TORONTO - Dalton McGuinty moved to fill a hole in his cabinet Tuesday night but the Ontario premier decided to stand by his man and kept David Caplan on as health minister, government sources told The Canadian Press.
The recent resignation of Michael Bryant as economic development minister forced McGuinty to shuffle his cabinet now so ministers could get up to speed on their new duties over the summer.
But McGuinty was not taking advantage of the cabinet shuffle to move Caplan into another portfolio, sources told The Canadian Press, and the premier only opted for some minor changes involving six ministers.
He did not demote any ministers or promote any backbenchers in his cabinet shuffle, which is to be officially announced with a swearing-in ceremony Wednesday morning.
Instead, he altered the size of some ministries and switched some responsibilities from one portfolio to another.
Sandra Pupatello merges her Trade portfolio with Economic Development, and takes on responsibilities for small business matters.
John Milloy will stay on as minister of training, colleges and universities, but takes on double duty by also becoming minister of research and innovation.
John Wilkinson moves from the Ministry of Research and Innovation to Revenue, which is becoming a stand-alone ministry again while the province merges its sales tax with the federal goods and services tax. The 13 per cent single sales tax is scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2010.
Michael Gravelle will add forestry issues -- which had previously been filed under the Ministry of Natural Resources -- to his Northern Development and Mines Ministry.
Government Services Minister Ted McMeekin will swap jobs with Harinder Takhar, which means he'll take over a downsized Consumer Services Ministry.
Keeping Caplan at the helm of the Health Ministry will likely infuriate the opposition parties, which have been demanding his resignation because of a scandal at eHealth Ontario involving $5 million in untendered contracts and petty abuses of expense accounts by consultants billing taxpayers $2,700 a day or more.
The controversy at eHealth has already claimed its top two officials, CEO Sarah Kramer and chairman Alan Hudson, both of whom resigned as the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats demanded heads roll for the abuses of taxpayers' money.
However, their resignations failed to stop the calls for Caplan's head as the minister responsible for eHealth, which was set up last fall after the first agency tasked with creating electronic health records spent $647 million and produced virtually nothing.
Last week, McGuinty accepted responsibility for the scandal and offered taxpayers an apology for the scandal at eHealth.
McGuinty is expected to meet with reporters Wednesday to talk about the reasons behind his minor cabinet shuffle.
