Graham shuffles N.B. cabinet before election

Premier Shawn Graham is shuffling his cabinet, adding one new face and offering three promotions before the Sept. 27 election.

Bernard LeBlanc, who resigned from cabinet over a privacy breach earlier this year, is returning as minister of justice. He will also be given the title of the province's inaugural minister responsible for public engagement.

Graham announced that he was setting up the public engagement portfolio last week coming out of a caucus retreat in St. Andrews.

The Liberal premier said New Brunswick will be the first province to have such a cabinet position and it will ensure people are engaged in how government's make decisions.

The Graham government came under fire starting last fall when it made the surprise announcement that it wanted to sell NB Power to Hydro-Qubec. The deal ended up falling apart in the face of widespread public opposition.

Bathurst MLA Brian Kenny is being promoted from the minister of state for seniors to the minister of tourism.

Room for Kenny's appointment was opened up when Saint John-Fundy Liberal Stuart Jamieson was kicked out of Graham's inner circle over his insistence that the botched NB Power deal be put to a referendum.

Jamieson has announced that he will not seek re-election in this fall's campaign.

Wellness, Culture and Sport Minister Hdard Albert took over the tourism department after Jamieson's departure.

Kenny is a Bathurst businessman who won election in 2003 by a slim 96 votes and 187 votes in 2006.

Boosting gender representation

Cheryl Lavoie is entering cabinet and taking Kenny's former position as minister of state for seniors and minister responsible for the Community Non-profit Organizations Secretariat.

Lavoie's ascension into cabinet doubles the number of women in Graham's cabinet to two. She joins Health Minister Mary Schryer on the executive council.

The Liberals have come under criticism by other political parties and provincial organizations over the low representation of women in the cabinet.

Lavoie's promotion from the Liberal backbench is a good start, but not enough, according to Lisa Merrithew, the founder of Equal Voice New Brunswick.

"I think that when you have 52 per cent of the population, you have to have both a caucus and a cabinet that gets close to representing that," Merrithew said.

The Nepisiguit MLA was first elected in 2006 by roughly 400 votes in what is normally a Liberal stronghold.

Adding deputy premier

Graham used his final cabinet shuffle before the election to add a deputy premier's position, a distinction that he balked at handing out in his first three years.

And Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour Minister Donald Arseneault is gaining the titleof deputy premier.

The deputy premier's position means Arseneault stands in for Graham in cabinet and he can be asked to oversee issues that span more than one department.

Carleton Progressive Conservative MLA Dale Graham served as then-premier Bernard Lord's deputypremier for the seven-yearTory regime

Arseneault, 35,is also Graham's youngest cabinet minister and he represents the northern riding of Dalhousie-Restigouche East.

Arseneault's higher profile may also be used to help him in the upcoming election. He won the northern riding by 3,500 votes in 2006 but in the last four years several large local employers have shut down.

The fact that Arseneault, Lavoie and Kenny all represent northern ridings offers a glimpse into the Liberal government's pre-election strategy, according to one political observer.

Tom Bateman, a political scientist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, saidthe Liberals want to boost MLA profiles, especiallyin the north before the fall election.

"They do want to communicate to the people in northern New Brunswick that that part of the province is important to the Liberal government and they're signaling that by giving the representatives from up there more prominence in cabinet," Bateman said.