MacDougall: Trudeau needs to preserve his legacy rather than carve it up

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The choice now before the prime minister isn’t win or lose. It’s lose with dignity, or lose with desperation.

Published Nov 03, 2023  •  3 minute read

At an Oct. 26 news conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces that the government will double the carbon price rebate for rural Canadians beginning next April. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

Given that Mark Carney is once again swimming off the coast of Canada, it’s a good time to talk about Justin Trudeau’s future as leader of the Liberal Party. As in, it’s time to talk about how to exit the stage with a modicum of decency.

Trudeau’s shocking reversal on the carbon tax in Atlantic Canada is all the proof you need that his time is up. Once a leader starts trashing his legacy in an attempt to save the furniture, it’s time to call the moving van.

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That Trudeau has taken a scalpel to his signature environmental policy — his supposed legacy — tells you everything you need to know about the dire state of affairs in Liberaland. With his party now trailing Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives by an average of 15 or so points in the polls, the choice now before Trudeau isn’t: win or lose. It’s lose with dignity, or lose with desperation. And the carbon tax/home heating kerfuffle is pure desperation.

For one, Trudeau isn’t going to out-Poilievre Poilievre on the carbon tax. If people are feeling squeezed by the carbon tax, they’re going to vote for the guy who wants to bin it all, not the guy who only wants to bin bits of it in order to have a slightly better chance of not losing seats in Newfoundland and the Maritimes. And then there’s the demotivating effect it will have on the people who still believe in the Liberals. If he’s gutting the carbon tax, they’ll all be thinking, what else will he gut to stay in power?

So, how could Trudeau lose with dignity? The first stage is acceptance. One imagines the prime minister is feeling a little like late-stage Stephen Harper these days, looking at Poilievre and thinking “Nah, I can’t lose to that guy,” but that’s not where he needs to be. He needs to look in the mirror and accept that he’s going to lose to a guy nicknamed “Skippy.”

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Once his mind is firmly in the retirement place, Trudeau needs to look at his time in office and think about what he’s proudest of, then work to preserve it, not undo it. Yes, Poilievre and his band of vandals might very well dismantle his signature accomplishments when they take office, but that’s beyond Trudeau’s control. Here, he should look to Harper as an example. The former prime minister could have splashed the cash on the 2015 campaign trail in a bid to win, but he knew that getting the budget back into balance was his signature achievement after a bruising global financial crisis and that to undo that would be to undo his time in office.

Whether it’s legal weed, enhanced child-care agreements, gender-balanced cabinets or the now-carved out carbon tax, Trudeau needs to tout these accomplishments repeatedly as people prepare to write his eulogy, since these things will be what people ultimately remember. His father had the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Brian Mulroney had free trade, Jean Chrétien had getting Canada’s fiscal house in order, Paul Martin had, uh, stuff, and Harper saw Canada through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Trudeau has the carbon tax (maybe).

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Legacy reinforced, Trudeau should then look ahead for any tough decisions he can take to spare his successor as party leader any heartburn. Whether building housing, cutting spending, or grappling with the worrying scenes of naked antisemitism on Canada’s streets in the wake of Hamas’s slaughter of innocent Jews, a tough decision now could pay dividends later — for Carney, or whoever ends up taking the wheel.

The prime minister should equally — and belatedly — get a grip on knotty files such as Chinese foreign interference and Sikh separatism. Trudeau could, if he chooses to accept that these are serious problems, leave the country in a better place than he found it.

Politics is an unforgiving business, but the door eventually hits everyone’s arse. It’s up to Trudeau whether he goes out like a lion, or like a snake swallowing its own tail.

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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