The Decibel - Carney’s cabinet: who’s in, who’s out

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet was sworn in. Canada now has 28 ministers and 10 secretaries of state, with representation from every province – including the north.Campbell Clark is The Globe and Mail’s chief political writer. He joins the show today to explain who’s who in Carney’s cabinet, and what this means for the new federal government.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney's new cabinet was sworn in. We are starting as we aim to go on. Our government will deliver its mandate for change with urgency and determination. We're going to deliver that mandate with a new team, purpose-built for this hinge moment in Canada's history. Canada now has 28 ministers, along with 10 junior ministers, or secretaries of state. There's representation from every province in the country, as well as the North. And while some are new to cabinet and politics, there are more than a few names that Canadians might recognize.

Today, Campbell Clark joins us from Ottawa. He's the Globe's chief political writer. He'll discuss who's in, who's out, and what Carney's picks tell us about the direction of the new federal government. I'm Maynika Ramon-Welms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Campbell, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So we now know who's in the federal cabinet. These are the people who are responsible for the big government decisions that affect Canadians. Campbell, what does the makeup of this new cabinet signal to you about how Mark Carney's government is going to approach things? Yeah, I think one of the key things that surprises me is that he has basically kept a lot of the Justin Trudeau front bench. So the big players remain the big players,

even if they're in different jobs. And then about half the cabinet is new faces. So he's kind of bolted half a cabinet onto the Trudeau front bench, but given them a very different mission, because the portfolios are set out in somewhat different ways. What does that tell you that he's still got a lot of Trudeau people in his cabinet? It kind of tells me that it was difficult to push people out in a way. So for example, there were the ministers that were already involved in Canada-US relations, Canada-US trade, you know, the core team there, he didn't move them out of cabinet, although he did shuffle some of their responsibilities. There were key ministers that had supported his leadership campaign like Francois-Philippe Champagne, the finance minister,

and Mélanie Jolie, who moved from foreign affairs to industry. So they had to be kept. And there was a couple of ministers he'd sort of talked into running again when they wanted to, when they had said they were going to leave. You know, you have to give them posts. They got senior posts. It turned out that, you know, this meant that there really wasn't a lot of places for new faces and it's hard to demote some of those senior ministers as well. So in a sense, he had to make more political compromise than he made the first time he made his cabinet. That first cabinet he made a little over a week before the election campaign. It was supposed to be smaller, action oriented. He was going to be ruthless about who got portfolios.

He was combining portfolios and then he had a 24 member cabinet with what seemed like a lot of change. Now he's got a 28 minister cabinet plus 10 secretaries of state, so a much bigger cabinet. He's kept a lot of people. In fact, you know, the people who have lost their jobs, mostly it's some people that he put in new in March that kind of, you know, ended up being cabinet ministers for a very brief period. Yeah. So 28 ministers and 10 secretaries of state, which is an interesting distinction here. So can you explain that? How does that work, Campbell? Yeah, it's not a completely new thing. This used to be done on a

sort of relatively regular basis. So a minister, generally speaking, has a portfolio. You know, the defense minister, the finance minister, generally speaking, they have a department, and they have responsibilities, and they attend cabinet meetings. A Minister of State or a Secretary of State is not a full minister. They have specific responsibilities within another minister's portfolio. But in the days of Justin Trudeau, he decided, well, everybody should be equal at the cabinet table. So ministers of state, there were technically ministers of state, but he styled them all as full ministers and so he had a big cabinet of full ministers. What's a little vague at times is, sometimes there are, like for example, there's a couple

of ministers, full ministers in Mr. Carney's cabinet that don't really have departments, that don't really have the full portfolios you normally associate with a minister. It gets all very murky, but the general idea is that a minister is part of cabinet, sits in all the cabinet meetings, and usually, most of the time, runs a departmental portfolio. And the secretaries of state don't necessarily go to all the meetings, probably get less budget, that kind of thing then. Exactly.

And what about gender parity here, Campbell? Because former Prime Minister Trudeau always made a point of having a gender balanced cabinet and Mark Carney said he would do the same. Did he do that? He did do that. The ministers in the sort of full cabinet are equally balanced in terms of numbers, apart from the Prime Minister himself. You know, there are some questions about whether they have the same level of power because,

you know, some portfolios are more powerful than others, but it's a relatively gender equal cabinet. AMT – And for secretaries of state, how does that go? MG – There are six male secretaries of state, four female, and so there are slightly more men amongst the secretaries of state. AMT – There's also always a focus on regional representation in cabinets. In this cabinet, every province and the north is represented. How has this shaped the cabinet here? It always shapes the cabinet.

Actually, it was a fairly important feature, you can tell, of Mark Carney's cabinet making. When he made his pre-election cabinet, he left some people out of important places, or at least places that felt they had to be represented. There was no minister from Quebec City, for example. That was noticed in Quebec City. There are some things that you have to do in terms of regional representation and you can tell he went out of his way. For example, there's a full minister from Alberta.

There's a secretary of state from Saskatchewan, the only MP, Liberal MP from Saskatchewan. There are multiple ministers from Nova Scotia, from New Brunswick, from British Columbia. And I think importantly in terms of what the government of Quebec was asking for, the two biggest economic portfolios in the government went to Quebec. And those would be finance and? Industry, which Melanie Jolie is now the industry minister. OK, so this brings us to some of the names. So let's talk about the people in cabinet here, Campbell.

Let's start with the big shifts when it comes to familiar faces. So who is still in cabinet, but maybe in a different position now? Well, I mean, several people. Dominique LeBlanc. So Dominique had shifted through a series of portfolios as Christian Freeland resigned, then Justin Trudeau resigned. So- He was the minister of everything for a while, it seemed. He sort of still is now, in fact. Yeah. He was, as you recall, when Christian Freeland left suddenly

in December, he became quickly the finance minister, and then Mr. Carney moved him to international trade. Well, now he is the minister of Canada, US trade. He's also the minister of intergovernmental affairs. And of course, big part of Mr. Carney's agenda is free internal trade across the country. And he has, I think, the longest title I've ever seen in the cabinet minister. He's also president of the King's Privy Council for Canada. Yeah, it seems like he's got Canada, US trade, intergovernmental affairs, and also one Canadian economy, which seems to be a new way of phrasing this as well.

Yeah, and that's an interesting thing because there's actually two ministers responsible for one Canadian economy. So we might have 13 provinces and one economy, but we've got two ministers trying to sort out the whole business. The other one being Christy Freeland, who as you recall was the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in the Trudeau government. Mr. Carney made her the Transport Minister in March and the Minister for Internal Trade. She's going to retain those portfolios.

Was that a surprise? Because I think Freeland is very closely associated with Trudeau. So was that a surprise for Carney to keep her around? I think there was a bit of a surprise. There was talk of her being offered a diplomatic post in London, for example. It's not clear how solid that was or whether she outright turned it down. But you know, it would have been difficult for Mr. Carney to remove the former deputy prime minister who ran against him in the liberal leadership race. She's a significant figure. So, you know, leaving her out also would have created, you know, some questions about, you know, whether she,

he was being a little rough with his ministers. But it's obviously clearly a lesser post. She's held the two most high profile cabinet portfolios, foreign affairs and finance. And you can see from what we were just talking about that trade, both with Canada and the United States, and internal trade are really important priorities for the Carney cabinet. He has definitely set up a lot of the mission of the government around dealing with the provinces, both to remove trade barriers and to get projects, resource projects, infrastructure projects approved. So he's put a lot of emphasis on dealing with provinces and regional representation. I want to ask you about a few more people who are familiar names that are still in this cabinet.

So we talked about Freeland, we talked about Dominic LeBlanc. Who else might Canadians recognize? Well probably, you know, we've talked about the finance minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne is staying in his post. He was one of Mr. Carney's first leadership race supporters. Melanie Jolie, the prominent Quebec foreign affairs minister is moving to industry, which, you know, it is a less prominent post in some ways, but very important economic portfolio. It has a very big budget. And if you're somebody who is a sort of political player and a communicator the way Melanie Jolie is,

well, there's more votes in the Canadian economy than in foreign affairs if you're in Canadian politics. So it is a more political role in many ways than being the foreign Affairs Minister. And then there's Anita Anand who sort of went the other way. She had been what they called the Innovation Minister, which really the Industry Minister and is now going to be the Foreign Affairs Minister. As I mentioned, she's one of the two people that Mr. Carney sort of asked to run again, who had decided not to. And then Campbell, who have we seen in cabinet before but who's now out?

Any big names there that we should take note of? Yeah, there's a few big names and a few decided not to. And then Campbell, who have we seen in cabinet before but who's now out? Any big names there that we should take note of? Yeah, there's a few big names and a few interesting names. So the Defense Minister Bill Blair, he's out. The Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, also out. He was one of the two ministers that Western Canadian provinces, talking about Saskatchewan and Alberta, wanted to see taken away from the resources and environment files. So Stephen Gilbo, who had been the environment minister, and Jonathan Wilkinson, who had who was the

natural resources minister right up until today, both sort of had come into sort of combative relationships with those two provinces and I think it's likely that Mr. Wilkinson was left out of cabinet because of that, because of the sort of reset of relations with the West. Stephen Guilbault is now the Minister of Canadian Identity and of Culture in official languages, which is the old heritage portfolio. He got that in March and he's staying with that now. Another person that people might recognize who's not in this cabinet, who was not in Mr. Carney's first cabinet either, but it's a noticeable omission, was Karina Gould, who ran third in the Liberal leadership race. She was sort of a relatively

prominent member of Mr. Trudeau's cabinet and seen as one of the sort of leaders of the left wing of the party. She didn't make her way back into cabinet today. We'll be right back after this message. All right. So we've talked about some of the people that are known to most Canadians, but there's a lot of new people on this team as well, right, Campbell? So who are some of the rookie ministers who we should take note of here? So there are a lot of new people on this team as well, right, Campbell? So who are some of the rookie ministers who we should take note of here? Campbell So there are a lot of new ministers. There's not a lot of new ministers in the really most powerful portfolios. And sort of at the top of the list of who's the rookie with the biggest job would be Tim Hudson, who is the natural

resources minister, who replaced Mr. Wilkinson. He is interestingly, he's the former chair of Hydro One, the big power utility here in Ontario, but he's also a former friend and colleague of Mark Carney. Interesting. He worked at Goldman Sachs where Mr. Carney worked for years and he was an advisor to Mr. Carney when Mr. Carney was the governor of the Bank of Canada. So, friends of Mark there. By the way, there's another friend of Mark in the cabinet in Evan Solomon, the former CBC and CTV broadcast host who ran for the Liberals in Toronto this time and is now the minister of something called artificial intelligence and digital innovation.

Don't ask me what that entails. We don't really know yet. Yeah, that seems to be a new portfolio. We haven't seen that before. We've seen portfolios of digital services and digital innovation and I'm not really sure that we've ever seen a lot of product thereof, but I guess we're taking a little crack at it again. Mr. Crane talks a lot about artificial intelligence. He wrote about it in his book values. So maybe they have some ideas there. Don't really know what Mr. Solomon's gonna be responsible for.

So are there any other rookie MPs that we should take note of here? Yeah, there's a few that will be quite interesting. Gregor Robertson, the former mayor of Vancouver, is the new housing minister and this government, Mr. Carney, has big ambitions about housing and particularly he wants to pour $25 billion into financing for housing. He wants to create a new housing agency, and he wants to create a new kind of housing construction industry based on prefab housing, which I believe means that he wants to help capitalize those industries so that they can you know take roots in Canada and build in a bigger sort of more productive scale. So Mr. Robertson who's the former mayor of Vancouver is going to take on a

portfolio that is a very high priority for the government. There are some criticisms that he was the mayor of Vancouver and he didn't exactly solve Vancouver's high-cost housing problems. It is expensive to live in Vancouver, yes. Yes, not so cheap to live in Toronto and lots of other places in Canada anymore. So that's one person who I think is quite adjusting. There's a new minister who's not that well known called Mandy Galmasti, and she's a newly elected MP from Northern Quebec. She was a Cree chief and she's the Minister of Indigenous Services. And that is new. That is the first time that portfolio has been held by a First Nations

representative. And you know, that is something of a statement in terms of reconciliation in Canada. There are several other new ministers, many of whom really have a very low profile. One worth noting is the new health minister, Marjorie Michel. She was the deputy chief of staff in Justin Trudeau's office and she ran in his seat afterwards. She is the daughter of a former Haitian prime minister who has quite a sort of background and interest in Haiti's very difficult times now. And Campbell, what about the 10 secretaries of state here? So not the ministers, this is kind of the next tier. Anyone stand out to you from that group?

Yeah, this is kind of the group of people that they didn't want to leave out or for other reasons maybe couldn't leave out. Like for example, but the Belanger, who is the only Saskatchewan MP, so they couldn't leave him out. So he is a Secretary of State. But there's some other interesting characters. Wayne Long, the first MP to openly call for Justin Trudeau to resign last year from New Brunswick, from St. John. He's now the Secretary of State for the Canada Revenue Agency. And and Natalie Proveau who was one of the survivors of the Puddy Technique Massacre and gun control advocate for many years. Well, she's a Secretary of State not to do with guns but for nature. And Anna Gainey, son of the former Montreal Canadians, great Bob Gainey and wife of Tom Pitfield who managed Mr. Carney's election campaign.

She's an MP from Montreal and she's the secretary of state for children and youth. So like those are some people that probably, you know, on another day might have made it into cabinet. Okay. Interesting. All right. So Campbell, we've talked about the group of people around Carney in his cabinet and as secretaries of state here, but I guess I'm also wondering about what we know about Mark Carney's style

of leadership here. In his press conference on Tuesday afternoon, he said that his cabinet is going to govern as a cabinet constructively and collaboratively. So what should we make of that? Yeah, so bringing cabinet back is, I think it's a promise that Justin Trudeau made, I think it's a promise that Justin Trudeau made, I think it's a promise that other prime ministers made. And theoretically, cabinet is the executive decision making body of government, right? And the idea is that cabinet is supposed to work collectively together, they're collectively

responsible for decisions and therefore ministers both talk amongst themselves and decide things together, but also have power over their portfolios. What is crucial, last point, in my view and experience is how you govern, how you run cabinet meetings, how you run committee meetings, how you delegate authority through the mandates to ministers so you get the maximum out of that experience. Now the reason that that is something that has to be brought back is, you know, over the decades there has been an increasing concentration of power in the prime minister's office, partly because modern politics moves so fast. And one of the jobs of the prime minister's office is keeping their government out of

trouble. And that tends to mean that aides in the prime minister's office start to tell ministers and their staffs what should be done, how things should be working. You know, you better get out and say this and do that. So it has made the government far more prime ministerial and much less cabinet centered. In the Trudeau cabinet, there was a lot of, I think, complaints amongst ministers that they didn't really have a lot of direct relationship with the prime minister. And the prime minister sometimes would simply reserve decisions for himself so that even a cabinet decision would occasionally be made sort of ex cathedra from the prime minister.

Wow. So does this signal to you that Mark Carney is going to be doing things differently then? It signals to me that he intends to do things differently, whether he will or not, I don't know. What we do know about Mark Carney's leadership style, because he's been the leader of large organizations and people have talked about it, is he's demanding. He's certainly demanding of his employees. He also demands to hear answers, though, from the people on his team.

That is, he expects them to be up to scratch and to have something to say and to have input. One of his friends, Evan Sittle, said in a piece that I wrote recently, I quoted him saying you can't hide or he won't let people hide. In other words, Mr. Carney will call on you and say, what do you have to say about this file? So that could either be a source of ministerial power because they have, you know, a say, or it could be scary. You could be getting called out on those cabinet meetings. You could be getting called on the carpet. Yeah. So I mean, how that all plays out,

we don't know. And I think probably the ministers and even the prime minister don't know at this point. So just before I let you go, Campbell, of course, Parliament comes back in less than a couple of weeks on May 26th, followed by the throne speech on May 27th. That's when we'll hear about the government's main priorities. What do you think we can expect on that front? First of all, before the King does his speech, there'll be the election of a speaker and there will be an interesting question about whether the Liberal Party lets the opposition parties take the speaker's role because they have a minority that is very close to a majority. 170 seats and 172 makes a majority. Better sometimes if the speaker's on the other side and can't vote.

The speaker's kind of like the referee in the House, right? And if there's a hung jury, for example, on whether the government has defeated the speaker, votes with the status quo, meaning he votes to keep the government alive. That's the tradition. Then in terms of the priorities, well, look, there's be a speech from the throne, which will outline some of those priorities, but we know what some of them are going to be. So June 2nd, he has a meeting with the premiers, and that's where he says he's going to put forward projects or an effort to identify and advance projects, resource projects, infrastructure projects that will, you know, improve the economy. And there's also been this promise that he would try to streamline

approval for resource projects, you know, one approval with provinces and the federal government. That would be actually a very big deal. It sounds bureaucratic, but it would be a very big deal for economic development in Canada. He's promised to clear away federal hurdles to federal barriers to trade by Canada Day. He's promised middle class tax cut by Canada Day, which means that in that session that's going to go from late May to mid-June, he's going to have to table some form of budget or mini-budget in order to put forward that tax cut, presumably. And he's going to have a federal provincial meeting to set federal provincial priorities. And then the G7 in mid-June.

So in the course of really the first month after parliament comes back, there are going to be major events. There's going to be a lot of sort of budget and economic issues, federal provincial issues. And that's really what's going to dominate the agenda, except for one thing, Donald Trump and Canada-U.S. trade. And that, we don't know exactly what's going to happen with that yet. There's still sort of a waiting period to see if there's going to be some form of negotiation that advances that. So lots for this new cabinet to do and lots for us as Canadians to watch out for. Campbell, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you. That was Campbell Clark, the Globe's chief political writer. That's it for today. I'm Maynica Ramon-Wilms. Our intern is Kelsey Howlett. Our associate producer is Aja Souter. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Freiner is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.