Trudeau-Cabinet, 3rd Writethru
code:2
Update:RESTORES background
Eds:Will be Writethru
INDEX: National, Politics
HL:Cabinet prospects seen boarding buses at Ottawa hotel, bound for Rideau Hall
THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA — On the long-awaited first day of Justin Trudeau’s government, Twitter has come alive with sightings of Liberal cabinet prospects.
Veteran MPs like Stephane Dion, Ralph Goodale, Marc Garneau, Scott Brison, Dominic LeBlanc and John McCallum have been spotted boarding a bus at a downtown Ottawa hotel.
So too was Chrystia Freeland, the Toronto MP who joined the Liberal ranks in a byelection in 2013, as well as former solicitor general Lawrence MacAulay and upstart Catherine McKenna, who defeated the NDP’s Paul Dewar.
Others that were spotted include newcomers Bill Morneau — tapped in some media reports as a possible finance minister — and Jim Carr.
Trudeau and his new cabinet are to take a bus to Rideau Hall for today’s swearing-in ceremony, arriving en masse to symbolize a unified team.
In a statement from Rideau Hall, a spokesperson for Gov. Gen. David Johnston confirmed that Stephen Harper had resigned as the country’s 22nd prime minister.
The new Liberal prime minister and cabinet are scheduled to hold their first meeting later today.
They are widely expected to take immediate action on their campaign promise to reinstate the long-form census, signalling the start of a new era that will be starkly different than the decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper.
During the campaign, Trudeau promised to reinstate the mandatory long-form census as part of a broader commitment to return to “evidence-based” decision making by his government.
And his new ministers will also emerge from their first meeting to face questions from the media — another departure from the Harper era.
Under Harper, reporters were banned from waiting in the hallway outside the cabinet room, where ministers had scrummed for decades — indeed, the media wasn’t even notified when cabinet meetings were taking place.
Virtually everything about Wednesday’s ceremony is designed to highlight change.
For the first time, a general invitation has been issued to the public to gather for the event and giant TV screens are being set up on the grounds of Rideau Hall so that everyone can watch the swearing-in proceedings.
Huge lineups of people began to form early today and have only grown longer under unseasonably warm Ottawa sunshine.
In an email to supporters on Tuesday, Trudeau also suggested he’ll recall Parliament soon — likely early next month, after attending a whirlwind series of international leaders’ summits — to deliver quickly on the central plank of the Liberal election platform.
“We’ll also be getting straight to work at home: The first bill introduced by our government will be a tax cut for the middle class so we can get started right away growing our economy, strengthening our middle class and helping those working hard to join it,” he said.
The composition of Trudeau’s cabinet has been a closely guarded secret but it’s evident that it, too, is aimed at reflecting not just a new government but a new generation at the helm of the Liberal party.
Informed speculation suggests that not all of the star candidates Trudeau went to great pains to recruit have made the cut, the victims of geography and the leader’s promise to construct a cabinet that is smaller than Harper’s 39-member ministry and made up equally of women and men.
09:40ET 04-11-15
