Leak suggests Jody Wilson-Raybould will be in Justin Trudeau's cabinet

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      For generations, the Toronto Star has been Canada's liberal national daily newspaper.

      So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the paper has given the most detailed look at the Justin Trudeau cabinet, which will be sworn in on Wednesday (November 4).

      According to an article by Bob Hepburn, B.C. will have three ministers in a 28-member cabinet (including Trudeau). The source is an unnamed "senior adviser" to the prime minister designate.

      Vancouver Granville MP Jody Wilson-Raybould is the only one identified as going to cabinet. She's the former regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations.

      That leaves plenty of room to speculate on who the other two B.C. cabinet ministers might be.

      If Hepburn's article is correct, you can rule out Harjit Sajjan, Sukh Dhaliwal, and Randeep Sarai because there will be only one Sikh minister.

      The Toronto Star reported that it's "most likely Navdeep Bains, a Mississauga MP who played a key role in Trudeau's leadership bid in 2013".

      So who will be the other two B.C. ministers? My guess is Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry and either North Vancouver's Jonathan Wilkinson—a Rhodes scholar and former tech-industry CEO—or former West Vancouver mayor Pamela Goldsmith-Jones.

      Fry checks off lots of boxes: she's a Trudeau loyalist with plenty of experience, as well as a woman of colour.

      It will help ease the sting for the South Asian community to appoint Fry, who has some South Asian heritage, if only one post is given to a Sikh MP.

      Ordinarily, one would think that the third post would go to Joyce Murray, a former B.C. cabinet minister.

      But it's inconceivable that Trudeau would name all of his B.C. cabinet ministers from Vancouver, which might rule out the Vancouver Quadra MP.

      So that likely puts Wilkinson or Goldsmith-Jones at the top of the list, given the importance of the North Shore to the Liberals' long-term hold on government.

      Given Trudeau's commitment to gender parity, my guess is Goldsmith-Jones will be the one who gets the call.

       

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