Yeah, they’re all sending me messages bragging about the new Trudeau cabinet: gender parity, diverse, and representative of all of Canada. I am duly impressed.
Now can we get the American presidential candidates to pledge to do likewise with their appointees, once they’re in office? It would be the right thing to do.
I do worry a bit, though, about all the token men they’d have to sign up for positions, taking away slots from better qualified women.
This was making the rounds on Twitter and is awesome… http://www.thebeaverton.com/national/item/2204-50-female-cabinet-appointments-lead-to-5000-increase-in-guys-who-suddenly-care-about-merit-in-cabinet
The great thing is how much actual merit there is. I haven’t read up on all the cabinet ministers, but each one I have comes across as very suited for the job.
@Tabby Lavalamp. The Beaverton is the Canadian version of “The Onion”. However the sentiment seems to be correct, from what I have been reading online.
It’s like guys assume there’s one single value of ‘merit’ that can be objectively measured. Like, there’s probably dozens of people who could do a satisfactory job as a Presidential/Prime Minsterial adviser. At that stage, it’s going to be down to what essentially amounts to a coin flip.
(I remember as a grad student watching the department do a faculty search. You realize that none of the candidates on the shortlist would be a bad choice because bad choices don’t make short lists, and the choice came down to taking a bunch of different factors and trying to figure out which ones would best cover the holes in the department.)
Methos, I was unaware I was posted it as a serious piece of journalism, though looking at my second paragraph I can see how it made it seem that way. But no, I know it’s satire and I should have made it clearer about how there have been serious complaints about merit.
I liked Trudeau’s answer when he was asked, after the swearing in, why the cabinet had gender parity: “Because it’s 2015”.
And in his opening remarks, he said we finally have a cabinet which looks like Canada.
Haha, funnies! In the mean time, I am pondering which guy is going to be a worse president, Trump or Carlsen? Cabinet gender equality is not even in the radar.
But yeah, very good for Canada.
Damn it, I keep typoing “Carson” as “Carlsen”.
Yay!
Also, one of the very first things he did: reinstate the mandatory long-form census!
A representative cabinet, no tokenism and the long-form census all in the last 24 hours? Yass!
Lotarloo, perhaps because you keep confusing his adeptness for the job with Mr. Carlson? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
Wishful thinking, I suspect. No doubt Mr. Arthur Carlson would make a far superior President. Watch him in campaign mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GISoeNnsmcs
Great news about the long-forms census, by the way. (I never did understand why the Reformatories were so dead-set against it, actually.) Now, maybe we can talk about reinstating the long-gun registry [grabs helmet, dives for foxhole]
Do any other Canadians here listen to the Canadaland podcast (or read the website)? It’s a great podcast that examines/criticizes Canadian journalism. The most recent episode had an interesting discussion about the CBC’s Sunday Talk panel about this issue… though on a less serious note, they finished by mentioning the curiously funny way in which a Canadian theatre critic ended up breaking a story about New Zealand’s rugby league.
I definitely recommend it if you have any interest in Canadian politics and journalistic integrity, but it also does a great job at examining things like gender and other social issues (when they come up).
http://canadalandshow.com/
Our new Minister of Defense is a combat vet not a party hack. Our Minister of Science is an actual scientist. Our new PM has already held actual press conferences with questions from the media and long forgotten innovations. Please forgive our giddiness.
I just realize I forgot to clarify *why* I enjoyed Canadaland’s discussion on the panel so much. Basically, the CBC had three guests (two women and one man), and only one of them seemed to have any understanding of gender politics. A (roughly paraphrased) quote from the Canadaland podcast: “It was like a philosophy 101 class where there were two eager young students attempting to constantly contribute to the discussion, and one grad student who needed the class to graduate, gritting their teeth through the whole thing, trying to field questions such as ‘why do we really need women represented in parliament anyways?'”
Here’s a link to the panel they were discussing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnWJ-l5aRLA
@Tabby:
No, it’s this Carlsen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY27lgnPKWI
I support everything Trudeau has done so far, but Bill C-51 needs an incinerator, not some white out.
The top posts in the administration are typically finance, and then defence, foreign affairs and justice about equal between them. Here’s my thoughts:
Finance – Bill Morneau. Not sure I’m excited about this guy: he joined his dad’s firm and made it big. So he’s a typical white dude big-businessman. Problem is, countries aren’t businesses. Paul Martin — the previous liberal finance minister — had a similar past and mixed reviews of his performance. On the one hand he crushed the economy for a couple years, on the other he got the debt down, and he refused to deregulate banks, which led us to survive the big crash reasonably well.
Defence – Harjit Sajjan. Combat vets for defence is unusual, but Harper’s first defence minister was also one, after which it went to a series of lawyers. It’s *always* been a white guy, except for the six months it was a white woman (Kim Campbell). I chuckle to see India’s reaction to having a Sikh at the table representing us. Or that of the racists who throw around the “raghead” insult.
He was a commander in fucking Kandahar. Canada took the Kandahar posting, deliberately the bloodiest posting in Afghanistan, as an excuse for why we couldn’t follow the US into the Iraq adventure. One of the issues facing the new government is finally dealing with the atrocities we committed in Afghanistan, particularly when it comes to the jails we ran (the old government kept trying to shush it all up). Ironically, last time the Liberals took over from the tories, in 1993, one of the issues facing their new government was dealing with atrocities we’d committed in Somalia, particularly when it came to the jails we ran. For all Sajjan’s credentials, I’m not sure that naming a commander from the theatre where atrocities were committed is going to lead to a good investigation.
Foreign Affairs – Stéphane Dion. Political scientist (Ph.D. from Sciences Po — highly prestigious), prof before going into politics. Held Harper to minority government when Dion was head of the liberal party, but lost badly; one of the main issues in that election was Dion’s proposal for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. He’s basically Canada’s John Kerry. I’m pleased he’s in a role where he can be most useful, and not a rung above his level of competence. White dude. First woman in this post died just this summer; bet she would have been pleased by the cabinet.
Justice – Jody Wilson-Raybould. Lawyer, specialized in first nations treaty negotiations, worked up the political ranks to become the Regional Chief of BC first nations. She’s the first first-nations justice minister (at least the first openly so; there’s enough metissage that it’s likely some prior ones had claim to be first nations). Again, all justice ministers to date have been white. She’ll be the third woman (Kim Campbell was the first here too, but for a lot longer).
The rest of the slate is interesting, but these are the ministries that traditionally hold the real power.
Wilson-Raybould is the choice that excites me the most: there’s major justice (legal and social) issues with first nations in Canada. There’s the missing women scandal that Harper wanted to shush up; starting an inquiry is one of the big promises in this election. There’s the Val d’Or scandal that just erupted and seems likely to consume a lot more than one small city (police sexually assaulting first nations women). There’s housing crises. And there’s the resource extraction issues, with first nations communities being on the forefront of the fight against the tar sands pollution, pipelines, and fracking on their lands. A lot of the biggest issues that really affect Canadians are under her purview.
Nice PR job on Trudeau’s part. Kind of reminds me of how Americans were all excited about Obama. But he was basically Reagan v.2 in the end. Unlike the rest of Canada, I remember the last half dozen times the Liberals were in power. The only difference with them and the Conservatives is that the Cons were open about their corruption. (You Americans will recognize the parallels with how the Democrats will pay lip service to their morals when being watched and how the Republicans give not a damn.) I have no optimism for this parliament.
Within two years it’ll be business as usual with the Liberals and all of this progress will vanish. These folks either getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar or pushed out by lobbyists or Trudeau consolidating power in the PM’s office.
If the NDP remembered that people voted for them to be the NDP and not Liberal Lite they might have gotten more seats… and stayed in power on the provincial level as well… there *might* have been some lasting change in Canada going forward. As always, first past the post voting is a path to the lowest common denominator. I can see why Americans place no trust in the idea of a third party.
But maybe I’m just a crank old pessimist and this really is a new era Liberal Party. Maybe Canada has learned it’s lesson after a decade of being run by the policy arm of Alberta’s oil industry. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
Bullshit. The corrupt Liberal party under Chrétien and Martin is not remotely similar to the Harper tories.
As for the NDP, maybe if Mulcair had run a positive campaign like Trudeau did it might have turned out better. Instead, he was spending a third of his time dishing on Harper, a third of his time dishing on Trudeau, and we’d all tuned out by the time he would talk about what he was up to. My local candidate’s campaign threw out the negative crap and won a tight race.
I disagree. Grumpy Mulcair won me over because he reflected my opinion of Canadian politics. I wanted a candidate who was going to metaphorically demolish Parliament and build something new. The NDP platform was never that radical, but any chance we had to reverse Harper’s damage went up in smoke when Mulcair switched to Dad Mulcair. Grumpy Mulcair might’ve bought a lot more anti-Harper votes.
Cabinet qualifying merit has many meanings in Canadian politics. Sometimes, for example, it means “good enough at campaigning to be the only candidate from the PM’s party to win election in that province”, since having every province represented in the cabinet is a thing that many PM’s have considered to be important.
The anti-Harper votes were going to the party that was in the lead and wasn’t the tories. The NDP was that party at the start. They kept their base, but the swing votes all went Liberal at the end.
Not only is there the diversity mentioned, but half of the new ministers were sworn in without any religious pledge, omitting the whole “so help me God” part. And nobody even cared.
numerobis;
You’ll find out that you’re wrong soon enough.
It was a tight three-way race until the niqab became an issue, and once the NDP started falling in Quebec it was over for them. The niqab issue. My happiness at being Canadian took a big hit over that.
williamgeorge@23: you honestly expect Trudeau to refuse to investigate women’s issues, to muzzle scientists, to fight against efforts to limit carbon pollution, to cut taxes to the rich, to subvert the elections process, to neuter the census, and to bail out of peacekeeping efforts?
Or does none of that matter and all you care about is the binary “is there corruption Y/N” question.
Yes, there will be corruption. No, I won’t be happy with everything. There’s more to life than that.
Keystone XL dead. Trudeau “voiced his disappointment” but I suspect was actually pretty happy about not needing to kill it himself.
#26 numerobis:
My favorite part surrounding the causes of the KXL “withdrawl request” by TransCanada was the complete lack of discussion about oil sitting at $45/barrel.
Complete lack of discussion as per this story, which uses about the same number as yours?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/transcanada-asks-u-s-to-delay-keystone-xl-pipeline-review-1.3300867
That said, oil prices matter, but they are likely to increase again in the future; it’s a boom-bust market. TRP didn’t ask to withdraw when oil prices fell, they asked to withdraw shortly after Trudeau got elected and State was about to render their decision.
@ #17
If you think Obama is Reagan v.2, you know nothing about Reagan.
OMG, the MRAs have reared their ugly heads in Canadia.
Reddit thread: Because it’s 2015
In brief, there’s a large cadre of men-children who all of a sudden feel it’s important that we scrutinize our cabinet ministers for merit, and that Prime Minister Trudeau’s “quota” of 50/50 gender parity is bullshit.
TA-BER-NAC.
Vatican Black Ops, #30
I guess the Beaverton article Tabby Lavalamp (#1) posted wasn’t far off…
How fundamentally irrational that people are celebrating not the fact that the most qualified people were selected for the positions but the fact that 50% of the selected happen to have vaginas.
For the record, I’m not arguing these women are not qualified; they could very well be, but that doesn’t seem to be what people are so happy about.
Mikko Sandt, #32
We are assuming all the cabinet selections are more or less qualified. Then we are celebrating the fact that 50% of those qualified people are qualified women.
The question whether each cabinet selection is qualified or not is a completely different topic.
There is never a “most qualified” person for any of these jobs. Perhaps people are celebrating the fact that, for once, qualified people are not automatically dismissed because of their gender.
Perhaps people are celebrating the fact that, for once, qualified people are not automatically dismissed because of their gender.
And this assumption is based on the fact that exactly half of the cabinet members are women? If 70% of the cabinet had been women, should I draw the conclusion that many men were dismissed because of their gender?
From what I have read, Trudeau specifically promised that half of the cabinet would consist of women; in other words, he made female genitalia a qualification. How can anyone see this as anything but utterly idiotic?
Care to show me with evidence, that your opinion that a penis is required for competence is absolutely correct? Half the population is qualified as the other half. That is what the science shows.
Care to elaborate without sounding like a misogynist?
It doesn’t seem any more idiotic than the longstanding expectation that cabinet posts will reflect all regions of the country and will include both Anglophones and Francophones. Funny how it’s suddenly a problem when there’s an explicit commitment to ensure that women are equally represented.
Mikko Sandt,
What’s wrong with choosing 10 qualified men and 10 qualified women?
You say you’re not accusing the women of not being qualified, but your objection to this whole thing goes against that.
If the women are qualified, then why do you suspect he has risked having an unqualified cabinet?
Trudeau also promised that 50% of the cabinet would not have vaginas.
I’m probably not reading this right, because it seems to me you are stating that women are generally better qualified than men. Misandry is no more justifiable than misogyny, or what?
@gunnar jokobbriem, #41:
And writing steely words is no better than writing words of irony.
So what?
Crip Dyke @42:
More carbon! Isn’t that better?
Ah, ok, my irony detector was turned off. Thanks! :-)
From Tabby Lavalamp’s link @1:
What took ’em so long to show up?
Rob Grigjanis @45
They’ve been too busy fawning over and stroking Andrew Coyne’s… merit to man their keyboards.
Federal government unmuzzles scientists
Another data point against the idea that Trudeau is much the same as Harper.
@Mikko the thikko
Canada has more than 20 people in it.
The population is half female and half male.
Intelligence and ability is uniformly distributed across genders.
Therefore a 50/50 split of genders in the cabinet makes perfect sense.
In a country with a population of millions of people it is likely that there will be many people capable of filling a cabinet role. Therefore there is no downside to the idea that the cabinet ought to reflect the make up of the population.
Obviously, this is more meaningful in a context where rich, white guys have tended to be the majority in most cabinets across the western world.
If you cannot grasp this simple concept than I hope you have not already reproduced and will not reproduce in the future.
Then.
Apologies.