Trudeau must learn to say ‘no,’ or Canada will pay for it

Following a blissful first year of hallelujahs and happy snaps, Justin Trudeau is now finding out that promising to be all things to all people can’t work for all time. To govern is to choose, and while your choices inevitably please some, they blister others, turning “friends” into issues to be managed.

This week’s decision by the government to approve — albeit with 190 conditions — a massive liquefied natural gas project on the B.C. coast is the first major fly Justin Trudeau has dropped into the ointment of the people who placed their trust in him because the previous government rubbed them the wrong way. Sorry, environmental and First Nation lobbies, plus ça change, plus c’est pareil. Every new government crosses this dubious threshold. I was but a young buck tucked into the bowels of the Conservative Parliamentary research office when Stephen Harper and the late Jim Flaherty committed their 2006 Halloween Massacre and reversed a key pledge, to announce a tax on income trusts. Oh, how we bled. Hell hath no fury like a senior scorned.

But, and as I’m fond of repeating, one of Stephen Harper’s virtues was his ability to shrug off the displeasure of the people he displeased. If he thought it was the right decision for the country, he was prepared to soldier on. Will Trudeau be able to do the same?

Here, young Prince George’s refusal to exchange high or low fives with Trudeau on a B.C. tarmac is instructive. At some point in your mandate — like, say, now — people aren’t just going to be happy to meet you; they’re going to want you to deliver on what they want, which isn’t necessarily what you need.

This will be a difficult lesson for Trudeau to learn because, at heart, he is a pleaser. And while yeses are fun, in the long run they leave the treasury dry, which is why any competent leader must at least be on speaking terms with the word “no.” To date, Trudeau has uttered fewer “noes” than a yes-man with a one-word vocabulary. Taxpayers had better hope Trudeau finds his spine soon. There are some grouchy provincial “partners” on the horizon: the premiers await the specifics of carbon tax that will sting voters in their pocketbooks; the Liberal premiers of Nova Scotia and Quebec are grunting ominously about healthcare funding; and let’s not ask Brad Wall or Rachel Notley about energy exports at the moment.

This will be a difficult lesson for Trudeau to learn because, at heart, he is a pleaser.

That’s quite the collection of policy bonfires. Justin Trudeau, a major fan of the sizzle, will begin staking his reputation with his responses to them.

Fortunately, Trudeau hasn’t been idle; he’s spent months spraying his seeds of bonhomie across the barren post-Harper wasteland. A new era of co-operation is, we’re told, at hand. Now is when we’ll see if Trudeau can reap what his sunny ways have (allegedly) sown, or whether he’s merely bought peace in the first year of his time as prime minister.

My money’s on the latter. Pleasing is easy, but so is giving in, and Justin Trudeau’s serial appeasement is his strategy, not a tactic meant to extract concessions later on.

This reluctance to play the heavy is perhaps why Trudeau is leaving the inevitable disappointment to his surrogates. The prime minister was nowhere near the LNG announcement. Just as he was AWOL when Jane Philpott was out last week saying the Harper plan for health spending is here to stay. Ditto for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s announcement of adherence to the Harper-era climate targets.

What’s next? Harjit Sajjan jumping up to declare the F-35 tickety-boo?

What ought to be scary for Team Trudeau is the climate and health fights are the easy ones. It’s another audience Trudeau has gone out of his way to please that won’t accept a government being idle anymore: indigenous communities.

Trudeau has promised the moon, a UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and a shedload of cash to Canada’s longest-suffering constituency. The stakes couldn’t be any higher. And it’s a notoriously tough crowd.

The Harper government apologized for residential schools, funded on-reserve infrastructure massively, sought to boost First Nations education, and plumped for the resource projects that could employ thousands of aboriginal people, and all it got was grief.

Trudeau brings more goodwill, but as he’s now learning, it evaporates quickly. The inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women is undoubtedly appreciated, but it won’t erase either the LNG or recent Site C hydro decisions.

Managing disappointment isn’t why anyone goes into politics, but failing to do it well can get you ejected from public life. It’s time for Justin Trudeau to stop courting approbation and use his immense personal charm in the service of difficult government decisions.