Hot Potatoes for new Ministers

The much-rumoured Cabinet shuffle, a very partial dissection

For anyone interested in the government’s handling of national security issues, the biggest news coming out of today’s Cabinet shuffle is the replacement of the much besieged Marco Mendicino as Public Safety Minister by Dominic LeBlanc. Next in line as big news is the move of Bill Blair from a minor Cabinet post (Emergency Preparedness) to Defence, replacing Anita Anand. Melanie Joly stays as Foreign Minister. This is the big three trio of Ministers with responsibilities for security and intelligence.

Public Safety is a tough and unforgiving assignment, as Marco Mendicino discovered, full of potential bad news files with little on the upside for an aspiring politician. That is why it is a Ministerial portfolio best suited to a Cabinet veteran with no political ambitions to move up, with strong connections to the Prime Minister, and good amounts of teflon. This describes LeBlanc to a tee.

Minister LeBlanc will now face a multitude of tests, of which dealing with the foreign interference file is only one (and one which he was already stickhandling as Minister of Democratic Institutions). It will be up to LeBlanc to see whether a negotiated agreement with the opposition parties on a formula for some sort of public hearings into Chinese interference in Canadian elections is a possibility and, if it is not, to decide what to do next. But that is only one file on his desk. There are others that will demand his attention, including major revisions to the forty-year old CSIS Act; crucial decisions on the future of the RCMP as a federal police force; and mandatory Parliamentary reviews of the legislation that created the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. Minister LeBlanc will also have to address the persistent absence of a national security strategy to guide the government’s endeavours in the face of a radically transformed national and international security environment. He will need to think through the lessons of the Freedom Convoy protests to see what needs to be done to ensure a stronger capacity to understand domestic security threats.

A Public Safety Minister has to be an accomplished fire-fighter. But any Minister who is simply content to put out fires and deal tactically with the portfolio is bound to fail. The Public Safety Minister must also bring a strategic lens to the job and look to make important changes in the national interest to the government’s capacity to deliver domestic security and contribute to international security. The first holder of the portfolio, when the Liberals came to (majority) power in 2015, Ralph Goodale, knew this. His legacy will be the important contributions he made to revolutionizing accountability for security and intelligence and in modernizing national security laws. What will LeBlanc’s legacy be? It will be measured in changes to CSIS and the RCMP and in terms of creating a national security strategy. Will these efforts be a priority for the Trudeau government as a whole? That remains to be seen.

Sometime between now and the next Cabinet shuffle, the Minister of Public Safety needs to look around and ask himself whether Public Safety is even viable as a singular ministry. Is it too large? Are its functions too diverse? Some thought needs to be given to reshaping Public Safety after its twenty year run, to be leaner and more focused. Turn it into a Ministry for National Security with a modernized CSIS, RCMP/national security policing, CBSA, and an agency to counter foreign interference as key components, and a policy shop for strategy. Corrections and policing that does not involve national security threats should be hived off elsewhere. As should emergency preparedness.

Minister Blair inherits a deeply troubled Defence Ministry portfolio. His sustained place in the Trudeau Cabinet remains something of a mystery to me, as he was previously demoted from Public Safety Minister to occupy a hived-off Ministry for Emergency Preparedness. Now he rebounds to move into the front ranks of Cabinet Ministers at Defence. His most immediate preoccupations will be the much-delayed Defence modernization review, and working with allies in support of Ukraine in its efforts to combat the Russian invasion and win back territory. How he will come off as a key allied participant in discussions on support for Ukraine will be a key performance indicator. Whether he will be able to deliver on much-needed capability improvements for the Canadian armed forces will be another. How well he will serve as a spokesperson for whatever the Defence update delivers will be a third. But like LeBlanc at Public Safety, Blair will have to show that he can be a strategic thinker and lay a foundation for the future of the Canadian military, its support role for Ukraine, its place in NATO, its renewed attention to early warning systems for North American defence through NORAD modernization, and its ambitions to be a player in a Canadian pivot to the Indo-Pacific. One thing that Minister Blair will learn is that he just inherited responsibility for the largest intelligence agency in the Canadian government, Canadian Forces Intelligence Command. Blair will need to ensure that it thrives, even in the face of other budgetary demands and personnel challenges.

Melanie Joly keeps her Foreign Affairs job. At some point she will have to turn her attention to a problem unearthed by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians regarding the inadequate governance of the intelligence function at Global Affairs. This may not be in the news, but is in the national interest as a matter to be fixed. In essence the problem is Ministerial disengagement and poor reporting structures. A dedicated Deputy Minister can fix the reporting problems, but only a Minister can decide that she needs to be more engaged with intelligence issues. The culture at Global Affairs may be resistant to such a change, but it is a necessary one.

All three Ministers, once the dust has settled on the Cabinet shuffle, need to jointly address an important gap in Cabinet machinery—namely the absence of a Cabinet committee on national security and intelligence. Ultimately the construction of Cabinet committees is in the purview of the Prime Minister, but advocacy for change from the trio of Ministers most engaged on national security and intelligence matters would make a huge difference.

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