Replenishing the Cabinet

Ontario will be well-represented in a cabinet that keeps most senior ministers where they were while finding room for nine newcomers.

A slew of new faces and a few old ones landed new portfolios in Stephen Harper's cabinet this morning. All told, the cabinet now boasts 39 MPs with at least one representative from every province.

John Baird, Foreign Affairs: Baird moves from his role as government House leader to Foreign Affairs, where hopefully his showboating, partisan rage will be tempered by the responsibility of being Canada's representative to the rest of the world.

Tony Clement, Treasury Board: The top Twitterer on Parliament Hill moves on from Industry to the role vacated by Stockwell Day. He'll now be responsible for monitoring the House's finances and finding ways to cut the deficit.

Christian Paradis, Industry: Harper's point man in Quebec takes Clement's old gig after a stint at Natural Resources. It will be a busy portfolio, with the TSX merger and possible liberalization of the telecom sector falling under his purview.

Joe Oliver, Natural Resources: The former investment banker lands a senior portfolio for a rookie MP, making him the only Toronto MP in cabinet.

Keith Ashfield, Fisheries, and Gail Shea, Revenue: The Maritime Tories switch portfolios, just to keep things interesting, we suppose.

Notables: Bernard Valcourt, a former Mulroney cabinet minister, returns to the table as the head of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; the Department of Indian Affairs gets a name change to Aboriginal Affairs, where John Duncan keeps his job; former OPP commissioner Julian Fantino becomes associate minister of defence; B.C.'s Ed Fast takes over Peter Van Loan's spot as trade minister, and Van Loan goes back to being government House leader; aboriginal leader Peter Penashue will be the Tories' first minister from Newfoundland and Labrador since 2008 as minister of intergovernmental affairs; four of Quebec's five Tory MPs are now in cabinet– in addition to Paradis, the shuffle puts Denis Lebel in Transport, rookie Steve Blaney in Veterans Affairs, and Maxime Bernier as minister of state for small business after getting turfed from Foreign Affairs in 2008; highly touted newcomer Chris Alexander gets shut out; and yes, Bev Oda keeps her job as minister of international co-operation.