LESSONS FOR PM. MCPARLAND, NP2

Aresearcher looking back on Canada from some future perch could be forgiven for suspecting there must have been some sort of Liberal-eating disease at loose in the land between the years 2015 and 2019.

It’s been an ugly period, no question, for a party that sees itself as an inclusive, big-tent unifying force yet seems fated to rule in periods of restiveness and discontent.

In his early days as prime minister, Justin Trudeau — when he wasn’t posing for magazine covers or inspiring admiring headlines in foreign publications — could gaze across Canada and view a sea of progress for self-declared “progressives.”

There were Liberal governments in Quebec, Ontario and across the Atlantic provinces. Albertans had chucked out the Tories for the first time in forever. New Democrats had been running Manitoba for 15 years, and Liberals had been in power in British Columbia almost as long — though B.C. Liberals aren’t quite like the ones you’d find elsewhere.

A little over three years later and it’s all gone. Ousted in Quebec, decimated in Ontario.

Of 708 seats in 10 provincial legislatures, Liberals hold just 173, less than one-quarter. The three remaining premiers are huddled together on the eastern coast, where their number could soon be reduced to one after upcoming elections in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. Of 37 million Canadians, just 1.6 million are in provinces governed by the Liberals.

Is it just a coincidence that the party professing great faith in unity and co-operative federalism can’t seem to find a country it can get along with? The last great wave of Western resentment crested under an earlier Trudeau. Two efforts to separate Quebec from Canada produced referendums under Liberal prime ministers. While not a Liberal, Alberta premier Rachel Notley was as popular and progressive as they come when she took office, more than willing to work with the Trudeau Liberals toward shared ambitions of carbon reduction and pipeline expansion. Her defeat Tuesday resulted from many Albertans’ belief that Ottawa betrayed that trust.

Trudeau didn’t make oil prices tank, and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were no great success at getting pipelines built, either. It’s not Notley’s fault that Canada’s courts so easily co-operate in the delaying tactics of activist zealots. Neither can the NDP be blamed for umpteen previous Alberta governments blowing through oil revenues during boom times while failing to prepare for the downturns.

Both promised so much, however, and proved unable to deliver. The euphoria that greeted Trudeau’s victory and Notley’s triumph was always a bit unrealistic. The disillusion that’s followed is a direct result. Progressivism’s belief system is all about the advances to be gained from bonhomie and good intent, the great advances waiting to be seized via right-minded people waging a just campaign for the greater good.

In advance of October’s election, Trudeau, under pressure from scandals and missteps, is already on the road seeking to give new life to that revivalist spirit.

“The choice Canadians will be facing is one about striving forward confidently into the future and knowing that if we work together we can solve these big problems,” he declared in a speech to party members Wednesday.

He didn’t explain why more than three years of striving has produced so little forward marching. He also has far fewer fellow travellers to call on for support than he did the first time around.

In 2015 he had a great friend in Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, a Liberal premier in Quebec who forswore the separatist card, and a seeming sea-change in Alberta politics. He tossed around pledges of kinship like candies at a Halloween bash. He found Notley happy to deal: she’d give him a carbon tax and he’d help her get a pipeline.

The times seemed ripe: Alberta was portrayed as a community on the cusp of change, with a population of young, enlightened migrants from other provinces certain to free it from the hidebound conservatism of earlier generations.

Stuff got in the way, finances being one of them. Money never seems important to progressives until it’s not there, as Wynne learned when 14 years of heavy borrowing finally aroused alarm in complaisant Ontarians. In Trudeau’s bailiwick, future planning consisted of “the budget will balance itself,” despite plans for several years of deficits. To Alberta’s New Democrats, the fact the province had relatively little debt meant it had plenty of room to borrow. Notley defiantly vowed to ramp up spending in spite of collapsing revenues.

Like so many others on the left, she argued that public “investment” would soften the impact of lost jobs and the cruelties of the market. Maybe it did, to some extent, but four years later Calgary’s office towers still echo emptily and unemployment remains well above the national average, while the borrowing continues.

To her credit, Notley showed the ability to adapt, a skill Trudeau has yet to demonstrate. Without a pipeline, oil couldn’t get to new markets. Without new customers, government income stagnated. Without more money, the deficits just piled up, and all the hopeful forecasts proved faulty. All of a sudden Notley sounded like an angry Tory, threatening to shut off oil supplies to B.C., buying up rail cars to move stranded crude, labelling federal tanker ban legislation “a stampede of stupid.”

Unfortunately, in Jason Kenney she was faced with an authentic angry Tory, and the voters opted for the real thing. Notley did well to hang onto 32 per cent of the vote, still three or four times her party’s historic level. Liberals won no seats and less than one per cent of the vote.

Making promises is a great way to get elected, especially when there’s no mention of costs or pain to be involved. Following through is the eternal problem, especially when far too much has been pledged to be reasonably delivered. Conservatives are constantly criticized for gloomy prognostications on the need for caution, discipline and realistic budgeting, yet tend to get the call to service when “progressives” start to run out of other people’s money. Notley struggled in vain against the expectations she aroused; Trudeau has six months to find a way to avoid the same fate.

BOTH PROMISED SO MUCH AND PROVED UNABLE TO DELIVER.