the biggest thing with hedy is her age. she's 75. she's still going strong, don't get me wrong. and experience is important, to a point. but, you have to balance it out with long term planning, and it's hard to plan a ministry around somebody that should have retired an election or two ago. here's to hoping that hedy has a few more elections left in her, but to realizing that you can't plan around it.

that said, she is uniquely positioned to be a minister of state for seniors, and i think that's a good idea. there's a lot of focus in the media on presenting a younger cabinet. i understand the reasons for this. but, the liberals don't have problems with younger voters. they have problems with older voters. older voters have always skewed right, but not the way they have over the last ten years. i might suggest that this has something to do with the reality that the liberals lost an entire generation of good mps - people like allan rock and brian tobin - in the power shift from chretien to martin. my experience - this is unscientific - is that older people follow politicians the same way that younger people follow media personalities. they latch on to the ones they like, and follow them for extended periods. the fact that older boomers are drastically under-represented in the liberal caucus is no doubt a big reason why the liberals have such a hard time attracting older voters. and, putting out a cabinet full of young people is going to alienate what is almost certainly going to be the most important voting base for years to come. you can't call up hazel forever. and, putting hedy in the senior portfolio may be a mild gesture, but it's the kind of thing they have to do to win elections in the upcoming years, until we get through the demographic glut.

i know most people are pencilling dion in as environment minister, but i think there's a big misunderstanding about the role. the environment minister focuses mostly on things like wetlands and parks. this is important and everything, but it's not the most important post in terms of tackling climate change. it is the minister of natural resources that is going to be faced with these tough decisions, and that is where i would place dion.

that makes joyce murray the best remaining choice for actual environment minister.

that said.....i'm a little confused by the media rhetoric, and am starting to expect a cabinet that may not make a lot of sense. you expect a few goofy articles from the usual suspects. but, the totality of it seems to suggest that there's some co-ordination in setting expectations. it remains to be seen how much of this is just that - setting expectations. but, it seems as though he's set to make a major tactical and logical error, here.

part of the reason i felt ok about voting for a guy that has no business running for this office is that it seemed clear to me that he'd be relying on the experienced people around him. that is, that i didn't vote for trudeau as much as i voted for the liberal party machine. a choice to reject that machine in favour of a cabinet full of rookies is going to resonate very badly. but, there's a caveat to that, too.

scholars of the elder trudeau will point out that one of his major contributions to the way canada works was the dissolution of actual decision making power out of cabinet and to the civil service. the idea was that decisions should be made by life-long bureaucrats, who are appointed on merit and seniority, rather than elected people that more often than not have little real understanding of their files. when trudeau was doing interviews with mansbridge and others, he pointed out repeatedly that he rejected the centralizing approach of his father (picked up strongly by harper) to put power in the pmo and was in favour of devolving power back to the ministries. but, this is kind of a canard - what trudeau did was centralize political power, while shielding the way that ministries actually operate from the political process altogether. there's a kind of marxism in this; it's one of the more explicitly "left" parts of the whole third way approach. yet, it was assumed by everybody that what the younger trudeau meant was a return to parliamentary government, where capable ministers are in charge of their portfolios. if what he meant was that he wished to carry on with his father's movement towards separating the civil service from parliament, he was not at all clear. but, it's the only possible conclusion if he really does come out with a photo op cabinet like this, full of ministers that may accurately reflect a kind of "retail politics" but could not be described as independent or capable.

the message is that these people aren't actually doing anything. and, if that's the case, i'd rather support the abolition of cabinet altogether. i'm not opposed to taxes paying for capable ministers. but, i'd rather see that money spent on something worthwhile than to fund a glossy parliament that is just a public relations front to the civil service.

if the media is right, this is an error in multiple ways. i'm hoping the media is wrong. but, i don't have any evidence to back up the idea that he's going to be more rational about this - it's just faith. and, while i'd like to think that faith is well-placed in the party, there's no empirical reason for me to conclude that it's well-placed in the individual.

think about this...

excluding harper (who falls more into the "generation jones" category - he wasn't a true boomer), canada has managed to avoid a baby boomer prime minister. at this point, it seems safe to conclude it won't happen.

that's remarkable. they remain the largest voting group.

www.straight.com/news/568856/leak-suggests-jody-wilson-raybould-will-be-justin-trudeaus-cabinet