{"id":2005,"date":"2008-10-30T18:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T22:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2005"},"modified":"2008-10-30T18:07:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T22:07:00","slug":"cabinet-making-follow-the-instructions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=2005","title":{"rendered":"Cabinet Making &#8211; Follow the Instructions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/servlet\/story\/RTGAM.20081030.wcabinetn1030\/BNStory\/politics\/home\">This<\/a> was a pretty standard Cabinet making exercise, with few surprises. Among the highlights:<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Strong Performers Get Promoted <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jim Prentice winds up with Environment (presumably because he\u2019s the <em>only<\/em> member of caucus who owns a hybrid car) and Lawrence Cannon gets Foreign Affairs, meaning we\u2019ll quickly see if the strong reputations Harper\u2019s HoC flank-men have built up are due to their competence or the fact they\u2019ve handled rather benign portfolios to date. Tony Clement replaces Prentice in Industry, which should booster Clement\u2019s bio for the next time he decides he wants to lose a leadership race.<\/p>\n<p>Jason Kenney gets rewarded for bringing over a large number of ethnic voters, by being given Immigration. James Moore gets another well deserved promotion, becoming Minister of Rich People Galas. Peter Van Loan\u2019s reward for (not) answering 90% of the questions in the house? Public Safety.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and Peter MacKay becomes Minister in charge of Danny Williams.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Weak Performers Get Demoted<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Josee Verner has been sent to Cabinet purgatory \u2013 Intergovernmental Affairs. So long Josee! Gerry Ritz stays in place, which means costing Harper his majority is a bigger offense than cracking listeria jokes. Oh, and apparently \u201cgross incompetence\u201d also rats fairly low on list, since Gordon O\u2019Connor managed to, yet again, keep his spot.<\/p>\n<p>As for John Baird? Off to Transport! I look forward to learning about how the Liberals neglected <em>that<\/em> file for 13 long years.<\/p>\n<p>Garry Lunn also gets knocked down to sport.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Faces Get Big Roles<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As expected, the new women have featured prominently in the new Cabinet. Leonna Aglukkaq will put her experience as <strike>Mayor of Wasilla<\/strike> a Nunavut CabMin to work right away in Health, while Lisa Raitt gets Natural Resources and Gail Shea gets Fisheries.<\/p>\n<p>Denis Lebel, Keith Ashfield, and Peter Kent all get Minister of State titles too, although it\u2019s wholly possible that Lebel and Ashfield were just invisible backbenchers rather than new members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was a pretty standard Cabinet making exercise, with few surprises. Among the highlights: The Strong Performers Get Promoted Jim Prentice winds up with Environment (presumably because he\u2019s the only member of caucus who owns a hybrid car) and Lawrence Cannon gets Foreign Affairs, meaning we\u2019ll quickly see if the strong reputations Harper\u2019s HoC flank-men [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}