How the Liberal Party can save itself, maybe

(Trigger warning: This column contains baseless speculation on the future plans of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It may be upsetting to some and utterly tedious to others. Govern yourselves accordingly.) Spare a moment of empathy for those dejected Canadians who do not find Justin Trudeau appealing, but who find the alternative appalling. There are quite a few. Who do they vote for in 2025? Do they even bother? It is not an immediate decision, thankfully. Much could change between now and next spring, although pollsters and most pundits seem to think the pudding is set, that there is nothing to impede a majority Pierre Poilievre government. (Not “Conservative” government, note; Poilievre has put his own monogram on the party.) But what if Trudeau were to resign before the election—although he insists every time he is asked that he won’t (which is taken as confirmation, in some circles, that he most certainly will)? What happens then? Does the leaderless Liberal party simply melt away like spring snowbanks, and leave a muddy puddle? It happens. It happened to the once-dominant federal Progressive Conservative party, reduced to two seats in 1993 after a few years too many of Brian Mulroney. It happened to the Harper government in 2015, too, after the former leader finally turned almost everyone into an enemy. In fact, there appears to be an informal—but rigorously enforced—term limit on ruling parties: 10 years, and you’re gone. But that might not happen next time for two reasons: the Liberal Party has enough talent within its current ranks to re-invent itself without Trudeau. Indeed, it could be easier if the prime minister does leave. And, second, the sheer awfulness of Poilievre and his merry band will give many “reasonable” voters pause. The Liberal talent, partly organized by height, starting with the tallest: Housing Minister Sean Fraser, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, Treasury Board President Anita Anand, Sport Minister Carla Qualtrough, Government House Leader Karina Gould (who's on maternity leave right now), Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan, Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, and under-used backbenchers like Nate Erskine-Smith, who ran second in the recent race to lead the Ontario Liberals. (He would have to be lured back, however; he has declared he will be leaving the federal scene.) What distinguishes this group most is that they tend to get things done. This is all the more notable since they belong to a government known for dithering, delaying, back-tracking, and dropping the ball, apparently because of some paralyzing uncertainty, or complacency, at the top. Whatever the reason— too much overpromising, blue-skying, allergy to risk?—the Trudeau government’s unfulfilled promises are piling up like January dust bunnies. So it has been refreshing to see Fraser, barely weeks into the housing ministry, start signing agreements, making announcements of pending projects, and revamping longstanding policies all with a view to actually building places that people can afford. Miller also acted very quickly on a sensitive file by announcing a move to reduce the volume of foreign students to further relieve relentless pressure on rental housing. Last week, the immigration minister also announced a push for greater francophone immigration to places like New Brunswick, which is sorely in need of professionals. Pressed to put a number on the level of recruitment, he demurred: “I didn’t have the confidence in setting the levels that we were going to get to—10 per cent, 13 per cent—so I didn’t want to be a moron, plain and simple… I’m not going to do the trick of the politician who makes any promise, but can’t meet thresholds.” That straightforward talk goes a long way, especially in politics as it is practised today. Before that, Miller established fruitful relations in the Indigenous affairs files, signing a number of groundbreaking agreements regarding First Nations social services, land claims, and missing and murdered women, keeping the oft-ignored issues in the public eye—and earning the respect of many Indigenous leaders along the way. When she was defence minister, Anand brought dynamism and commitment to reforming the old boys’ culture of the Canadian Armed Forces—without much luck, but it is hard to turn around a ship that size, particularly when it is stuck on a sandbar. (Her successor in defence, Bill Blair, appears to have simply stopped trying.) Now Anand is at Treasury Board, charged with trimming excessive, or useless, government spending—another Herculean task, but one she has taken on so far without the usual ideological broadsides against public servants, unachievable and arbitrary targets, or grand-standing. Frugal voters can only wish her well. As for Champagne, cabinet’s most active energizer bunny, as innovation minister he has announced three multi-billion dollar electric vehicle and battery plants in recent months, hopefully ensuring a future for central Canada’s crucial auto manufacturing sector. He has also worked well with provincial governments, and beaten the Americans at the bidding game (albeit at significant cost to the taxpayer.) Sport Minister Qualtrough, formerly at employment and with responsibility for disability files, was arguably assigned a lower profile post in the last shuffle, but the former Paralympic swimmer has a record of blunt talk and steady achievement. Not long ago, she enacted new benefits for low-income working people with disabilities after years of promises. She also announced a national inquiry into safe sport in the wake of stories of sexual and physical abuse in hockey and other sports. Importantly, she rejected a call for a more cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive judicial inquiry despite pressure from high-profile sports associations. It would be too protracted, without enough protection for victims and survivors, in her words, “a two-year process that would result in a finding that bad things happen in sport. I’ll stipulate: bad things happen in sport.” As for O’Regan, he has overseen three major strikes—federal public servants, West Coast port workers and St. Lawrence Seaway employees—that ended in settlements with minimal disruption to the economy, or hardship for strikers. He resisted pressure for back-to-work legislation, declaring: “Stop looking to me to do end-runs on collective bargaining.” Clear, forceful, unambiguous—unlike most of what emerges from his boss’ mouth, it must be said. Gould, currently on maternity leave, managed the impossible in her previous job as families minister: that is, getting the provinces—even deeply hostile ones—to sign on to the federal child care program. As house leader, too, she has ably fenced with Poilievre across the aisle in Question Period without appearing superior or overly-rehearsed. She is definitely an asset, particularly for a younger demographic. There are other top achievers, too, notably Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland who did most of the heavy lifting (and heavy sighing, no doubt) in negotiating an updated free trade deal with then-U.S. President Donald Trump, and who also helped push the historic and much-needed $10-a-day child care program. Freeland’s problem, however, is that she is not a natural politician—perhaps unfairly, she comes across as condescending, isolated from daily concerns and pedantic. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has the opposite problem: she is politically adroit, but doesn’t seem to be driving Canada’s foreign policy. It often appears that no one is—at least not very confidently, particularly when it comes to the Middle East. There are ministers a renewed Liberal Party could do without because, fairly or not, they are a drag on the party’s popularity. One is Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson who plays both sides of the fence—promoting renewables while approving new pipelines and fossil fuel plays. The other, regrettably, is Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Regrettably, Guilbeault knows the environment file so well and believes so ardently in a green future, but he has no marketing skills, and, like Freeland, is unlikely to develop them this late in his career. He was born to be a policy advocate, an especially articulate one, or a university professor—not a politician. It doesn’t help, either, that his boss is too anxious about offending Western provinces to back his justly impatient minister. What matters most, of course, is who becomes the party’s next leader (not that the job is vacant.) If that person campaigns humbly and governs in the style of Jean Chrétien, who gave his ministers plenty of leeway to mostly good effect, more things might actually get done. As it is now, the enormous power centred in the Trudeau PMO—like the Harper PMO, or the Poilievre opposition leader’s office—hog-ties ambitious ministers and eager bureaucrats alike. Top-down control, wherever it is found, kills initiative and sours hope. It may be too late, of course. The Liberals are never going to win over Alberta’s political class, many western Canadian voters, many angry men. They should stop trying and start governing—especially on the all-important climate file—for the rest of the country, and the rest of the planet. Their only tiny hope is that distaste for Poilievre hardens and that, in the time remaining before the vote, the Trudeau PMO further unleashes some top performers—in caucus and in the bureaucracy—and lets them start fixing things. It is a strategy replete with risks: offending the wrong foreign power, investing too much public money in a failing enterprise, driving premiers to be more—not less—intransigent. But they’ve made these mistakes already while trying to be careful. The question now is whether they have to change their leader to change their ways? It would seem so. Susan Riley is a veteran political columnist who writes regularly for The Hill Times. The Hill Times