It’s time for Trudeau to show some substance
One of the burdens of being prime minister is that it affords the occupant of the office scant room to hide. Not that Justin Trudeau isn’t trying.
The prime minister returned from his trip to New York and Boston with sweet Fanny Adams on borders or trade, i.e. the two major irritants in Canada’s relationship with The Massive Irritant fronting the Gazebo of Crazy™ formerly known as the presidency.
Not that you’d know Canada was much bothered — on either front — by the current state of affairs. Even with an important NAFTA deadline slipping by and the unofficial border-crossing season about to open, the official trip summary issued by Trudeau’s office peddled only soft euphemisms about the Canada-U.S. “partnership” and its importance to “good, middle-class jobs,” while (insert favoured euphemism for “illegal” here) border crossings weren’t mentioned at all.
Instead, we were reminded of the prime minister’s cloying address to NYU graduates, where Trudeau — from the comfort of his bubble — told an audience of admirers to get out of theirs, and a laundry list of meetings with business leaders whose welcomed investments in Canada will do little to mask the trauma should Trump decide to spite Canada and spike NAFTA.
And while Trudeau did talk trade with an audience of the converted at the Economic Club of New York, he wasn’t playing offence and didn’t offer a tactical intervention; his comments were mostly to cheer on the people who were doing the real work in Washington, D.C.
“We’ve worked with (the Americans) on a whole bunch of issues, including this morning in Washington where we have some of our top folks continuing the conversations,” Trudeau told the audience. “I’m feeling positive about this, but it won’t be done until it’s done and people are working very, very hard on it right now,” he added. To pick up on a theme the Liberals are currently pushing: It wasn’t an answer Stephen Harper would have given.
I’m feeling positive about this, but it won’t be done until it’s done.
And when Trudeau did eventually careen into specifics by saying Mexico had made proposals that will “go a long way towards reducing the trade deficit the U.S. has with Mexico and indeed even bringing back some auto jobs from Mexico to the United States,” he was quickly rebuked on Twitter by Mexico’s economy minister, who replied: “a clarification is necessary: any renegotiated Nafta that implies losses of existing Mexican jobs is unacceptable.”
Fine, Trudeau isn’t the details guy. But when partisans are trying to paint a picture of Trudeau as a man with “the political depth of a finger bowl,” it would surely help the prime minister to take a deep dive on some of the complicated issues currently facing his government, whether it be NAFTA, illegal border crossings or the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Yet, on all of these files Trudeau is taking a back seat to his ministers, with Chrystia Freeland fronting efforts to get NAFTA over the line, Bill Morneau playing pipeline poker and Ahmed Hussen trying to stem the flow of Nigerians crossing the 49th parallel. Given that failure on any of these fronts would be injurious to Liberal reelection prospects, it’s a high-risk approach.
The charitable interpretation is that Trudeau trusts his team to get the job done. The PMO will also claim that each office is working in tandem with the Centre. But the longer Trudeau stays in the shadows as issues come to a boil, the more people might draw another conclusion: that the prime minister just doesn’t have anything of substance to offer.
There’s also the question of brand. Even if stopping the flow over the Canada-U.S. border could be done without a willing partner in the U.S. (a ha-yuuge ‘if ’), doing so would run counter to Trudeau’s public promise to welcome all. Trudeau can’t be hard-ass on immigration for the same reason Stephen Harper couldn’t be a candy-ass on the same question: the base would revolt.
But last year saw upwards of 20,000 dodgy crossings, with experts predicting more this summer as the Trump administration continues to crack down on various communities who have overstayed their welcome. What Trudeau will eventually find out is what Harper knew to his core: that Canada’s vaunted support for immigration is heavily predicated on its being done properly and fairly, which all can agree isn’t an accurate description of what’s currently happening.
Trudeau is in a similar bind on pipelines, with his enviro-social licence-Indigenous-consultation image crashing hard into the economic necessity of our oil reaching tidewater.
This leaves NAFTA as the one bona-fide opportunity for Trudeau to demonstrate some mettle. So, enough of the cheerleading prime minister, it’s time to come out from behind your ministry and own a file.