the heritage minister as "largely ceremonial"?

That's how Slate magazine characterizes Canada's version of a Minister of Culture in a recent version of its series "the explainer". While it's true Bev Oda is no Andre Malraux (and it's also true that this was only a short piece) Canada's culture minister does a lot more than attend functions and cocktail parties. She controls the purse strings for a lot of cultural activities in this country and can play a major role in establishing the structural conditions that affect the other institutions that govern over national cultural activity, like the National Film Board of Canada. As the government's interface to the cultural sector, the Minister of Canadian Heritage also wields considerable symbolic power too.

To borrow a phrase from Ricky Ricardo, I think the explainer has a lot more explaining to do.