Gagnier won’t KO Trudeau, but leaves a black eye
Justin Trudeau has Scottish roots on his mother’s side. But he must have some Irish too, given the timing of the only serious setback his campaign has suffered since he first hit the road, lo those many weeks ago. The Jays’ great win and Rob Ford back with a clash and clatter, all on the same day. What are the odds?
At issue, of course, is Dan Gagnier, the now former Trudeau campaign co-chair who resigned Wednesday following revelations he’d written a confident and troublingly prescriptive note to five officials at TransCanada Corp., whose effort to create a pipeline network linking Alberta with the Saint Lawrence has been stymied by political opposition along the proposed route.
Gagnier went so far as to advise his contacts about the probable future size of a post-Stephen Harper cabinet (25) and the best way to approach it. “An energy strategy for Canada is on the radar and we need a spear carrier for those in the industry who are part of the solution going forward rather than refusing to grasp the implications of a changing global reality,” reads one paragraph of his note, which was obtained by The Canadian Press.
Translation from the insiderese: Have a look at these polls, fellas. The writing is on the wall. We’re looking for friends in industry who can get onside with our agenda. Step up now, not later, and reap the rewards.
At which point the earnest among us might be tempted to hit the showers. It brings to mind every appalling story about how the Liberal party, the “natural governing party,” as it was once known, was wont to operate, back in the days when its hold on power was all but assured. It reinforces the Conservative and New Democrat assertion that, when all is said and done, it’s still the same old bunch, lining up even now for a share of the same old spoils.
Gagnier, it has been noted, is a veteran of Liberal and industry circles. His profile on the website of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, where he is listed as a past board member, cites his past experience as a chief of staff to former Quebec Liberal premier Jean Charest, as a senior vice-president of Alcan, and as a former Ontario deputy minister of energy, among many other prominent posts.
By Thursday morning, following 24 hours during which the Liberals sounded only grudgingly contrite for Gagnier’s letter, Trudeau tossed him over the transom with anchor chain attached. Asked about his former adviser’s future relationship with a still entirely hypothetical future Liberal administration, Trudeau said Gagnier will be out for the “long-term future.”
According to Liberal sources, Trudeau was unaware of the letter and intends to make an example of anyone guilty of such lapses. Meantime, Maclean’s reported late Thursday that Gagnier has said the party knew of his work for TransCanada. However it shakes out, there can be little doubt heads were exploding hither and yon at Liberal HQ when this news hit the wires, and not just because of the egregious and obvious optical problem of a well-connected insider gaming the system even before the drapes have been re-measured at 24 Sussex Drive.
The practical problem is that here, you have an apparently successful campaign entering its final days with the wind at its back, poll reinforcing poll in a gathering crescendo of strategic voting that is progressively draining support from the once-mighty New Democrats and causing the Conservatives to link hands with the scandalplagued Ford brothers, so dire is their need. But then along comes this, to remind swing voters why, 10 years ago, and again in 2008, and again in 2011, they bailed on the party of Trudeau the Elder, Pearson, King and Laurier.
The Liberal platform sets a high bar for openness and accountability in government. The document reads like a wish list for every democratic reformer since the Jean Chrétien years and before. More powerful parliamentary committees, check; reining in the kids in short pants in the PMO, check; fewer whipped votes, check; a Senate free of cronyism and patronage, check; and on it goes, up to and including a promise to reform the electoral system itself by making it more proportional. Were this last to happen, majority governments might become a thing of the past, resulting in a permanent systemic check on the power of the prime minister.
None of those high-toned promises are worth beans, however, if the people making them can’t be believed. Trudeau ran into serious headwinds last year, rightly so, over his inability or unwillingness to keep a promise to keep out of riding nomination battles. The Eve Adams floor-crossing debacle was a case in point.
In casting his Liberal party as different and better, Trudeau has raised expectations that it will be, in fact, different and better. The Gagnier episode, eclipsed as it has been by other news, may not change the outcome next week. But it does signal the huge obstacles Trudeau faces, from friends as well as foes, should he win.