Whatever happened to, Ottawa 2023

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Big plans. Big promises. And then … silence.

In politics, things that are front and centre for months can slide out of view. Often, that’s because the government wants people to forget.

So now is a good time to look back at what slipped down the memory hole in 2023. Some are things that should have been done by now – or should never have been promised in the first place.

It’s not so easy to recall whatever happened to them.

Assault-style gun ban

Remember the debacle that the Liberal government got itself into over the plan to ban “assault-style” rifles? Well the Liberals wish you didn’t.

The whole thing was a shemozzle, so they backed off and decided to let time pass before taking another go. How much time? They’ll get back to us.

A year ago, then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino was trying to push the ban through Parliament. But he had dumped a complex and poorly worded package of amendments onto the bill, and that fuelled a bonfire of confusion.

Gun advocates complained the bill would ban common hunting rifles already in the hands of many. Indigenous groups objected. Montreal Canadiens goalie Carey Price posted a rifle selfie. Rural Liberal MPs turned sheepish.

The Liberals backtracked, pulling out the section of the bill banning a list of guns already on the market. They said they’d issue a revised version of that list later in regulations. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc reiterated that in October.

The bill itself passed on Dec. 15. Mr. LeBlanc’s press secretary, Jean-Sébastien Comeau, said in an e-mail that an advisory committee will review the list of guns to be banned, but the membership of that committee still has to be “renewed.” When? “In due course.”

Defence policy review

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 seized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government with the need to bolster military spending. But that feeling passed quickly. The Liberals delayed action by announcing a defence policy review – and then the review was more or less forgotten.

It was different in the days immediately after the Russian invasion in February, 2022. Eastern Europe was nervous, and allies put new pressure on Canada to meet the NATO target of spending 2 per cent of GDP. Then-defence minister Anita Anand said publicly she was presenting budget proposals to exceed that target. Maybe that’s why she’s no longer defence minister.

Instead of money, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s April, 2022, budget included an announcement of a defence policy review – an update of a 2017 review. It would be swift, Ms. Freeland promised.

“By any definition of the word, it has not been swift,” said David Perry, president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Mr. Trudeau’s government doesn’t actually want to spend much more money on defence. In November, Defence Minister Bill Blair said he has asked for the still-invisible review to be rejigged.

Mental-health transfer

There was a time when the Liberals were promising to sharpen the focus on mental-health care in Canada by earmarking a separate transfer payment specifically for mental health.

That time was 2021 and 2022. It ended in 2023.

Federal-provincial talks on health care funding ended with a February announcement that Ottawa would send an additional $21.3-billion over five years to the provinces for health.

But a dedicated mental-health transfer? It did not happen.

Of course, the Liberals insisted that some of the additional money sent to the provinces would go to mental health, but that’s not what they promised in their 2021 election campaign. In that campaign, as the mental-health effects of the pandemic were becoming increasingly visible, they had pledged a new, dedicated transfer of $4.5-billion over five years that would ensure extra mental-health care “for everyone.”

But the provinces didn’t want Ottawa to detail how they should spend on health care, which is their jurisdiction. And that was entirely predictable.

The truth is that federal parties shouldn’t make such promises in the first place. Provinces should be held to account for the breakdown of health care, and lack of mental-health care. A dedicated transfer was never going to make much difference, because one can’t track which transfer dollar goes where. That’s worth remembering the next time a federal politician makes a promise like it.

24 Sussex Dr.

This one is a little different. It’s not that the federal government started ignoring the problems of 24 Sussex Dr. in 2023. It ignored them for more than a decade, under Mr. Trudeau and his predecessor Stephen Harper.

Yet Mr. Trudeau’s perennial neglect is reaching the next level. The official residence of Canada’s prime ministers was closed in late 2022 for health and safety reasons. Still, the government can’t decide whether to renovate it or knock it down.

That doesn’t mean no money is being spent. The National Capital Commission did work, including asbestos removal and stripping out old HVAC and electrical systems, on a property that might be torn down – if anyone ever makes a decision.

But what better symbol for Canadian political indecision than the official residence of prime ministers slowly crumbling into a pile of rubble?

Mr. Trudeau doesn’t want to spend money on a house for prime ministers because it looks bad, as does knocking the building down. The decaying monument to political dysfunction is there to provide a symbolic answer whenever someone asks: Whatever happened to 24 Sussex Dr.?

The answer is nothing. Nothing happened.

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