Canadian PM Harper reshuffles cabinet amid polls slump

Canada's prime minister has appointed eight new ministers in a cabinet shuffle, hoping to reanimate a Conservative government sagging in polls after seven years in power.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird will remain at their posts, steering Canada's export-driven economy through global headwinds and shifting its foreign policy toward rising nations in Asia and South America.

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a Twitter message that he was "welcoming eight new faces" and was "proud to be naming four new strong, capable women to the ministry".

"This fall (they) will carry our new agenda forward."

With two years to go in its first majority mandate, Harper's government is at its lowest polling levels since being elected in 2006.

The Conservatives trail the Liberals, relegated in the last election to third-ranked after ruling for most of the past century.

"This is really the commencement of something I told all ministers at the beginning of Parliament, that in the course of the mandate I would bring generational change to the ministry," Harper said.