Trudeau uses Throne Speech to urge opposition to play nice

Justin Trudeau has made a virtue of scarcity since October’s demotion to minority government.

A few discourteous words in Donald Trump’s direction aside, the prime minister has largely kept quiet since his latest “victory,” creating a vacuum into which the issue of Andrew Scheer’s control over the Conservative movement has now been sucked.

Alas, nothing lasts forever, and the business of administering the federation has kicked back into gear with the government’s throne speech. Just how does the prime minister plan to pull the country together, absent any cogs from a restive West? One day after having her nearly 40-year old plane requisitioned from Italy to replace the prime minister’s nearly 40-year old plane, which had broken down in England after being pressed into service because of a crash involving Trudeau’s nearly 40-year old primary plane in Trenton, a jet-lagged Governor General Julie Payette delivered some textual healing on Trudeau’s behalf.

“We are,” the former astronaut said, “inextricably bound to the same space-time continuum and on board the same planetary spaceship” and, for that reason, apparently, the 43rd Parliament should get on with implementing the entire Liberal platform. All of it. Trudeau met with the opposition leaders before his office put digits to keyboard but, other than a comma or perhaps a period, there doesn’t appear to be any sign of their influence on Liberal thinking.

Trudeau met with the opposition leaders before his office put digits to keyboard but, other than a comma or perhaps a period, there doesn’t appear to be any sign of their influence on Liberal thinking.

To no one’s surprise, there will be a “middle-class” tax cut. There will be more action on climate change. There will be a “walk” along “the road of reconciliation” with Indigenous Peoples. Illegal guns will be made illegaller. If you loved the Grit platform, you’ll love it even more in speech form.

Not that Trudeau has completely ignored the West. “Today’s regional economic concerns are both justified and important,” Payette told parliamentarians. “The government will work with provinces, territories, municipalities, Indigenous groups, stakeholders, industry, and Canadians to find solutions,” she added. The 112 words of explanatory bafflegab that follow, however, show this government still doesn’t have a scooby about how to get on with doing just that.

Indeed, the government will keep going green but will work “just as hard” to “get Canadian resources to new markets, and offer unwavering support to the hardworking women and men in Canada’s natural resources sectors, many of whom have faced tough times recently”. So that’s that, then. I can hear Jason Kenney downing tools already.

Nor has the government changed its tone; it’s still so earnest and cloying it makes Tracy Flick sound like Howard Beale. The degree to which this prime minister slings focus-grouped confections around is a hangover from his first government that he could really do without. The Liberals will “deliver a better Canada for all Canadians”? Franchement .

But with an election around every corner in a minority Parliament, Trudeau knows he must always be selling, even if, as the throne speech repeats 10 different ways, Parliament needs to work together to do “what is right for the common good.”