Apologies. This appeared in last week’s Hill Times. I’m late posting it.
“Concerns over Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan’s health has sparked speculation over whether or not (and when) a Cabinet shuffle will take place. Do you expect Harper to shake-up his top bench in the new session? Why?”
Frankly, a cabinet shuffle won’t change anything. The composition of cabinet matters very little so long as Stephen Harper remains Prime Minister. The PMO has iron-fisted control over every single cabinet portfolio, leaving precious little room left for individual cabinet ministers to meaningfully direct their files or take on departmental of their own. As Don Martin once wrote, cabinet ministers now “play the role usually reserved for potted plants.” In other words, they’re nice visuals at a press conference.
The events of last week illustrate the absolute control of the PMO over cabinet ministers, when Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver signed his name to an embarrassing, hyperbolic “open letter.” In it, he accused First Nations, environmentalists, and other ordinary Canadians who oppose the Northern Gateway Pipeline of attempting to hijack progress with a radical ideological agenda and undermine our national economic interest.
It’s hard to believe that Mr. Oliver would take it upon himself to conceive of and produce this ridiculous and insulting rant. The letter is perfectly consistent, however, with the operations of the centralized PMO spin machine, which truly runs the show. Mr. Oliver isn’t a fool, and it’s tough to imagine he had no qualms about putting his name on a missive filled with such inflammatory and untrue accusations. But in Harper’s Ottawa, the PMO calls the shots; ministers are mere window dressing.
Scridb filter