Ontario Provincial

CabinetEleanor LauChris Chung

Jenny Lu

Cabinet Ministers(28 in total)

Dalton McGuinty placed Gerard Kennedy, runner-up in the Liberal leadership race, in

his cabinet and appointed him to the prestigious role of Minister of Education in

2003 when he won government

Premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty

Former Minister of Education Gerard Kennedy

Composition of Cabinet

• Ability• Loyalty• Experiences• Age• Gender• Ethnicity• Geography• Occupation

Ability

• handle written material• speak clearly• answer questions in

legislature factually• listen to the public and

advisors• have independent

judgment

A minister should be able to

Ability• Specialized knowledge not all that vital to the

appropriateness of a member

• Specialized knowledge can bring disadvantages such as conflicts of interest

• Upon investigation, the Cabinet consists of more generalists than specialists

Loyalty and Experiences• Monique Smith was first elected as a

Member of Provincial Parliament for the Liberals in 2003

• Even before that, she served McGuinty in his Opposition Leader’s Office in 1997

• Gerry Phillips has been an MPP for the liberals since 1987

Loyalty and Experiences• By adding new faces, when core ministers

start to age, the Cabinet will still have ministers with experience to rely on

• Overall, McGuinty selected a Cabinet of experienced ministers, as several of them have had many years of experience in the political area

8

Age• The average age of the

Ontario cabinet is 53

• It may be difficult to rejuvenate the Cabinet and also for the Cabinet to improve the capacity to develop new ideas

Gender

• The ratio of males to females is over 2:1

Ethnicity• Simply by looking at the portraits of our

Cabinet, we were only able to spot 3 visible minorities

• Upon investigation we discovered a minister from the Netherlands, two French Canadians, one Italian minister, and one minister from Portugal

Geography• Large number of ministers

representing Ottawa and Toronto

• Southern Ontario is represented well, but not so much Northern Ontario

• Probably attributed to the fact that most of Ontario’s population is concentrated in the southern area

Occupation• Members of the Ontario cabinet have had a

variety of past occupations including an insurance broker, entrepreneurs, an athlete, consultants, mayors, publicists, a nurse, a musician, and an accountant

Sexual Orientation• The Deputy Premier and Minister of

Education are both homosexual

• Better representation in parliament of changing public views