{"id":152993,"date":"2021-01-12T22:11:17","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T19:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/another-tiny-perfect-cabinet-shuffle\/"},"modified":"2021-09-17T13:42:24","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T10:42:24","slug":"another-tiny-perfect-cabinet-shuffle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/another-tiny-perfect-cabinet-shuffle\/","title":{"rendered":"#Another tiny perfect cabinet shuffle"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Another tiny perfect cabinet shuffle<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Paul Wells: Industry is a good fit for the ambitious Champagne. Garneau will be a dignified presence in foreign affairs. And making an impact will be a huge task for either of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cFor once,\u201d a Liberal I trust told me, \u201cit really is about family.\u201d App<\/a>arently Navdeep Bains makes time for a family call every night when he\u2019s on the road\u2014well, he used to, I mean who\u2019s on the road any more? Over the holidays, his oldest daughter told him that if he runs again, she\u2019ll be heading off to university by the time he finishes the next mandate. Assuming it\u2019s a majority. This corner levels no penalty for filial optimism. Out goes Bains. He\u2019ll serve the rest of his term from the back benches, and that may not be long<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Justin Trudeau decided early he likes modest cabinet shuffles. This one has a lot to be modest about. Bains has been this government\u2019s only Minister of Innovation. Before 2015 the job title was Minister of Industry, and since 2019 \u201cIndustry\u201d has been tacked back onto the end of Bains\u2019s title. But if you\u2019re going to keep pretending the job\u2019s about innovation, the simplest patch would be to move Marc Garneau, who rode three times in space shuttles. Instead the job goes to Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne, who\u2019s been foreign minister.<\/p>\n

A demotion for Champagne? I\u2019m not so sure. I know some people who worked for Champagne were hoping he\u2019d get the Industry\u2014sorry, innovation<\/em>\u2014portfolio a year ago. Industry is a good fit for an ambitious pol: it spends a lot of money, it has stakeholders with clout, it puts you in front of Canadian voters full-time, rather than sending you off jetting around the world to spend time with people who don\u2019t vote here. I doubt Champagne is at all displeased by this turn of events.<\/p>\n

Garneau to Global Affairs, then. (It\u2019s like Foreign Affairs, but more innovative.) He\u2019ll be a dignified presence at any international conference he attends. He won\u2019t commit gaffes. But it\u2019s hard to imagine him taking the lead with members of the Biden foreign-policy team or with European leaders as the world tries to sketch the contours of a post-Trump democratic coalition. If it does try, I mean maybe I\u2019m being overly optimistic. Despite a c.v. that was already formidable before he ever reached orbit a lifetime ago, Garneau has not been a take-charge guy in government. Trudeau\u2019s listless attention to international files has begun to be noticed by Canada\u2019s international partners, as witnessed by the drubbing Canada sustained in the U.N. security council election. And St\u00e9phane Dion\u2019s botched appointment<\/a> to two concurrent European diplomatic posts. And the revolving door Trudeau has installed at the entrance to Fort Pearson: Garneau becomes the fourth foreign minister in five years, and there\u2019s no particular reason to expect he\u2019ll keep the job after the election.<\/p>\n

The most recent annual report from Freedom House, a U.S. non-governmental organization dedicated to tracking the success people and nations have in promoting civil rights and democratic freedoms, carries the subtitle \u201cA Leaderless Struggle For Democracy<\/a>.\u201d Lately I find the adjective in that phrase haunting. It\u2019s great to point out that Donald Trump was a problem, but the problem is global, it\u2019s becoming entrenched, and who\u2019s the solution? Is it actually inconceivable that a Canadian could provide part of the answer? In Washington last week we saw the passionate intensity of the worst. The other side seems to lack all conviction. Maybe Garneau, with counterparts from other countries not yet lost to the mob, will help lead a change. This would be excellent news<\/a> if it happened.<\/p>\n

But in a government of quite unprecedented centralization, where the centre struggles to deliver anything but more ideas for subsidies, it\u2019s fair to ask, as I did two years ago almost to the day, what a cabinet shuffle is for. There would be much for Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne to reform at Industry or Innovation or whatever they want to call it, if he wanted to, if he were granted any leeway. That department is an elephant\u2019s graveyard of earlier governments\u2019 half-baked subsidy programs. In 2017 Kevin Page and his colleagues at the University of Ottawa found<\/a> $23 billion in existing annual spending from 147 programs and other \u201cactivities\u201d to promote \u201cinnovation.\u201d Bains made no attempt to rationalize that inherited mess before adding new programs.<\/p>\n

The result is predictable. In the banking world, firms hire \u201cquants,\u201d number-crunching specialists to navigate the opportunities the market offers. In Canadian business, companies hire specialists to navigate the forest of subsidies and incentives available from the federal government. This is full-time work because the programs are too numerous and make too little sense. In many cases there is no decision a business can make on its core area of competence that will make as speedy a difference in its balance sheet as its success or failure in capturing the next bit of government help. Here again, the results are predictable: Canadian firms don\u2019t research new ideas, they research the subsidy landscape. An arms-length advisory panel used to deliver this news<\/a> to Canadian governments every two years. In 2015 Bains released the panel\u2019s most recent report on the lousy results of the Harper government, and then abolished the panel. In its place he had a sunshiny report prepared in-house<\/a>, which everybody properly ignored.<\/p>\n

Bains used to have a simple measure of success<\/a> in his portfolio: \u201cTen Shopifys wouldn\u2019t be so bad,\u201d he\u2019d say. Fair enough. What are we to make of the fact that the counter remains stuck at one? Meanwhile Sidewalk Labs fled Toronto\u2019s Quayside<\/a> project, Element AI sold to U.S. investors<\/a> for a lot less than its claimed value, and Bombardier is out of the commercial aircraft business<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Making any impact at all on that kind of departmental performance would be a huge task for any minister. But this will be Champagne\u2019s fourth cabinet post in five years. The hatches are already battened down for an election. With the inevitable futzing around in its aftermath, the election will swallow half a year. Then it\u2019ll be time to shuffle Champagne again. I keep reading about ministers being promoted or demoted and I keep wondering, how on earth can anyone claim to tell which is which?<\/p>\n

Related article : 50 Key Stats About Freedom of the Internet Around the World<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News articles, you can visit our General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Another tiny perfect cabinet shuffle” Paul Wells: Industry is a good fit for the ambitious Champagne. Garneau will be a dignified presence in foreign affairs. And making an impact will be a huge task for either of them. \u201cFor once,\u201d a Liberal I trust told me, \u201cit really is about family.\u201d Apparently Navdeep Bains makes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/CP110080815-750x422.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"#Another tiny perfect cabinet shuffle","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89226,67806,86746,67816,89238],"class_list":["post-152993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-cabinet-shuffle","tag-editors-picks","tag-francois-philippe-champagne","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-marc-garneau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152993","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=152993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}