PRAISE THE LORD — Mandate letters dropped Thursday afternoon , manna from heaven for everyone on the Hill who obsesses over Liberal priorities. (Playbook has been literally counting the days.) Opposition politicians, advocacy groups, lobbyists and journalists feast on the agenda-setting letters to ministers. We all ganged up together to crash the PM's website in 2019. — Everyone has a motive: Conservatives will look for specific references to their own priorities — say, inflation and China — and find little mention. New Democrats will seek out priorities like pharmacare, and emerge unimpressed. Advocacy groups will watch for their own interests. Lobbyists will attempt to match clients with key priorities. And journalists will set an alarm for a year from now, salivating at the chance to track the government's progress. — Something old, something new: The Liberal election platform naturally drops an awful lot of hints. But there's new stuff in the mandate letters, too. Take DOMINIC LEBLANC, whose job includes improving leaders' debates "to ensure that they better serve the public interest." Government House Leader MARK HOLLAND was tasked with another priority nowhere to be found in the platform: "promoting free votes" that allow Liberal MPs to deviate from the government position. POLITICO's Canada team pulled out all the biggest mandate letter priorities for Pro s. Here are three highlights: — Freeland's plate now includes planning for "long-term economic growth," music to the ears of economists and the business lobby — pretty much every member of the Coalition for a Better Future that boasted in a missive to members that it has met with the PMO, Privy Council Office and Department of Finance. — Plenty of China hawks applied the Ctrl-F test to Foreign Minister MELANIE JOLY 's letter and came away disappointed. China merits zero mentions, though Joly will lead a "comprehensive Indo-Pacific strategy to deepen diplomatic, economic and defence partnerships and international assistance in the region.” — Remember Bill C-10, the failed attempt to reform the Broadcasting Act that riled free-speech defenders before the election? It's Heritage Minister PABLO RODRIGUEZ's job to see that through once and for all. Prepare for battle. — Winnipeg Free Press reporter DYLAN ROBERTSON applies a Prairies lens. CTV's RACHEL GILMORE applies her own Ctrl-F test. ATIP guru DEAN BEEBY laments the disappearance of access-to-information from the agenda. THE GREEN GIANTS — Trudeau’s mandate letters give us a clearer look at how responsibilities will be split to implement the government’s ambitious climate agenda. For the first time, the environment minister (ATTN: STEVEN GUILBEAULT ) is the lead on driving the climate plan. Here’s ZI-ANN’s take: There’s additional info on Guilbeault’s long list of to-dos and clarity on who he will partner with on key campaign promises. — On the docket: working with Natural Resources Minister JONATHAN WILKINSON to cap oil and gas emissions at current levels; collaborating with Innovation Minister FRANÇOIS-PHILIPPE CHAMPAGNE to create a new C$100-million fund to seed “made-in-Canada technologies and solutions for the reuse and recycling of plastics;”and partnering with Finance Minister FREELAND to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies by 2023. — Legislation preview: Guilbeault’s mandate letter suggests at least three bills will: enshrine the “right to a healthy environment” in federal law (election promise); protect animals in captivity (election promise); and protect federally owned historic places (new). Playbook readers already know this, but Environment and Climate Change Canada will now be the lead department on developing a regulated EV sales mandate , enforced via regulatory changes instead of legislation. — Protectionism new terrain: The increased emphasis on “made-in-Canada” climate solutions highlights how green subsidies are new ground for implicit protectionism. Just look at what’s unfurling stateside (and here in Ottawa) over the Biden administration’s EV tax credit for evidence of how that’s going. — M.I.A. : What’s notably missing from Wilkinson’s mandate letter is any mention of the splashy promise Canada made on the COP26 stage in Glasgow, promising to end all public financing for international fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022. That deadline is not in Guilbeault or International Trade Minister MARY NG’s mandate letters, either. FRONT OF THE ROOM — A pair of oppo-controlled committees elected chairs Thursday. TOM KMIEC will helm public accounts. ROBERT KITCHEN will oversee government operations. KODY BLOIS heads up agriculture. RANDEEP SARAI chairs justice. PETER SCHIEFKE runs the show at transport and infrastructure. OUTSIDE LOOKING IN — In a city where hierarchy matters, the governing party can hand out a lot of promotions. Liberals elected 159 MPs. JUSTIN TRUDEAU appointed a Cabinet and a squad of parliamentary secretary understudies. He also named House leadership, and it's not like the roster of committee chairs happens independent of the PMO. Weed out the rookies learning the ropes, and you're left with 34 MPs without a significant promotion. The Commons re-elected ANTHONY ROTA as Speaker and ALEXANDRA MENDÈS as one of his deputies. Ten of the remaining Liberals were first elected in 2019. Several others have received promotions at some point since 2015. The remaining 15 have toiled on the backbench for six years: CHANDRA ARYA, SHAUN CHEN, JULIE DZEROWICZ, FAYCAL EL-KHOURY, NATHANIEL ERSKINE-SMITH, KEN HARDIE, ANGELO IACONO, MAJID JOWHARI, EMMANUELLA LAMBROPOULOS, WAYNE LONG, LLOYD LONGFIELD, MICHAEL MCLEOD, YVES ROBILLARD, CHURENCE ROGERS, and JEAN YIP. Every set of promotions comes with a grueling decision-making process. Representation matters at every step: geography, gender, experience, not to mention varying skill sets. Regular readers who've observed two months of this stuff might agree it resembles an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. In the end, not everyone gets a promotion. And some might be perfectly content. — Pro s can download a poster of Trudeau’s cabinet, and key ministers, here. | 
