OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new minister of labour and seniors thinks his party is fully capable of pulling off an upset in next year’s election.
The blue-grit-Paul Martin-era-political-wonk doesn’t like labels. But Steven MacKinnon is either delusional or a soothsayer.
“People want Justin Trudeau to succeed. They want Canada to succeed. And I think at the end of the day, that will be an essential part of the ingredients for victory,” said MacKinnon in an exclusive interview with the National Post last week.
MacKinnon, who was recently sworn in as a full-time cabinet member after serving as interim House leader and chief government whip, isn’t kidding.
“Of course, I see my party winning the next election,” he said.
But Canadians are fed up with Trudeau, whose approval rating stands at only 29 per cent while the Conservatives enjoy an 18-point lead in the polls.
The Liberals have not generated a single surplus since coming to power in 2015. The deficit has skyrocketed to $40 billion this year, and they have implemented a carbon tax and raised taxes on the wealthiest.
For months, the Trudeau Liberals have been hammering the idea that Canada is in a better financial spot than any other country in the world. Of course, economists might take issue with that claim.
Twelve years ago, so would MacKinnon.
“Like Paul Martin, today’s Liberals must also rededicate themselves to eliminating the scourge of deficit and debt,” he wrote in a 2012 op-ed.
The Liberal party is the party of fiscal prudence, of making careful choices
Steven MacKinnon
Now he says “society has evolved.”
“In the intervening time period, we have had a decade of quite revolutionary changes around the world. And with the rise of technology in particular, we can, for example, more cost effectively deliver the kinds of programs like dental care,” said MacKinnon in the interview.
“The Liberal party is the party of fiscal prudence, of making careful choices.”
The polling suggests voters aren’t buying the message. But MacKinnon seems to expect Canadians will have some sort of epiphany in the upcoming year.
That doesn’t make him crazy, just loyal, says longtime friend David Herle.
“He is very level. Very level. At a time when people are getting so busy, frazzled by the circumstances, he’s got a really strong basis of bringing everything back to ground,” said Herle, a former political adviser to Paul Martin.
Herle worked with MacKinnon in 2004 to help the Liberals win a fourth consecutive mandate. The 57-year-old MacKinnon, who is originally from Prince Edward Island and worked in New Brunswick for Frank McKenna’s government in the 1990s, was the “Atlantic guy” before playing a bigger role nationally.
“He’s just a master of political organization. He’s a real student of how you structure campaigns and how you motivate workers,” said Herle, who described MacKinnon as “tough,” “experienced politically” and “not intimidated.”
But even good friend Herle, who is now a political consultant, said that a miraculous comeback by the Liberals is almost impossible at this point.
MacKinnon cuts short any comparisons between the Liberal party of 2024 and that of 2004, mainly because the issues at stake and the leaders are “very different.”
Back then, the Liberals were bickering among themselves publicly. This time, they mostly remain disciplined, although there has been simmering discontent since the party’s surprising loss in the June byelection in Toronto—St. Paul’s.
MacKinnon has had a lot to do with these internal debates getting mostly swept under the rug. His colleagues describe him as a “team player” who wants to keep dirty laundry in the locker room. He gets results: only one MP has called on the prime minister to resign since the byelection debacle.
With a byelection scheduled for the Liberal stronghold of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun on Sept. 16, Liberals could find out if the party’s troubles in Ontario are seeping into Quebec, which has traditionally been its last bastion of support. While the Conservatives have been threatening Liberal ridings across the rest of Canada, they’re still polling in third place in Quebec.
Trudeau tapped MacKinnon, one of his most experienced Liberals, to replace his old friend Seamus O’Regan as labour minister after O’Regan announced he was quitting politics. He is the 12th cabinet member from Quebec.
MacKinnon, who also wrote in that 2012 op-ed that “Liberals are not New Democrats” because there is a “lack of common DNA,” and they have an “abject disinterest in social democratic experiments” and a “lack of umbilical attachment to big labour,” must now work hand in hand with the latter.
He is tasked, among other things, with steering the implementation of legislation to ban federal employers from using replacement workers.
Bill C-58 was adopted with unanimous consent in Parliament and was a long-standing demand by unions and New Democrats. It is also part of the supply and confidence agreement the Liberals struck with the NDP in order to keep their minority government in power.
“It has to be implemented within 12 months, and we think it’s too long. Mr. MacKinnon needs to show a lot of leadership in that file to make sure it gets to the finish line,” said Magali Picard, the president of the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec, one of Quebec’s largest unions.
“He already called me twice. He wants to have clear communication channels, and I’m encouraged with that,” said Picard, who expects to meet him soon.
Frédérik Larouche, who worked for MacKinnon as a political adviser, describes his former boss as a “true Liberal” who “believes in the Liberal machine.”
“He is very pragmatic. He wants to find solutions and the Liberals need him there,” said Larouche, who is a director with StrategyCorp.
But he admits that his former boss sometimes likes to get his hands dirty.
In May, MacKinnon publicly criticized the Quebec government for its management of the health-care system in his riding of Gatineau and the Outaouais region.
Historically, the region has suffered from a lack of resources. Doctors and nurses have often crossed the river to work in Ontario, where salaries are much better. And the provincial government relies heavily on Ontario to provide services to its population.
“People are going to die,” MacKinnon said at the time, calling the situation in his region a “national catastrophe” that should preoccupy the “highest level of the Quebec government.”
In Gatineau and Quebec City, members of the National Assembly were flabbergasted by his approach.
The provincial minister responsible for the Outaouais region, Mathieu Lacombe, called his remarks “irresponsible.”
“We must work together, not scare citizens by taking shortcuts. If the federal government wants to help us, rather than lecturing us, it could write us a check to increase health transfers,” Lacombe wrote on social media at the time.
Lacombe and Health Minister Christian Dubé both declined the National Post’s interview request.
“I have no regrets about doing that. And frankly, I think that it has helped Quebec maybe train a little bit more focus on the health-care system in this region,” said MacKinnon last week.
In an email, Outaouais health authorities said that the province’s contingency plan had hardly been implemented.
It’s impossible to say if MacKinnon had any influence. But the Liberals have a lot in common with the Outaouais health-care system and steadying that ship could be an even bigger challenge.
National Post
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