KING OF THE HILL

Trudeau won votes by steering clear of Ottawa. Now he’s back in the bubble.

With one notable exception, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been lavishing attention on many who felt neglected during the Conservative years in power.

Premiers, public servants, scientists, the United Nations, reporters, the United States, diplomats, cabinet ministers, Green party Leader Elizabeth May — all have received abundant assurances that the new guy at the top is not like the old guy.

The exception, to date, is Parliament. In the 40 or so days since the election that gave him the keys to the prime minister’s office, Trudeau has given few indications that either the Commons or the Senate figure prominently in his plans to breathe new life into Canadian politics.

His 30 new cabinet ministers have been enjoying a month in the spotlight, but little has been heard about meaningful jobs for the other 153 Liberal members of Parliament elected on Oct. 19. No parliamentary secretaries have been appointed, and committee assignments remain unknown.

Granted, events on the international stage have conspired to lead Trudeau to spend more of his first weeks in office cultivating relationships with other governments than within his own caucus.

But all this time spent away from Ottawa since the election also fits with Trudeau’s minimalist approach to Parliament Hill even before he took office. To put it in the dating language that has become regrettably common in the coverage he’s been receiving lately, Trudeau’s just not that into the whole Parliament scene.

Will that change now that he’s in the top job? We’ll get a chance to see next week when the new Parliament is convened. But Canadians might be advised not to hold their collective breath.

It wasn’t an accident on the opening day of the election campaign that Trudeau chose to get on a plane and fly to Vancouver — about as far away as he could get from the capital.

While Conservative leader Ste- phen Harper and NDP chief Thomas Mulcair were framing their election launches against the backdrop of Ottawa buildings and institutions, Trudeau put himself in front of a sunny sky and smiling Liberals in B.C. As noted previously, there couldn’t have been a clearer demonstration of how Trudeau intended to fight and win the election.

Trudeau’s predecessor, Michael Ignatieff, was caught flat-footed in the 2011 leaders debates when Jack Layton needled him about his Commons attendance — or, more accurately, his lack of attendance.

Trudeau, though, has been far less apologetic about the time he spent away from Parliament while serving as opposition leader, arguing that his main priority was to connect with Canadians outside the bubble. The attendance question didn’t come up in this year’s leaders de- bates, but if it had, that would have been Trudeau’s answer. Which is probably why it didn’t come up.

According to an analysis earlier this year by the Ottawa Citizen, Trudeau showed up for only about 40 per cent of question period sessions after becoming leader in 2013, compared to more than 60 per cent for Mulcair after he began helming the NDP in 2012.

We know how this turned out. While Mulcair was attracting rave reviews for his question period performances — “the best Opposition leader since John Diefenbaker,” according to Brian Mulroney — Trudeau was playing a different game. He was gambling, correctly, that elections aren’t won in the Commons but in the country at large.

Or, to put a new twist on his father’s old remarks about MPs, Trudeau was figuring that it was better to be a nobody on Parliament Hill and a somebody at a distance from the day-to-day fray in Ottawa.

Trudeau’s attitude toward the Commons may shift now that he has the best seat in the chamber and more than one chance a day to rise and speak.

With a strong majority, however, Trudeau doesn’t have to worry about every tiny thing that happens in the Commons. His government won’t collapse if a few MPs, or even the prime minister, miss the occasional vote or two. He might well decide, as he did in opposition, that his time is better spent out of the Ottawa bubble.

His more immediate concern is the Senate, where the Conservatives hold a majority, and where nearly two dozen seats are vacant. Trudeau’s expulsion of senators from caucus in 2014 was another strong sign of his calculated detachment from parliamentary politics, but he’s going to have to figure out a way to manage the Senate so that his legislation isn’t derailed there.

For about 40 days now, we’ve been getting a chance to see how Trudeau is delivering on his mandate to change the country — everywhere except in the Commons and Senate. Next week, we’ll see whether Parliament, never Trudeau’s favourite place, is also going to get shaken up. sdelacourt@bell.net

Before becoming PM, Trudeau focused his energies outside Parliament. That may change now that he has best seat in the House