The relationship between a prime minister and his finance minister is arguably the most important of any Canadian government. It is certainly also the interministerial relationship most studied by economists and political scientists. If politics is the art of the possible, a Prime Minister must be able to count on his Minister of Finance to define — and ideally expand — his options for action by exercising sound management of public finances.
A prime minister never chooses his finance minister based on his personal affection for the principal concerned. There must be a natural tension between the head of government and his big money-maker for their relationship to flourish. But if it is the Prime Minister who decides, it is at his own risk that he will ignore the instructions of his Minister of Finance.
The most enduring duos of recent decades have been those of Brian Mulroney and Michael Wilson, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty. The success of each of these pairs did not derive from the personal or political affinities of their elements, but rather from their mutual respect and their shared objectives. Certainly, Messrs. Chrétien and Martin were political rivals, but both men agreed on the need to get federal public finances back on track no matter what.
The least we can say is that the relationship between Justin Trudeau and his Prime Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, was not based on mutual trust.
This wealthy Toronto businessman embodied the economic backing of a Liberal team that lacked big guns in the field. But it became clear to him, as soon as he took office as finance minister in 2015, that the bonzes of the Prime Minister’s Office wanted him to be content with a figurehead role. His pleas for the adoption of tighter budgetary targets were systematically rejected by Mr. Trudeau’s political advisers. And it was they — not the Prime Minister — who decided. Mr. Morneau’s direct access to his boss was strictly forbidden by Mr. Trudeau’s closest advisers.
This is the portrait that Mr. Morneau paints of his time in politics in a new book, the English version of which will be released on Tuesday. His frustration culminated in his resignation in August 2020 in the wake of the scandal surrounding the awarding of WE Charity to a contract to run a volunteer internships for students. Mr. Morneau’s daughter was then working for UNIS, and the minister himself had to reimburse more than $40,000 in travel expenses that had been paid by the organization during an excursion to Africa.
Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion concluded in a report in 2021 that Mr. Morneau should have recused himself in connection with the government’s decision to award this contract to UNIS. But this scandal is not the real reason for his resignation. According to him, it was media leaks that Mr. Trudeau was thinking of replacing him – leaks that Mr. Morneau attributed to the Prime Minister’s team – that prompted him to leave the government.
Some political observers loyal to Mr. Trudeau accuse Mr. Morneau of engaging in a pure and simple settling of accounts. They say that Mr. Morneau made several missteps as Minister of Finance and that his talents as a politician were simply not up to scratch. That he has no one to blame but himself for this turn of events.
While it is true that Mr. Morneau never knew how to master the art of politics, he nevertheless possessed skills in business and economics that few other members of Mr. Trudeau’s team could boast of. . His departure left a gaping hole in the Council of Ministers, just as the need to put public finances back on track was becoming more and more pressing. The $500 billion that has added to the federal debt since the pandemic, pushing the total debt to around $1.3 trillion, is limiting the government’s room for maneuver and worrying the financial markets.
Chrystia Freeland, Mr. Morneau’s successor in Finance, seems to have a closer relationship with her boss. But it is not clear that she is ready to play a role of “killjoy” to counter the profligate tendencies of Mr. Trudeau’s advisers. Moreover, the latter seems to prefer to surround himself with ministers who all think like him, which is not necessarily conducive to reflection. Besides Mme Freeland, Mélanie Joly and Mary Ng also enjoy a privileged relationship with Mr. Trudeau.
Although Mr. Dion determined in a report filed in December that Mr.me Ng had also violated the Conflict of Interest Act by participating in decisions surrounding the awarding of contracts to a friend’s firm, Mr. Trudeau would have no intention of asking for her resignation. Proof that, if he had wanted to keep Bill Morneau on his team, he would not have hesitated to do so. But the former politician was telling some truths he probably didn’t want to hear.