Freeland, Fraser, NES, And Deckchair Shuffles

On Sunday's Avalanche Of News

Let’s start this column by being real here; Sean Fraser’s retirement is going to be rolled into the narrative of this week and I’m not sure it’s actually justified. I’ve heard rumours and stories that this was a possibility for over a year now, due to the arduous nature of a Ministerial portfolio and a rural Nova Scotia seat. The fact that Fraser was essentially guaranteed to lose Central Nova theoretically matters in the story of this decision, but unlike when family is usually mentioned as an excuse for a resignation or retirement, this time it is genuinely sincere.

Obviously, this government is fucked! Nobody is denying it, and nobody is denying the two other bits of news that came out Sunday night aren’t proof! Chrystia Freeland openly defying her PM seems like a disaster, as does the fact that she won’t be in the job as soon as Wednesday. Mark Carney is still being asked to enter cabinet (read: be the Finance Minister), and therefore nobody knows when the Cabinet Shuffle will happen or who will be in it because again, nobody knows if he’ll say yes. It’s a shit show.

What is clear to me, as someone with more access to this government than most but certainly less access than I did at some points (the costs of speaking the truth), is that this government is cooked. It is burnt. It is dead and needs to be buried. And it is high time we admit this to ourselves. Because Chrystia Freeland is openly defying her PM but for some reason not resigning, the government is pinning all their hopes on a new Finance Minister who has already made clear he doesn’t want the job in Mark Carney, and Canadians who made plans with the money promised from these cheques are now shit out of luck. It’s a disaster.

..

I wrote all about the Freeland and Carney of it all this past Friday, and every word of that has been strengthened by Sunday’s revelations. But it’s pretty interesting that nobody, either in the press, the PMO, Freeland’s orbit, Carney’s orbit, or anybody else has said fuck all to me since I said that Carney would be Finance Minister if he wanted it. I routinely get messages about what I write here if they’re untrue or even just written unclearly, and none such came after Friday’s piece. Maybe those who accused me of making shit up should take note.

What is more fundamental is that Freeland and JT do not find it necessary to support the same policies. Freeland is actively undermining the government she is in, and feels no need to tender her resignation. Trudeau knows she’s about to do so, and yet isn’t firing her before the Fiscal Statement. It’s a joke. It’s a sham of a democracy that the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister believe in very different things about a core government policy and the PM keeps the Finance Minister in the job. Hell, the fact that the PM kept Freeland in the job while opening shopping for better is offensive to the public, but whatever.

What matters more is that this government is quickly running out of any claim to moral authority or a right to govern. They’re announcing and then denouncing policy in equal measure, they’re leaking key decisions to John Fucking Ivison, they’re letting a lame duck Finance Minister give the Fall Economic Statement despite the fact that everybody knows she won’t be here in a month, and they’re doing all of this in the name of a leader who is lucky to be ahead of the NDP.

It is nearly impossible to make a case for the forward benefit of four more years of Liberal governance. There is a case for voting for this government for the things it has done for people, and there is a case for voting Liberal to stop Pierre Poilievre, but there is not actually much of a case that another four years of this government will achieve much. The ideas are gone, the best they have are laughable policies hated by the experts they claim to believe in, and now they’re unable to even implement their terrible ideas.

They’ve been handcuffed to a privilege debate they’ve refused to get rid of, either by acquiescing to Parliament’s demands or by convincing the NDP that their demands are exactly as stupid as you believe them to be. They can’t convince the public they deserve another term, as their ever deteriorating poll numbers show. They can’t convince their own MPs and Ministers they deserve another term, as the 5 officially lame duck, not including Freeland, Cabinet Ministers about to be shuffled out this week show. They can’t convince the shining star of Liberals outside the caucus to say yes to the proverbial dress. They can’t even guarantee that every business that sells a now-GST free product will be GST free! If this government were an Iannucci plot we’d be decrying his decline from realistic comedy to the truly absurdist. It’s not okay!

I don’t like the reputation I am increasingly getting as a hater of this government as much as any of you like calling me a conservative, but at the end of the day there are people living with their heads up their asses and it’s unacceptable. Tonight as I publish this the Liberals are about to lose another seat at a byelection and this result is so locked in I didn’t bother writing a preview for it. The government isn’t functioning as a government anymore. The best defence anybody has offered of Freeland’s decision to ditch the cheques is that the idea was so obviously ludicrous and terrible in the first place that it’s a good thing they’re ditching them. Respectfully, that’s not a good fucking argument.

Apparently we’re at the stage where the miracle Nate Erskine-Smith promotion to Cabinet is happening, according to the Globe. He makes sense as a Fraser replacement on one level - he is a serious and credible thinker on housing whose Ontario Liberal leadership campaign was supremely strong on the issue. That he is now tied more intimately to a deeply unpopular government that will make any future ambition harder is worth noting. But let’s put aside my (many, complicated, and visceral) feelings about this move as a supporter of his last year and a fan of his - that the government is doing this says a ton.

This government isn’t guaranteed to make it to April, let alone October. They’re shuffling the Cabinet a week before Christmas and hoping it solves their problems. It won’t. It’s a day late and a dollar short and all of this is just so fucking depressing.

I can’t do another year of this. Put me out of my fucking misery.