By Daniel Béland

May 13, 2025

Barely two months after he and his cabinet were first sworn in and two weeks after his election, Prime Minister Mark Carney attended the swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall Tuesday during which two dozen new people joined his shuffled, culled and expanded ministry. More than half of them are newly elected MPs, which brings many new faces to the fore.

The composition of this revamped cabinet points to the ongoing emphasis of the Carney government on economic matters, a situation that stands in contrast with the Justin Trudeau years, during which social policy appeared more central than hard-core economic issues, partly because of the  pandemic and the influence of the NDP and its supply-and confidence agreement with the Liberals, which lasted from March 2022 to September 2024.

Tuesday’s ceremony stood in sharp contrast to what we saw on March 14, when Carney and the members of his original cabinet were sworn in. That was clearly a pre-electoral cabinet that emphasized experience in the context of a new trade war with the United States. At that ceremony, very few new faces were in sight, as the new Prime Minister had decided to play safe by surrounding himself primarily with veterans of the Justin Trudeau era.

One major change that the original Carney cabinet introduced was a dramatic reduction in the number of its members, which declined from 39 under Trudeau to 23 under Carney. This shift seemed to signal a change in the way of doing things, with a more focused approach and fewer players around cabinet table, something observers such as Andrew Coyne hoped could restore its influence, which had declined for decades in the era of what Donald Savoie calls “court government.” This type of government, which crystallized in recent decades, is characterized by a concentration of power in the hands of the Prime Minister and their immediate entourage in PMO.

Now that the Liberals have just won more seats than in 2021 and that they are almost in majority government territory, attrition has been replaced by the logic of expansion aimed at promoting MPs who had never served in cabinet, including newly elected ones, especially “star candidates” such as Ontario broadcaster Evan Solomon and former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, who have both entered cabinet.

At the same time, as a way to expand the size of cabinet to bring new faces in while keeping a core governing team of a manageable size, Carney appointed 10 secretaries of state (who will not have control over a full ministry and will only attend cabinet meetings when the issues they are responsible for are on the agenda) alongside 28 ministers, which is an attempt to have one’s cabinet cake and eat it, too.

This two-tiered approach is not new to federal politics but it stands in contrast with the way in which Justin Trudeau and his team operated. It is unlikely that this approach might reverse the centralized logic of “court government,” as Prime Minister Carney — especially as someone with experience in the private sector and hierarchical central banks — and the PMO are likely to run the show.

Carney’s two-tiered approach to the federal ministry does not eliminate the traditional challenges that prime ministers face in constructing a cabinet. 

But Carney’s two-tiered approach to the federal ministry does not eliminate the traditional challenges that prime ministers face in constructing a cabinet. Many of these challenges are about representation, in terms of gender, ethnicity, language, and regions.

First, and here there is clear continuity with the Justin Trudeau era, the Liberals restored full gender parity within cabinet, as the initial Carney cabinet slightly departed from that rule. Beyond parity per se, it is important to note that women are occupying powerful cabinet posts, including Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand, Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly, and Minister of Health Marjorie Michel — Trudeau’s former deputy chief of staff and daughter of former Haitian Prime Minister Smarck Michel — now the newly-elected MP in Justin Trudeau’s former riding of Papineau.

Second, ethno-racial diversity is key to contemporary cabinet building, and Anand and Michel are only two of the several prominent visible-minority members of this extended ministry alongside, among others, Minister of Justice and Attorney General Gary Anandasangaree and Chief Government Whip Rechie Valdez.

Another key issue related to diversity is Indigenous representation, especially because reconciliation is a Liberal objective and there are five Indigenous MPs now serving. Three Indigenous MPs joined cabinet on Tuesday, including rookie Cree MP Mandy Gull Masty (Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou), who became the first Indigenous person to become minister of Indigenous Services Canada.

Third, Canada is officially bilingual and it is important to have strong francophone representation in cabinet. That includes people from Quebec but also francophones who live in other parts of the country, who are a significant electoral constituency of the Liberals. The most illustrious non-Quebec francophone in the cabinet remains Dominic Leblanc, who was the first minister to swear his oath on Tuesday.

Leblanc’s title is a long one, and it points to his central role in dealing with the hot issue of trade, with the United States but also among the provinces: President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, Intergovernmental Affairs and One Canadian Economy. Interestingly, the last component of his title seems to overlap with the second part of Chrystia Freeland’s title as Minister of Transport and Internal Trade. How many cooks in the internal trade kitchen do you need, especially when said kitchen is already crowded with the premiers?

A look at the regional distribution of cabinet members after Tuesday’s cabinet reshuffle illustrates the reality of imbalanced geographical representation: while Alberta has one minister, Eleanor Olszewski, Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, Ontario has 12 (Prime Minister Carney included) and Quebec 7, including François-Philippe Champagne, who remains as finance minister, the most important cabinet position after the one of Prime Minister, and even gets  national revenue on the top of it, thus further increasing his status among Liberals. Additionally, There are two ministers from B.C. and Nova Scotia and one each from Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and P.E.I.

This remains a cabinet strongly dominated by Ontario and Quebec, something that will reinforce the perception of many people in Western Canada, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, that they have little inside influence over this government, which remains primarily in the hands of the so-called Laurentian elite.

Of course, this mainly reflects electoral outcomes but optics matter, especially in the current political context, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is musing about a potential referendum on Alberta sovereignty, sooner rather than later.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director (on leave) of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University.