Harper's Cabinet Shuffle

This morning, Stephen Harper shuffled his cabinet. Seven senior ministers had their portfolios changed. The changes are as follows:

• Rona Ambrose moves from environment (as everyone expected) to Intergovernmental Affairs
• John Baird moves from the Treasury Board to Environment
• Vic Toews moves from Justice & Attorney-General to Treasury Board
• Rob Nicholson moves from being Government House Leader to Justice & Attorney-General
• Peter Van Loan moves from Intergovernmental Affairs to be Government House Leader
• Monte Solberg moves from Immigration to Human Resources and Social Development
• Diane Finlay moves from Human Resources and Social Development to Immigration
  

If Harper thinks that this shake-up is going to fix anything, he is sorely deluded. What the environment needs is new policy, not a new face for the old, bad policy. Perhaps Harper thinks that because Baird had so much success moving the Accountability (HA!) Act through the House of Commons, he will have similar success moving the so-called Clean Air Act along. Fat chance. The opposition is going to essentially re-draft the Clean Air Act, and the oil barons will be apoplectic (and thus so will be their stooges in the Conservative Party of Canada and Canada's New Government^tm).

The one move that is in any way encouraging is the move of Rob Nicholson into Justice. He is not nearly as extreme as Mr. Toews and will hopefully have the sense to scrap the insistence on draconian penalties and theatrics that Mr. Toews was so fond of.

This is not a team that will win Harper a majority in the next election, thank goodness. Frankly, I would be surprised to see Harper win the next election at all. He has not learned the lesson of Rona Ambrose's failure at Environment. Canadians do not want empty rhetoric and blaming previous governments that failed to act. They want action, and they want it NOW! All Harper is doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Cheers

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