Trudeau, the actor, misses his cue
Justin Trudeau’s critics like to dismiss him as an actor. But this prime minister’s time in power has seen him doing more reacting than acting, mainly to large global events out of his control.
Trudeau’s “build back better” plan — the focus of his huddle with cabinet ministers this week — will be a test of whether his government is capable of action and reaction.
The promised “ambitious” agenda is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has kept the Liberal government in reactive gear for most of 2020. But it is also being billed as a blueprint for a future that no one envisioned as recently as the election less than a year ago, a “generational moment.”
Putting a plan in place for what’s going to happen is a totally different thing than dealing with what’s already occurred. It’s too bad the Liberals already used “forward” in their 2019 election platform and throne speech, because this new plan is the one that will really be judged by its ability to anticipate the future.
There’s an old maxim, “to govern is to choose.” But so much of what has taken up Trudeau’s time since 2015 didn’t require much of a choice at all — it’s not as if the government could have opted not to renegotiate free trade with Donald Trump or do emergency relief for a pandemic-shocked nation.
“Building Back Better,” however, requires an array of choices, none of them obvious, easy or simply reactive. What does a new employment insurance system look like? How much does the federal government want to wade into the mainly provincial territory of health and child care? Is climate change or COVID-19 the most urgent concern facing the country right now? And significantly, how much debt can Canada handle after the hundreds of billions more it has already assumed in this locked-down year?
None of those choices boil down to a simple either/or decision or worse, platitudes that are too often the frothy filler of “bold” speeches from the throne in ordinary times.
Long ago, I was taught the trick for telling the difference between a platitude and a real strategy. Take any sentence from a politician’s speech and put “not” in it or turn the sentence into its reverse meaning. If it sounds ridiculous, as in: “This government will not build back better,” then what you’re being sold is an empty sentiment, not a policy choice or a strategy.
That’s not a bad way to measure what the Trudeau cabinet considered for the last couple of days for inclusion in the speech from the throne, due to be read on Sept. 23. It could in fact be a good exercise for the ministers themselves after they met on Monday and Tuesday to go over the drafts of the postpandemic blueprint. Points should go to any minister willing to weed out the platitudes from the strategy.
Another exercise for this cabinet retreat, if it wasn’t done already, is to sift through what worked and what didn’t work in the thick of the pandemic and see what can be applied to the post-pandemic future.
What definitely worked was federalprovincial co-operation and transparency — the weekly calls, the near-daily contact between Chrystia Freeland and the premiers.
Back in April, Ontario Premier Doug Ford told me that the pandemic experience on this score would bleed over into the post-pandemic future; that some seeds of collaboration were being sown. The last two public appearances between Ford and Trudeau; the most recent one on Friday, would seem to indicate that something like co-operation has taken hold between the federal Liberals and Ford’s government.
What also worked during the pandemic, for the most part, was putting government on to a more nimble footing. As Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said in an interview last week, this past year has taught government that it can do big things when necessary. “We created a program out of thin air,” Guilbeault said, “so maybe there’s a lesson there.”
Working at warp speed, however, comes with risks, such as the now-infamous WE Charity controversy, which Trudeau and his advisers have now already acknowledged as a failure — or at least a slip — in due diligence. Leaving aside the questions still being debated over whether this was cronyism, what that story exposed yet again was whether anyone around Trudeau’s cabinet is able to put the brakes on not-so-good ideas.
Did any ministers at the Ottawa retreat have that question on their minds as they went through the build-back-better plan?
The product of their work will be assessed on Sept. 23 on the basis of its ambition, its choices and its cost — and maybe most importantly, whether this is a government that can act as well as react.