On rare occasions, politicians do right by admitting their mistakes

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Marc Miller, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, gave a press conference in early December to announce tweaks to Canada’s admission policies for international students. He said some really weird stuff.

A reporter asked if the minister had numbers on how many fewer people would come to Canada because of a rule change requiring them to demonstrate greater financial resources. Mr. Miller said he and his team were “currently looking at that,” but acknowledged things would change.

“I mean, it is what it is,” he said. “We compete with other countries for some of the top talent, but clearly, we have become a country that has been targeted for abuse and exploitation by some unsavoury actors and we need to be able to address that head-on.”

Did you catch that? He openly acknowledged that a rule change would cause something to happen, but argued the trade-off was worth it. And then he acknowledged that the current state of affairs had caused big problems.

Another journalist asked about reports that some Canadians had been told their Palestinian grandchildren could not be evacuated from the Mideast war zone while others had obtained exit visas for their Israeli grandchildren.

“It doesn’t make sense to deny children,” Mr. Miller agreed. “We have a limited window to advocate for a limited group of people in a different context – we are talking about a war zone. And it’s one where we have tried our best to be flexible and mistakes are made at times, with the fact that it costs, sometimes, people’s lives.”

So: He admitted to information he didn’t have, acknowledged things are unfolding quickly and imperfectly and admitted not only that mistakes happen, but that they can have life-or-death consequences

A couple of weeks later, Mr. Miller was at it again in a different press conference. This time a reporter cited a Bank of Canada report that suggested Canada would need to build new housing about as fast as rudimentary Lego kits. The reporter asked if the minister thought it was fair to bring in so many students and temporary foreign workers in the face of our existing housing problems.

“It’s clear that that does put pressure on the system and particularly our housing needs,” Mr. Miller said. He conceded that the volume of international students – especially those drawn by fraudulent programs – and postgraduate work permits were things Canada needed to “get under control.”

Colour commentary: He did not scold a reporter for having an uncouth question and he acknowledged a huge increase in temporary residents had exacerbated the shortage of affordable and available housing in Canada.

That is some wild stuff.

Assuming that you are a healthy and normal person who does not watch press conferences on the regular, I might need to underline how unusual all of this is, how it registers like a trickle of cool water in the brain-baking desert of good-vibes-only defensiveness that is Justin Trudeau’s Ottawa.

Around here, one simply does not acknowledge difficult trade-offs or the need to change tactics. In this town, you don’t announce a new policy because the old one didn’t work out; you simply “continue to” do the effective and valorous work you’ve been doing all along. Mistakes don’t exist, and if they did, you sure don’t point at them.

The refusal to use the filthy M-word is rampant in politics well beyond the government Mr. Miller belongs to, of course. But there have been a few notable exceptions who found admitting mistakes so useful that it became part of their political identity.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has at times governed by applause metre, as if he was living inside some old-timey game show where the cheers or hisses from the audience told him what to do. In the face of widespread public howling, he’s undone policies including halting random police stops to enforce pandemic restrictions and invoking the notwithstanding clause to impose a contract on education workers. In September, he walked back his government’s decision to open up the Greenbelt to development, saying he was “very, very sorry” for breaking a promise, and that doing so had been “a mistake.”

For late Alberta premier Ralph Klein, gamely admitting to a screw-up was part of what that made Albertans adore him as their everyman “Ralph.” Policy false starts, inappropriate comments lobbed in public and blatant flip-flops were all diffused by his walk-backs.

Not long after winning his third decisive electoral victory, in 2001, a drunken Mr. Klein wandered into a homeless shelter, told the people there to get a job and flung some money on the floor. Once the story went public, he tearfully admitted to a drinking problem and suffered no apparent damage to his reputation.

Mr. Klein and Mr. Ford were both populist conservatives, so maybe it’s a bit easier to choke out a mea culpa if you can lace it with the word “folks,” or if it further endears you to a public that already likes your messy un-elite humanity.

But whether in life or politics, saying “I screwed up” is often both the right thing to do and useful.

Whether it’s crafting public policy or making things right with a spouse whose feelings you’ve hurt, there is no path to doing something better that doesn’t pass through admitting you weren’t doing so well in the first place.

And anyone who’s ever been stuck in a protracted argument knows the best way to diffuse things is to simply say you were wrong. Your angry spouse – or, say the surly public that is just absolutely done with your government’s whole deal after eight years – may not be mollified by your mea culpa. But they’re sure not getting less angry as long as you keep insisting you’ve been right all along.

 

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