Widely regarded as having mishandled the university funding and Jewish private school files, Reid was demoted to government services minister after a cabinet shuffle on February 18, 2005. An editorial in the "Montreal Gazette" later described this as a "make-work" position for Reid. This position offered him a much lower public profile, and he was dropped from cabinet entirely on February 27, 2006. During his time as government services minister, Reid announced that the Charest government would replace an information management system approved by the previous ministry.