The challenge for any new national Liberal leader isn’t just to distance him- or herself from Justin Trudeau — though that will be hard enough. The task is also to offer fresh energy and tap into the actual concerns of Canadians. Why on earth, after 10 years of Liberal rule, should voters go back to the same old bowl of soggy cereal?
To his credit, Mark Carney took a good stab at it in his “Daily Show” interview, where he came across as self-effacing, serious and even a little bit funny. But the task ahead — back in this country — will be trickier.
The problem is that, over the last decade, Liberal policies have caused much frustration among Canadians. On the other side, firmly entrenched and channelling 10,000 gigawatts of public resentment, is Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
You might call it a conflict between two philosophies: “get outta the way” versus “yes, of course, but …”
For several years now Poilievre has become the lead champion of “get outta the way.” He assumed the Conservative leadership attacking “gatekeepers.” On issue after issue — from housing to inflation to crime — Poilievre has made the case that the real problem with life in Canada is the bureaucrats and change-stoppers who prevent progress.
This was a position that came naturally to the free market, libertarian-leaning Poilievre. But it would be a mistake to see him as just neoliberalism version 2.0. The reason the gatekeepers message worked so well is because Canadians could recognize their own frustrations in Poilievre’s diagnosis.
His desire to get gatekeepers out of the way is a sharp contrast with what seems to be the unspoken reigning philosophy of modern Canada — and much of the modern West outside of the United States. This is the “yes, of course, but …” approach. Though to call it an approach is generous. It’s more of a prophylactic to progress than anything else.
On issues grand and petty, modern life is frustrated by those who seem to have far too many seemingly reasonable excuses why we just can’t quite accomplish goals we’d otherwise all agree on. Do we want to have safe communities where criminals are locked up and kept off the streets? Sure we do but … what about bail? Even for repeat offenders? We just can’t seem to protect the rights of criminals too much.
Are you concerned about sexual assault, rape and murder? Sure you are, but if the offender is Indigenous or “racialized,” then our justice system also has to consider their sad childhoods. So let’s be more lenient on these criminals and release them back to likely re-offend, almost certainly in Indigenous or “racialized” communities, making those people we say we care about even less safe.
Do you care about public parks where children can play away from drug addicts shooting up? How about having public libraries that aren’t just way stations for potentially dangerous and disturbing individuals to congregate and publicly defecate? Of course you do, but let’s think about harm reduction. Yes, we might have shot that addict full of Narcan three times today, but he needs a space out of the cold. So you’ll just have to put up with it.
This type of thinking affects our politics in both grand and mundane ways. After Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe’s access to Russian natural gas became a huge risk, our European allies asked if Canada could help. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz even said his country would invest in facilities to receive Canada’s aid.
Sure, we could help, said Trudeau. His government truly did want to support Ukraine. But with natural gas? This would just be too expensive. There’s no business case for it (even as Scholz and the Russian invasion were making one). And then of course there are environmental concerns and Indigenous consultations needed for pipelines. Yes we’d like to help, but … no.
Normal, everyday concerns about safety, the environment or something else inevitably get in the way of pretty much everything that could improve our lives. The problem for any new Liberal leader is that he or she will inherit one side of this profound political divide.
For more than a decade, Liberals have lined up on the wrong side of the fight over ambition and freedom. They’ve been the ones saying “yes, of course, but …” And then you can fill in the blank — usually with something about safety or harm or risk or the environment.
We now live in a culture where these not unreasonable concerns have gone from being cautious breaks on progress to ever growing swamps that spread into the morass of nothing-will-get-done-land. The frustration has mounted and is overflowing the walls of political discourse.
Poilievre and the Conservatives saw this and lined themselves up on the side of anti-regulation. They became the chief spokespersons for “get outta the way.” There was nothing inevitable about this. Conservatives have historically been, by definition, cautious. Liberals used to be on the side of ambition, progress and nation-building.
But in the 21st century, their roles have shifted. Does anyone really think this is going to change because the Liberal party belatedly selects a new leader?
National Post