a lot of the people in our country.

That's a preview of how conservatives and NDP preparing their attacks for the people in our country. That's a preview of how Conservatives and NDP preparing their attacks for the Carney era of government. That's next. At issue, new dynamic with a new prime minister and a new cabinet, opposition leaders are previewing their attacks for the Carney liberals. A Mark Carney government is a race to the right between Mark Carney and Pierre Pauliève. Today Liberals are trying to trick Canadians into electing them for a fourth term in power with a cabinet that is 87% the same as Trudeau's cabinet.

So how are opposition parties realigning and preparing for an election with Mark Carney at the helm of the Liberals? Let's bring everybody back. Andrew, Althea and Erin. Althea, I'll start with you here. What did you make of the response and the attempt to, I mean, they've obviously been preparing for this, but now here they are faced with Mark Carney as prime minister in this cabinet.

What did you make of the response? Unimpressive. I'm actually quite surprised that they didn't try harder to find more wedge issues. So the two main messages we heard from Jagmeet Singh was on Karina Gould being left out and basically suggesting that there's no space for progressives in Mr. Carney's cabinet. We will see whether the policies match the action, but I think he can point to other people as I mentioned before in his cabinet, just so I know there is room for them. And then quibbling over the title of Steve McKinnon's new combined portfolio, which was labor and employment and now is called jobs and families.

The fact that labor is no longer there, Mr. Singh was arguing that this says that there's no room for unions and there's no room for the workers. We're just talking about jobs. I don't know if Canadians are really going to see it that way. And for Mr. Poliev, he was talking about how, for the first time, he used the word the rebate. We heard him talk about the carbon pricing rebate. I don't know if it's the very first time, but it's the first time I've noticed it. And then there won't be a rebate.

What? This rebate that you seem to forget existed for the last, I don't know, six years? Suddenly you're going to miss it? And he also talked about this being a law and that Mr. Carney could not do this without repealing the law. Well, actually he could. So, you know, it's like you're kind of misleading the public. It's you're holding on to the old arguments, it's time to move on. They're not running against Justin Trudeau anymore. The landscape has changed.

They're the old. They're the tired and old. And he's the brand new shiny thing. And they need to find a better line of attack. And I do not think that either party have landed on something that works. Yeah, I have to say, I think you hit the nail on the head there, Althea, Erin. I was struck by how much it just sounded the same, that there's no new line of attack. Because certainly there are weaknesses to go after here, but they don't seem to have

seized on them or settled on them yet at any rate. Yeah, I mean, I think Jagmeet Singh went for the easy ones on day one to say, you know, there's no minister of gender equality here. There's no minister of youth. There's no minister of diversity. You know, those charges could amount to something if the liberal platform seems short in those areas. But otherwise, it's sort of a branding exercise.

And I think the Carney response will simply be as it kind of was today, you know, I'm about actions not words. And that, you know, is a play of course on what was the major complaint about Justin Trudeau, that he could throw these words around but that the government didn't live up to them. For the conservatives, they still feel like they're in a spot where they're kind of just throwing stuff against the wall to see what works.

And they haven't quite figured out how to deal with Mark Carney. The argument that he is sort of more of the same, you know, there's something to that, that Mark Carney can't come in and say, you know, the last nine and a half years didn't happen or, you know, I don't have to account for that. He can't completely separate himself from those things. But the idea that Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau are the same person, I just don't know that voters are going to accept that. They can make the argument that he's the economic advisor,

and yes, he was providing advice. But they're just very clearly different people. And depending on what kind of platform we see from the Liberal Party in the next election, which may be very soon, it should be, I think, or could be very clear that we're dealing with a kind of very different offer at this point. Yeah.

Andrew, what did you make of how they responded? They did seem to be a bit flummoxed, I think, partly because in the end it was a fairly cautious cabinet change. So yeah, the best thing Jagmeet Singh could come up with was you called it jobs instead of labor. Yves Blanchet said the problem was there wasn't enough ministers from the Quebec City area, which is not the strongest point you can make about a cabinet. And while Pierre Pauillet ever had the strongest point of saying, yeah, this is mostly just

the same liberal cabinet, so where's the big change here? That got lost a lot. He started wandering into all kinds of, as Aaron said, throwing everything he could think of to stick. So in answer to a question from a rebel news representative, he seemed to suggest maybe there was something suspicious in the election of Mr. Carney. He claimed without evidence that he might be working against the interests of Canada because he had such brutal, quote unquote, conflicts of interest. There was just a lot of loose talk, frankly,

being thrown around that I don't think is really advancing his case, particularly if we're into a contest of leaders and who can show mature judgment and leadership in a time of crisis. He still seems in the mode of let's tear down as much as we can the opponent rather than trying to build himself up as a prime minister and waiting.

Go ahead, Althea. That's about feeding the conspiracy theories on social media so that they can run off with a theory that Mark Carney was elected in a completely undemocratic way, which is actually the way things are done in this country. And it is normal in this circumstance that the prime minister has not been elected by everybody and he will face the electorate, you know, but they're feeding that. And you see that echoed by conservative MPs amplifying that message, retweeting that message. And so I think that he is doing that to feed other people to run with that on the internet.

Sure. But it's one step beyond that, which is the thing he's got himself into talking about was only 150,000 of the 400,000 registered Liberal members voted. There must be something suspicious about that. Now he prefaced that by saying it may just be that there's a lack of enthusiasm, which would be a more traditional and tenable attack you could make on your opponent. But to be, to even go near there and saying, well, there was something suspicious about that, I don't think showed great judgment.

Yeah, to invent something or infer something, as you point out, has no evidence to back it up at all. Last point to you, Althea, on what that tells you about where Pierre Poiliev is at in terms of understanding how to take on Carney. I think both the NDP and the conservatives believe that Mr. Carney's personal wealth and success can be portrayed as a handicap. For the NDP, he doesn't know how regular people live, and he's not in it for you. He's really out there to protect CEOs and other multimillionaires. For Mr. Poliev, it is about the conflicts of interest. Did he act against Canada's interest?

Why isn't his stuff in a blind trust? Today, he very publicly said, actually, my stuff is already in a blind trust. like six months ahead of time. I have put it away. But he would not divulge what his assets are worth. I'm not sure that Pierre Poliev has divulged how much his assets are worth. I should say that. I don't know. But I don't know that we want to get into that contest.

I will say that I thought the most critical thing was actually said from François Fedeep Schnaubach, the new finance minister, where he talked about this was a brand new era, a new era of financial sustainability. And then at the same time, in the same sentence, he said, and now we're going to invest more. We're going to invest everywhere. Like, you can't do both things really. So I feel like this is an area of vulnerability that also sounds a lot like Justin

Trudeau 2015. And so they themselves don't seem to have settled on a message beyond Canada strong that they're going to bring to the electorate at the moment. Or if so, maybe the ministers are all freelancers. Andrew, Elthea, Erin, thank you for stepping in. That is that issue for this week. What do you think of Mark Carney's smaller cabinet? Do you think that he's distinguished himself from his predecessor's cabinet and government? Let us know what you think. You can send us an email at ask at cbc.ca.

Remember, you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10 a.m. Eastern. We will be back here in your podcast feeds next week or sooner if there's an election that's called. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.