OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper will demote embattled Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor in a cabinet shuffle expected in the week of August 13, senior government insiders told Â鶹´«Ã½.
Â鶹´«Ã½ has also learned Harper will prorogue Parliament in September and present a new Throne Speech outlining the Conservative government's new priorities.
In the cabinet shuffle, Heritage Minister Bev Oda is also expected to be moved and Revenue Minister Carol Skelton, who announced she is not running in the next election, will be dropped, sources say.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay will remain in their senior posts.
Sources say the Prime Minister decided he had to shift O'Connor out of Defence after he gave an interview on CTV's Question Period two weeks ago, in which he suggested Quebec's famed Van Doos would spend their six-month mission in Afghanistan training Afghan army troops rather than fighting the Taliban.
Families who lost loved ones in Afghanistan were deeply upset at O'Connor as were members of the Van Doos, government officials told CTV.
Gen. Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff, had to step in and assure the country that the Quebec-based Van Doos would not be confined to the Kandahar air base.
Sources say they expect Harper will put Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice into Defence and move O'Connor to Veterans Affairs.
Prentice, who chairs the operations committee of cabinet and is the de facto deputy prime minister, is highly regarded by Harper for his political and management skills.
Greg Thompson will likely be shifted from Veterans to Revenue.
Oda, who is judged by the PMO to be a weak minister, will be given a less onerous post.
It's possible bilingual B.C. MP James Moores could take over Heritage. Jason Kenney, the bilingual minister of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity, might also be a candidate for promotion.
Government insiders say they do not expect a wide-scale shuffle, characterizing this is an effort to remove weak ministers and strengthen the government politically for what Harper expects will be a partisan-charged fall session and the possibility of an election in the spring.
O'Connor has also stumbled on other issues, particularly the controversy over Canada's handover of Taliban detainees to Afghanistan's secret police.
Despite these troubles, O'Connor has managed to win cabinet approval for the purchase of $22 billion of new military hardware, the largest buildup since the Second World War.
