Whether smaller is better remains to be seen

Opinion

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This article was published 03/05/2016 (3425 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What is it like to be sworn into cabinet?

For politicians, finally making it to the cabinet table is sort of like winning the Super Bowl and the lottery, on your birthday, just after finding out that your kids were both accepted into Harvard on full scholarships. In other words, short of nuptials and the birth of children, it’s the most totally awesome, awe-inspiring day in the life of any politician.

And so it was on Tuesday as Premier Brian Pallister and the 12 members of his cabinet were officially sworn in as members of executive council. Drenched in sunlight pouring through the glass “cloud” of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights — the profound if not unusual location for the swearing-in ceremony — eight men and four women began a journey of discovery as the most powerful people in the province.

Veteran and rookie MLAs alike who had been promoted to cabinet were left teary eyed and quivery at their good fortune. Some, such as the indefatigable Ron Schuler, seemed stuck in a dream-like state. “I can’t believe it took 16 years,” an incredulous Schuler said over and over again as he received congratulations at being named minister of Crown services after more than a decade and a half in Opposition.

Regardless of who we voted for in the election, all Manitobans should wish Schuler and the other members of Pallister’s cabinet luck as they go forward. The thrill and awe of their swearing-in will soon be replaced with the stark reality of the difficult times in which they will govern.

To that end, Pallister had hoped to set his government off in the right direction with a significant reconfiguration of cabinet. As promised during the election campaign, he trimmed the size of cabinet down to 12 ministers from the 18 that served under former premier Greg Selinger. This required quite a bit of reorganization, as departments were renamed, merged, and otherwise absorbed, never to be heard from again.

The core service areas of government saw little or no change. This means that Finance, Health, Education, Agriculture and Justice remain, both in name and configuration, nearly identical to their pre-election form. But just about every other department of government saw change. Of particular interest are the new portfolio names, and the words that were or were not used in describing their role and purpose in government.

Gone are words like “labour,” “northern,” “conservation,” “youth,” and “immigration,” and “aboriginal.”  In their places, we get terms such as “growth, enterprise and trade,” “sustainable development,” “indigenous and municipal relations” and Schuler’s portfolio, the aforementioned “Crown services.”

Is the change in language important? Pallister downplayed the semantics of his departmental designations. “The words are not as important, of course, as the work we’re going to be doing.” And he is absolutely correct in that assertion. As long as government is meeting the expectations of its citizens, then the name of each portfolio is not that important.

That said, a cabinet reconfiguration is not unlike a Speech from the Throne in that it provides an opportunity for government to define its priorities and overall philosophy. It’s not an exact science, and sometimes people read too much into language, often to see the things they want to see. Still, the process of renaming cabinet portfolios is a deeply symbolic endeavor, and a key building block in a government’s retail political strategy.

What can we deduce from Pallister’s rebooted cabinet? First and foremost, Pallister did not mess around with either the name or the mandates of the core departments of government: Justice, Finance, Health, Education, Agriculture, Infrastructure.

For those departments that were renamed or merged, it will take some time before we know the full impact. Much will be made of the fact that there is no reference to conservation, the word used by the NDP in 1999 to cover off a merger of natural resources and environment. There will also be intrigue around the refusal to include labour in the name of any portfolio. Labour programs are now being lumped into the catch-all dumping ground ministry of Growth, Enterprise and Trade. Or the decision to leave out the word “northern” from any department in the wake of an election where the Tories made a historic breakthrough in Thompson. 

There could be some insight in mandate letters given to each of the new ministers on Tuesday. Pallister made some show of the fact he had drafted mandate letters for each minister, inviting reporters in to the cabinet room Tuesday afternoon where everyone could clearly see a sealed, letter-sized envelope on top of a binder in each spot around the cabinet table. However, as of Tuesday night, the option of releasing the letters was still under discussion.

There are some strong signs the Pallister government isn’t quite ready to enunciate its master cabinet reorganization plan because, not surprisingly, it is still trying to figure things out. And given that the premier had promised to save $5 million from trimming the size of cabinet, the decision to cut the number of ministries by a third is more important now than defining exactly what those ministries will be doing.

Over the next few weeks, the new Tory government can continue to enjoy its electoral triumph while also slowly learning how to govern after so many years in opposition. The sticky matter of  whether the new, smaller cabinet is actually better at meeting the needs of Manitoban, can be left until another day after the euphoria has worn off.

When that day comes, however, it will be important that Pallister can demonstrate that a smaller cabinet with new departmental names is actually a better cabinet. And not just smaller.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca