Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shuffled his cabinet on Wednesday, which includes moving Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge to Minister of Canadian Heritage.

She takes over from Pablo Rodriguez, who was named Minister of Transportation.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage has responsibility for arts, culture and broadcasting in Canada, including industries related to those fields. It also formulates cultural policy, including policy related to foreign investment, copyright and cultural property. The minister is also responsible for the CRTC, CBC, National Film Board and Telefilm.

St-Onge is a former musician who would later serve as president of the FNCC, the union representing media and cultural industries in Quebec. She was elected to represent the Quebec riding of Brome–Missisquoi in the 2021 federal election, and was subsequently named Minister of Sport.

Her tenure included presiding over what she described as a “crisis” of safety in sports, marked by allegations of abuse and toxic cultures at organizations like Hockey Canada and Gymnastics Canada, as well as from several Olympic Athletes. She also oversaw hearings into a dispute between Soccer Canada and the women’s national team. This led to a number of individual actions – including reviews and even suspensions of federal funding from organizations – and broader safety reforms, such as the creation of the Office of the Sport Integrity Commission.

Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough has been picked to take over as Minister of Sport. A former Paralympic swimmer, Qualtrough had previously led the portfolio from 2015 to 2017 when it was known as the Ministry of Sport and Persons with Disabilities.

Moving into the Heritage portfolio, St-Onge is now tasked with overseeing the implementation of the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act (the FNCC lobbied the federal government to create a regulation during her time as president). That will include taking over a dispute with Google and Meta, which have said they plan to pull news from their platforms in Canada in order to avoid bargaining with news outlets.

“My goal is going to be the same, which is to make sure that our media industry and our cultural industries thrive, and to make sure that we have news and journalism so that the population can be well-informed and our democracy is strong,” St-Onge said during a press conference on Wednesday.