Pierre Poilievre Release Shadow Cabinet Picks – Leaves Out Woke Michelle Rempel Garner

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre released the list of MPs he has chosen for Shadow Cabinet positions this morning, which have overall pleased the party base.

Some of the most important positions (author’s opinion) were filled with the following people:

• Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Agri-Food and Food Security – John Barlow

• Shadow Minister for Canadian Heritage – Rachel Thomas

• Shadow Minister for Finance and Middle Class Prosperity – Jasraj Singh Hallan

• Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs – Hon. Michael Chong

• Shadow Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship – Tom Kmiec

• Shadow Minister for International Trade – Kyle Seeback

• Shadow Minister for Small Business Recovery and Growth – Brad Vis

• Shadow Minister for Supply Chain Issues – Matt Jeneroux

• Shadow Minister for Civil Liberties – Marilyn Gladu

• Shadow Minister for Health – Dr. Stephen Ellis

• Shadow Minister for Red Tape Reduction – Scot Davidson

• Shadow Minister for Justice and Attorney General of Canada – Hon. Rob Moore

• Shadow Minister for Transport – Mark Strahl

• Shadow Minister for National Defence – James Bezan

• Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Communities – Dr. Leslyn Lewis

If you are wanting the see the full list of Shadow Minister and Associate Minister appointments you can find them on the Conservative Party’s website at the link here.

The general impression of the people chosen for the roles tends to be that they were picked for their overall competence and independent political clout and not their relationship with the party leader. Under the previous elected Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, Pierre Poilievre had actually been replaced as Shadow Finance Minister and replaced by Ed Fast, which many insiders saw as a move to try and suppress Pierre’s popularity, and centre more of the spotlight on O’Toole.

Pierre didn’t follow in O’Toole’s footsteps and actually appointed both of his leadership race competitors who are currently serving Conservative MPs, that being Dr. Leslyn Lewis and Scott Aitchison into the Shadow Cabinet.

One name that notably did not show up in the list of appointments, that the party base will be largely happy not to see, was MP Michelle Rempel Garner. 

Despite Rempel’s very artificial stand against wokeism in Parliament last week, Poilievre has chosen to leave her in the back benches of the party after over two years of Rempel pandering to the woke political crowd and attacking social conservatives in the party. 

It has been rumoured in the background of the party for quite a while now that despite Pierre Poilievre not being a social conservative, he has a deep dislike for Rempel’s brand of social progressivism, and was planning since he was running for CPC leader to effectively push Rempel towards the emergency exit. 

It will be interesting to see if Rempel is aggressively challenged for her nomination before the next election after years of being protected from nomination challenges by being automatically acclaimed as the candidate for Calgary-Nose Hill before each new federal election.