10 February 2025
While the pointless Liberal leadership race carries on what stands out from all the noise is the lack of commentary from candidates on more fundamental structural change. It’s fine to say you will “buy Canadian” military equipment that does not exist and would require years to stand up the necessary industry. The more important issues that are not being addressed are not “what” they will do but “how” they will do it.
In dealing with the “how” one can’t help but feel despair given the Liberal track record. The really glaring example that stands out in terms of highlighting just how terrible Trudeau’s Liberals have been at managing the “how” might be the enormous Liberal cabinet.
Trudeau’s Cabinet has faced many reshuffles and along the way, several ministries have been rebranded or eliminated, amalgamated etc etc. To the point, it’s actually very difficult for the average person to fully understand how many cabinet ministers there have been and what they have done.
This in itself is a symptom of just how mismanaged the Canadian government has been. The constant rebranding and reshaping of ministerial remits is an indication of how rudderless the Trudeau Liberals are, they have no course and have been floundering on the shoals since launch. It can be downright dizzying to track and summarize how many ministries there have been but it numbers in the mid-40s with some such as labour or sport being rebranded four or five times respectively.
As it stands the Liberal Cabinet still numbers 37. Bigger is not better, bigger means more moving parts, more complicated, and slower moving. Trudeau has already proven it unwieldy. Effectively tabling a Cabinet meeting at this scale is nearly impossible. What governing requires, particularly in moments of crisis or near crisis, as Canada finds itself now, is a small and agile team.
To put this in perspective the Liberal Cabinet is roughly the size of Churchill’s entire Government while the British were fighting the Second World War, keeping in mind that this included Ministers for various regions of the Empire and Dominions. His actual War Cabinet numbered only 16 because to make decisions a cabinet needs to be small enough that it can sit around a single table and have a genuine (and frank) conversation, not a meeting, an actual conversation.
A small cabinet would be better for responding to the multiple crises Canada faces at home and in the US. Things like getting the border done, defence, removing interprovincial trade barriers, building domestic industrial capacity etc. The Liberals are discovering this having belatedly made moves to amalgamate the ridiculous multiple Regional Economic Development Ministries (of which there were 7).
A reasonable Cabinet might instead look something like this:
- Agriculture,
- Attorney General,
- Canadian Heritage
- Defence &Veteran’s Affairs (there is no reason DND can’t deal with Veteran’s Affairs in-house … if properly funded and mandated),
- Education,
- Finance,
- Foreign Affairs,
- Health,
- Housing,
- Immigration,
- Indigenous Affairs,
- Intergovernmental Affairs,
- Natural Resources, Environment, Fisheries and Oceans (which might be three separate or possibly all under one)
- Privy Council,
- Public Safety,
- Public Services and Procurement (which should be excluded from Defence procurement)
- Seniors
- Trade, Industry, and Labour (again perhaps three or possibly under one)
- Treasury
This is a list that runs somewhere around the 20 to 25-member mark. There is a critical need for Canada going forward to focus on forming a government with the smallest cabinet necessary. Too many ministries create a confused mess overlapping responsibilities. Many of Trudeau’s separate ministries would traditionally be (at best) deputy ministers under a Cabinet Minister not competing ministries stepping on each other’s toes. There must be a clear chain of command that starts and ends at the Cabinet table. From here standing Cabinet committees / sub-committees (with the smallest numbers necessary) that meet regularly (i.e. fortnightly) would tackle specific issues as well as serve to maintain coordination between ministries with remits that dovetail with one another. For example, Defence, Public Safety, and Foreign Affairs.
The reality is that good policy starts with having real genuine informed discussions, bad policy emanates from political theater. Trudeau’s Cabinets have been performative with ministries created to cater to the feelings of individual voting blocs, instead of focused on achieving any sort of policy goal. The results are there for anyone to see, look to the past 9 years of policy performance and approach it by assessing it through the lens of the “how”, to the structure and organization of those creating the outputs, and executing the plan. It is painfully clear the reason why this government has failed so often, it can’t get anything done because it’s tripping over itself and going in every direction at once.
Between saying and doing lies the sea. Policy from start to finish involves a large host of agencies and individuals each with their own remit and their own piece of the pie. There needs to be someone at the helm making the calls and a clear chain of command that limits the space between saying and doing as much as possible.
You also can’t steer a ship that isn’t moving. You need leadership making clear informed decisions as a group and then executing them as a team. Canada has not had that; it has had a government in a perpetual state of damage control for decades and it’s why the country finds itself under assault by allies and unable to adequately respond. Canada has placed itself in the position it finds itself.
Canada shouldn’t expect much to change with a new Liberal at the helm given the track record and the unwillingness of the next Prime Minister (whatever Liberal candidate that might be) to expand from “what” they are doing to explaining “how” they envisioning accomplishing it. Wholesale radical change is in order, at the structural level as well as the political.
Feature Photo: Churchill Coalition Government, 11 May 1940. Wikipedia, 2025.
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