Minister of defence is no easy job — is Bill Blair ready for it?
CBC
On Tuesday, the night before the federal cabinet shuffle — when it became clear that Anita Anand was on the way out as defence minister — one question dominated a sweltering mid-summer reception in Ottawa's diplomatic community.
Who is Bill Blair?
It isn't as though the former public safety minister and retired Toronto police chief is a complete unknown on the Canadian political landscape.
But the choice of him as minister of national defence at this particular moment — with the world in crisis and the Canadian military as an institution still reeling from a crisis of its own making — raised more than a few eyebrows, even among our closest allies.
The answer to the question of who Bill Blair is will be pertinent — perhaps even crucial — for the Liberal government as it tries to refocus its agenda away from the dangerous mess that is the rest of world and toward domestic, pocketbook, vote-getting issues.
But the world has a way of intruding on the homefront political agenda in ways that governing parties, regardless of political stripe, find most unwelcome.
Just look at the Afghan war, the tumultuous term of Donald Trump as U.S. president, the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, the rise of a newly assertive China intent on bending countries like Canada to its will.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has "tremendous confidence" in Blair, given the minister's tenure in the emergency preparedness portfolio.
In an open letter sent to Department of National Defence staff on Thursday (which was also published on Twitter), Blair said his mission is to "modernize this institution, establish meaningful culture change and keep Canadians safe in a changing world."
How he intends to do that — and what sort of personal capital (or baggage) he might bring to the effort — were subjects of intense debate and speculation in the defence community on Thursday as experts took stock of his record in previous portfolios and his former career.
Steve Saideman of Carleton University, one of the country's leading experts on NATO, said Blair has big shoes to fill.
Anand, he said, worked very hard to earn the trust and respect of those at the centre of culture change within the military, while at the same cultivating important relationships with key allies, such as Ukraine, during a time of global crisis.
"How good is Blair at this kind of stuff, [at] building relationships with foreign leaders, with defence secretaries and other countries? ... I don't really have an answer," said Saideman.
How quickly Blair masters inarguably complex files, how much homework he's willing to do, how much effort he's willing to put into building relationships with allies and survivors of sexual misconduct in the military — these will be the key factors that decide whether he succeeds.
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