The loss in Mark Carney's Cabinet is the Ontario Liberals' gain.

One door closes, while another door opens.

Nate Erskine-Smith, Liberal MP for Beaches—East York, captured in a candid photo celebrating the holidays with members of his riding. | Copyright © Jake Landau, all rights reserved.

Mark Carney has a new cabinet, and while it’s claimed to be smaller than the 36 ministers Trudeau had in his final arrangement…it’s technically bigger.

Carney has adopted a two-tier structure, where only 28 people will be full ministers invited to every meeting, while ten more will merely be “secretaries of state” instead, a position which makes roughly ~$25k CAD less per year and reports to a full minister.

Now, to be frank, some cabinet positions have always mattered more than others. And this kind of two-tier structure is a good management strategy, trusting ministers with larger portfolios by giving them several juniors to manage. Many countries and subnational jurisdictions use this in some form, even if they don’t say it explicitly.

But from the position of managing people’s egos, and boy howdy are politicians well-regarded for the bountiful size of their egos, it is quite funny to have Carney explicitly tell MPs that their jobs aren’t as important, and he’s giving them less money. We’ll see how that goes for him.

Many faces were retained from the Trudeau government, but shuffled around like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Anita Anand takes Foreign Affairs from Mélanie Joly, who instead moves to Industry, and David McGuinty slots in at Defence.

Both Chrystia Freeland and François-Philippe Champagne stay in their respective roles at Transport and Finance, while Dominic LeBlanc will be focused on Canada-US trade and interprovincial trade.

As an olive branch to progressives, socialist Steven Guilbeault remains responsible for Canadian Identity and Culture. Steven MacKinnon is also off the Labour portfolio to instead be Leader of the Government in the House, which may reassure those familiar with his strikebreaking obsession, or terrify those wondering what he’ll do with this power.

And Sean Fraser has returned to cabinet, to take the Justice and Attorney-General roles, having retired from his family to spend more time with politics. Adam van Koeverden, an Olympic gold medallist and a pro-Palestine voice in the party, will also be Secretary of State for Sport, a properly fitting role.

Another MP who endorsed the Vote Palestine platform, Shafqat Ali, will now have the plum position of President of the Treasury Board. You may recall his name from the time he logged in virtually to a session of parliament while sitting on a toilet stall. Clearly, neither that nor support for Palestine will disqualify you from cabinet.

There are some progressive faces here that people can be happy with…but not many. And it is extremely pointed who has been left out. Jonathan Wilkinson, former Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, has been bounced from cabinet to appease Albertan oil interests.

In his place? Carney’s former boss at Goldman Sachs, and the CEO of Goldman Sachs Canada from 2005 to 2010, Tim Hodgson. Mr. Hodgson is a rookie MP who was just elected to his very first term, but he and Carney have a long history of mutual benefit, with Hodgson serving Carney as a special adviser at the Bank of Canada.

Karina Gould, the standard-bearer for left-wing Liberals in the leadership race, has once again been condemned to the backbench. As the candidate in the leadership who was most vocally critical of Carney’s right-wing instincts, it appears she is being punished.

While Jobs and Families remains the amalgamated larger ministry, there is technically a Labour role again, with John Zerucelli being appointed Secretary of State for Labour and reporting to Patty Hajdu. Mr. Zerucelli served as Director of Operations for Trudeau’s PMO, but he was previously an executive for multiple companies in charge of lobbying efforts.

As such, I do not expect union-friendly policies; the role of Labour itself has been downgraded, and the person selected to fill it has repeatedly served corporate interests over those of the Canadian worker. Mark Carney clearly considers unions an obstacle, and wishes to reduce their political power.

But the worst absence? That would be Nate Erskine Smith, who has been dropped from his role as Minister of Housing. He is now replaced by Gregor Robertson, a rookie MP who served as an MLA for the BC NDP from 2005 to 2008 and as Mayor of Vancouver from 2008 to 2018.

Mr. Robertson’s reputation on housing is…not strong from his tenure as Mayor, having raised development charges a whopping 141% on single-family homes from 2008 to 2018, while in Richmond they only increased 94%. These are a tax assessed on the developer merely for building a home, and they’re used in order to keep property taxes for existing homes artificially low.

While the BC NDP are making solid progress enabling density in cities, it came as a result of forcing municipalities to abandon policies like Mr. Robertson’s, policies that made housing more expensive and contributed to our current crisis.

Meanwhile, Nate has a strong reputation across the spectrum, both in general and on the housing issue. In the short time since he got the role in December, he’s been moving quickly to ink deals with cities and provinces.

And what’s curious is that Nate did endorse Mark Carney in the leadership race, and hold a massive event for him in Toronto’s Beaches neighbourhood. I would never have expected Nate to be dropped from cabinet, and Nate didn’t expect this either. In his piece published today, Nate said the following:

The way it played out doesn’t sit right and it’s impossible not to feel disrespected.

Bold language, but he’s certainly not wrong to feel this way. What did Nate ever do to make Carney stab him in the back like this? He was very skilled as a minister, and he hopped on Carney’s team before he even won the leadership. This is typically what a Prime Minister seeks to reward.

It’s an extremely poor decision on Carney’s part, but the Federal Liberals loss could very well be the Ontario Liberals gain. After all, Bonnie Crombie will be undergoing a leadership review at the Ontario Liberal AGM this fall, and while her team is putting on a brave face, the end appears nigh for her time as leader.

Many people respect how close Nate came in the previous leadership race, they respect his competence and integrity and thoughtfulness, and Bonnie’s failures have made Liberals wonder: “What if we could go back, and take the road not taken?”

The opportunity is there for the Ontario Liberals to fix this mistake, and elect Nate as the next leader of their party. I am confident that if they did so, their fortunes would improve significantly.

And to be quite honest, who else wants the job? It’s a much easier prospect to replace the leader when you know there’s a popular replacement available. I believe that Nate’s removal from the Federal cabinet may indeed make it more likely for Bonnie to fail her leadership review.

Mark Carney’s choices for cabinet are peculiar and inscrutable, and in many cases outright disagreeable. Getting rid of talent like Karina Gould and Nate Erskine-Smith is inexcusable.

But if Prime Minister Carney doesn’t want these progressive voices, I’m sure there are many political homes that will be happy to accept them. And I’m sure the consequences of that will haunt Carney for a long time.