The talk has centred on old names in new places rather than on new blood. That's because, with a very few exceptions, the list of newcomers who won in the Oct. 14 election is unimpressive.

Accordingly, what may matter more than the names involved in the shuffle is that Harper lets his ministers be ministers, rather than ciphers mouthing lines written for them by the Prime Minister's Office.

In Harper's first term, most ministers seemed to be looking over their shoulders. If they talked to the media at all, it was only to deliver scripted messages. Interest groups had trouble getting in to see them. Provincial partners waited in vain for responses to their queries.

Canada is a big country – and not just geographically. The federal government has a $240 billion budget. Departments like National Defence and Public Safety dwarf most of Canada's major private sector corporations in size. To require all this to be run out of the Prime Minister's Office is to invite policy gridlock and to stifle innovation.

Past prime ministers have realized this – most famously Lester Pearson in the 1960s, whose decentralized governing style often seemed chaotic but produced creative policy initiatives.

Even prime ministers with reputations as more controlling – such as Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien – understood the need for strong ministers. Think of John Turner and Donald Macdonald under Trudeau, Don Mazankowski and Benoit Bouchard under Mulroney, and Paul Martin and John Manley under Chrétien. More...