Seasoned team dominates Harper's inner circle

OTTAWA -- Within Prime Minister Stephen Harper's new cabinet, which was unveiled Oct 30, is a powerful inner circle of ministers designed to project economic calm, credibility and competence in the face of financial turmoil around the world.
The circle of about half a dozen ministers with big, economic-related portfolios is populated almost exclusively by loyal and dependable foot soldiers from Harper's last cabinet.
Three of them - Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Industry Minister Tony Clement and John Baird, minister of transport and infrastructure - hail from Ontario and the cabinets of former premier Mike Harris.
However, the most powerful man in the government, Harper, and Jim Prentice, one of his most trusted ministers and the new environment chief, are from Calgary.
"It's the Calgary two-step married to a Harris chorus," said David Taras, a political scientist at the University of Calgary.
Prentice hardly qualifies as the kind of right-hand man, or minister of everything, to Harper that politicians such as John Manley, Don Mazankowski, Allan MacEachen and, most famously, CD Howe, were to the prime ministers of their day.
But the Calgary lawyer is the closest thing Harper has to a "go to" person. Prentice has held key portfolios, including Industry and Indian and Northern Affairs, and he will continue as chairman of the pivotal cabinet committee on operations, which is responsible for day-to-day co-ordination of the government's agenda.
Now that U.S.-born credit and market meltdown has gone global and thrown a wrench into Canadian economic prospects for the foreseeable future, Harper has clearly turned to the tried and trusted to take on the most critical portfolios.
The man accused by critics of running a one-man-band government appeared at pains to talk up his "team" during a news conference after the cabinet was sworn in.
Norman Hillmer, a political historian at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Canadians are seeing the "careful manager" side of Harper.
"He's still going to be a control freak because that's his nature," Hillmer said. "But he has a new challenge to deal with this (economic) crisis, which is really unprecedented in modern memory, and so he's doing what is necessary. He's putting all of the experience in the top jobs."
Harper shared some of his cabinet-making strategy at a news conference.
"This is not a time to take risks," the PM told reporters as he explained his choices, particularly his decision to keep Flaherty in Finance. "We've tried to move some of our strongest ministers into key economic portfolios."
Harper said shifting Prentice to Environment from Industry should not be interpreted as punting him from the economic team. "We can't separate environmental and economic policy," Harper said, echoing what Prentice told reporters within minutes of being sworn in.
"One of the most difficult challenges that we face is the responsibility to be stewards of the environment and, at the same time, protect our economy and advancing our economic interests," Prentice said after he emerged from the swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall. "That balancing responsibility is why environment is now an economic portfolio."
Harper's selection of political novice Lisa Raitt, a former CEO of the Toronto Port Authority, as minister of natural resources was the only time he broke his pattern of naming experience to senior economic and international posts.
Rounding out the power circle are Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, the former transport minister, International Trade Minister Stockwell Day, the country's former public safety minister, and Vic Toews, who remains minister of the Treasury Board, which is responsible for the government's financial management.
Day, who already is familiar with Canada-U.S. border and security issues, will be front and centre if the North American Free Trade Agreement is targeted by a new U.S. administration and Congress after the Nov 4 election.
He also inherits stalled world trade talks, Harper's promise to enhance trade with the European Union, and will take on the chairmanship of the cabinet committee on the Afghan mission.
Toews' Treasury Board job will be one of the toughest in the coming months as the government tries to cope with shrinking revenues from a slowing economy. The Treasury Board must approve all significant spending.