Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ventured to Nunavut last week to sign a historic agreement under which the territory will take control of its resources, lands and waters. It was, for the record, the result of a process that began under former Conservative prime minster Stephen Harper in 2008. Given that the handover will take another three years to complete, there is a good chance Mr. Trudeau won’t be in office when that happens.
But there is still a chance that he will be, and Mr. Trudeau took a moment in Nunavut to lay down the broad strokes of his party’s message for the general election scheduled for no later than Oct. 20, 2025.
“Canadians … are going to have a really important choice coming up in the next election,” he said. “Do we want to continue to fight climate change? Do we want to still continue to look at responsible partnerships working together to solve big issues? Do we want to continue to work towards reconciliation as an explicit goal and as a journey that Canada is on? Those are the kinds of questions people are going to have to ask themselves in the next election, because the Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre has made it very, very clear that they want to take Canada backwards in all those ways and more.”
It’s not the most original message. Politicians insist in every election that voters face “a really important choice.” Otherwise, why bother? As well, the threat that the Conservatives want to take the country “backwards” loses steam when “going forward” doesn’t seem all that appealing.
But Mr. Trudeau’s pilot attempt to define the stakes in the next election, combined with the three-day cabinet retreat that began in Montreal on Sunday, marks the beginning of an attempted reset after a terrible year during which the Liberals played constant catchup to a political narrative set by Mr. Poilievre, and took a historic beating in the polls.
Already, the Trudeau government is swinging into belated action. On Sunday, it announced that in early February it will hold a national summit to address the rise in international car theft in Canada. On Monday, it announced a two-year temporary cap on international study visas for foreign students in Canada while our rapidly growing country wrestles with a housing shortage, skyrocketing rents and an overburdened health care system.
No doubt there are more thrilling announcements to come. The question is, will it help? The three most pressing issues at the moment – the housing shortage, affordability and immigration – are not the Liberals’ best work. Even Mr. Trudeau has acknowledged in interviews that his government was late to recognizing the impact of the first two. And the government’s failure to address the massive surge in temporary immigration has put Canadians’ trust in the entire system into question.
It will be tough for a government that seems to have been in a stupor ever since the COVID-19 crisis faded to convince voters that it has the energy and ideas required to do the job for another term.
The Liberals have a year and a half to accomplish that. If interest rates fall as expected this year and next, and the economy perks up, that could help them.
If by some miracle the Liberal government found a way to increase competition in the grocery-store business and actually brought down food prices, as Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne once again vowed to do on Monday, that would help, too.
If by some equally miraculous intervention the Trudeau government decided to run balanced budgets, stopped hiring government employees at a steady clip and demonstrated an appreciation for fiscal restraint in inflationary times, that could also put some wind in their sails.
And if the Trudeau government continues to take concrete action to address the growing immigration crisis by limiting the number of study visas and temporary foreign worker visas it makes available, voters might get the sense that it is back in charge of the country’s destiny.
That unlikely series of fortunate events might not be enough to extricate the Liberals from the deep hole in which they currently reside. But even if it doesn’t help them win the next election, they can console themselves in the knowledge that actively governing, and staying ahead of problems, is good for the country. A government focused on the job at hand would be a refreshing change in 2024.