Trudeau’s challenge: fulfilling big promises
The honeymoon will be all too brief.
Justin Trudeau, the eldest son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, has resurrected his party, confounded his critics, defied the naysayers and trolls, overcome his own mistakes and resoundingly defeated two tough, smart, determined opponents who cannot have imagined anything like this outcome.
A minority was presaged by many polls. A majority, and a broad one at that, is beyond the Liberals’ wildest hopes.
In pulling this off, Trudeau, 43, has made history. Canada has its first political dynasty. The country also returns, at the New Democratic Party’s expense, to the status quo ante, before the late Jack Layton’s 2011 breakthrough; two major parties, Liberal and Conservative, facing each other across the aisle, with the NDP forming a rump.
Very soon, prime ministerdesignate Trudeau will say ( if he hasn’t already), the real work begins. It will not be easy. It will, in fact, be extraordinarily hard — and not just because of the usual need for the victor to unite the country following a bitterly divisive, brutally long campaign.
This will be difficult for reasons specific to this time and this leader. He has pledged sweeping, aspirational reform, on a scale not seen since the Brian Mulroney era. Success, if it comes, will not be incremental. It will necessarily be greater than that. The potential for failure will also be greater.
Most obviously, Trudeau has campaigned for years on the promise of change. He seized the campaign on that basis; over the course of a gruelling, 11- week contest, he became the lightning rod for the two- thirds of Canadians who, for the past decade, have wished for leadership different than that Stephen Harper was providing. Autocratic, insular, controlling, is out; transparent, open, inclusive is in.
Except that modern politics, with its 24/ 7 news cycle, does not do “open” particularly well, nor has Trudeau personally in the past. His campaign was disciplined and gaffe- free, marred only by the 11th- hour resignation of campaign co- chair Dan Gagnier.
With glasnost, and the broad loosening of the PM’s grip on cabinet and caucus that would accompany it, will come opportunities for mistakes. It remains to be seen to what extent Trudeau and his advisers will tolerate the risk of relaxing central control.
After that, it gets tougher. Once the tax hike and middle- class tax cut are out of the way, there’s the promised doubling of the Conservatives’ Building Canada fund, adding $ 60- billion in spending over the next decade.
That was conceived, the Liberals have said, to boost economic growth. The risk here is twofold; first, that growth does not cooperate, which it often doesn’t in a global economy; and second, that money will be misspent.
The risk of boondoggles was ever- present even under the Conservatives, who prided themselves on their parsimony. Under Liberals, whose instinct is to admire “activist” government, it is likely considerably greater. The extent to which public money is spent wisely and transparently will define Trudeau’s government. But there’s more. Open government and smart spending are the tip of the iceberg. Trudeau has promised to clean up the mess in the Senate, making it truly independent, without resorting to Constitutional reform. The Supreme Court has ruled Senate appointments must be a prime ministerial prerogative, yet the Liberals have promised an arms- length process. How that works in practical terms, without igniting concerns about hidden undue influence, remains a question mark.
Trudeau promised last June to adopt all 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. There was woefully little discussion of First Nations issues in the campaign, but that promise stands. It amounts to a sweeping re- ordering of the Canadian state to address long- standing aboriginal grievances. Yet the money deployed for this in the Liberal costing — $ 2.6 billion over four years — is a relative pittance, next to the scale of the need.
The Liberals promised during the campaign to kill the F- 35 jet fighter procurement, buy a lower- cost plane for the Royal Canadian Air Force and redeploy the savings to Canada’s rustedout Navy. However, the lion’s share of the cost of any fighter is not in the purchase proper, but rather in the operating and maintenance costs. Even a halving of the purchase cost would save only $ 4.5 billion — a relatively small sum next to the already projected $ 26 billion cost of building a new navy.
From where will the extra billions come?
Most challenging of all, linking back to the promise of openness, is Trudeau’s ambitious plan for democratic reform which, if implemented, will have the practical effect of curtailing his power. Less power for the kids in the PMO, fewer whipped votes and greater influence for MPs sound terrific in the abstract. The new prime minister, his inner cabinet and advisers will need to decide how much power they wish to give up, in a Parliament that is as sure to be as bitterly partisan as the last one, if not more so.
Trudeau has pulled off a staggering political feat. Now, his work begins.