OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to task two senior ministers with boosting economic co-operation across the country suggests he remains keen to keep pushing Canada to get out of its own way—even if his picks might remind voters of his unpopular predecessor.

“We need to balance experience and new perspectives,” Carney said Tuesday after his new cabinet was sworn in at Rideau Hall.

Chrystia Freeland is staying on as minister for transport and internal trade, which are the portfolios Carney gave her in March when he succeeded Justin Trudeau as prime minister after winning the Liberal leadership race—a race Freeland had also contested. She had been in the job just over a week when Carney triggered a federal election, but her plate was already full.

The idea that dismantling internal trade barriers could offset the economic hit from U.S. tariffs had pushed Ottawa and the premiers to move astonishingly quickly this spring. “Internal trade has become sexy,” Freeland said Wednesday as she headed into a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill, adding the time has come to get it done. “It’s funny, but yet true.”

Another funny thing about Freeland’s new job: she is not, at first glance, the only one who has it.

Dominic LeBlanc, whom Carney put in charge of Canada-U.S. relations, is also the minister responsible for “One Canadian Economy.” That is the name the Liberals attached to a collection of campaign promises linked to liberalizing internal trade, including a pledge to introduce legislation by July 1 to remove any remaining barriers within federal jurisdiction. He also remains minister for intergovernmental affairs.

A senior government official told The Logic on Tuesday that LeBlanc and Freeland would work together as a team, but that LeBlanc would focus more on the part of the “One Canadian Economy” initiative that involves working with provinces and territories on accelerating what the platform called “nation-building” infrastructure projects, including for energy and critical minerals.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce says the more the merrier.

“We’ll take as many ministers focused on internal trade as they want to put in—this is the moment to get it done and we really can’t afford to miss the mark,” Pascal Chan, vice-president of strategic policy and supply chains, said Wednesday. “Both have strong relationships with the premiers, so we’ll want to see federal leadership leveraging every tool at their disposal to tackle domestic trade barriers and unlock billions in economic growth.”

Both Freeland and LeBlanc have worn the moniker “minister of everything” when they were in Trudeau’s cabinet. Carney’s choice to reappoint them, after promising voters he represented a change from the Trudeau era, will do nothing to convince those who were skeptical of the claim.

Trudeau named Freeland as his deputy prime minister and minister for intergovernmental affairs in 2019. The mandate letter he gave her made clear she was in charge of pretty much everything: “you will … work very closely with me in both setting and fulfilling the government’s agenda.” She was given more to do a few months later when Trudeau put her in charge of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then Bill Morneau resigned as finance minister and she got his job.

There she stayed until last December, when she resigned as finance minister hours before she was set to deliver the 2024 fall economic statement in the House of Commons.

LeBlanc, another close Trudeau ally, was hastily sworn in to replace her as finance minister that day, while remaining as minister of intergovernmental affairs and, for a few days, public safety. That made him the next “minister of everything.” The son of former governor general Roméo LeBlanc, he babysat Trudeau in the 1980s, and in 2012 abandoned his own Liberal leadership ambitions when Trudeau told him he planned to run.

Both cabinet ministers, however, have experience working with the premiers that could serve Carney well as he attempts to build his “One Canadian Economy.” LeBlanc joined former health minister Jean-Yves Duclos, whose relationship with his provincial counterparts during health-care funding talks had been bumpy, to tour the country and bring the premiers on board with an agreement.

One reason Trudeau named Freeland, who is originally from Peace River, Alta., as intergovernmental affairs minister in 2019 was the need to smooth tensions between Ottawa and Western Canada after that year’s election shut the Liberals out of both Alberta and Saskatchewan. Freeland was seen as a strong performer after playing a key role in the negotiations that created the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Though the Liberals’ relationship with the West remained tense, then-premier of Alberta Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe both praised her for her efforts to build a more “constructive relationship.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has joined Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston in taking quick action on internal trade, has praised Freeland publicly for years.

Ryan Manucha, a lawyer and research fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute who specializes in internal trade, said keeping Freeland on the file is a sign Carney is serious.“The fact that someone with such established linkages and experience within government is on the file is showing its significance,” Manucha said Wednesday. He said he was also impressed by what Freeland’s 2024 fall economic statement had to say on internal trade, even if she did not get to deliver it. “I took that to mean she has a far-reaching understanding of it,” Manucha said.

With files from David Reevely