MacDougall: Old tactics won’t be enough to puncture the sheen of Trudeau

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Trudeau has set the table. Now, can he run it?

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Incumbency in politics can be a millstone or a howitzer. Having had the weight of SNC-Lavalin placed around his neck in the run-up to the last election, Justin Trudeau is determined to go into the coming campaign with all guns blazing.

Nary a day has gone by this summer without an announcement or spending commitment made by the Trudeau government. Everywhere you look, Trudeau is taking out your wallets to keep or make commitments designed to ensure his reelection and/or improve the lives of Canadians, depending on where you sit.

The Liberals have moved with uncharacteristic urgency to turn their child-care budget commitment into concrete action, striking deals with seven provinces, including some governed by Conservative premiers. They have also doled out major cash for high-speed rail in Ontario and Quebec and thrown more good money after bad in the pursuit of hydroelectric power for Newfoundland and Labrador.

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The government is also shoring up support on so-called shield issues like Indigenous services, where it hasn’t performed very well as promised, as evidenced by this week’s $83-million investment in “finding and memorializing” lost children. That this money hadn’t already been spent in the six years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission delivered its report, and is only now being spent after Catholic churches started going off like firecrackers in the wake of the horrible discoveries in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, smacks of opportunism.

Of course, woe to anyone who suggests this government’s motives aren’t pure (and 100 per cent pure at that); the Trudeau government dresses up cynicism as empathy like nobody’s business. It will now be Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh’s business to find a way to puncture the so-far rock-solid “heart-is-in-the-right-place” sheen surrounding the prime minister. Trudeau has always been judged on intent rather than outcome and no failure of delivery or scandal has yet changed how a strong plurality of Canadians view their prime minister.

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Trudeau’s seeming imperviousness to stain suggests a strategy of painting his failings would be a loser. It’s like punching Bambi. Sure, Bambi might make the occasional mess in the yard or nibble the vegetables growing in the garden, but punching him for doing so makes you the jerk. Moreover, going negative on Trudeau didn’t work when he was made Liberal leader, it didn’t work when he won government in 2015, and it didn’t work even when he was buried in merde going into the last campaign. It’s going to take a better vision at the heart of government, not a better person, to make people switch.

The challengers will also have to make their case in an environment where the spending taps are still wide open due to COVID-19, and with case counts on the rise in advance of an anticipated fourth wave. Anyone running on a platform of taking the punch bowl away will be charging straight into Trudeau’s spending howitzer.

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And while the prospect of a fourth wave should play against this unnecessary election, it is as likely to help the Liberal leader as it is to hurt, given the day-to-day public health decisions are now largely with provincial authorities and vaccination rates are relatively high, which should blunt the stresses of any fourth wave on hospitals (and the federal government).

The slowing pace of vaccinations is actually an issue for Trudeau to lean into, for one simple reason: most of those who are vaccine resistant vote for O’Toole. Using the spotlight of an election to stress the benefits of vaccinations and push for vaccine passports at the provincial level would rally Trudeau’s support and force O’Toole to either match the prime minister’s advice or dissent with a long list of caveats. Either way, vaccinations in the midst of a fourth wave would be a more compelling subject for dinner table chat than O’Toole’s rural broadband plan or pitch for the skilled trades.

Returning to millstones. The biggest anchor for opposition leaders is their invisibility. Coming a close second is the fact governments defeat themselves. Try as they might, O’Toole and Singh are faced with a prime minister who is still popular (enough) and a government that hasn’t yet defeated itself.

A tough road lies ahead.

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