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TOP STORY
With Friday’s cabinet shuffle, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed eight new members of what is effectively a doomed cabinet.
At best, Canada’s newest ministers of the crown will oversee 10 months of tumultuous rule before becoming the public faces of an ignominious electoral defeat. At worst, they’ll get only a few weeks of rule before a snap election yields their inevitable descent into political oblivion.
As to why anyone would do this, the first and most obvious clue lies in the perks: Any minister, no matter how jinxed their portfolio, is immediately granted a series of benefits that are largely unknown to the average Canadian.
For starters, the new ministers are immediately ascending into a realm of power and prestige that they may never experience again.
Just three years ago, the new minister of seniors, Joanne Thompson, was a registered nurse in Newfoundland and Labrador. Now she has a car and driver, an upgraded office (possibly with an ensuite bathroom) and whole legions of staff to call her “minister.”
There’s also a pay bump, and not just for the few months that a new appointee will be in charge of a ministry. If the new minister is eligible for the famous “gold-plated” Parliamentary pension, that pension amount will be calculated based on the money they made as a minister, rather than just a backbencher.
And in the short term, their pay will be going up by about $100,000 per year. Even if the position lasts only until October, that’s an extra $75,000.
More importantly, joining cabinet means becoming a life member of the King’s Privy Council, one of the country’s most exclusive official clubs.
There have been more than 8,000 inductees into the Order of Canada. And there’s about 1,000 Canadians who have played in the NHL. But the Privy Council only has about 350 sworn members.
Privy councillors are given the lifelong title “The Honourable,” and they’re forever allowed to write their name followed by the initials P.C.
And plenty of them do this, even if just for ceremonial occasions or to liven up one’s business card or resume.
Take the example of Jody Wilson-Raybould, the minister of justice famously pushed out by Trudeau in 2019. To this day, her public appearances — such as one held in March at the University of Manitoba — are typically advertised as featuring “The Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould.”
A more obscure example would be Nova Scotia politician Mark Eyking. He was sworn into the Privy Council in 2003 to serve a few months in the extremely entry-level cabinet post of parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture and agri-food. Although parliamentary secretary is not usually a ticket to the privy council, it was during the tenure of Paul Martin.
But right up until he left public office in 2019, anytime Eyking was pegged to make a public announcement, press releases cited him as “The Honourable Mark Eyking.”
Privy Councillors get a special passport. Although all MPs are allowed to carry green-covered “special passports” denoting them as a representative of the Canadian government, Privy Councillors get to keep carrying one even after they leave public life.
And when they die, the flag on the Peace Tower is half-masted for three days.
In very rare cases they may even get to participate in some obscure yet glamorous monarchical tradition. In 1981, for instance, the Privy Council was assembled at a luncheon so they could give formal assent to the marriage of now-King Charles III and Lady Diana Spencer.
And even if Trudeau’s eight newest cabinet ministers have no illusions about the fate of the current government, they might see a cabinet post as a way to leverage their position over whatever remains of the post-Trudeau Liberal Party.
While the vast majority of Liberal MPs are expected to be ousted in the coming election, Trudeau’s new ministers disproportionately represent ridings where they might eke out a victory and remain in the House of Commons.
Whatever the appeal of an 11th hour cabinet post, it may have been one of the few things holding the Trudeau government into the holiday recess.
According to Liberal MP Sean Casey, the forlorn hope of a cabinet appointment is one of the singular reasons why internal criticism of Trudeau hasn’t been more widespread. As Casey told a press scrum this week, “There’s going to be a heck of a lot more speaking out once (MPs) find out that they’re not going into cabinet.”
IN OTHER NEWS
For the third time since October 7, bullets have been fired into a Toronto Jewish girls’ school. Just before 3 a.m. on Friday, there were reports of another “firearm discharge” into Bais Chaya Mushka School for Girls. Attacks of this kind against Jewish sites have happened multiple times in both Toronto and Montreal, in addition to a wave of arson attacks against Canadian synagogues. In one recent list of global synagogue firebombings assembled by a fellow at theTel Aviv Institute, Canada’s three incidents ranked higher than any other country.
At the same time that Ottawa’s been thrown into chaos by an unexpectedly steep $62 billion deficit, B.C. has just intentionally tabled a $9.4 billion deficit. That’s about as high, given that B.C. comprises roughly one sixth of Canada’s population. And it’s also a sharp turnaround for a province where an NDP government was tabling balanced budgets as recently as 2019.
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