The tough road ahead for Liberals

It may come as bad news to Justin Trudeau that the first half of his mandate, now coming to a close, was the easy part.

Over his first months in office, Trudeau’s political advantages were many, including, for instance, that he was not Stephen Harper. Where the previous prime minister had been personally cold and his policies too often mean-spirited, Trudeau brought youth, charisma and the promise of sunny ways to 24 Sussex, ushering in a rare moment of national optimism in an increasingly mistrustful era. Trudeau was also gifted with relatively friendly global economic trends and a ghostly opposition. Until recently, the prime minister faced in the House only interim leaders and lame ducks.

Even the phenomenon of Donald Trump, which by necessity disrupted the government’s plans (not to mention the world order), has provided a politically useful foil, turning Trudeau into a beacon of progressivism on the world stage.

These advantages have helped the government over its first two years to accomplish a number of important goals and improve the lives of Canadians in concrete ways, as we argued in this space on Friday. But they have also enabled the prime minister’s worst habits: in particular, his tendency to signal commitments without delivering the substance and paying the cost, to attempt to have his cake and eat it, too — presumably because he can.

But for how long? As Trudeau enters his mandate’s second half, some of his luck has run out. The PM now confronts fresh-faced new opposition leaders, controversy over his tax proposals, a constrained fiscal position, and most consequential, a renegotiation of NAFTA with a most capricious figure across the table.

With poll numbers sliding, it is clearly no longer enough simply not to be Stephen Harper. If Trudeau fails to deliver on the change he promised in a number of crucial areas, the optimism he has fostered may well turn into cynicism — and the cost for party and country will be high.

Progress on three issues in particular will be essential over the next two years if Trudeau hopes to claim a successful first mandate.

Normally, governments make the hardest decisions in the first half of their mandate. Trudeau seems to have done things backwards

Indigenous reconciliation First among these is an issue to which Trudeau has rightly given unprecedented prominence in his rhetoric. But while his government clearly represents an improvement over its predecessor on Indigenous issues, the prime minister’s actions have too often failed to live up to his lofty talk.

Take the government’s shameful response to a Human Rights Tribunal ruling that Ottawa must address the long-standing discrimination against Indigenous children on reserves. Trudeau initially welcomed the decision, but again and again he has failed to act, even amid a growing Indigenous youth suicide epidemic.

Meanwhile, the long-awaited Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has been a mess from the start, stymied by infighting and mismanagement. And the notoriously sclerotic Indigenous affairs bureaucracy continues to undermine what efforts Trudeau has made, consistently spending less than is allocated to it. (Trudeau has wisely reorganized the department, but must ensure this, too, doesn’t become another unfulfilled vow.)

The new relationship, in other words, looks far too much like the old one. Trudeau will have to do much more in the two years ahead. Criminal justice reform On the promise of justice reform, meanwhile, the government has not simply fallen short; faced with clogged and dysfunctional court and penal systems, Trudeau has accomplished next to nothing.

The Harper government’s crackdown on crime, even as crime continued its steady, decades-long decline, drove up the cost of the criminal justice system by billions of dollars, increased the federal prison population by 25 per cent, unnecessarily criminalized minor offenders and contributed to a national crisis of court delays that profoundly undermines both justice and public safety.

To his credit, Trudeau, who came to power on the promise of an evidence-based approach to policy-making, has not fed fear of imagined crime as Harper did. Yet two years into his mandate, he has done very little to undo the Tories’ evidence-blind policies. He has instead left this to the courts, which have repeatedly overturned mandatory minimum sentence laws and other features of Harper’s tough-on-crime agenda.

It is always politically difficult to topple laws born of fear. But these were mistakes of Parliament’s making — and they ought to be Parliament’s to undo. Tax fairness If, as he says, tax fairness is his top priority, Finance Minister Bill Morneau has a funny way of showing it.

The tone-deaf rollout and clumsy design of his small-business tax reforms has turned what should have been manageable blowback into a major political headache, thus endangering both the sensible goals of these particular measures and, far more important, the larger project of tax reform.

Canada’s sprawling tax code is rife with regressive loopholes Morneau has rightly promised to review. But it’s hard to imagine him carrying on after the current fiasco.

To stop now would be a great shame. As the Star has argued before, at a time of slow growth and ballooning debt, amid declining trust in government and rising concerns about inequality, the government has little choice but to persist on this essential project.

These are three vital areas, but they are of course not the only ones in need of care. Much of the legislation passed so far by this government has been on balance for the good. But it must be noted also that this half-mandate has been among the least legislatively productive in recent history.

Part of the slow pace can no doubt be chalked up to inexperience. The government has chosen to fill its cabinet with fresh talent. But while there’s probably merit to the notion that experience is sometimes baggage, we have too often seen with this cabinet how inexperience — particularly on complex and hot issues, such as electoral reform or culture policy — is a recipe for failure.

Trudeau will have to demand more of his team, but the legislative lethargy is not just about talent.

The felicitous political climate and Trudeau’s personal appeal have allowed the prime minister to have it both ways on some tough issues. But the climate is becoming less felicitous and charisma is a tougher sell the second time around. Normally governments make the hardest decisions in the security of a mandate’s first half before becoming more politically sensitive in the second. Trudeau seems to have done things backwards.

Now comes the hard part.