Promises to keep? Not the Liberals. McParland.
Justin Trudeau enters his second summer as prime minister with a thin record to look back on, across a landscape littered with abandoned promises and public reversals.
Balanced budgets have been abandoned. Limited deficits are a thing of the past. Electoral reform crashed and burned like a damaged drone. Parliamentary reform turned into an embarrassing retreat as the opposition ganged up against Liberal efforts to bend the House of Commons to its will.
Canada’s indigenous people have refused to be jollied along with happy talk and photo ops, signalling that it will take more than a renamed office block in Ottawa to reverse generations of built-up anger. “Peacekeeping” — that magic Liberal realm where proud Canadian soldiers in blue helmets keep order in far-off lands — turns out to mean a $30 billion increase in conventional military spending over the next decade. The firm belief that the Liberals held while in opposition — that the paranoid Tories of the Harper government saw terrorists behind every lamp post — has given way to a vast expansion of Canada’s spy agency and an enhanced prioritization of halting extremists before they can do to Canada what they are doing to Europe. Warning of the potential evils that Canadians face, and their need to be vigilant, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale even sounds a little Harper- like if you close your eyes and listen.
Better relations with the provinces ran aground on Trudeau’s decision to stick with the Tory funding formula on health care, as well as its decision to side with Alberta on pipelines rather than British Columbia, which is determined to put such projects in their graves. Ottawa’s wish to be pals with the premiers had already hit rough water over climate change policies: Saskatchewan has fiercely opposed the imposition of a carbon tax, especially after the Liberals adopted the same emissions standards as the Harper Conservatives (despite repeated pledges to do better) and took a high- profile, all- expenses paid junket to Paris to glad- hand their way through a big UN climate change gathering.
It’s almost as if the government shouldn’t have made all those promises (what was it, 200? 300? No one seems sure of the exact count) on the way to its majority. Trudeau’s victory in 2015 was supposed to be the last election ever held under the first- past- the- post system. What will voters think when they head to the polls in 2019 and awaken to the fact that nothing has changed? If they start looking for answers they may have trouble getting factual information, as the Liberals’ pledge of better transpar- ency and openness has been shovelled onto the growing heap of stuff they’re not really going to do. After two full winters of examining the issue, Treasury Board President Scott Brison emerged this week to unveil the result: a thin set of minor alterations to the Access to Information Act that, as columnist John Ivison noted, “offers so many exemptions public servants are spoiled for choice in picking a reason to deny the release of information.” Among other things, information requests can be refused if the government judges them to be “vexatious.”
The inquiry into murdered and missing women? After months of delay, indigenous leaders have complained loudly of poor leadership and bad communications. The justice minister’s own father denounced the affair as “a bloody farce” and demanded firings. In- digenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett seems to have been swallowed whole by a portfolio that has stymied so many others before her — a fact the Liberals blithely ignored while promising a new era of reconciliation and co-operation.
How has it all fallen apart so quickly? Liberal hubris — a chronic ailment that afflicted so many previous Liberal regimes and seems particularly virulent among prime ministers named Trudeau — is a big reason. Trudeau simply shrugged off the possibility that governing might be harder than he thought, or that the world was trickier to deal with than the application of some sunny ways. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that many of the pledges dangled before the electorate were simply impractical or unrealistic, and that no rookie government could push through so much change in so short a time in a democratic system where opposing opinions proliferate and are meant to be respected.
Many members of his team of bright new faces have proven disappointing: Bennett has fallen from view; Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has all but boasted himself out of a job; the ineffectual Stephane Dion was replaced after someone in the Prime Minister’s Office realized that Russia isn’t our friend; Karina Gould replaced the hapless Maryam Monsef as minister for electoral reform, only to be told days later there would be no reform. House Leader Bardish Chagger, fortunately, has failed in her efforts to turn the chamber into a Liberal luncheon club. There has been one encouraging performance, from Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, though her most recent speech effectively jettisoned three decades of Liberal principles on foreign affairs in favour of a more muscular approach to the world. It’s almost like she’s been paying attention.
It’s only their second summer, so the Liberals may yet regroup. Trudeau’s revamping of the Senate (though it may have been largely an attempt to free himself from blame for its activities) has managed to inject a bit of life into the place. And Canada’s 150th birthday offers an opportunity to glory in photo ops and the feel-good moments at which the prime minister excels. In a world of political turmoil, terrorist attacks and dismaying displays of intolerance — not to mention Donald Trump — Canada still often looks like a bastion of quiet sanity. That might be the case no matter which party was in power, but the Liberals will happily claim credit. The birthday bash plays directly into one of their strengths: self-congratulation has always been something Liberals are good at.
HOW HAS IT ALL FALLEN APART SO QUICKLY? LIBERAL HUBRIS IS A BIG REASON.