The Trudeau Liberals need to be better at doing politics – Canada's National Observer

There’s a litany of potential explanations for the disastrous drop the Trudeau Liberals have seen in their polling numbers over the last 12 months, from rising interest rates and growing cost-of-living concerns to Pierre Poilievre’s image makeover. But the one that stands out from the rest is the one that might be the hardest for them to fix: “Team Trudeau” is really, really bad at doing politics.

This wasn’t always a problem for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, of course. If anything, they’ve survived the last two elections because they’ve been better at doing politics than their Conservative opponents. But whether it’s pandemic fatigue or just a government that’s long in the tooth and short on talent, they keep stepping on their own feet when they try to walk.

Case in point: Steven Guilbeault’s declaration on Monday that “our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure.” It came as part of his keynote speech at a fundraising luncheon for a public transit advocacy group called Trajectoire Québec and probably wasn’t intended to serve as fodder for Opposition attacks on his government. It’s not clear whether he didn’t think his comments would reach the broader public or he didn’t care, but the net result is the same: they represented an act of political self-harm at a time when his government is already bleeding out.

Yes, yes, Guilbeault says his remarks are being misinterpreted, but it’s literally his job to reduce the risk of that happening. And sure, what he said is grounded in research about the climate impacts of so-called “induced demand” that comes from building new roads and highways. It’s true the federal government has been clear for a while now that it would shift its funding towards infrastructure projects like LRT and other public transit. No matter. The job Guilbeault signed up for is called politics, not policy, and his comments were supremely unhelpful in that respect.

“There will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network,” he said. “The analysis we have done is that the network is perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have.” This will come as a surprise to people in places like the GTA and Greater Vancouver, where traffic remains an enduring frustration that’s only growing thanks to the federal government’s ambitious immigration targets. Yes, roads and infrastructure are a provincial jurisdiction, but Guilbeault’s comments and their dismissive tone are going to make it exceptionally easy for the politicians there to shift the blame on him.

Oh, but he wasn’t done shooting himself in the foot. “We must stop thinking that electric cars will solve all our problems,” Guilbeault said. This is a very weird message coming from the environment minister of a government that keeps leaning conspicuously on electric cars as a solution, whether it’s the 2035 mandate for 100 per cent zero-emission vehicle sales or the tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits it keeps throwing at EV battery manufacturers. Again, there’s a kernel of truth in what he’s saying, but it’s going to get lost in the language he’s using to communicate it.

Conservatives in Canada right now might be terrible at climate policy, but they’re no slouches when it comes to politics, and Poilievre, Scott Moe and Danielle Smith didn’t miss their free shots. At some point, Guilbeault and the rest of his cabinet and caucus might want to decide to stop handing them out like free candy on Halloween.

This isn’t a completely new problem for the Liberals, either. The handling of the carbon tax rebate, which was rebranded this week, has been a years-long example of political malpractice. It’s allowed conservative politicians and pundits to confuse Canadians about the impact of the broader carbon tax — the Liberal government’s signature climate policy — and pretend that it’s driving the cost-of-living crisis everyone is facing right now.

At first, the Liberals included the rebates as an income tax deduction, which was described as the “Climate Action Incentive Payment.” When it became apparent people weren’t noticing it or that their tax preparers weren’t drawing sufficient attention to the rebate, they shifted to a direct deposit system. But even then, they couldn’t get the banks to label it consistently — and still insisted on using opaque bureaucratic branding rather than simple language.

They’ve fixed most of that now, it seems, but Band-Aids don’t tend to stop this amount of bleeding. If they have any hope of cutting into Poilievre’s lead in the polls, much less taking one of their own, they need to start doing the work of politics as well as policy. Housing Minister Sean Fraser seems to get that. So does Immigration Minister Marc Miller and Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan. But until the entire cabinet and the prime minister himself start appealing again to the hearts of Canadians instead of just their heads, they’re going to keep getting their butts kicked by Poilievre and his growing legion of supporters.

The political beatings will continue, in other words, until the politics improve.