News
PM’s pre-election shuffle eyes border, trade and bruising provincial relations
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau has unveiled his pre-election cabinet in a shuffle designed to showcase new faces and to address increasingly troublesome files — from border security, to trade promotion, to the potential for bare-knuckle scraps with the provinces.
In Wednesday’s shuffle, the prime minister gave new portfolios to six ministers and expanded his cabinet by promoting five other MPs to his front benches. The shakeup will boost the profiles of more members of Trudeau’s team, which has long relied on his personal brand, ahead of next year’s federal election.
The moves also look to reinforce possible weak spots.
In one key change, Trudeau confidant and long-time MP Dominic LeBlanc moved from fisheries to intergovernmental affairs, elevating him into a higher-profile role that’s destined to become particularly turbulent.
As a result, Canadians should expect to see a lot more of LeBlanc. At the helm of the unpredictable provincial relations file, the sometimes-pugnacious politician will have more bureaucratic powers at his fingertips with support from several departments.
The federal-provincial dynamic is set to become more confrontational for Trudeau’s Liberals following the recent election of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Doug Ford. Over the coming months, there’s potential for more conflicts if Quebec and Alberta elect right-leaning governments of their own.
The new cabinet lineup has also been crafted to handle Canada’s complicated relationship with the United States. Following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, Ottawa has faced growing challenges related to irregular border crossers and big unknowns surrounding Canada-U.S. trade, including an escalating tariff dispute and the difficult renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“I think there’s no question that the international context is constantly changing,” Trudeau said Wednesday after announcing his new cabinet at Rideau Hall.
“There is certainly a level of clarity for Canadians, for businesses, for everyone across this country that we need to diversify our markets, we need to ensure that we are not as dependent on the United States.”
To expand Canada’s trade interests beyond the U.S., Trudeau moved natural resources minister Jim Carr into the international trade portfolio. Carr’s job will be to re-energize stalled efforts towards a trade deal with China, to promote the Canada-EU free trade agreement among European countries that have yet to ratify it and to continue to push for deeper economic integration into Latin America.
The shuffle will also raise the profiles of five Liberal MPs entering cabinet for the first time.
The newcomers include Bill Blair, who was named minister of the new portfolio of border security and organized crime reduction.
The former Toronto police chief will be responsible for the thorny political issues of border management and a surge of migrants at unofficial entry points, as well as gun violence and the complex process of cannabis legalization.
Other new ministers include Mary Ng, who oversees small business and export promotion. The Toronto-area MP was an adviser to Trudeau before her byelection win last year.
Filomena Tassi, a Hamilton MP and former high-school chaplain, assumes the new cabinet file dedicated to the needs of seniors.
Jonathan Wilkinson, a North Vancouver MP, is taking over from LeBlanc as minister of fisheries, oceans and the Coast Guard. The Rhodes Scholar served as parliamentary secretary to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
Mandate letters for the new ministers are expected later this summer.
In Quebec, veteran MP Pablo Rodriguez will succeed Melanie Joly, a fellow Montrealer, as heritage minister. The move will position Rodriguez as a key minister responsible for selling the Liberals to Quebec, a critical electoral battleground for the party.
Joly, who struggled at times in her role as heritage minister, was shunted to tourism, official languages and la Francophonie.
Trudeau put the controversial pipeline file in the hands of Amarjeet Sohi, who represents an Edmonton riding. Sohi, who will take over Carr’s natural resources portfolio, handed off his infrastructure file to Francois-Philippe Champagne, the former international trade minister.
The responsibilities of five existing ministers were also revamped. Many cabinet members with key roles stayed put, including McKenna, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.
Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt said Trudeau’s shuffle highlights areas where the government has failed to deliver on its promises.
“They’re failing in trade, they’re failing in pipelines, they’re failing in infrastructure and as a result those ministers have been moved to other portfolios — this is desperate attempt to hit that reset button,” Raitt said.
“If Justin Trudeau had thought the last two-and-a-half years had gone well, he wouldn’t be making these kinds of changes.”
Raitt also said she’s concerned about Ottawa’s decision to have LeBlanc — whom she described as “extremely partisan” — and Blair deal with the provinces. Blair sparred with the Ford family during his time as police chief.
Ian Brodie, who served as chief of staff for former prime minister Stephen Harper, said in a tweet that Blair’s appointment shows the Liberals are worried Ontario’s Ford government can hurt them over border security and the migrant issues. Brodie believes Blair will make things personal for Ford and the Liberals will hope the premier “gets unhinged.”
Indeed, the Liberals will have to manage a progressively vexing provincial landscape.
Provincial ballots are coming in Quebec this fall and Alberta next spring, and Ottawa already has a difficult relationship with British Columbia’s NDP government over federal support for the contentious Trans Mountain pipeline.
At the moment, there’s also risk the Ottawa-Ontario relationship could be severely strained over key issues, including the federal carbon-pricing plan and management of the migrant influx.
— with files from Lee Berthiaume, Janice Dickson and Mike Blanchfield
Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press
By Jen Hodgson
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is using taxpayer money to pad its bureaucracy, while reducing the number of journalists on staff, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
“CBC defends its very existence based on its journalism, but its number of journalists are going down while its bureaucracy keeps getting bigger and taxpayer costs keeps going up,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Why does the government keep giving CBC more taxpayer money if barely anyone is watching and its number of journalists keeps going down?”
The CBC employed 745 staff with “journalist” or “reporter” in their job title in 2021. That number dropped to 649 by 2025, the records obtained by the CTF show. Of the 6,100 total employees disclosed by the records, just 11 per cent of CBC staff had “journalist” or “reporter” as their job title in 2025, according to the records.
Even journalist roles such as editors, producers and hosts declined between 2021 and 2025.
While the number of journalists employed by the state broadcaster fell, the number of other bureaucrats grew. The total number of CBC management positions increased to 949 in 2025, up from 935 in 2021.
Bureaucratic roles such as “administrators,” “advisors,” “analysts” and sales staff all increased steadily during the same period.
Management positions saw the steepest growth, with titles like “national director,” “project lead,” “senior manager” and “supervisor” leading the surge.
These trends undermine the CBC’s long-standing claim that its frontline journalism justifies its existence. Despite bureaucratic bloat and fewer journalism positions, the CBC continues to promote its news coverage as a reason it deserves more than $1 billion in annual taxpayer funding.
Separate access-to-information records obtained by the CTF show further proof of CBC’s bloated bureaucracy.
The CBC has more than 250 directors, 450 managers and 780 producers who are paid more than $100,000 per year.
The CBC also employed 130 advisers, 81 analysts, 120 hosts, 80 project leads, 30 lead architects, 25 supervisors, among other positions, who were paid more than $100,000 last year, according to access-to-information records. The CBC redacted the roles for more than 200 employees.
CBC’s CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard insists the broadcaster is a “precious public asset” that provides “trustworthy news and information.”
CBC’s previous CEO, Catherine Tait, made similar comments throughout her 6.5-year tenure.
“A Canada without the CBC is a Canada without local news [in some places],” Tait said in 2022. If funding were withheld, there would be “fewer journalists to hold decision-makers at all levels to account.”’
“Local news is absolutely at the core of what we do,” Tait said in a 2020 interview. “Canadians are coming to the CBC in numbers like we’ve never seen before.”
However, CBC News Network only accounts for about 1.8 per cent of TV audience share, according to its own data.
Meanwhile, taxpayer funding to CBC will surpass $1.4 billion this year, according to the federal government’s Main Estimates. The broadcaster has spent about $5.4 billion of taxpayers’ money over the last five years, according to the government of Canada.
Prime Minister Mark Carney claimed “our public broadcaster is underfunded” during the federal election. He pledged an initial $150-million annual funding increase and said that number could rise even higher.
CBC paid out $18.4 million in bonuses in 2024 after it eliminated hundreds of jobs. Following backlash from across the political spectrum, CBC ended its bonuses and handed out record high pay raises costing $37.7 million.
“Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for an office full of middle managers pretending to be reporters,” Terrazzano said. “The CBC’s own records prove it has fat to cut and if Carney is serious about saving money, he would force CBC to cut its bureaucratic bloat.
“Or better yet, Carney should defund the CBC.”
Internet
It’s only a matter of time before the government attaches strings to mainstream media subsidies
Misinformation is not exclusive to alternative online news organizations
In a previous world, whether they succeeded or failed at that was really no one’s business, at least provided the publisher wasn’t knowingly spreading false information intended to do harm. That is against the law, as outlined in Section 372 of the Criminal Code, which states:
“Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to injure or alarm a person, conveys information that they know is false, or causes such information to be conveyed by letter or any means of telecommunication.”
Do that, and you can be imprisoned for up to two years.
But if a publisher was simply offering poorly researched, unbalanced journalism, and wave after wave of unchallenged opinion pieces with the ability to pervert the flow of information and leave the public with false or distorted impressions of the world, he or she was free to do so. Freedom of the press and all that.
The broadcasting world has always been different. Licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), content produced there must, according to the Broadcasting Act, be of “high standard”—something that the CRTC ensures through its proxy content regulator, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC).
Its most recent decision, for instance, condemned Sportsnet Ontario for failing to “provide a warning before showing scenes of extraordinary violence” when it broadcast highlights of UFC mixed martial arts competitions during morning weekend hours when children could watch. If you don’t understand how a warning would have prevented whatever trauma the highlights may have caused or how that might apply to the internet, take comfort in the fact that you aren’t alone.
The CRTC now has authority over all video and audio content posted digitally through the Online Streaming Act, and while it has not yet applied CRTC-approved CBSC standards to it, it’s probably only a matter of time before it does.
The same will—in my view—eventually take place regarding text news content. Since it has become a matter of public interest through subsidies, it’s inevitable that “high standard” expectations will be attached to eligibility. In other words, what once was nobody’s business is now everybody’s business. Freedom of the, er, press and all that.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith
Which raises the point: is the Canadian public well informed by the news industry, and who exactly will be the judge of that now that market forces have been, if not eliminated, at least emasculated?
For instance, as former Opposition leader Preston Manning recently wondered on Substack, how can it be that “62 per cent of Ontarians,” according to a Pollara poll, believe Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to be a separatist?
“The truth is that Premier Smith—whom I’ve known personally for a long time—is not a separatist and has made that clear on numerous occasions to the public, the media, and anyone who asks her,” he wrote.
I, too, have been acquainted for many years with the woman Globe and Mailcolumnist Andrew Coyne likes to call “Premier Loon” and have the same view as Manning, whom I have also known for many years: Smith is not a separatist.
Manning’s theory is that there are three reasons for Ontarians’ disordered view—the first two being ignorance and indifference.
The third and greatest, he wrote, is “misinformation—not so much misinformation transmitted via social media, because it is especially older Ontarians who believe the lie about Smith—but misinformation fed into the minds of Ontarians via the traditional media” which includes CBC, CTV, Global, and “the Toronto-based, legacy print media.”
No doubt, some members of those organizations would protest and claim the former Reform Party leader is the cause of all the trouble.
Such is today’s Canada, where the flying time between Calgary and Toronto is roughly the same as between London and Moscow, and the sense of east-west cultural dislocation is at times similar. As Rudyard Kipling determined, the twain shall never meet “till earth and sky stand presently at God’s great judgment seat.”
This doesn’t mean easterners and westerners can’t get along. Heavens no. But what it does illustrate is that maybe having editorial coverage decisions universally made in Hogtown about Cowtown (the author’s outdated terminology), Halifax, St John’s, Yellowknife, or Prince Rupert isn’t helping national unity. It is ridiculous, when you think about it, that anyone believes a vast nation’s residents could have compatible views when key decisions are limited to those perched six degrees south of the 49th parallel within earshot of Buffalo.
But CTV won’t change. Global can’t. The Globe is a Toronto newspaper, and most Postmedia products have become stripped-down satellites condemned to eternally orbit 365 Bloor Street East.
The CRTC is preoccupied with finding novel ways to subsidize broadcasters to maintain a status quo involving breakfast shows. So we can’t expect any changes there, nor can we from the major publishers.
Which leaves the job to the CBC, whose job it has always been to make sure the twain could meet. That makes it fair to assume Manning will be writing for many years to come about Toronto’s mainstream media and misinformation about the West.
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
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