Lessons For Next Time: Embrace Dissent

Learning From One Of Trudeau’s Errors

One of the great crises of the Trudeau era was the tightening of the circle over time - as people chose to leave for the private sector or other jobs over the 9 years, some of the government’s best people who could deliver reasoned criticism and be heard were lost. A culture of institutional distrust towards the critical spread, and those of us trying to push the party labelled as assholes. (In my case, the people who called me that internally are obviously correct - I am a massive asshole, I am aware - but I will point out that that wasn’t an issue for many of you when I was being an asshole towards Conservatives.)

If Carney and co want to ensure that they don’t become single minded and in their own bubble, they should strengthen internal accountability and dissent measures and publicize the existence of them. The government needs to take seriously the risk of echo chambers and out of touch people talking to other out of touch people and deciding everything is fine. They need to ensure there’s not just room for internal dissent, but direct access to communicate it up the chain.

There’s a few ways of doing it, and I think all of them are worth doing - ensuring a diversity of viewpoints and ensuring you have your finger on the actual pulse, not the screened and manicured one you want to believe, is crucial. You want to err on the side of too many critics than not enough.

More Caucus Engagement

In addition to weekly caucus meetings, Carney should undertake regular, additional meetings with the various regional caucuses, the Women’s caucus, and representatives of the YLC, the Senior’s Commission, and the Indigenous Commission. These meetings would represent a significant opportunity for on the ground feedback to be relayed to the PM and his office with regularity. That regularity would also ensure people could be honest. More bluntly, knowing that you don’t have to suck up to the PM to get another meeting will enable people to actually voice their concerns.

Regular meetings of the various party apparatuses will give MPs and dedicated Liberals a lot more ability to guide the direction of the government, and to inform the direction. It’s impossible to say what would have happened with greater caucus input in the last Parliament but it’s possible that we might have been able to stop things getting so bad in the first place if we had a more functional process for criticism.

It’s pretty clear from the reporting we’ve already got on the last few years that caucus were plenty pissed off at the lack of meaningful engagement, but the culture of acquiescence and of limited upward mobility for critics silenced a lot of people. (I would have said zero upward mobility but Nate did end up in Cabinet at the end, somehow.) We need clear signals that caucus are allowed to express disagreement and concern with individual policies without being seen as troublemakers and pains in the ass.

The PMO Must Embrace Critical, Independent Press

I’m not talking about Juno or Rebel here, and I’m putting the “Independent” caveat here because I don’t want someone trying to explain to me that actually, yes, the PMO do know what’s being said in the National Post. There are a lot of good, progressive media orgs that have been critical when necessary and friendly when earned to the Liberals, and they need to be the PMO’s media diet.

Obviously this site qualifies, but I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about Moscrop, I’m talking about the more Liberal/progressively friendly names in the broader Hub circle of contributors, I’m talking about Press Progress, and the National Observer, and a whole host of other writers and thinkers. There is a serious amount of intellectual capacity on the broad centre-left and left in this country that want Liberal governments to govern well. Don’t treat them like traitors for attacking individual policies when we disagree, engage with them and their ideas in a more serious and credible way.

The refusal of Rachel Notley to engage with the critiques of myself and Fawcett and many others cost her any real chance of winning the 2023 campaign, and we know they saw them. They just didn’t think we were right, and then we were. Listen.

Empower Cabinet To Disagree

One of the more surprising aspects of the Trudeau government was the lack of leaking about Cabinet Ministers opposing policy at the Cabinet table. We got bits and pieces of Ministers disagreeing with the PMO in their brief, but we never got the gripping tales of knock down drag em out fights around the cabinet table on key, contentious issues. It seems, at least to the outside, that Cabinet wasn’t sufficiently tough in vetting ideas, and we need to change that.

Last week I wrote a column that urged the creation of another economic portfolio - the Minister for Economic Development and Growth or something like it - as a means to ensure we have four economic heavyweights at the cabinet table. I maintain the idea is fantastic and I hope Carney does it, but it’ll be worthless if we treat Cabinet like a fait accompli and don’t make Ministers actually argue for their agendas with stakes.

Carney’s PMO should be encouraging cabinet members to steelman arguments against our policies, to ensure that the best possible Conservative attacks against us always have an answer before it’s announced, not once it’s taken hold of the press cycle. We need strong Ministers from Quebec to always push back at English Canadian Ministers to ensure how it plays in Quebec is properly understood, but by the same taken ideas by and for Quebec must be assessed through the lens of the whole of Canada too.

(My other deeply held Cabinet opinions are that Nate Erskine-Smith better stay at Housing, and we need to give Steve MacKinnon a front and centre big job. My fondness for Nate is well known, and the housing platform we ran on deserves to be implemented by the caucus’ biggest proponent of an All Of The Above housing strategy. MacKinnon, on the other hand, has been criminally underused in the Trudeau years, is one of the sharper minds in the Cabinet and caucus, will help ensure the party stays focused on growth and opportunity, and can be trusted to actually run his department without issue.)

All of these things will also enable Carney to show he’s different from Trudeau, a performative exercise that is worth doing, given how unpopular Trudeau was and still is. Showing that Carney listens to and values internal critics is a hugely important signal he can send, and on its merits will make our governance better. Empowering Caucus and Cabinet to push back more vigorously and listening to progressive, external critics will keep the Liberals grounded, and governing well.