News Analysis
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a number of appointments to fill vacancies in the government apparatus and has created new roles in the bureaucracy in the weeks before his expected resignation.
Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 he intended to resign after the Liberal Party chooses a new leader. That leadership race will end on March 9 and Trudeau will pass the baton to his successor, six months short of 10 years in power.
Since the Jan. 6 announcement, Trudeau has appointed five new senators, including executive Duncan Wilson and former Mountie Baltej Dhillon for B.C., businesswoman Danièle Henkel and economist Martine Hébert for Quebec, and vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture Todd Lewis for Saskatchewan.
This has brought the total number of senators to 100 out of 105 seats in the Upper Chamber. Out of the currently sitting senators, 80 have been appointed by Trudeau, 17 by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and three by Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
Pending further Senate appointments before he formally steps down, Trudeau will have named 95 new senators during his three mandates. Trudeau is surpassed only by William Mackenzie King in Senate appointments with 103. Mackenzie King, however, served for almost 22 years as prime minister, more than twice Trudeau’s time in power.
Ambassadors and Judges
Other than naming new senators, Trudeau’s government has issued more than 60 Orders in Council related to appointments since early January. Those include everything from ambassadors to judges, to membership or leadership of federal boards, to appointments to senior-level positions in the public service.
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Trudeau has named seven new ambassadors or high commissioners. The most high-profile diplomatic appointment is former PEI Premier Dennis King becoming ambassador to Ireland. King, a Progressive Conservative, stepped down as premier on Feb. 21.
His government also appointed a new ambassador in Israel, but this time a career diplomat was chosen for the role.
Along with filling vacancies, Trudeau also created two new roles in recent weeks.
Liberal MP and former Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, who said he was not seeking re-election after being removed from cabinet in July 2023, was appointed as special envoy for Syria.
Alghabra’s role is to advise cabinet on “Canadian efforts to support the Syrian people in addressing their pressing needs and transition toward an inclusive and peaceful future.” After years of civil war, the Islamist opposition toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December.
Another new role created by Trudeau pertains to the tariff threat from U.S. President Donald Trump. After broad 25 percent tariffs were announced in early February, Canada and the United States struck a deal for a 30-day pause with Trudeau announcing he would appoint a “fentanyl czar.”
This title does not in fact exist in the federal bureaucracy. The former Mountie appointed in the role, Kevin Brosseau, is officially named the Commissioner of Canada’s Fight Against Fentanyl.
Along with these changes, Trudeau also recently shuffled parliamentary secretaries to cabinet ministers.
Comparison
Over the same period last year of early January to early March, the Trudeau government had issued 107 Orders in Council related to appointments, so around 40 over what has been done in the final days of Trudeau’s tenure.
Among those appointments, there were 22 judges and two ambassadors, including former minister Carolyn Bennett being named ambassador to Denmark. Trudeau had also appointed three senators.
The Harper government, in the three months prior to the launch of the 2015 general election, had issued 213 Orders in Council related to appointments. Among those were the naming of several dozen ambassadors.
There were no appointments to the Senate, however, with Harper’s last appointments to the Upper Chamber taking place in 2013.
Canada is facing a similar situation to when Pierre Trudeau resigned in 1984 to be replaced by John Turner, who did not hold a seat in the House of Commons.
In the Liberal leadership race, former central banker Mark Carney has been leading other candidates by a large margin in the categories of fundraising and cabinet and caucus endorsements.
If he wins the race, Carney would become a rare unelected prime minister and will need to decide how he will gain a House of Commons seat. His main options will be to ask the governor general to dissolve Parliament before the end of prorogation on March 24, or to wait for opposition parties to topple the government in a non-confidence vote as they’ve all pledged.
There’s also the possibility that Carney could attempt to make deals with the opposition parties and run instead in a byelection.
