This cabinet shuffle was Justin Trudeau’s ‘Ted Lasso’ moment

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/10/2021 (1059 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

About 12 hours after he walked into Rideau Hall to announce his new cabinet on Tuesday, Justin Trudeau was ready to kick back and relax.

Without fuss or even much notice from other patrons at the bar, the prime minister quietly slipped into the Metropolitain restaurant, not far from Parliament Hill, and squeezed into a booth where his deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, was dining with her family.

Other ministers soon straggled in to join them: Marc Miller, the new minister for Crown-Indigenous relations; Marco Mendicino, newly named to head public safety, International Trade Minister Mary Ng and Seamus O’Regan, who is now the labour minister.

Trudeau didn’t do any rounds of handshaking around the bar or shout-outs to the crowd, as he did at the packed restaurant after the post-election cabinet shuffle of 2019. He was not at the Metropolitain to make an appearance — rather, just to huddle socially with a few of his closest friends in cabinet.

The contrast from two years ago is a product of pandemic times, naturally, when crowded political bars are still a foggy memory. But the scene at the Metropolitain on Tuesday night also fit with the whole thinking behind the cabinet that Trudeau spent weeks constructing after the Sept. 20 election.

It is a cabinet of small teams, in which most individual ministers’ fates are inextricably tied up with those of others. No one has a table for one at this establishment.

Climate change is now in the hands of both Steven Guilbeault, a long-time environmental activist, and Jonathan Wilkinson, who stepped out of environment and into natural resources. The two are a matched set, the idea being to temper Guilbeault’s green enthusiasm with the low-key pragmatism that Wilkinson displayed when he had the job.

Health, which looms as a major post-pandemic priority, is now a team effort in the Trudeau cabinet too. Jean-Yves Duclos, a quiet, cerebral health economist, now holds the health title, but so too does Carolyn Bennett, who is tasked with channelling her passion and empathy into a new department for mental health and addictions. Meanwhile, Intergovernmental minister Dominic LeBlanc will be helping lead crucial negotiations with the provinces on health-care financing.

Law and order matters are in the hands of Justice Minister David Lametti, as well as two cabinet members who hail from downtown Toronto: Mendicino, at public safety, and former police chief Bill Blair, with emergency preparedness. A law professor, a former Crown prosecutor and a cop — no, not walking into a bar, but into all things legal in the federal cabinet.

Melanie Joly got a big promotion to global affairs, but she’s not travelling alone either, charged with working hand in hand with Ng and international trade.

In short, there isn’t much room for lone wolves in the government Trudeau has reconstructed for his third term. And that even goes for the prime minister himself, who appears to have traded his old solo act for frequent double bills with Freeland.

If the six years of Trudeau government was a TV series, critics might be saying that it has gone from a one-man show to an ensemble cast — kind of like the difference between seasons one and two in the Emmy-award winning show “Ted Lasso.”

It’s a long way from 2015, when all the parts of the Trudeau cabinet revolved around one man and his celebrity power. After six years at the helm, Trudeau appears to like the team approach so much that he’s created many of them within one cabinet.

The danger here, of course, is that familiar little groups can get clubby and insular, as everyone who lived through the pandemic “bubbles’ knows. Team Trudeau has been already vulnerable to this criticism, with even MPs complaining through the years that the circles around the prime minister are too tight and impenetrable.

And as usual, for every one minister who joined the 39-member cabinet team on Tuesday, Trudeau has three other MPs in his caucus who will be wondering whether they’ll ever be chosen to sit at the table — or in the booth, if you like.

Putting together the cabinet in 2021 was a much different exercise than 2015, Trudeau advisers say, because there were fewer opportunities to blaze trails with “firsts.” As well, it’s difficult to create a spirit of renewal amid experience and well-worn familiarity.

But scattering authority among smaller teams, diluting the star power of any one minister (or prime minister) is a departure, certainly from six years ago. Trudeau himself won’t likely be invisible — eventually people noticed he was at the bar on Tuesday night — but he may be doing more to blend in with the crowd.

Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt