Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the construction site of an affordable housing project in London, Ont. on Sept. 13.Nicole Osborne/The Canadian Press
“There is discontent across the country.”
That is a phrase you might expect to hear from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose speeches focus on the hardships caused by the high cost of living and the general brokenness of Canada.
But it was Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada for the past seven years and 11 months, who was talking about disgruntlement in the land on Wednesday. Or, as he termed it in French in response to a reporter’s question, “la grogne.”
He was speaking on the margins of a two-day caucus retreat where Liberal MPs’ private chatter undoubtedly included talk about the national funk and whether this prime minister is the person to shake it. But it was still strange to hear the Prime Minister conceding Canadians are upset with the way things are going. Some of it might have been lifted from one of Mr. Poilievre’s speeches.
“It is an extremely difficult time for almost every Canadian,” he said in answer to a TVA reporter’s question. “We are facing prices that are too high for housing, for groceries, for gas. The cost of living is causing an enormous amount of difficulties.”
But Mr. Trudeau was not accepting blame. Au contraire. He was talking about non-Trudeau reasons for the malaise, and as we saw Thursday, the acknowledgment of tough times allowed him to talk about Liberal plans and rattle the cage of others who are to blame.
So Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne will summon grocery-chain executives to rap their knuckles over food prices. And the new housing measures the federal Liberals announced were accompanied by calls for municipalities and provincial governments to step up to solve a crisis that, as Mr. Trudeau has said often, no one level of government can fix.
Still, there was a shift in the sense that Mr. Trudeau seems to be finally trying to echo the anxiety of Canadians, and their sense of urgency, over the cost of living and especially the housing crisis.
Liberals in ‘solution mode,’ as ministers acknowledge Canadians are struggling and downcast
It’s not generally viewed as ingenious political strategy for a long-serving incumbent leader to tell everyone that things are bad and the country is upset.
But there is no secret about the palpable public angst. Maybe Mr. Trudeau feels his first step to addressing his problem is admitting he has a problem. Or at least that the country has a problem. Or something like that.
When Mr. Trudeau was in opposition, in plotting a campaign to dislodge then-prime minister Stephen Harper, his team viewed Mr. Harper’s regular assertions that things were good under Conservative rule as out of touch with public sentiment – and a weakness they could exploit. Mr. Trudeau’s senior strategist at the time, Gerald Butts, sometimes responded to Mr. Harper’s all-is-well arguments with a facetious singing of The Lego Movie song Everything Is Awesome.
Now Mr. Trudeau is the veteran incumbent. And he has been forced to admit that not everything is awesome.
What does that change? Presumably Mr. Trudeau hopes that conceding that there are deep problems, such as a housing crisis, will allow him to move on to talking about tackling them.
On Thursday, he announced that the federal government will remove the GST on purpose-built rental housing, which is a good move. Earlier in the week, he announced a first agreement under Ottawa’s housing accelerator, with the city of London, Ont., which includes changing municipal rules to encourage the building of more housing.
Neither is revolutionary, but they stand up in comparison to the proposals announced Thursday by Mr. Poilievre, which amounted to various kinds of threats to punish big cities that don’t increase home building substantially by withholding federal money for things such as public transit and wastewater plants.
But that’s not all that counts. Mr. Trudeau’s bigger political problem is underlined by the fact that both of the housing announcements he made this week were obviously things he should have done long ago.
The agreement with London was the first deal under a program that was announced 17 months ago in the 2022 budget. The removal of GST from purpose-built rental housing was in the 2015 Liberal campaign platform on which Mr. Trudeau first won power. The explanation Mr. Trudeau gave Thursday for not following through sooner on that GST promise was pure bunk.
That’s part of the late-mandate cycle Mr. Trudeau is well into now. He has to acknowledge the public angst or look out of touch. But it comes attached to a question about how much responsibility the Prime Minister bears for discontent across the country.