EUPHORIA’S SHELF LIFE
Alberta NDP’s rude awakening headed Trudeau’s way. McParland
Make one small change to the following paragraph and you could be reading Canada’s 2015 year- in- review: “The NDP government is flailing now, beset by the quadruple woes of low oil, huge spending promises, crippling inexperience, and the exhaustion that can overwhelm a new regime trying to do too much at the wrong time.”
All that’s required is to switch “NDP” to “Liberals.” The paragraph is from the Calgary Herald. Alberta’s NDP government was elected with all the euphoria and outsized expectations of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, and seven short months later has discovered euphoria comes with a short shelf life. There’s no reason it should last any longer for Trudeau.
The lessons for Premier Rachel Notley have been several, and stark. Everything that looked so clear- cut and easy from opposition benches becomes difficult and complicated in office. Making promises is not the same as achieving them, no matter how much effort goes into the trying. Money really does matter, annoying as that may be, and budgets can’t simply be ignored because left- wing philosophy treats them with disdain. The people who praised you when you were making pledges get decidedly cranky when told they’ ll have to wait. And political opponents won’t hesitate to celebrate your failures just like you celebrated theirs.
Much of this should already be dawning on the Liberals. They’re unlikely to meet their goal of 10,000 Syrian refugees by year- end, despite chopping the pledge from 25,000. Turns out that Trudeau’s declaration that Canada only needed the “political will” to succeed was a bit off the mark. Finding and preparing that many people in a war zone can’t be accomplished with a waved hand or a timely selfie. “We are moving heaven and earth to get them here as quickly as we can, but to do it in a way that is correct and appropriate and takes due concern for security, medical and other issues,” said Immigration Minister John McCallum on Wednesday. Which is pretty much exactly what t he Conservatives were saying when they were in power, and were treated to so much Liberals disdain.
The Liberal pledge to usher in three years of $ 10- billion deficits, followed by a balanced budget, is similarly evaporating. It would be hard to achieve if they didn’t spend a single extra dime. If they go ahead with the massive list of spending promises that got them elected, they’ll be lucky if the shortfall is double that amount. So many Liberals are promising so much spending that federal bureaucrats are wondering where the money will come from. Finance Minister Bill Morneau won’t rule out an increase in the GST, though he says he is “not considering” one at the moment. Morneau also found this month that meeting with provincial counterparts produces the same demands they made on the Tories: more money, more money, oh … and more money, please. A decade after the Liberals claimed to have “fixed” health- care funding for a generation, the provinces insist it’s still broken, and it’s still Ottawa’s responsibility to repair.
Trudeau made a comparable discovery when he ended Stephen Harper’s boycott of provincial summits. Premiers Brad Wall and Christy Clark still want nothing to do with Trudeau’s Senate reform plans, and two premiers is plenty enough to ground them. The premiers love luring the prime minister to their summits, because it makes him such an easy target for their de- mands. Harper felt there was little to be achieved by subjecting himself to the experience; we’ll see how enthusiastic Trudeau remains.
The Liberals have skilfully deflected national attention from their early stumbles with a mast erful display of media optics. Trudeau personally welcomes the first Syrian arrivals; Trudeau comforts a downcast student on Parliament Hill; Trudeau escorts a group of kids to Star Wars; Trudeau leads 383 delegates to Paris where they all herald a toothless climate change pact. They know how to give good headline, these Liberals: even as his Syrian effort was struggling, McCallum was able to quickly approve entry for an Indian boy who had been waiting three years to join his parents in Canada. Maybe it wasn’t a deliberate move to divert the media from the Syrians — that’s what the Tories would do — but it sure didn’t hurt.
The media honeymoon won’t continue. One reason the pundits were so keen on ridding themselves of Harper was because the targets were getting stale. New people, and new programs, were needed to be found wanting. A key moment will come early in the new year when Morneau has to deliver a budget and explain how the spending torrent can be maintained without sliding deep i nto the debt hole that will so quickly sour so many dreams. Joe Ceci, Alberta’s finance minister, knows what it feels like. He’s already acknowledged that a lot of the NDP’s big- spending promises may have to wait.
If it happens to the NDP it can happen to the Liberals. Join us here a year from now to see if they find a way to avoid it.
The same kind of rude awakening Notley went through in Alberta is heading Trudeau’s way now