Escorted by U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tours the balcony outside Harris’s ceremonial office at Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Nov. 18, 2021 in Washington, D.C.Alex Wong/Getty Images
In her only debate with former president Donald Trump, Vice-President Kamala Harris made sure to mention that she’s a gun owner. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Ms. Harris said that her weapon is a Glock; asked whether she’s fired it she replied, incredulously, “Of course I have.” And in conversation with Oprah, Ms. Harris said, in a scripted zinger designed to be TikToked, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”
Ms. Harris has also repeatedly praised fracking and rising American oil and gas production, while never missing an opportunity to say she looks forward to signing the most restrictive border-control bill in generations. Those things are opposed by her most progressive supporters, but backed by a large majority of Americans.
The Vice-President’s message to swing voters is: I’m with you – and I’m not a prisoner of the progressive pieties of my party’s left wing.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be listening carefully, and figuring out how to translate it into Canadian.
So far, that’s not what’s happening. In a friendly podcast interview last week with Nate Erskine-Smith, one of his MPs, Mr. Trudeau once again signalled that he plans to try to win the next election as the same guy, with the same message and the same policies.
“The old flag, the old policy, the old leader,” may have worked for Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891, but this is 2024. The old leader and the old policies are deeply unpopular.
Hang on, let me rephrase that. Some Liberal policies are a source of unpopularity. But while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre never fails to mention that he will Axe The Tax, he’s insistently mum about axing other things. Some Liberal things – the Canada Child Benefit, or the national child-care program – are not so unpopular.
What if a government were to keep its popular policies while – I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out – ditching the unpopular ones?
An example of a politician trying to do this, in a down-to-the-wire fight for political survival, is British Columbia’s New Democratic Party Leader David Eby. In the provincial election, the incumbent premier’s biggest handicap is that he did some deeply unpopular things, such that even sympathetic voters blame the NDP for a sense of financial and physical insecurity.
The physical insecurity comes from a not-unfounded belief that many of the province’s streets feature more disorder and lawlessness than ever. A lot of voters concluded that the NDP’s drug decriminalization dream was feeding the problem, and that it was in thrall to an ideology willing to turn public spaces into inhospitable no-go zones.
Mr. Eby eventually realized that he had to respond to the concerns of the majority, by walking back the decriminalization experiment. What’s more, his election platform contains five “commitments to you,” one of which is “make our streets safer.”
In 2024, the loudest voices on the left tend to get triggered by any mention of “law and order.” But that’s now where most Canadians are, or have ever been. And the sense of unwelcome insecurity has grown. A recent Maru Public Opinion poll found that more than half of those surveyed in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver worried about becoming victims of violence on public transit.
To the extent that Canadians believe that public spaces are not safe, they will withdraw into private spaces. That will represent a loss of faith in government’s ability to do the foundational job of government, which is keeping the peace. Such a loss of public trust will result in a loss of support for spending on public programs – and a loss of support for the parties of the left and centre-left.
In Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, his mythical Canada is so safe, and so filled with law and order, that people don’t lock their doors.
It’s an exaggeration, but it starts from a truth. Canada’s greater peace and order partly came from more government – those social programs progressives want to talk about. But law and order, and the feeling of community it engendered, was also a prerequisite for support for those social programs, and the taxes to pay for them.
What does that have to do with Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals? Many of their policies are sufficiently popular that Mr. Poilievre is not running against them. But he is running against many others, and some visible outcomes of the Liberal years, such as the fourth item in his to-do list: “Stop the crime.”
What if – I know, crazy idea – Mr. Trudeau stole that slogan? And what if he actually meant it?