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The obvious point, already made in this newspaper and elsewhere, is that this cabinet will only be what Stephen Harper makes of it. As long as most ministers are shackled, with the PMO effectively managing half their offices, few will grow into their jobs - and come next election, we'll be left talking about the Conservatives' lack of bench strength again.

That being said, on first glance there are at least a few positives...

• In Jim Prentice, Environment has its first serious minister since the Tories formed government. Under John Baird, the job basically involved playing defence, mostly by accusing the Liberals of having been even more inactive on the file than the Tories were. It's difficult to imagine Prentice being satisfied with that role, and equally improbable that Harper put him there to play it. This is clearly an effort to take ownership of the issue, particularly with the Liberals veering away from it.
  
• Unlike Prentice in the Tories' first mandate, Chuck Strahl has not been shuffled out of Indian Affairs as soon as he proved he could do the job. It's a tendency of governments to use that ministry as a jumping ground for anyone who performs reasonably adequately in it, which has only contributed to the failure to move forward on most of its many challenges. It's about time a minister was given the time to make his mark on it.
  
• The power shift in British Columbia - Gary Lunn down to a secretary of state (albeit one who will get to play with the 2010 Olympics), and James Moore up to Heritage - is encouraging. Lunn is an affable guy, but the fact is that when the pressure was on his performance ranged from miserable to invisible. The youthful Moore has long impressed most people he's come into contact with, and more than did his time as the Tories' spokesman on all sorts of unsavoury matters in their first round. Hopefully he wasn't too soured by that experience, because he has a lot to offer.
  
• Contrary to speculation, Harper didn't go completely nuts trying to appease Quebec. The key indicator is the demotion of Josee Verner, who richly deserved it. Meanwhile, the PM resisted the urge to get cute (as with the Michael Fortier gambit last time) and there's mercifully no sign of Maxime Bernier.
  
• Making Peter Kent the junior foreign affairs ministers shows good restraint. There's a small but very vocal cluster of Kent-aholics in Toronto (and possibly Winnipeg) whom Harper could have curried favoured with by giving him something more senior. (Some were even touting the real foreign affairs post, which would have been insane.) He's an intelligent guy, but with no government experience the Tories are doing well to make him prove himself.
  
• An obvious point, but one that has to be made: Jay Hill will be a vastly less obnoxious House Leader than Peter Van Loan. More on this later, I hope, but it's not totally far-fetched to speculate that Harper is aiming for a slightly more civil parliamentary tone.

As for the potentially, er, less positive:

• Although he certainly proved himself a loyal soldier, one hates to see Van Loan - the face of all that was wrong with the last Parliament - being rewarded with a real ministry. It sends an unfortunate signal on how one gets ahead in this government. (The same could arguably be said about Moore and Jason Kenney, but both have also exhibited their share of substance.)
  
• All indications during Tony Clement's tenure as Health minister were that Harper had absolutely no faith in him. Now, he's being entrusted with Industry - a portfolio that's second in importance only to Finance during a time of economic turmoil. Pray that he's given more leeway in this posting than he was in the last one.
  
• Stockwell Day proved a better Public Safety Minister than most people expected. But I'm just going to say it - is this really the person we want to be sending abroad (and into meetings with senior officials from other countries) as Canada's top salesperson?
  
• I could probably just cut and paste this from what I've written after past cabinet announcements, or from any number of other reactions today, but seriously - what's with yet another snubbing of Diane Ablonczy? It's a bigger cabinet, it's clearly been designed with an aim to have better female representation, and still she's basically on the sidelines.

Finally, there's one that I'm reluctant to judge either way just yet. Leona Aglukkaq is a fascinating choice as Health Minister, with the potential to get the government focused on challenges in Inuit and aboriginal communities that it's long neglected. She's also a huge leap of faith, since being a minister in Nunavut is a long, long way from being a senior federal minister within about five minutes of getting to Ottawa. This is one that could either be regarded as a stroke of genius by Harper, or completely blow up in his face.