On Tuesday, the night before the federal cabinet shuffle — when it became clear that Anita Anand was on the way out as defence minister — one question dominated a sweltering mid-summer reception in Ottawa’s diplomatic community.
Who is Bill Blair?
It isn’t as though the former public safety minister and retired Toronto police chief is a complete unknown on the Canadian political landscape.
But the choice of him as minister of national defence at this particular moment — with the world in crisis and the Canadian military as an institution still reeling from a crisis of its own making — raised more than a
