Making Trudeau’s Cabinet meaningful

Nov 4, 2015 by

Today Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his new cabinet were sworn in. He deserves a lot of praise for bringing gender equality to cabinet and for how he provided greater access to the public to view the ceremonies.
These are great changes to see, but, with all of the talk about changing the way government is done, I was hoping for even more… There was an online petition going around encouraging Trudeau to appoint Elizabeth May, Green Party Leader, as Minister of Environment. We think this would have been a great idea!
Trudeau could have used the opportunity to extend an olive branch by offering a cabinet position to a Green, NDP and Conservative MP.
This type of behaviour is pretty unheard of in majority governments but is common place in coalition governments and would have shown that Trudeau was really willing to work together, even when he doesn’t have to
Of course there could be some the concern about whether MP’s from other parties could be trusted in the cabinet positions, but trust issues could always be overcome by ensuring they were put in portfolios with strong Deputy Ministers and loyal civil servants willing to report to the governing party and not just directly to their Minister.
It is time political parties started working together to do what is best for citizens and it is just the type of thing you could expect a YPP government to do!

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