New Transport minister

[boeingboy]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudea ... -1.5869541

New Transport minister is coming. Marc Garneau is out. Wonder if the new minister will be any better.....I doubt it.

[sanjet]

We had a transport minister?

[RatherBeFlying]

Wikipedia notes that he got an engineering degree and has been involved in human rights issues as an MP.

Will he be the one to clean out the stables?

[AngelsSang]

Likely no difference. Just collect their pay, wait for retirement, and get that big retirement package politicians do.

[tsgarp]

This mas a promotion for Garneau. Forgiven Affairs is much more prestigious than transport. The fact that Transport was given to a virtual neophyte tells us how much priority Trudeau gives the portfolio.

[Cavalier44]

This mas a promotion for Garneau. Forgiven Affairs is much more prestigious than transport. The fact that Transport was given to a virtual neophyte tells us how much priority Trudeau gives the portfolio.

Agree with you here. This seems like a bizarre cabinet shuffle to me - Garneau was a ghost as Minister of Transport, having accomplished virtually nothing of note in the last five years. The things that Garneau did have a hand in have been poorly planned and executed disasters (the rollout of the new duty regs, implementation of a mandatory 14-day quarantine for air travelers while eschewing rapid testing at Canadian airports, the new requirement to have a negative PCR test 72 hours before entering Canada brought in with only a week's notice, leaving airlines scrambling to implement new and vaguely defined regulations, etc.).

Minister of Foreign Affairs is a high-profile position and while I don't want to diminish Garneau's personal accomplishments prior to entering politics, nothing during his tenure as Minister of Transport would lead me to believe that he would be any better suited in an even more high-profile public role. Garneau seems much more comfortable Tweeting from the comfort of his home than he does at actually doing his job, I worry to see how that will translate to advancing Canada's interests abroad - especially when it comes to nations who have much more "heft" in the world of negotiations, such as the USA, Russia, or China.

With all that being said, the appointment of a virtually unknown candidate who has no prior experience in any field of transportation to the position of Minister of Transport indicates to me that nothing particularly ambitious is being planned from our government. While I doubt that anyone can be worse than Garneau, I would expect that the role of Alghabra will be to simply occupy the position and not "rock the boat" too much. I remain cautiously optimistic in that nothing can be any worse than what we had already, but I don't see any reason to believe that meaningful action in terms of a government aid package for the airlines is on its way.

[7ECA]

It's simply a cabinet shuffle, with an eye to an election in the coming months. The Government is likely to fall, or be "helped" into falling on either a confidence vote on the budget or on something minor and procedural that will be trumped up into a "confidence" matter (was tried before, remember).

The idea is to have people in cabinet posts, whom will be running again when the writ drops - nothing more.

Weeks ago, it was reported that Elections Canada was hiring workers and looking for office space for a district headquarters in the Vancouver area; with an eye to being ready by March...

[confusedalot]

Well, I see that the garneau thingy seems to have a rather interesting reputation all over. Even out of blogs like this.

And, this guy gets one of the top jobs? That has serious impact on the whole country?

I am worried.

[Inverted2]

We had a transport minister?

Well on paper we did..... I don’t think he did anything during his reign. I wonder if the new guy even knows an elevator from a rudder. I am thinking not.

[ogopogo]

Ha! You should check out our new Space Agency pres..

https://www.canada.ca/en/government/man ... pbell.html

[phillyfan]

Hard to go down from here.

[TheStig]

Omar Alghabra was the Parliamentary Secretary to the PM, so I wouldn't expect him to stray from the party lines. On the other hand political pundits are saying this appointment has implications for the next election and his Mississauga riding is far from a Liberal stronghold and FULL of households dependant on YYZ for their well being.