OTTAWA —

Prime Minister Mark Carney

will unveil a “small, focused” cabinet of less than 30 ministers at Rideau Hall on Tuesday, with half of the team being people who

have never been sworn in as ministers

. The cabinet will also include 10 secretaries of state, who will be members of the Privy Council and will be responsible for key issues within a federal department. Liberal

insiders told National Post

that Carney will be trying to balance his desire to make a clean break from the tenure of former prime minister Justin Trudeau with his need for experienced ministers during the trade war with the United States.

Follow along for live updates from the swearing-in ceremony that begins at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

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OTTAWA — Justice Minister Gary Anandasangaree will move to the public safety department and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson will no longer be a minister as Prime Minister Mark Carney tries to make a clean break with the past with his new cabinet.

Carney is expected to unveil a team full of fresh faces and a series of new “junior minister” positions on Tuesday.

Wilkinson announced he would not be in the new cabinet on social media on Tuesday morning before the swearing-in ceremony.

“Today, I do not stand among those being sworn in as members of Canada’s new cabinet. Though my tenure as a Minister of the Crown comes to an end, the privilege of serving this country over the past seven years remains one of the greatest honours of my life,”

wrote Wilkinson

.

Carney will assemble a “small, focused” cabinet of less than 30 ministers and up to 10 secretaries of state, said

a source within the Prime Minister’s Office

. It’s one of the ways Carney will try to distance himself from the unpopular tenure of his predecessor, former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

The secretaries of state will be members of the Privy Council and will be responsible for key issues and priorities within a federal department, added the source, but will only be invited to cabinet meetings when decisions associated with their responsibilities arise.

The swearing-in ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m.

More to come.

National Post

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A McDonald’s restaurant in Virginia has banned customers under the age of 21 years old from eating inside, due to student violence.

Local media reported on Sunday about the new policy after

a sign posted on the door read

: “Due to repeated incidents of student violence, the location is temporarily closed for dine-in service to anyone under 21 years of age.”

The Fairfax County McDonald’s is located near a high school in the Franconia neighbourhood,

7News reported last week

. One customer, Robert Hancasky, told the publication that he has frequented the restaurant for breakfast every morning and that the issue has been “manifesting probably over 10 years.”

He said high school students “routinely trash the bathrooms, start fights in dining area, and generally provide an unpleasant experience for everyone.”

“The fighting is a problem and they’re pretty brazen. The management tries to step in and these kids are pretty violent. And let’s be honest, they’re young adults. They’re just trying to stop the violence because it’s not fair to any other customer who comes in for a sandwich, a hard-working person, and they got to put up with a bunch of idiots,” he said.

In

a video shared with news outlet NBC4

, students are fighting and screaming inside the McDonald’s.

“These kids are off the chain. They have no respect, no discipline,” one customer, who identified herself as Stacey, told NBC4. “And it seem like how they acting, their parents are allowing them to act.”

She said when she visited the location to eat with her grandchildren, some students were smoking and drinking and swearing.

In 2023,

according to Fox5

, two teens discharged a gun in the bathroom of the McDonald’s. There were no injuries. Officers later charged one teen with carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a firearm on school property. Another teen was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, brandishing, and reckless charge of a firearm, Fox5 reported.

Now, in order to enter the premises from Monday to Friday, customers have to ring a doorbell. An employee can then permit a person to enter. Meanwhile,

Fox8 reported

, drive-thru and mobile ordering options are still available for all ages.

McDonald’s responded with a statement, shared with NBC4.

“We love being part of the Edison community and we value each and every customer. We’ve enhanced our Franconia Road McDonald’s security measures in an effort to promote a safe environment for our customers and staff. This policy was developed in partnership with local school officials with oversight from local law enforcement. This serves as a temporary fix as we work towards a long-term solution for all,” the statement said.

“We thank our community for its support, understanding and patience.”

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) said in a statement to 7News that “students who leave campus during the school day without a parent check-out will receive an unexcused absence.”

“FCPS encourages families to talk to their students about appropriate conduct, including in the community,” the statement said.

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OTTAWA — When Elections Canada certified the Liberals’ victory by a single vote in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, senior party officials were stunned.

“This wasn’t in our forecast. We didn’t think she would win,” admitted a Liberal source about the party’s candidate,

Tatiana Auguste, the 24-year-old who thought she had lost the constituency.

Auguste was initially declared the winner on election night, but she later lost the riding to Bloc Québécois incumbent Nathalie Sinclair Desgagné, who attended her party’s first caucus meeting last week, before winning it again by a single vote after a judicial recount.

“I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster, but I’m really happy,” Auguste said in multiple media interviews. But for Quebec Liberal organizers, her victory showed how much the big red Liberal machine has outperformed in the province.

In the end, the Liberals won 44 of the 78 ridings, double the Bloc’s 22 seats in the House of Commons. Before the recount in Windsor—Tecumseh—Lakeshore and Terra Nova—Les Péninsules and Milton East—Halton Hills South, Terrebonne, and numerous surprise victories in Quebec, brought the Liberals to 170 seats, two short of a majority.

Terrebonne hadn’t voted Liberal in 45 years. The same goes for Trois-Rivières. The last time the Liberals won Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou was in 2000, and they had never won Beauport—Limoilou in Quebec City since its creation in 2004.

They won all four of them.

“It’s surprising. Absolutely… I’ve always been skeptical because these are often ridings that have promised the Liberals but often failed to deliver,” said Jeremy Ghio, a former advisor to minister Mélanie Joly and a strategist at Tact Conseil.

“These have always been regions in which the Liberals had high expectations and ultimately suffered disappointment at the end of the campaign,” he added.

Ghio and many Quebec Liberal sources believe Prime Minister Mark Carney will have to give significant roles to the province’s representatives and bring fresh Quebec faces at the cabinet table.

For instance, people suggested to the prime minister’s entourage that Mandy Gull-Masty, who was recently the Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees/Cree Nation Government before winning Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, should be named in cabinet.

“Without her, we wouldn’t have won Abitibi, it’s that simple,” a source told National Post.

Ghio believes it is time for the prime minister to appoint longtime Quebec MP Joël Lightbound to Cabinet after his resounding majority in Louis-Hébert.

“You need a minister in Quebec City. And it’s time for Lightbound to join the cabinet. He worked his riding. He broke rank during the Trudeau years. He is not associated with Trudeau,” said Ghio.

During the campaign, the Liberal team deployed key ministers like Mélanie Joly, François-Philippe Champagne, and Steven Guilbeault in more than ten ridings where the party thought it had a chance of success.

As the campaign progressed and fears of U.S. President Donald Trump crystallized, ridings like Trois-Rivières were no longer just a fantasy. They became targets and a necessity to help the Liberals secure a majority.

Another riding outside Montreal, Repentigny, was also in the Liberals’ sights, but they lost to former Greenpeace activist and Bloc Québécois candidate Patrick Bonin, who won a majority of 2,000 votes.

“We shook thousands of hands, and I think a strong base of Bloc electors stayed home and voted for us,” said Bonin as he was entering his first caucus meeting on Parliament hill, last week.

Yet her predecessor, Monique Pauzé, won the 2021 election with a majority of 14,000 votes and was first elected in 2015, when the party only had 10 candidates elected to the House of Commons.

Repentigny has already been represented by the NDP after the historic orange wave of 2011, but the riding is a Bloc stronghold, as is Terrebonne, where Sinclair-Desgagné won by more than 6,000 votes in 2021.

The Bloc Québécois’s new House leader, Christine Normandin, called the campaign “atypical” and felt on the ground that the Liberals gained ground every time they used Trump as a pawn.

“What we heard on the ground is that if people hesitated it was really out of fear and certainly not a disavowal of the work we did because we heard very very very clearly that the work of the Bloc Québécois is appreciated,” she said.

Some of his colleagues seemed irritated by the Liberal gains in their strongholds. During the campaign, they argued that Bloc candidates were winning local debates and that the Liberals were often absent or ignorant of local issues.

Today, some in the Bloc are talking about a “borrowed seat” in Terrebonne, but also in other ridings north of Montreal where the Liberals have made gains.

“We can never take an election for granted, even if the polls initially show us winning. Our job is really to make sure we give everything we have in the election campaign, and this time was no exception,” Normandin said.

National Post

atrepanier@postmedia.com

• Quebec’s envoy in Ottawa leaves office as province seeks larger role in Canada’s U.S. relations
• Carney’s Quebec honeymoon could turn into a ‘hangover’ in a province with high expectations

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Toronto Maple Leafs forward Max Domi

has been fined $5,000

for boarding Florida Panthers centre Aleksander Barkov in the closing seconds of Game 4 in the second-round series in Florida on Sunday, the National Hockey League’s Department of Player Safety has announced.

Domi’s hit on Barkov came with just eight seconds left to play in the third period. Domi was also assessed a major penalty for boarding. The Panthers had just about completed what would be a 2-0 win, their second in a row on home ice, tying the series at two games apiece. Game 5 is set for Wednesday in Toronto.

Max Domi was issued a 5-minute major for boarding for his hit on Barkov when the game ended. We’ll see what DoPS has to say… #TimeToHunt pic.twitter.com/ynu3HOGWm6

— NHL News (@PuckReportNHL) May 12, 2025

Domi’s move set off a fight amid several other players that led to 10-minute misconducts for Toronto forward Bobby McMann, Florida defenceman Aaron Ekblad and Florida forward Brad Marchand. Barkov was not injured on the play, head coach Paul Maurice said.

The fine is the maximum allowable under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The money goes to the

Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund

, which was set up in 1996 to assist NHL players and their families with mental health, substance abuse or other issues. The league might also have decided to issue a suspension, but

chose not to

.

Domi signed a one-year, $3-million contract with the Leafs in the summer of 2023. The next year, he signed a four-year, $15-million

extension

with the team. As a percentage of salary, a $5,000 fine would be equivalent to about $132 for someone making $100,000 a year.

Florida centre Sam Bennett

told Sportsnet

that he thought Domi’s hit wasn’t out of line, noting: “It’s been a physical series, so I expect more of that.”

Meanwhile, Toronto head coach

Craig Berube compared the action to another play earlier in the same game, telling the broadcaster: “To me, the (Dmitry) Kulikov hit on (Mitch) Marner was 10 times worse.”

That elbow-to-the-head move did not result in a penalty or fine.

Kulikov lands a high elbow on Marner pic.twitter.com/Xtf3d0kSUb

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 12, 2025

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OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney will be at Rideau Hall on Tuesday to unveil the team he promised would “do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

Carney will be presenting a “small, focused” cabinet of less than 30 ministers and up to 10 secretaries of state, with half of the entire team being “fresh faces,” meaning that they have never been sworn in as ministers, said a source within the Prime Minister’s Office.

The secretaries of state will be members of the Privy Council and will be responsible for key issues and priorities within a federal department, added the source, but will only be invited to cabinet meetings when decisions associated with their responsibilities arise.

Liberal insiders think Carney will be marking a clear contrast to former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways” by ditching the pomp and circumstance associated with a big cabinet reveal and will instead present a team solely focused on implementing his ambitious agenda.

That means finding the right balance between the current, more experienced ministers, such as Dominic LeBlanc, Mélanie Joly and François-Philippe Champagne, and the dozens of new MPs elected under the Liberal banner who were hopeful of being named to cabinet.

Among the names to watch for are Tim Hodgson, who worked with Carney at the Bank of Canada and at Goldman Sachs, Carlos Leitao, a former Quebec finance minister who delivered a surplus in the province, and former Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson.

But factoring in regional representation of all parts of the country and respecting gender balance might have caused some disappointment for many hopefuls.

“This might be one of the more complicated cabinets to put together, especially because one of Mark Carney’s biggest challenges is he has to make sure that this does not look like a Justin Trudeau cabinet,” said Laura D’Angelo, a vice president at Enterprise Canada.

“He has to make it very clear that he is a new prime minister with a new government.”

Marci Surkes, chief strategy officer and managing director at Compass Rose, agreed that Carney needs to create as much distance as possible between himself and Trudeau, and said the fact that he will be tapping as many rookies in cabinet “makes good sense.”

“I assume he will be also maintaining experienced cabinet ministers in some of the senior portfolios, particularly those who have served as interlocutors with the U.S. administration,” said Surkes, who was a senior adviser to Justin Trudeau until 2022.

A secretary of state is not a term that is typically used in Canada, but that position is common in the United Kingdom where secretaries of state are considered to be senior ministers of the Crown and make up most of the positions in cabinet.

The Paul Martin and Stephen Harper governments commonly appointed ministers of state, which were considered junior cabinet ministers, but Trudeau ceased that practice in 2015.

Carlene Variyan, associate vice-president at Summa Strategies, said Trudeau had decided to forgo the junior cabinet roles — which come with a smaller salary and staff budget — to elevate roles such as minister for the status of women as a full cabinet position.

“In that era, because it’s 2015 and everything, he really thought that it was pretty hypocritical to have a minister for the status of women who wasn’t paid as much as the other ministers,” she said.

Surkes said it should not be seen as “slight” to be named secretary or minister of state.

“It is, in fact, a recognition that ministers have varying degrees of responsibilities handed to them, and not all of the individuals selected for the ministry need to be present for every decision-making moment,” she explained.

Variyan, who had senior roles in the Liberal government, said she cannot help but remark on how Carney’s approach and thinking around assembling his cabinet in 2025 “could not be more different” than Trudeau’s conditions after his majority win in 2015.

“I think Carney and his team are responding to the moment that the country finds itself in, and what Canadians are looking for, which is stability and a leader who could demonstrate a calm hand that can guide the country through all of this,” said the former Liberal staffer.

Already, D’Angelo said Carney’s first official press conference at the head of a re-elected Liberal government gave a clear indication of his tone and style.

“It was much more like a chair of a board… He did not mince words. He didn’t spend time with slogans or flowery language or over-explaining things. He was telling us very clearly what was going to happen, what he was going to do, and what the priorities were.”

Carney has laid out his packed agenda, which includes strengthening relations with trading partners in Europe and Asia, building millions of new housing units, turning Canada into an “energy superpower” and lifting all federal barriers to internal trade by July 1.

Jonathan Kalles, a former adviser to Trudeau who is now vice president, Quebec, at McMillan Vantage, said he expects to see a more “decisive executive” under Carney.

“Mark Carney is very well-known for hearing everybody out, really wanting input from everybody,” he said. “But then when he makes a decision… he expects it to be implemented quickly, and he’s going to be frustrated when it’s not, if it’s not.”

Carney also has the advantage of having served as a senior bureaucrat in the Department of Finance before he was appointed as governor of the Bank of Canada, noted Kalles.

“That means somebody who not only knows how the system works, from a general perspective, but also understands how to actually implement things, where the roadblocks are, and how to get past them,” he explained.

“He’ll have short runway to get key things done, like any government does, and then hope, they don’t get bogged down. That’s the nature of the beast.”

National Post

calevesque@postmedia.com

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