Diane Finley named new Minister of Human Resources

Prime Minister Stephen Harper named his new 38-member Cabinet this morning. This new Cabinet is larger (up from 31) and contains more women (up to 11 from seven) than the previous Cabinet; it also contains a younger roster of Ministers, many in their 30s or early 40s.

With Monte Solberg’s retirement from public life earlier this fall, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development Canada had been left vacant. Today, Prime Minister Harper announced that Diane Finley, MP for Haldimand-Norfolk (a riding in rural southern Ontario), would fill the post – again. First elected to Parliament in 2004, Ms. Finley first served as Minister of HRSCD from February 6, 2006 until her move to Citizenship and Immigration on January 4, 2007.

The four programs of HRSDC are: income security and social development, learning (including student financial assistance, savings incentives for post-secondary education, and literacy), program operations (the operation and coordination of the Grant and Contributions programs across the Department), and skills employment (including Employment Insurance).

With CPJ’s work heavily focused on issues of poverty, inequality and social exclusion, we were eager to see who would be appointed to this portfolio.

During her previous tenure at Human Resources, Minister Finley was responsible for the announcement of Canada’s “Universal Child Care Plan” which included $1200 per year, per child under six, paid directly to parents, and a commitment to create 125,000 flexible child care spaces through the Child Care Spaces Initiative (May 2006) (It is unclear how many spaces have actually been created as part of this initiative). She was also the Minister under which funding of more than one million dollars was provided for four new homelessness projects under the National Homelessness Initiative (NHI) (October 2006).

While at Citizen and Immigration, Minister Finley was behind legislation, passed in April, 2008, to restore citizenship to Canadians that had lost, or never had, citizenship due to antiquated provisions in legislation, through amendments to the Citizenship Act.

We at CPJ have a number of policy ideas that we would like to see taken on by HRSDC – such as a Federal Poverty Reduction Strategy and significant policy changes to address housing and homelessness in Canada. We look forward to engaging with Minister Finley on these important issues.