Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

UPDATED AGAIN: Shuffleuffagus v2.0 – It begins!

by kadyomalley on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 4:08pm - 64 Comments

Scroll down for the latest updates!

To nobody’s surprise (except possibly Stockwell Day), Lawrence Cannon is headed to Foreign Affairs (link courtesy of NNW). This post will be updated as further news leaks out.

UPDATE: It’s a cornocopia of (seemingly) informed speculation over at CanWest! Baird or Prentice (really? Prentice?) to Transport, which will apparently be “central” to the government’s efforts to “avoid a recession” with billions of dollars for infrastructure. Everyone loves bridges and tunnels! And hockey arenas! And wharfs! Oh, and Clement might end up with International Trade, which would be — different; does anyone else have trouble imagining him as anything other than Health Minister? It’s like, his entire political identity at this point.

Jason Kenney may get Citizenship and Immigration – which I totally called earlier this week, by the way, only in my scenario, Peter Kent took over the Canadian Identity portfoliette – and James Moore could be bumped up to Canadian Heritage or Environment. The former would let him keep the Vancouver Olympics too, since Heritage is now not so much about arts and all about sports. (And human rights museums, but y’all have heard that rant more than enough times already, so I’ll spare you the rest.) (Seriously, though – Winnipeg? WINNIPEG? Oh well, at least we’re not going to buy them a football arena too, right? Right? Hello?)

Oh, and Josee Verner gets the Rona Ambrose Memorial Naughty Chair for failing to sell PMO’s culture war in Quebec. I wonder if she’ll get to go to next month’s first ministers’ meeting? Probably not – I’m pretty sure Rona wasn’t invited to the last one.

STILL MORE UPDATEY GOODNESS: L. Ian MacDonald has Baird taking over Transport, which is being spun as a plum assignment because of all that lovely cash to spread around deserving ridings, but sounds more like an attempt to spin it as Not A Demotion for whoever lands there – well, if it’s someone currently on the A-List like Baird or Prentice, anyway. Then there’s the idea of Peter Van Loan taking over Environment. Pivvle the Pit Bull as Mr. Corner Turning Cap and Trader? Is the PM worried that there may be one or two environmental groups out there that his government hasn’t yet antagonized?

Moving on, Jay Hill as House Leader actually does make some sense, although I still think they’d be better off with Diane Ablonczy, who – as per L. Ian – will get Health. He also has Lynn Yelich headed to Revenue – and Gordon O’Connor replacing Hill as Whip, which seems like an odd pairing – and boldly predicts that Gerry Ritz will be booted from Agriculture, with one of ITQ’s very favourite Conservative MPs, Ted Menzies, as a contender to replace him. (Go Ted!)

BECAUSE WE’RE ALREADY CHATTERING ABOUT IT IN THE COMMENTS UPDATE: Stephen Taylor, on the other hand, is getting a markedly different story on who is going where from his source(s), including the tantalizing rumour that a Quebec Liberal may Emerson up and cross the floor for a cabinet job. Oooooeeeeoooo. (ITQ suspects this may be mischievous disinfo from the Sun Tzu division of the Conservative Resource Group; if that’s the case, we can only say – well played, sirs!)

THANK GOODNESS FOR CANADIAN PRESS UPDATE: The overhaul will be “sweeping”, Alex Panetta assures us. Well, good. The last one was a bit of a snoozer, although admittedly, it was primarily to deal with that Bernier-shaped hole in the wall at Fort Pearson. Many of the same names show up in the CP piece – most of the big kids staying where they are – Prentice, Flaherty, MacKay, Day – Kenney to Citizenship (CALLED IT! FEELING SMUG! YES, I HAVE WITNESSES! PLEASE IGNORE THIS IF IT TURNS OUT TO BE WRONG!), Baird to Transport, Jay Hill as House Leader (oddly, no mention of Pivvle), Verner to the Room of No Longer Required-ment, Ambrose to HRDC, Clement to Trade, Duncan or Gerald Keddy to Fisheries, Shea to ACOA (sorry, Peter – no more pork gravy for you), Leona Aglukkaq to a newly created northern development secretary of stateship, and her fellow newbies Bob Dechert and Peter Kent to various unspecified junior mint jobs.

Tags: dear quebec: does this help?, La Presse, lawrence cannon, leaky goodness, shuffleuffagus v.2

More by kadyomalley

Sophie

Dion for Minister of National Unity?
He’s still an MP, and hes done it before…
I still say STockwell Day needs to be our Foreign Affairs minister.
HAS TO.
http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

Riley – CanWest had him going to Environment, of all places, which seems like a spectacularly bad pairing of man and ministry unless the plan is to reduce government/ENGO relations to the same level of barely concealed hostility that marked the relationship between house leaders by the end of the last parliament.

Brian, I’ve promised AMM that I won’t turn this into an airing of my many problems with the museum, but you can read the backstory here and here.

Darrel – Can’t be a senator if the Senior PMO Source from yesterday’s off-the-record background briefing is to be believed; he was clear (or as clear as you can be while also being frustratingly opaque) that there will be only one senator in cabinet: the leader of the government therein.

L: Maybe that’s the American spelling!
Wascally Wabbit

Ah – Clement for Transport! Sweet!
George Smitherman will eat him up – again!
Turn him upside down and shake out a full deficit (along with the lint) out of his pockets for Ontario Infrastructure!
No contest!
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

Kady,

Any word on Southwestern-Midwestern Ontario getting a Cab Min? We’re pretty under-represented despite the fact there a couple seats here that the Tories would love to snag in the future (London Fanshawe, Guelph).

Southwestern Ontario has 6 Tories and no cab mins and Midwestern Ontario has 10 Tories with one cab min (Diane Finley).
Sophie

Miwestern/Southqwster Ontario is difficult, because of the bizarre mix of industries etc. Diane Finley’s riding, for example, takes the highest percentages of its economy from agriculture in all of Ontario. However, it’s darn close to London, Guelph etc.
So I think there may be some balance issues there.
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

“Miwestern/Southqwster Ontario is difficult, because of the bizarre mix of industries etc. Diane Finley’s riding, for example, takes the highest percentages of its economy from agriculture in all of Ontario. However, it’s darn close to London, Guelph etc.
So I think there may be some balance issues there.”

True. You’d think, though, that the area could get one urban and one rural member of cabinet.

Between the census metropolitan areas of London (457K), Kitchener-Waterloo (451K) and Windsor (323K) you have over 1.2 million people and not a single cabinet minister – despite the fact the 3 urban areas combined have a larger population than either Saskatchewan or Manitoba.

That being said, I’m all for choosing cabinet ministers solely on merit. But if you are going to make your decisions based on regional concerns (which Harper clearly is), then I don’t see how you can snub an area so large – particularly one that has a number of Conservative MPs.
http://economics.about.com Mike Moffatt

Or to put it another, way the 3 CMAs (Windsor, London, Kitchener) combined have more people (1.23M) than the individual CMAs of Ottawa (1.13M) , Calgary (1.08M) and Edmonton (1.03M).
DR

Odd, I thought Edmonton and Calgary were bigger than that now.

“Verner to the Room of No Longer Required-ment”

Hah!
Riley Hennessey

CTV has Prentice going to environment!

Kady, are you going to be live-blogging the limo-watch?
Riley Hennessey

You know what I’ve been wondering since this election began? Where is The Star’s ottawa correspondant and politico extraordinaire Susan Delacourt? She just dissapeared when this election started, and hasn’t been heard of since as far as I know? Anyone know details of this?
http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

Riley, she won a Massey Scholarship, and is taking a year off to study at the University of Toronto.
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Bazoo

re The Asper Human Rights Museum being in Winnipeg: it is discouraging to read so much disdain for my native city. With our new designation as an inland port, the expansion of the Churchill port area, commitments to rail infrastructure reinvestment and the opening of the North West Passage, Winnipeg and Manitoba are in a period of transition and revitalization. Winnipeg also has retained much of its turn of the century archetectural heritage, a nice side-effect of having plateau’d in the 60s, during which time a lot of other Canadian cities destroyed the innefficient stone buildings to put up modern glass boxes with higher revenue potentials. My prediction is that Winnipeg will top 1 million by the end of the next decade, and its place in Canada, its meaning as a Canadian city, will change. I love Winnipeg, our two rivers, our Forks area, our Native people, our cultural diversity and richness. I know that when some of you come to visit our new National Museum you will love Winnipeg too. Oh, and we have the best Perogis.
Jenn

Winnipeg has lots of museums I would love to visit. The Firefighter’s and St. Boniface museums in particular, but that Costume one, or the Transcona one sound interesting. Well, they all do, but I like museums (except ROM).

And I guess I’d better hurry up before this National museum opens and the hotel prices go further out of my price bracket.

I love Canada to death, but it does mean I have so many great places to visit and not enough gas money.