Every Wednesday, our parliamentary correspondent in Ottawa Marie Vastel analyzes a federal political issue to help you better understand it.
As if governing for a year and a half in the midst of a pandemic had not been enough, the first six months of the new mandate of Justin Trudeau’s government will have been overshadowed by three other crises. The Liberals plead that their work is continuing behind the scenes without major pitfalls and that their promises will be kept despite everything. But the management of repeated crises inevitably has effects at the top. And in a minority setting, even the slightest delay threatens to impact a busy schedule.
The troops of Justin Trudeau will celebrate in ten days the six months of their re-election. Since then, a new variant has resulted in a record wave of COVID-19 cases; convoys of truckers paralyzed a capital and border crossings; the Emergencies Act was invoked for the very first time; and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens World War III.
“It is certain that an international crisis, like a war, influences the agenda of the government”, observes Sheila Copps, who was deputy prime minister in the first years of the Balkan wars in the 1990s, then still minister in the cabinet of Jean Chrétien at the start of the war in Iraq in 2003.
Mme Copps remembers that the cabinet was then very divided. “There were a lot of special cabinet meetings, over a period of probably two months, where work was set aside to come to a consensus on the very thorny issue of the war in Iraq and to weave the mission in Afghanistan instead,” recalls Mme Copps in interview.
Announcements “soon”
In the offices of the ministers whose mandate letters promised major actions as of this spring, they insist on the fact that the successive crises have had only a marginal effect.
The bill on revenue sharing from digital platforms with the media, promised for “early 2022”, will arrive “in the coming weeks”. The one to crack down on hateful content online, promised “as soon as possible”, will wait a bit longer, but news about it will come “soon”. Both initiatives have been somewhat delayed, but due to complexity, not context, it is argued.
The plan to reduce GHG emissions to achieve the 2030 targets will be tabled as planned “by the end of March”. The major reform of employment insurance will indeed begin to be implemented “by the summer of 2022”. Even the long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, who manages the crisis in Ukraine full-time, would not have been delayed.
“We cannot stop all the rest of the work of the government simply because we are in an emergency situation”, pleads on the telephone the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino. His assault gun buyback and handgun control bill will be tabled “as soon as possible.” His office admits, however, that it was a little more difficult for him to prepare the ground with the provinces, the municipalities and the population – who also had none, over the course of his weeks, only for these crises.
“It is very difficult for a politician in this context to try to move on from something else, because it gives the impression of not caring about this big international issue – the most important of our time”, confirms Sheila Copps, commenting on the conflict in Ukraine. “We seem disconnected. »
Precious time
Announcements have thus had to be postponed, even if the financing or the policy in question have indeed entered into force.
And although the offices of ministers alternately insist that the pandemic has enabled them to “find a way to go” to manage both an emergency whatever it is as well as the rest of the portfolio, at the unless one of them agrees that at the top, approvals are slowed down by the management of successive crises. “It would be dishonest to say that all the work is progressing so quickly,” admits this person.
The heat of the news was also felt in the Commons, where the proclamation of the Emergencies Act and then the creation of a committee to examine it monopolized four and a half days of parliamentary proceedings — on 21 days since January.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said this winter that he only had two years at most to keep his election promises, given the uncertainty of a minority government.
To this usual context is now added that of a probable war which could well tear the consensus within the government, of its own caucus, in the months to come, and threaten the support granted to it by the opposition parties, notes Sheila Copps. Especially since the Conservatives, who will soon be led by a new leader, could get impatient more quickly.
The Liberals may insist that the incessant chaos has only slightly slowed down their work, but six months have already passed for a third mandate which, as a minority, does not leave them much time to lose.