Our Prime Minister has the ‘new team’ he says he needs finally to fix mistakes made by his two previous ‘new’ cabinets.

After 18 months in power, Harper has shuffled his cabinet three times, or roughly every six months. One reason for this rapid turnover rate is that no cabinet minister can execute a plan with so little time in the new roles he or she are given.

Gordon O’Connor, a retired brigadier general who has 30 years of military experience to his credit, just wasn’t the point man as Defence Minister. Too many gaffs, poor judgment coupled with a lack of the ‘common touch’ made O’Connor a lightning rod for an opposition hungry for power.

Peter MacKay was picked to replace O’Connor in an attempt to bolster the portfolio, but we question the move. MacKay is not one of Harper’s closest allies. Indeed, MacKay was given the job as Foreign Affairs Minister to keep him away from the PM and it worked well. Now we expect MacKay will take a lot of heat in his new post when MPs return after the summer hiatus.

The debate over Canada’s role in Afghanistan continues to grow with each soldier sent home in a bodybag. Canada’s presence in the war-torn country is a political hot potato set to explode during the next general election.

Harper’s shuffle is pure political posturing in preparation for the government’s ‘war’ against the opposition parties. Can MacKay handle what’s coming from the growing numbers of Canadians opposed to the mission in Afghanistan?

If Harper thinks giving the role of National Defence to MacKay will quell the furor in Atlantic Canada over the offshore debacle, he’s sadly mistaken. Voters in Eastern Canada weren’t happy with MacKay’s flip-flop on the Atlantic Accord and the subsequent poor treatment of Bill Casey, who was thrown out of caucus for voting against the new bill, despite MacKay saying his government would never do something like that.

Giving MacKay a larger budget to spend on projects that, if approved, will take a decade or more to implement isn’t going to cut it, either. Mackay is struggling to keep his seat as Elizabeth May continues to gain popularity for bringing the environment to the forefront in the minds of voters. At last Canada has a faint hope of electing a person, who happens to be a woman, devoted solely to protecting the environment.

On the surface, Canadians will see mostly the same faces in the minority government seats so little if anything has changed in the shuffle’s aftermath. There are still no women in prominent positions and that’s something voters are starting to notice.

The one thing the latest shuffle will not change is the complete control Harper retains over his ministers. No one is permitted to host a press conference or answer questions from the media without the explicit permission of the Prime Minister. Harper continues to field all questions from the media and keeps a tight leash on who speaks on what issues, especially while the House is sitting.

Riffling the deck won’t change that and we think it’s only a matter of time before the Prime Minister will have no choice but to put his chimeric policies to an electoral test.