TRUDEAU’S NOT FOR TURNING
Prime Minister talks religious freedom, trade & family life with the Post’s John Ivison
The problem with the Liberal Party, as articulated by former NDP leader Tommy Douglas, was that it often had a wishbone where it should have had a backbone.
Yet Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are proving themselves as rigidly dogmatic in their world view as Stephen Harper’s Conservatives ever were.
The latest example is the furor over the summer jobs program, where government funding is being denied to groups who refuse to support abortion in an online application form.
In a wide- ranging interview with the National Post, Trudeau hinted at concessions to avoid the funding applications of church and faith groups being blocked but offered no apology for a move that critics say introduces a hierarchy of rights in Canada.
“We are not limiting freedom of expression or freedom of belief in any shape or form. We are simply saying organizations with the explicit purpose of limiting and eliminating Charter rights like women’s rights do not qualify for government funding,” Trudeau said.
I suggested that church groups were the unintended victims of this dragnet.
“Obviously we recognize the role church groups and faith groups of all different types have in promoting strong communities and running day camps for kids. It’s an extremely positive impact and we’re absolutely going to work with them to ensure they can continue to do that,” Trudeau said.
“We are specifically going at organizations that have the explicit and mandated purpose of removing rights that women have long fought for.”
Faith groups say they are forced to tick a box in the online application form that forces them to choose between their beliefs and government funding.
“On the actual mechanism for this, we’re happy to work with organizations that have concerns. Our goal on this is to make sure that an organization that is focused on taking away rights from women and the LGBT community that have been long fought for does not get government funding for summer students,” Trudeau said.
The culture wars have replaced economics at the heart of the political divide but the economy may make a comeback before the next election.
I asked if the Liberals remained committed to a falling debt- to- GDP ratio over the next five years — the one surviving fiscal anchor from its election platform.
“The conversations we had with Canadians in 2015 were very straightforward — a choice between Conservatives and NDP, who said they would balance the budget at all costs,” he said, “and us, who said we’re going to remain fiscally disciplined but we’re going to invest in low- income Canadians, the middle class and infrastructure. Canadians are pleased in general that we are investing in their communities and supporting the folks that need support, but they also expect a measure of fiscal discipline … People get our plan is working and we’re going to stay focused, not on arbitrary numbers…”
I interrupted: Is the debt to GDP ratio an arbitrary number?
“No, it’s not. That’s why we’re going to keep decreasing our proportion of debt,” he said.
Yet to keep that number falling, the government’s fiscal plan indicates it needs to reduce direct program expenses over the next five years in real terms, from 6.5 per cent of GDP this year to 5.7 per cent in five years’ time.
Which programs do you plan to cut, I asked.
The answer, it appears, is to conjure up economic expansion that neither the private sector nor the Department of Finance have foreseen.
“One of the things we need to do is look for new areas of fresh growth. Obvi ously when you have people who are unemployed or underemployed when they should be employed, that’s an area we can turn around. That’s why we’re trying to get more women into the workforce and get them better paid,” he said.
Another source of growth would be new markets, and critics contend Trudeau’s commitment to inclusiveness and diversity has become a barrier to striking new trade agreements, including the renegotiation of NAFTA and the prospect of free trade deals with China and the Trans- Pacific Partnership countries.
Is it time to abandon the progressive trade agenda, I asked.
“On the contrary, it’s more important than ever that we have a progressive trade agenda,” he said. “It’s an agenda that recognizes the benefits of trade cannot just go to multinationals and the one per cent and the country’s coffers — they have to be shared with everyone.”
Our t r ading partners don’t feel that way, I said.
“But we feel that way. I’m not going to accept a bad deal just to get a deal if I know it’s going to leave out workers and middle- class Canadians. That’s something the Americans, whether they are aware of it or not, agree with us on. The entire vision of President Trump around trade is, ‘ it hasn’t benefited hard- working middle- class Americans’.”
I shifted topics to the broader political landscape. A new Nanos Research poll suggested the stock of both the prime minister and his party have fallen in the past 12 months, and, while polls come and go, I asked if he was worried that the Liberals were being branded with a promise-breaker tag.
“We put forward an incredibly ambitious agenda for 2015,” he said, “where we laid out a plan for a government that was going to be active in changing things and making things better for people in a whole bunch of different ways, and we’re delivering on those commitments. We’re halfway through the mandate. We’ve done an awful lot, there’s still more to do, but I am very confident that we’re going to achieve the things Canadians expected us to do.”
“The capacity to get a mandate to do more things depends largely on whether Canadians feel you did the kinds of things you said you would do in the first place. That’s a natural and important accountability function in a democracy.”
I reminded the prime minister about an interview in 2013, before he was leader of the Liberal party, when I asked why he was in politics.
He talked about doing things differently and lifting the cynicism from the process. “I don’t need the money, fame or accolades to prove something to the ghost of my father or the history books,” he said, with the type of flourish he is too disciplined to match these days. But inevitably his agenda has been bogged down and, I wondered, did he ever feel like taking a walk in the snow, like his father?
He admitted he regrets the lack of family time.
“I have to do a better job of managing the family-work balance. It’s been tough on my kids — there have been certain moments when I haven’t been there. I managed to get to a hockey game last night with my son, so that was good, but it hasn’t happened often enough.”
But he said he is in politics because of his kids.
“I’m doing it because I have an opportunity to serve Canadians and to make a positive difference in their lives. It’s the only thing that allows me to keep having the schedule I do and work as hard as I do, and not be there for my kids and family as much as I’d like to — because I know I’m doing something meaningful.”
Though his poll numbers have dipped, he remains the prohibitive favourite to be re- elected in 2019 and appears to relish the prospect, refreshed by spending his winter vacation at a mountain lodge in the Rockies with no power, no Wi-Fi and no running water. “The outhouse at 25 below was great for the kids,” he joked.
He has returned to work apparently devoid of selfdoubt. For better or worse, this Liberal’s not for turning.