‘Hits and misses’: Liberal strategist says Calgary should be represented in cabinet

Liberal Strategist Sabrina Grover speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about PM Carney's cabinet selections.

Liberal Strategist Sabrina Grover speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about Prime Minister Carney’s cabinet selections.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: How do you weigh the balance of new faces with the old guard? What message is the prime minister sending with the makeup of this cabinet?

Sabrina Grover: I think it’s a really good influx of new faces to the cabinet, but faces that may be new to politics and may be new to this cabinet, but aren’t new to their portfolios in terms of their skills and their depth and their experience.

Prime Minister Carney had a lot of really good choices in terms of the new folks who were elected, and I’m sure that it was a tough choice in coming into some of these decisions. It’s a really strong cabinet, really deep knowledge and experience and understanding on their files.

MH: How far does this cabinet go in distancing the Carney government from the cloud of disdain that hung over the Trudeau Liberals?

SG: I think it does a really good job of distancing itself. Overall, I think there’s some key portfolios that we’ve seen Trudeau-era ministers retain. For example, finance is staying with Francois-Phillippe Champagne. You have foreign affairs staying with the Trudeau-era minister Anita Anand. We see Dominic LeBlanc retain his role in Canada-U.S. relations and Intergovernmental Affairs.

I think that it’s hard for Canadians to necessarily be upset at those choices, because those are such strong performers in their roles, and they did so well in their roles that they had previously. I think that it’s welcomed to see some stability. Certainly you can’t have a cabinet of entirely new ministers if you’ve got some veterans to choose from, because you do need some of that institutional knowledge to actually have cabinet function.

MH: Where regional representation is concerned, to what degree is this a unity cabinet?

SG: I think there’s some hits and misses. Obviously a strong inclusion of Quebec ministers, which is important, a good representation from Quebec, especially considering that Quebec is going to have a provincial election later on this year, and there are some sovereignty and unity questions coming up in that province.

I think a good inclusion of new folks and new faces from B.C., which is important, and the prairies, it’s a little bit of a light touch. But looking to the north, there’s some interesting inclusions. Rebecca Alty, as an example, former mayor of Yellowknife. I think that’s a really important role for her in Crown Indigenous Affairs.

So there’s some good choices here, and I think that there’s some good balance of regional voices.

MH: On that light touch where the prairies are concerned, one Alberta MP named to a portfolio, Emergency Management, Community Resilience and Prairie Economic Development.

What do you make of Edmonton Centre MP Eleanor Olszewski being a fit?

SG: Congratulations to an Alberta home-grown talent. I’m really excited to see Eleanor in there. I do think it was a bit of a misstep to leave Corey Hogan out of cabinet from Calgary. We haven’t seen a minister from Calgary specifically since, I think maybe 2017, so a long time without representation for what I would deem as Alberta’s economic engine.

Certainly from a business interest, certainly from a natural resources and energy interest, Calgary really does hold a lot of those networks and connections. So it will be interesting to see how the Minister of Energy, Tim Hodgson, deals with Alberta and manages to build new bridges and new relationships, but I do think it’s a bit of a loss to not have a Calgary minister.

MH: How do you see this cabinet responding to Alberta’s lengthy list of concerns and the notable rise in separatist sentiment?

SG: I think that Prime Minister Carney has been very reasonable and very open minded when it comes to negotiating with the province, when it comes to negotiating with the premier, but one of the things that I think is important is to not get a hung up solely on Alberta’s voice coming from the office of the premier.

Seventy per cent of Albertans are not in favour of separation or a referendum on separation, and so I think it’s important for the Carney government, new MPs, new ministers, to reach out and dig in and find those voices, including those voices that might be in business.

The separation argument really hurts business interests in Alberta and in Canada. I think it creates a lot of instability and investment environments and so it’s an opportunity for the government, federally, to think about what does create stability and how to overcome some of those pieces and that rhetoric that the premier is continuing to lay out.

MH: Parliament resumes sitting in less than two weeks time. Canada welcomes the world’s leaders for the G7 summit in Kananaskis in mid-June. Mark Carney has promised the removal of interprovincial trade barriers by July 1. Of course, there’s still the threat of Trump tariffs hanging overhead.

How much pressure is this new cabinet going to be under to perform?

SG: That honeymoon period is going to be short and sweet because they have a lot of work to get to and a lot of work to get to right away. You’ve already seen a lot of that work happen last week with the first meeting between Donald Trump and Prime Minister Carney.

I think that it’s important for that to remain the focus, but also to show that domestic strengthening. I think that’s why roles like Chrystia Freeland and Dominic LeBlanc are important in terms of those internal trade barriers in Canada that we’ve said we’re going to take down by July 1.

I think about housing and infrastructure, and huge commitments that came out of the campaign during the last couple of weeks on that. Putting Gregor Robertson in that role and seeing how quickly we can actually move on these housing and infrastructure priorities will be important.

I think there’s a good balance of both geopolitical and international things that the government’s going to have to deal with, while also dealing with local pieces.

And then lastly, we host the G7 in just over a month, and so what does it look like for the government to head into that, and what are the priorities and outcomes they’d like to see?