Ontario gave Stephen Harper the first Conservative majority in almost a quarter of a century and, in exchange, it will be making itself at home in the driver’s seat of the revamped cabinet for the foreseeable future.
Almost half of the ministers appointed or reappointed on Wednesday are from Ontario, and for the first time since the Liberals lost power five years ago, the city of Toronto will have one of its own at the table.
But in the end, the numbers and the new faces matter less than the power concentrated in the hands of a few familiar ones.
In Harper’s first majority cabinet, the heavy lifting continues to rest on the shoulders of a few top performers who mostly hail from Ontario.
That starts with the Ontario troika of former provincial Conservative ministers who helped turn the province a deeper shade of blue in the May 2 election.
As expected, Jim Flaherty was reappointed as finance minister. One of his top priorities will be to rebalance the federal books. The government has promised to do so without raising taxes or cutting social transfers to the provinces.
The brunt of the savings Flaherty will be looking for will have to come from other federal programs and, as president of the Treasury Board, Tony Clement will be expected to deliver them.
Clement’s appointment to this central role is bound to send shivers down the already fragile spine of the federal bureaucracy. Within the civil service, last year’s census controversy earned the minister a solid reputation for defending the indefensible.
By far the most telling sign that the prime minister, who put together this cabinet, brings a more seasoned outlook to the business of government than when he was first elected is John Baird’s appointment to foreign affairs.
It could be construed as a just reward for having had the unenviable task of applying some green veneer to the government’s tarnished environment record in the first Conservative mandate and for handling the fort as House leader in the last minority Commons.
But it also confirms that Baird’s talents as a political operator will be less essential to the day-to-day life of a majority government.
With the decision to redeploy a trusted minister at foreign affairs, the days when Harper treated foreign policy as a cumbersome distraction seem to be behind him.
The future funding of medicare is expected to be the top federal-provincial issue of the new mandate. That’s a discussion to which Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq has so far brought a very low profile.
Her reappointment suggests that Ottawa will continue to approach the health-care debate almost exclusively from the fiscal angle and leave the more meaty matter of transformative change to the provinces.
Few constituencies have greeted the advent of a Conservative majority with more trepidation than the cultural community. On balance, the decision to keep James Moore in place at heritage will likely help soothe its frayed nerves.
In uncertain times, it is usually safer to have a strong minister whose influence is on the rise than a well-meaning but untested one.
The biggest promotions handed out on Wednesday went to Quebec ministers Christian Paradis and Denis Lebel, respectively elevated to the sensitive industry and transport portfolios.
In total, four of the five Quebec MPs sit in cabinet. Harper ultimately made the most of the thin material Quebec left him with on election night.
Had the prime minister not been in such need of warm Quebec bodies, Maxime Bernier might have remained on the back bench.
The man who left the foreign affairs portfolio in disgrace three years ago came back through the small door of the lower tier of the cabinet on Wednesday, in the junior position of minister of state for small business and tourism.
Mind you, during his time out of the cabinet, Bernier stepped outside the policy perimeter of the government on so many issues that it is hard to think of a major portfolio he could have handled without a lot of adult supervision.
Chantal Hebert is a syndicated Toronto Star columnist based in Ottawa.