Cabinet shuffle

Stephen Harper’s cabinet shuffle was mostly about selling the mission in Afghanistan and nothing more. Harper also moved the moderate Jim Prentice from Indian Affairs to Industry and put the more conservative Chuck Strahl into Indian Affairs. This change in Indian Affairs minister has frustrated Caledonia First Nations protestors (http://www.940news.com/nouvelles.php?cat=23&id=81574). Yet I find it strange that by contrast it seems to have pleased Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Ramsay. Look at thus quote from the article I just cited:

Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Ramsay suggested the portfolio change shows the federal government considers First Nations matters a priority.

Ramsay said he's currently writing the new minister a letter outlining some of Ontario's priorities. Working closely with the federal government to implement the recommendations of the Ipperwash inquiry and resolving land claims such as the one plaguing Caledonia are among them, he said.

"I think we have a federal government that is very concerned about the aboriginal issue and has really showed some tremendous progress in trying to move yardsticks on this file," Ramsay said.


Why does Mr. Ramsay think that causing disruption on the Caledonia file by replacing ministers mean that the federal government considers First Nations matters a priority? These are words coming from a Liberal cabinet minister. I suspect he is only saying this to try to create a smooth relationship with his new federal counterpart, Chuck Strahl, and that if it were not for this he would not have said such nice things about the disruption being caused by the replacement of the Indian Affairs Minister. The Ontario government has often been critical of the Harper government, so I am still very surprised to see such positive words coming from a minister of the Ontario government. After all there is a lot Ontario Liberals could criticize the Harper government about regarding aboriginal affairs, starting with the scrapping of the Kelowna Accord. But again I don’t think Ramsay meant those praises and I think they were only for the purposes of good diplomatic relations.


My household has been recently receiving unwanted copies of the National Post due to a promotion that we do not want. On today’s National Post paper there was an editorial about Harper’s cabinet shuffle. I was shocked to see how blatantly pro-Conservative the editorial was, heaping much undeserved praise on the Harper government. I also find it interesting that some people are connecting this cabinet shuffle with a possible future election. While the shuffle IS all about the 3 ongoing by-elections in Quebec, it is important to remember that there is a fixed election date Bill in place that means in order to get a general election we’d need a non-confidence vote. The recent SES poll showed a significant drop for the NDP. So they aren’t ready to have an election. The Liberal numbers in the SES poll are stagnant. That is not enough to want an election. The Bloc has been the Conservatives’ coalition partner ever since the government came to power. The Bloc has no reason to withdraw their support now as polls show the Bloc would either lose seats (probably some to the Liberals, maybe a couple to the Conservatives), or keep all the ones they have. Polls do not show the Bloc gaining seats so the Bloc has no incentive to withdraw their support of the government. This means an election will not come until some time next year at the absolute earliest. By then any popularity boost by this cabinet shuffle would be all forgotten anyway. Even if sometime in 2008 the Bloc for some reason withdrew its support, the Liberals might try to keep the Tories in power themselves unless their poll numbers were going through the roof. But it’s more likely the Bloc’s support of the government will last throughout 2008.

There is also talk of proroguing Parliament and having a new Throne Speech in the fall. I’m not sure if this Throne Speech would occur on September 17 when the House of Commons is scheduled to reconvene or after that. I don’t want the Throne Speech occurring in the middle of the Ontario election because this would give an unfair advantage to the provincial Tories. The problem with proroguing Parliament is that it would kill at least temporarily Bills that have not received Royal Assent. This includes some of the government’s vaunted justice Bills that have yet to pass the Senate. There is some kind of procedure to bring back killed Bills that I do not understand. But proroguing Parliament potentially delays the passage of these Bills into law, and I thought the government wanted those justice Bills to become law as soon as possible. Proroguing Parliament would also kill the unpassable Bill to scrap the gun registry and the controversial political redistribution Bill that both Quebec and Ontario are against. Several other government-introduced Bills would die, not to mention countless private members’ Bills. If they want a Throne Speech, the least they can do is wait until their vaunted Bills are passed, unless the Bills’ purported importance was being overplayed for political gain. Nevertheless, proroguing Parliament is not a decision Harper should take lightly.