{"id":152887,"date":"2021-01-12T23:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T20:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/omar-alghabras-path-to-federal-cabinet\/"},"modified":"2021-01-12T23:00:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T20:00:14","slug":"omar-alghabras-path-to-federal-cabinet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/omar-alghabras-path-to-federal-cabinet\/","title":{"rendered":"#Omar Alghabra’s path to federal cabinet"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Omar Alghabra’s path to federal cabinet<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The new Transport Minister has spent years handling tough ‘no-win’ assignments and juggling competing interests behind the scenes, say colleagues\n <\/div>\n
\n Omar Alghabra was due for a promotion into the Canadian federal ministry, say some of his current and former colleagues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Mississauga MP racked up years of experience on tricky issues before his app<\/a>ointment Tuesday to the transport file. \u201cOmar has carried some difficult files and worked so hard in his constituency but also for the wider GTA region politically, but never made it to cabinet,\u201d says a former senior Liberal official.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The ex-official attributes that to the number of Greater Toronto Area ministers already on the Liberal bench. The departure of another GTA politician, Navdeep Bains, left an opening for Alghabra. \u201cHis work ethic, commitment and compassion, not to mention he is whip-smart, a former engineer and passionate about transport, make him ideal for the role. There won\u2019t be anyone you find who isn\u2019t happy for him and excited about what he will bring.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Julian Ovens, now a senior advisor with Crestview Strategy, was the chief of staff to several ministers for whom Alghabra served as parliamentary secretary. Ovens describes Alghabra as a good friend, a \u201cfundamentally decent person,\u201d a hard worker and someone who isn\u2019t in it for the limelight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He established good relationships with his counterparts, Ovens says\u2014especially former foreign minister St\u00e9phane Dion and former trade minister Jim Carr, who is returning to the cabinet table per Tuesday\u2019s announcement\u2014and he is well-respected within caucus and across the aisle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alghabra had served in the House of Commons as an opposition MP from 2006 to 2008, working stints as a consultant and a visiting professor at Ryerson University before returning to Parliament in the 2015 landslide that gave Liberals a majority.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(A non sequitur: In that campaign, Alghabra ran a strange little ad that played off the popularity of Game<\/a> of Thrones. It began with an animated map then showed angry cartoon constituents hungry for change and getting ready to, verbatim, \u201cstorm the capital\u201d\u2014a phrase that, way back in 2015, could only be interpreted as harmless hyperbole. The ad concludes when the gaggle considers flying a raven to Ottawa but settles on sending Omar instead.)<\/span><\/p>\n

During Prime Minister Justin Trudeau\u2019s first term, Alghabra served as parliamentary secretary to foreign and trade ministers, handling Canada\u2019s consular affairs file for several years. He was involved in managing cases such as the 2015 kidnapping of John Ridsdel and Robert Hall in the Philippines\u2014which culminated in their beheadings as Canada refused to meet ransom demands\u2014and the 2017 rescue of Joshua Boyle, his American wife Caitlin Coleman and their three kids from a Taliban-affiliated group.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As an Arab-Canadian lawmaker, Alghabra has received regular vitriol online, which Ovens says he \u201cpowers through.\u201d His background is not just fodder for Twitter<\/a> trolls. A Conservative senator was pressured to apologize in 2018 after publicly insinuating that his birthplace would affect his handling of foreign policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Born into a Syrian family in Saudi Arabia, Alghabra immigrated to Canada at 19 to study engineering in Toronto. He told the <\/span>Globe and Mail<\/span><\/i> in 2017 that, growing up, Saudis saw him as Syrian and Syrians saw him as Saudi. \u201cAnd in Canada, I\u2019m a newcomer as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

During the heat of the Syrian civil war, Alghabra was unable to visit family members in the region, including after his father passed away in 2015. This gave him a unique lens for his job, he told the <\/span>Globe<\/span><\/i>: \u201cI am in a position where I have to interact with families who have loved ones in troubling situations. And I can certainly relate to the level of anxiety and the angst they feel because I know what it\u2019s like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After the 2019 election, he was appointed the Prime Minister\u2019s parliamentary secretary for public service reform. But in the aftermath of the Ukrainian Airlines crash in Iran last year\u2014which claimed the lives of 55 Canadian citizens, 30 permanent residents and 53 more people en route to visit Canada\u2014he was brought back to the foreign affairs table and asked to work with victims\u2019 families.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really tough, in some cases no-win work,\u201d Ovens says of consular affairs. \u201cYou\u2019re dealing with foreign governments, foreign sovereignty, you\u2019re dealing with highly aggrieved families, you\u2019re dealing with major parts of the bureaucracy, you\u2019re thinking about precedent. Really complex issues. And a lot of it doesn\u2019t happen in the public.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The tested ability to juggle so many conflicting interests at once will serve him well as he oversees transport, Ovens says. \u201cTransport is a place where it\u2019s really important to understand all sides of different issues\u2014to work with employees and unions, pretty heavily-regulated companies and all sorts of other stakeholders. Grain farmers. Consumers. Businesspeople.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alghabra is inheriting the portfolio, which covers railways, marine safety, aviation and more, at a time when travel<\/a> is restricted and new pandemic regulations are in force, and just a year after rail blockades in solidarity\u00a0with Wet\u2019suwet\u2019en hereditary chiefs caused a supply chain problem and a challenge for a government that has claimed its relationship with Indigenous people is a top priority.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is not the most glamorous job in cabinet but it is seen as an important file that requires a steady hand at the wheel. Even if his tenure proves to be short-lived, should an election be called in 2021, Alghabra\u2019s cheerleaders suggest there will be time and space enough for him to make his mark.<\/span>
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“#Omar Alghabra’s path to federal cabinet” The new Transport Minister has spent years handling tough ‘no-win’ assignments and juggling competing interests behind the scenes, say colleagues Omar Alghabra was due for a promotion into the Canadian federal ministry, say some of his current and former colleagues.\u00a0 The Mississauga MP racked up years of experience on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CP170171-750x422.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89226,67806,67816,89227],"class_list":["post-152887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-cabinet-shuffle","tag-editors-picks","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-omar-alghabra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}