New Brandon-Souris MP getting crash course in federal politics
May 20, 2025, 9:37 am
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
New Brandon-Souris MP Grant Jackson is getting a crash course on what the Member of Parliament job is all about. Jackson is taking over the reigns from long-time Conservative MP Larry Maguire, who announced he would not be seeking re-election as the race was called.
When asked what he’s up to in the space between an election win and the first day Parliament sits on May 26, Jackson replied “lots of intensive orientation.”
“The House of Commons staff have made it pretty clear to us that normally they onboard new MPs over the course of several months before the House comes back after a general election, so this time around, of course, the prime minister called the House back on May 26, which is less than a month after the general election date,” he explained. “It’s been very busy for the House of Commons staff to get everybody onboarded through orientation, get offices set up, all that kind of stuff.”
Jackson was interested in the new cabinet announced by Prime Minister Carney last week, with admittedly some concerns arising as a result.
“Not so much about the people that were put in—a lot of the same faces from the previous government, which wasn’t a surprise to many of us—but a few of them have made some comments already that we’re quite concerned about,” he said. “They have no intention of introducing a budget this year, which is deeply concerning. We were barely into this fiscal year, so I guess their plan is to run without a publicly-disclosed budget until next fiscal year, which is concerning, I think, for anybody who cares about the financial direction of the country.”
The mixed messaging around pipelines also piqued Jackson’s interest.
“Then we’ve got Minister (Steven) Guilbeault, the ‘no more pipelines minister,’ despite the Prime Minister having made commitments during the election that he would consider pipelines, you’ve got Minister Guilbeault coming out and saying that he has no appetite for them, and they won’t be a top priority for the government,” Jackson said. “So that’s very disappointing to Western Manitoba, to I’m sure many of your readers in Saskatchewan and Western Canada as well.”
Some portfolios simply have unclear priorities, such as the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and the name change to Canadian Heritage.
“It’s going to be very interesting to see what the mandate of that new ministry is,” Jackson said of the Ministry of AI. “I’m not going to make too many comments until I see what their mandate is, but I’m very much hoping that there are mandates published for each of these departments, because there are a few interesting decisions. No more Canadian Heritage, but they’re going to call it the Ministry of Canadian Identity? We’re a little confused as to who’s deciding what the Canadian identity is, and what the Minister’s mandate is in defining that from their government’s perspective. So yeah, some interesting choices.”
As for the opposition’s line-up, those appointments were not quite known yet, but Jackson is excited to see what happens next.
“We had an initial caucus meeting right after the election, but our caucus has not met since,” he said. “We will meet again before Parliament comes back, but no word yet. As the cabinet was just announced yesterday (May 14), we have no word yet on our shadow cabinet, or what our committee assignments are, etc. That’s all still yet to come.”
Jackson will be officially sworn in as an MP on May 22, then will “be ready to hit the floor of the House to Commons on Monday, May 26.”
“It is going to be interesting to see what the Prime Minister’s priorities are,” Jackson said. “We’ll obviously debate the Throne Speech, but then, if he’s not introducing a budget, what is his legislative agenda for the remainder of this May, June sitting? We’re waiting to see how aggressively he decides to move on some of the election commitments he made to Canadians.”
While it is early days in the Carney-led government, Jackson has not been impressed with some of the initial actions.
“We’re disappointed in a few of the cabinet decisions that he’s made,” he said. “We were hoping for broad scale change, and unfortunately, you’re seeing a lot of Trudeau government ministers remain in roles within the cabinet. We don’t think that signals new direction whatsoever for the government, and you’re seeing that in some of the comments that they’re making publicly.
“It’s deeply concerning, because they promised to be very different, and we haven’t seen so much evidence of that. Now, it’s only a couple of days in, so we have to give him the opportunity to meet his commitments to Canadians, but we’re going to be holding them aggressively to account on that as the official opposition.”
