McKenna Shuffles Cabinet
[ September 4, 2003]
(Ottawa) CP – Prime Minister David McKenna has performed another Cabinet shuffle prompting political speculators to once again ponder the possibility of an election call. As McKenna prepares to enter the fourth year of the most recent Liberal mandate, the possibility of an election call has the opposition parties scrambling. This is McKenna's second Cabinet shuffle since he was elected leader of the Liberal Party following the retirement of Prime Minister Marc DuRocher.
McKenna's latest Cabinet shuffle is unique in its low concentration of ministers from Ontario and Quebec and its high concentrations of newcomers in key positions. This new Cabinet has an average age of only 48. McKenna has no doubt drawn on his own fairly recent backbench experience and his own relative youth to determine who to give positions to. Had DuRocher stepped down only weeks earlier, McKenna would have taken Joe Clark's place as the youngest Canadian prime minister in history.
Ron Walsh, the current front-runner in the leadership race of the Opposition Canadian Alliance Party, is of the opinion that the young Cabinet is a pre-election gesture to Canada's youth. The last election found the lowest recorded turnout for voters under twenty-five since the late 1930s. "…[McKenna's] obviously grasping at straws," Walsh said, "he needs to get the youth to vote because the Liberals are trailing with the other age groups, the age groups that actually turn out to vote… He forgets that the youth might not be voting for him."
Paul Hjorth, the projected winner of the NDP leadership, is of the opinion that the Cabinet is not intended to do any actual governing. "This Cabinet does not have the experience that is needed to run the country," he stated. "I have no doubt that if McKenna wins the election, his first move will be to reinstate many of the older ministers that he set aside. My doubts are that he's going to win the election." He declared his own lack of experience a non-issue.
The next election, whenever McKenna finally decides to make the call, will find two of the four major parties with new leaders. The New Democratic Party and the Canadian Alliance will hold leadership conventions within weeks of one another in October. The Liberal Convention will still be held in November, but with McKenna's strong victory just under a year ago, there will be no change. Brian Anderson, leader of the Progressive Conservatives for the past six years, has announced his intentions to remain as leader at least until after the next election is over.
With three of the four leaders mounting their first national campaigns, the election landscape will bear only a passing resemblance to the one that swept the Liberals into a majority government four years ago. Anderson and the Conservatives may have a distinct advantage because of their experience, but, then again, their ideas may also seem stale and outdated in the face of the new solutions to old issues that the new leaders will be proposing.