Fire Guilbeault, Or Just Give Up

On Canada's Worst Minister

Steven Guilbeault needs to be fired.

Guilbeault, who was first elected in 2019 and has been Environment and Climate Change Minister for the entirety of this Parliament, needs to go. His initial hiring made a lot of sense – a leader in the progressive climate action space, Guilbeault was a coup for the Liberals, especially in Quebec. He has been a bulwark keeping the party focused on emissions reduction, and did a lot to reassure soft progressives that the LPC could be trusted on climate policy.

He is also one of the worst, if not flat out the worst, communicator in English in the Cabinet. I know that’s somewhat of an unfair test to hold him to but it’s a fact that every time he speaks it ends up needing to be cleaned up by staff. Today’s latest misstep on the federal government not paying for new roads will never be understood as “we won’t help fund the 413”, which is the type of project he means.

If you want to paint everyone who wants real and serious action on climate as fucking weirdos, go ahead; the incumbent Environment Minister does a great job of making defensible positions seem nuts. Should the Feds be funding new highways? Probably not. Is the way you make this point to say we have enough roads? Absolutely fucking not.

A Minister’s job is twofold; to execute a policy agenda and to help ensure the re-election of the government. Being detailed oriented and good on policy but a political liability is absolutely grounds to be dropped. Hell, the liberals dropped David Lametti for the crime of … wanting a different Montreal MP in Cabinet.

Guilbeault has made the task of advocating for climate action harder by being unable to sell a policy agenda properly. No matter how good he is at the technical parts of the job he has to go. And if Trudeau wants to try and win it’s the kind of move that can – done and messaged properly – end up being emblematic of a tide change.

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In 2014, right before the 2015 UK election, David Cameron engineered a reshuffle that allowed him to do 2 things – move out some of the “pale, stale, male” Ministers (literally how it was briefed to the press) in exchange for younger women, and to sack Michael Gove from Education, where the Teachers unions hated him. Gove was widely viewed by those on the right as one of the best Ministers in the government, but he was shuffled into a temporary pseudo-job (Chief Whip, and the informal head of the Tory campaign). Cameron understood that no matter how effective Gove was at executing the policy agenda set for him, he had to go.

Cameron didn’t want to do it, him and Gove were longterm allies. But Cameron understood that he needed to show he was listening. Gove was a poisoned well at Education, and if Cameron wanted to show he was a kinder, gentler, better Tory that could be trusted with majority Conservative government, then he had to give a bone to his opposition and change the channel.

Trudeau is later in his time as PM, obviously, but he needs a channel changer and something to show he’s listening. Chrystia Freeland would be my first choice, because she’s more prominent and just as prone to saying incredibly tonedeaf things, but this isn’t a situation where the government can continue to have key portfolios staffed by political incompetents. Freeland’s got a by-the-books intelligence that most would die for; Guilbeault has forgotten more about science and climate change than I’ve ever known. Both are actively terrible politicians.

Politics is not a meritocracy and public facing skills are not a luxury, as much as this government seems to forget it sometimes. Ministers are both performers and salesmen, actors and publicists. It’s not enough to do, you must be seen to do. Is this ideal? No, but politics aren’t either. Rule by technocratic fiat might sound good until you realize that plenty of people who have expertise in one area think they’re geniuses everywhere and then you get public health documents suggesting glory holes would be a good way to have sex without spreading disease. Oh, wait …

Guilbeault gets in the way of the government advocating for its climate agenda because he is incapable of focusing on issues where the public agree with him. Having an Environment Minister hated in Ontario and Alberta while you’re trying to get these two provinces to play ball on key parts of your emission reduction strategy is a bad fucking choice.

If he was either hated by Danielle Smith and Doug Ford or a bad public speaker, maybe his continuation in the job would be justified. He makes the governance tasks harder by being hated in Toronto and Edmonton, he makes selling the government’s agenda harder, and I have no real reason to believe he is essential to the ideas being put forward. I have no reason to believe that he and he alone can do it; more bluntly, I don’t see what genius or glory he provides to the policy side to justify such a political disaster.

This isn’t an argument to abandon a progressive climate agenda or to replace him with a oil industry lobbyist. But it is a case for someone in the job who can disagree with the Prairies on climate issues without making them all want to turn their mission in life to destroying you. And it’s time for someone who can make a case that these wildfires and smoke and the fact that you could walk outside in a hoodie yesterday in Ottawa are all connected, but more importantly that there’s a cost to be paid from inaction.

I know that a lot of columns lately have been about the failure of various left wing people or ideas. It isn’t fun for me to have to punch left, because punching left is hard. It is so much easier to punch “enemies” on the ideological opposite of you than it is to work to fight your friends and allies. But at the end of the day I could write a column a day on the threat of Pierre Poilievre and it would swing precisely 0 votes. If lending my name to a more muscular definition of progressive pragmatism could even change one singular decision that helps save the seat of a single Liberal MP, then I’ve used my influence well.

Portions of the Canadian left are captured by two structural truths – Doug Ford does not take sustained damage from his scandals and his (in their view) terrible decisions, and Pierre Poilievre is really consistently at 40% right now. They do not get why the Liberals punished severely while Doug Ford bounces right back off his feet. It’s a fact that, whether said explicitly or not, is the root of a lot of all of this. The poll denialism and the weird insistence that Ford “knows” he’s losing the next election and the bitching about the press as if this is all Postmedia’s fault are all functions of a very bare truth; they don’t get how this is happening to someone they think is good (Justin) and not someone they think is bad (Doug).

Not everyone is captured by it, but there is a huge amount of capture here, either by the Ford of it all or by the scale. Defeatism isn’t any better. Even if you accept that a Tory government is 100% inevitable and it is the only outcome of the next election – a premise whose certainty I reject – the difference between 70 Liberal MPs and 120 is hugely significant. And the government just running this group out unbothered by the clear flaws of it isn’t acceptable.

This country needs strong progressive parties that are willing to do what it takes to win. Victory cannot be an optional sidequest, but the zeal of every party. Right now we have a government that doesn’t seem to know if it wants to turn the polls around or run a natural experiment about how bad 1984 would have gone if Pierre hadn’t fucked off right before the cliff’s edge. I refuse to accept anything less than a party that will do everything in its powers to stop Poilievre. If the LPC actually, genuinely believe Poilievre is a Trump-level threat to Canada, fucking act like it. If we’re facing a crisis then try to fucking win. Getting rid of Guilbeault would go a long way towards showing you’re ready for a fightback.