The resignation of a key minister has prompted Premier Kathleen Wynne to do a spring cleaning of her cabinet with two new faces shoring up her Liberals in the GTA and northern Ontario.

Linda Jeffrey’s departure from Municipal Affairs and Housing to run for mayor of Brampton comes weeks before a provincial budget that, if defeated in the minority legislature, would plunge the province into an election.

“We don’t know whether there will be an election,” Wynne told reporters Tuesday.

Wynne promoted Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn, who successfully fought a controversial gas-fired power plant in his riding, to minister of labour. She replaced Jeffrey with Thunder Bay-Atikokan MPP Bill Mauro, giving the small lakehead city a second cabinet member.

The Liberals are worried they’re vulnerable in both ridings with an election possible in June.

“This is absolutely a seat-saving cabinet,” charged Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod, resurrecting criticisms that scrapping power plants in Oakville and Mississauga before the 2011 election — at a cost of up to $1.1 billion — was to save Liberal MPPs.

Wynne bristled at that suggestion.

“If you look at the political situation in the province there are 107 key ridings . . . . I made these decisions based on peoples’ experience and their capacity to do the job.”

The premier promoted Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi to Community Safety and Correctional Services, replacing Madeleine Meilleur. She becomes Ontario’s first francophone attorney general, taking over from John Gerretsen, who becomes chair of cabinet, a role Jeffrey also held.

Mississauga-Streetsville MPP Bob Delaney has been named chief government whip, which Flynn had done.

He and Mauro will get raises as they head into cabinet.

MPPs earn a base salary of $116,550, which increases to $133,217 for parliamentary assistants and $165,851 for cabinet ministers. But Gerretsen, as minister without portfolio, takes a pay cut to $138,928.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Wynne’s moves are “a little like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic” and characterized Jeffrey’s departure as “jumping ship” from a minority government that has had several senior members — including Gerretsen — announce they will not run again.

In quitting as MPP for Brampton-Springdale, Jeffrey said she plans to register as a mayoralty candidate soon in the hope of toppling embattled incumbent Susan Fennell, who has faced questions about her salary and spending.

“In January it became clear to me there was revelation after revelation,” Jeffrey told reporters.

She brushed aside criticism she was using the legislature as a stage to promote her mayoral bid with a news conference and press release touting improvements the Liberal government has brought to Brampton, such as an expanded Highway 410.

“I want to provide some clarity as to why I’m leaving,” said Jeffrey, crediting former Progressive Conservative premier Bill Davis for pushing her to run.

Taking aim at Fennell, Jeffrey, who was elected an MPP in the 2003 Liberal sweep by former premier Dalton McGuinty, said “respect for taxpayers is an extraordinarily important quality.”

That will be a tough sell for Jeffrey as a key player in a Liberal government that axed power plants, has been tarnished by poor oversight of questionable financial dealings at the ORNGE air ambulance service and eHealth Ontario in the past, said New Democrat MPP Jagmeet Singh (Bramalea-Gore-Malton).

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“The Liberal track record is not the greatest,” he said. “It raises some questions if the campaign is going to be about appropriate spending.”

Singh called Jeffrey’s resignation “a huge opportunity for us” to gain a seat also sought by the Progressive Conservatives.

The resignation of Jeffrey leaves the Liberals with 48 seats at Queen’s Park, including Speaker Dave Levac, to 37 for the Progressive Conservatives and 21 for the NDP. There is one vacant spot in the 107-seat legislature.

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