Emergencies Act Inquiry And The Return Of Serious Trudeau

On Yesterday's Testimony

I’m not going to pretend I watched all of the Prime Minister’s testimony yesterday at the Emergencies Act inquiry (which, given I don’t actually fully know what the acronym everyone is using stands for, is how I’ll continue to call it), but I saw the highlights and watched some of the coverage, so I probably am in the sweet spot of knowing less than the Ottawa bubble and more than the average news consumer.

Once again, I’m not going to argue about the legality – I am far less qualified to opine on this than this excellent CBC panel from Friday night – but I do think that the fact that the general consensus is that Trudeau came prepared, qualified, and was internally consistent in his arguments is one of the key moments of the Inquiry. And, frankly, tells us a lot about the next 3 years.

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The criticisms of the Liberals, in these pages and beyond, are often fairly consistent. The Liberals can look unfocused, out of touch, aloof, and fundamentally unserious. There is often a slowness to react from them, and when they do, it can take some time for them to meet the moment. It’s one of the reasons that over the summer and early fall people kept talking about a government falling apart, because they felt listless.

I never bought the doom, but I do agree with the idea that the Trudeau Liberals have a pattern – and one that is hugely frustrating. For a government that came in to office on the idea of proactive concern and a sort of Freshman-finally-living-alone bubbling excitement, the Liberals fall into policy inertia far too often – and then use a ton of bullshit moralizing and an amount of evasion to try and obscure the fact.

As a citizen, I don’t like it, but as a political analyst I’ve hated it, because I’ve always thought it unnecessary. The thing about Justin Trudeau is that he’s actually much more impressive than his critics believe, and often times, more impressive than the strategy decisions of the Liberal Party and his PMO allow him to be. Go back to 2015, and you’ll be reminded of it.

We all remember that campaign’s last debate – the Munk Debate, in both languages, between the three major leaders – for the moment near the end where Trudeau defends his father’s legacy and shivs Mulcair on bilingualism, but that wasn’t the most interesting or telling part of that debate. The Pierre moment was in a 7 minute segment between and Mulcair on the Harper Government’s anti-terror legislation and why the Liberals voted for it. Trudeau stood his grounds so well that when Harper was allowed back in to talk about it, he said Trudeau “actually well defended” the legislation.

That moment was the one where many voters – including my mother, for what it’s worth – decided that he was actually ready for the job. It was a tough subject, and a hard answer to make work – voting for an imperfect piece of legislation, squeezed between the risks of voting for a bill that was a bit too intrusive on security and voting against a bill that did do some important things. A year out from the death of Nathan Cirillo and the shooting in Ottawa, it was an important moment, one that he aced so superbly as to get the vocal admiration of his opponent.

Trudeau is not the world’s greatest mind, but he is not the cartoon caricature that many on the right paint him as. His status as a “son of” is undeniable, but he is often portrayed as a witless idiot, as the Canadian politics equivalent of James Dolan, when it’s just not true.

The reason everyone is so impressed by Trudeau’s performance yesterday is because of the bar that the right has lowered him to. His performance was fine, but it’s a level of understanding of the crucial parts of the gig that should be commonplace. It’s the same in the US when Pete Buttigieg goes to testify intermittently in front of the relevant House and Senate committees – he only looks so impressive answering questions that should be the bare minimum because the average Cabinet member down south is as qualified as I would be. Trudeau should be intimately aware of the laws he’s having to defend his invocation of and should be able to live in their contradictions and vagaries – and the fact that him being able to do so is a cause of surprise is a failure of the right.

The problem is, the bar is lowered for Trudeau by years of people pretending that he is this witless dumbass (and because there’s far too much rigidity in his comms strategy), and so this kind of performance does get written up as impressive. For the Liberals, this is a winning place to be, and I think the most important lesson from the Emergencies Act inquiry.

If the Liberals want to make the next election a referendum on craziness and untrustworthiness to govern in general and Poilievre’s craziness in specific – which, given the Liberals’ reliance on the “opt out of inflation” line, seems pretty clear – then this is the Trudeau they need to highlight more and more. If they want to run the next campaign as the grownups doing Serious Work while the opposition indulges cranks, freaks, and weirdos – which is an appealing message – then the way to do is it to highlight the opposition when they are unserious, but also have this version of Trudeau step up to the plate.

It became a meme in 2011, but Stephen Harper did win against Layton and Iggy because of his “island of stability in a sea of troubles” routine. The thing is, whatever you thought of Harper – and knowing the general tint of my readership, the average view is that he was somewhere right of Satan, I’m sure – Canada was last into recession in the Global Financial Crisis and first out, and had at the time of the 2011 election the lowest debt-to-GDP in the G8. The opening for Trudeau here is obvious.

Against a Conservative leader with no business experience, no career outside of politics, and an addiction to right wing news and the fringe online right, the Liberals have an opening, but it has to start with a more serious Trudeau. The Emergencies Act inquiry will end up being a nothing burger in terms of political consequence – but in reminding everyone of a more serious Trudeau, it might hold the key to the next election.