The only thing that comes close to the chaos that unfolded in Ottawa on Monday that I can recall is the sense of shock that followed the resignation speech in November 1990 by Margaret Thatcher’s soft-spoken, self-effacing deputy prime minister, Geoffrey Howe.
In a packed House of Commons, the man described as “an antidote to insomnia” criticized his boss’s domineering leadership style, using a cricket analogy. He said it was like sending out a batsman to the crease, only to find their bat had been broken by the team captain. Howe urged his colleagues to consider their own response to Thatcher’s style of leadership, which they did. The Iron Lady was gone within nine days.
Labour’s Denis Healey compared the unlikely success of Howe’s assassination of Thatcher to being “savaged by a dead sheep.”
It was similar in many ways to Chrystia Freeland’s resignation letter, that criticized the “costly political gimmicks” with which Justin Trudeau has been trying to resurrect his political fortunes. Further, she suggested that he is putting his own interests ahead of the country’s.
Like Howe, Freeland crystallized the fears that most Liberals have about Trudeau: namely that he is more concerned about himself than anyone else.
Until very recently, the two top Liberals were simpatico as the public faces of the Liberal government’s social-justice agenda.
Trudeau was intoxicated by Freeland’s 2012 book Plutocrats, with its themes of income inequality and the hollowing out of the middle class. He persuaded her to run and promoted her repeatedly, until she was named his deputy, after former finance minister Bill Morneau was tossed overboard. Senior Liberals talk about the affinity she and the prime minister have for one another — or at least did, until late last week when Trudeau told her he wanted to move her to another portfolio.
The words in her resignation letter were designed to wound but it is the source of the attack that will cut deepest.
The timing, just hours before Freeland was due to deliver her fall economic statement, left the government in complete disarray.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, took great glee in noting that the government’s own order of precedence named Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne as next in line to be finance minister, “but he didn’t know about it or want it,” in which case the job should have passed to Randy Boissonnault, had he not been forced to resign from cabinet last month, after making shifting claims about being Indigenous.
In the event, Trudeau turned to his Man Friday, Dominic LeBlanc, as he always does when he is in a jam. LeBlanc was sworn in as finance minister at 4 p.m. Ottawa time, allowing the government to table its fiscal update. It all rather suggests that Trudeau’s unrequited love affair with Mark Carney might now be over. Surely not even the prime minister can contemplate another trip to Rideau Hall with another finance minister.
The fiscal update was meant to be the focus of the day, but it has become a footnote.
What news it does make will centre on the deficit that is $21-billion more for 2023/24 than the government said it would be in the last budget. However, it turns out this is largely because the government has assessed that it is likely to be liable for $16.4 billion in lost court cases on the Indigenous file. These “contingent liabilities” in Ottawa-speak and COVID-related losses ($1.2 billion for expired vaccines and $3.5 billion for bad loans) explain last year’s heightened deficit.
Trudeau’s time in government is coming to an end. Freeland has seen to that
Should the Liberals have been more transparent? Probably. But the courts keep making awards against the government — $60 billion on Indigenous claims since 2016 — and the government, any government, is obliged to pay up.
Maybe Freeland had a premonition that this was her last chance to make amends for years of wasteful spending. There is very little in the fall statement that is objectionable and much that is commendable. Making 1.6-million more Canadians eligible for the rural carbon-tax rebate is fair, if you are arguing the tax is neutral.
Reinstating the accelerated investment incentive that allows companies to write off machinery and equipment purchases is expensive ($17 billion over six years) but it is an attempt to address the country’s chronic productivity issues.
Reforming the Scientific Research and Experimental Development tax credit is long overdue, as is streamlining project approvals to a “one project, one approval” process.
There are the proposals to increase domestic investment by Canadian pension funds that Freeland unveiled in Toronto last Friday, including the provision of $15 billion for AI data centre projects that require pension funds to invest on a two-to-one ratio with the government.
There is a suggestion that Ottawa will make federal transfers conditional on provinces eliminating specific barriers to interprovincial trade and labour mobility.
And the long-promised $5 billion Indigenous Loan Guarantee program is finally moving ahead. The fiscal update makes clear that First Nations will be allowed to invest in energy projects, a stumbling block when the government granted itself the luxury of having principles.
Freeland promised more tariffs on Chinese goods like solar products and critical minerals, “to prevent non-market practices from causing unfair and harmful market distortions.”
And the government made clear that reciprocity will be considered a requirement on all Canadian procurement: that is, if the U.S. implements a “Buy American” policy, Canada will respond in kind.
To help avert such unpleasantness, $1.3 billion will be directed toward a “comprehensive” border-security package to placate U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
To help balance the books, the government will conduct a strategic review aimed at making savings from natural attrition in the federal public service by expanding the use of AI.
The total incremental increase in spending is $24.2 billion over six years, most of which is aimed at growth and improved productivity.
By recent Liberal standards, it was a sound document and it is almost unfortunate that some of these initiatives will never see the light of day.
That’s because Trudeau’s time in government is coming to an end. Freeland has seen to that.
He could prorogue the House to stave off a confidence vote — if he can avoid one over the fiscal statement on Tuesday.
But it’s over. People have had enough: a significant number of Liberal MPs; NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who called on him to resign; not to mention eight out 10 voters.
It is ironic that it is Trudeau’s most loyal lieutenant who may end up being his assassin. But that seems to be the way of things: no man (or woman) is a hero to their deputy.
National Post
Twitter.com/IvisonJ
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