Scheer Finds New Place in O’Toole’s Cabinet

Scheer Finds New Place in O’Toole’s Cabinet
Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole holds a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Sept. 2, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)
The Canadian Press
9/8/2020
Updated:
9/8/2020

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 Alberta’s Michelle Rempel Garner to health critic, and New Brunswick’s Rob Moore to justice critic.

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.