Cabinet choices, chosen issues, indicate Premier's To Do list.
from Inside Queen's Park Volume 26, Number 4
Ontario’s new government is headed by a politician who is not afraid to declare key objectives, both substantive and in regard to process. Kathleen Wynne, the Premier-elect, wasted no time in declaring the importance of acting to advance both social justice and jobs and the economy before she left the Make Believe Gardens stage on which her convention victory was celebrated.
The premier has also sounded the klaxon on the state of Ontario’s agriculture, having kept her campaign promise to assume that portfolio – or the best part of it, at any rate. Hiving off the Rural Affairs component (to the steady Jeff Leal) will help some, but there is no guarantee that Queen’s Park can afford the political and financial cost of squaring the horse-racing industry, calming the uproar over wind-turbines and dissipating the bolshy attitudes in rural and remote territories.
Wynne’s team contains ten newbies, MPPs not previously invited to sit the Cabinet table, 8 women ministers (30 percent) and 19 men (70 percent).
Far more difficult, Wynne has to reach a workable détente with the teachers – for which she has tapped a trusted school board leader (Liz Sandals). This is in addition to allocating trusted or promising colleagues to address our jobs and employment needs (Eric Hoskins), and the deficit and spending challenges in infrastructure and transportation (Glen Murray). Then there are Toronto's demands for action to address grid-lock, added to the province-wide transit dossier. And the burdensome issues in the crowded field of energy have been given to a veteran (Bob Chiarelli).
Further cost-saving action on health care is imperative and the ministerial portfolio is now wielded by a reliable Deputy Premier (Deb Matthews). She can be expected to oversee the poverty implementation plan developed by Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh. The premier has already inscribed this last priority on the agenda for the responsible ministers and key bureaucrats. And that reflects, IQP has learned, the consensus-making technique Wynne’s government will adopt to compile the traditional "mandate letter". These will now be negotiated in sessions involving the Minister, Deputy Minister – and the Premier — rather than being handed down as marching orders to the Minister from the OPO, as before.
Another of Wynne’s highly significant priorities is aboriginal affairs, the stand-alone ministerial portfolio having been bestowed on another key Wynne campaign backer, David Zimmer. He was Personal Assistant (PA) to the Attorney-General from the 2003 beginning to the 2011 end of the McGuinty government, and was also PA at Aboriginal Affairs from November 2011 through February 2013. Zimmer does not need to be instructed on how important this field is to the new premier, having been PA to Wynne as Aboriginal Affairs minister from October 2011 to November 2012.
The new premier often strongly pressed Team McGuinty to do more than pay lip service to aboriginal rights. She was the only leadership contender who reminded convention delegates that they were meeting on lands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. (This went into her Throne Speech, as well.) She understands the potential of aboriginal land claims and other disputes to create strife and foment violence. Road and rail blockages in the name of Idle No More have drawn heavy media interest but their economic impact is perhaps less disruptive than the measures taken more remotely against development of the “Ring of Fire” in which so much northern development depends.
A strong factor which will ensure the Premier’s continuing engagement with aboriginal affairs is her family connection with that community. One of her daughters is married to a man from the Moose Cree First Nation in Moose Factory, giving Wynne aboriginal grandchildren.
Cabinet composition
Read alphabetically, the Wynne Cabinet lists four veteran ministers/non-supporters (Bradley, Broten, Chan, Chiarelli) before a newbie/supporter (Coteau) gets a look in. Then another veteran/non-supporter (Duguid), a veteran/supporter (Gerretsen) a veteran non/supporter (Gravelle) and a rival then supporter (Hoskins), a veteran/supporter (Jeffrey), a veteran/non-supporter (Leal) and a newbie/rival’s backer (MacCharles). Next comes a veteran/strong backer who was promoted to be deputy premier (Matthews), a veteran/supporter (McMeekin), a pair of veteran/non-supporters (Meilleur, Milloy), a newbie/supporter (Moridi), and a recent minister/rival/backer (Murray). Next are a newbie/neutral (Naqvi), a veteran backbencher/non-supporter (Orazietti), a newbie/non-supporter (Piruzza), and a pair of veteran/ backbenchers/supporters (Sandals and Sergio). Finishing up is a recent minister/rival/then backer (Sousa), a veteran/rival/then non-backer (Takhar), a very supportive veteran minister (Wynne herself) and finally a veteran backbencher/newbie and very strong supporter (Zimmer).
So of the 27 cabinet ministers, IQP classifies 14 of them as supporters and 12 as non-supporters. With that margin (which Wynne’s backers may have been tempted to think of as a minor majority), it helps that Yasir Naqvi has not maintained any vestige of his leadership convention neutrality as party president – and is (to judge from the zealous answer to his first question in the opening day of the Legislature) a strong Wynne booster.
Indeed, boosting the leader vigourously is what all Liberal MPPs can be expected to do, whomever they backed in the leadership contest and whether they showed up for the February 11 swearing in or not. In that respect, we can anticipate that Wynne’s government will not need reminding that minorities do not last unless they can work effectively with the opposition. And it’s already clear from the NDP response to yesterday’s Throne Speech that Wynne has cleared her first hurdle.
Wynne’s team contains ten newbies, MPPs not previously invited to sit the Cabinet table, and of this category, only three had first been elected in the most recent, 2011 Ontario provincial election. The new LIB cabinet contains 8 women ministers (30 percent) and 19 men (70 percent).
The Legislature opened again today but Premier Wynne was unhappy that the Progressive Conservative s spurned her offered Select Committee yet still called unhappily for – yes, a Select Committee. Mr Speaker Levac also called unhappily for Members to stop cat-calling and told them to expect a crack-down. He also said pointedly that he does not need to be told how to do his job. IQP thinks we’d better brace for some robust conversation.
About Inside Queen's Park
This article was first published in Inside Queen's Park, which is published twenty-two times per year by GP Murray Research Limited. IQP offers widely respected analysis of, and insight into, the inner workings of Ontario government and politics. Its contents are copyright and reproduction, in whole or in part by any means without permission of the editor, is strictly forbidden.
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