Carney’s cabinet to be sworn in on Tuesday in Rideau Hall ceremony
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new cabinet will be sworn in during a ceremony at Rideau Hall on Tuesday, the Governor General’s office has confirmed.
Gov. Gen Mary Simon will preside over the ceremony, which will see new cabinet ministers take the oath of office, a key step for Carney’s Liberal government after securing a minority in the federal election.
Carney, who was sworn in as prime minister in March, will not have to take the oath of office again “but may choose to do so,” a spokesperson for the Privy Council Office told Global News.
That also applies to other ministers who keep the same portfolio they held before the election.
Any new ministers, or those taking on additional portfolios, will need to be sworn in.
Some members of Carney’s brief pre-election cabinet — including former health minister Kamal Khera — lost their bids for re-election.
The Liberals saw several fresh faces newly elected to Parliament as the party increased its seat count to 169, giving Carney many new options for filling his cabinet ranks.
“I would anticipate that some of the key figures like Dominic LeBlanc, Melanie Joly, François-Philippe Champagne … will come back,” Hamish Telford, a political science professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, told Global News last week.
“But more broadly, he now has a much wider range of people to work with” within a larger caucus, he added.
Joly and LeBlanc both accompanied Carney to his White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Joly has served as foreign affairs minister since 2021, while Carney tapped LeBlanc as his international trade minister in addition to the intergovernmental affairs portfolio he has held since 2020.
Carney has given few clues on who he is eying for cabinet positions since his election victory two weeks ago.
“I committed to an efficient cabinet, a focused cabinet, a cabinet with gender parity, and we’ll work towards it, but those final decisions haven’t been made,” the prime minister told reporters last Friday at his first post-election press conference.
Asked specifically if Champagne would feature in his next cabinet, Carney said his former finance minister will “have to wait” for that decision.
The House of Commons is set to return on May 26, and King Charles III will deliver the speech from the throne the following day, officially opening the new session of Parliament.
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