Guns, border crossers top Liberal concerns
Liberal MPs are flooding into Saskatoon to plot strategy for the fall parliamentary sitting which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says will not include resetting the government’s agenda.
Speaking to reporters in Winnipeg Trudeau said the government will not have a new throne speech this fall, instead continuing work on the promises he was elected on, including help for the middle class and creating good jobs.
“We are delivering on the plan that we proposed to Canadians some three years ago,” he said.
While Trudeau had a pit stop in Winnipeg on his way to the Saskatoon caucus retreat, many of his cabinet ministers were fanning out in and around Saskatoon to talk up the Liberals’ record on the economy, the Canada Child Benefit, and hand out money for crime prevention, infrastructure projects, and pulse crops.
But at the caucus retreat, gun violence and border crossers are going to be the main issued raised by Liberal MPs based on what they are hearing in their ridings.
Unlike last year — when backbenchers used the annual end-of-summer retreat to berate the government over proposed tax changes that had enraged small-business owners — Liberal MPs now seem relatively content with the government’s performance as it heads into the countdown to the next federal election.
That’s despite a challenging summer for the Trudeau government, beset by a court ruling that toppled a central pillar of its climate change strategy and NAFTA negotiations that have dragged on without resolution, punctuated by repeated insults and threats to ruin Canada’s economy from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Toronto MP John McKay suspects Trump is responsible for the level of satisfaction he’s found among his constituents for Trudeau and his administration.
“I think everybody’s concluded that poor Trudeau is dealing with a lunatic and he’s just doing the best he can with what he’s got. Every time Trump tweets, Trudeau looks better,” says McKay, who’s found NAFTA negotiations are the top issue in his riding.
Caucus chair Francis Scarpaleggia says NAFTA negotiations have been “on everyone’s lips” in his Montreal riding as well. People recognize it’s “a difficult file,” but Scarpaleggia said he hasn’t heard any negative reaction to the government’s approach.
“I get positive vibes with respect to the way the prime minister is handling it, in terms of being diplomatic but at the same time standing up for Canadian interests.”
After months of sliding popularity, opinion polls suggest Liberal fortunes have rebounded somewhat over the summer, perhaps due in part to the internal travails of the two main opposition parties.
The Conservatives are coping with the scathing indictment of former leadership contender Maxime Bernier, who last month quit what he called the “morally and intellectually corrupt” Tories to start his own party. The NDP, meanwhile, has been struggling with dismal fundraising and polling numbers amid increasingly open discontent with Jagmeet Singh’s leadership.
At townhalls he’s held over the summer, Toronto Liberal MP Rob Oliphant said, “People tend to start out by saying they’re generally happy ... and then, from the general happiness, they have things that we could do better, which feels like a good place to be in right now.”