Scheer, Rempel find place in Conservatives’ new shadow cabinet
Posted September 8, 2020 5:15 am.
OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is naming his shadow cabinet, including his predecessor Andrew Scheer as the party’s infrastructure critic.
O’Toole is keeping Ontario’s Pierre Poilievre as finance critic and promoting Calgary’s Michelle Rempel Garner to health critic and New Brunswick’s Rob Moore to justice critic.
Rempel issued a statement Tuesday morning following the appointment saying she vows to hold the office of the prime minister to account for the amount of jobs and lives lost to the pandemic and points to a slow initial response to COVID-19 as costly to Canada.
Given the crisis currently facing our nation, the role of Shadow Minister for Health is an enormous and important responsibility. I am ready and eager to take on this role and work towards an @ErinOTooleMP led government. Read my statement here. https://t.co/zkpa7ifGi5
— Michelle Rempel Garner (@MichelleRempel) September 8, 2020
Fellow Calgary MP Stephanie Kusie will also serve on the shadow cabinet as the critic for transportation.
Critics are government ministers’ main questioners in the House of Commons and are supposed to be ready to move into their offices if the Opposition took over governing.
Ontario MP Michael Chong is taking a big step up to become the Conservatives’ critic for foreign affairs.
Alain Rayes, who backed up Scheer as his lieutenant for Quebec but who was dropped from O’Toole’s innermost circle, becomes heritage critic.
The Conservatives have a national caucus meeting tomorrow and O’Toole says they’ll soon present their own plan for economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 8, 2020.
The Canadian Press
