Maverick In The Cabinet

On Nate Erskine-Smith’s Decision

The worst kept secret in Ottawa is going to happen tomorrow, as Nate Erskine-Smith, the erstwhile rebel and maverick backbencher who nearly beat Bonnie Crombie to the OLP leadership last year, has agreed to become the Housing Minister in Sean Fraser’s absence and run for his Toronto area seat again. It’s a big decision for him personally, but also a big swing for the Prime Minister.

Erskine-Smith, for those who skipped this site’s extensive coverage of the OLP leadership race (which is to say, 9 provinces of this country), is a favourite of mine, though he wasn’t always. He did a significant service to Ontario by putting housing front and centre in that race, helping to force Bonnie Crombie to the correct side of the fight and spurring a YIMBY movement inside the party. He’s a committed thinker and a smart guy who has shown his independence, most notably by voting for electoral systems reform in the face of the PM’s majority mandate U-turn. That maverick nature was part of Nate’s appeal - an understanding that he was more than just a ChatGPT rendering of his talking points memo. Now he’s in the Cabinet of a man I want nothing more than to fuck off. It’s complicated.

The case for Nate not doing this is incredibly easy to make, and it’s where my head has been this whole week. The PM will try to spin the appointment of a leading backbencher with political capital and a base of loyalists, many of whom share my belief that the PM’s time is up, as a victory for him, and the sort of thing that justifies his continuation. As a move to mollify the kinds of people who supported Nate in 2023, and frankly the kinds of people who read this site, it’s not a bad move.

I first heard the rumour that Fraser was stepping aside in November, the morning Vandal, Tassi et al announced they were leaving. Ministerial staff didn’t know anything about it at the time, but as best I can piece together, the PMO has had about a month to plan for a future post-Fraser. It seems likely, seeing how this has gone, that Erskine-Smith was always their choice. It makes sense for them for a lot of reasons, both on policy and political terms.

It’s also the case that Erskine-Smith was a staunch advocate for turning the knives outwards in October after that Caucus meeting, a fact I criticised at the time. I’m sure, though I have no proof, that Nate’s press scrum in October helped this along, because I highly doubt if Nate had been as vocal for a change in the aftermath as Sean Casey or Wayne Long he’d be here.

The other fase against it is absolutely more self serving, and I do strenuously worry whether Nate is doing damage to his future aspirations to serve Canada and Ontario by tying himself to a government that is only slightly more popular than drinking one’s piss. But, at the end of the day, he’s taken the job.

As far as I understand it, the case for doing it goes something like this. There is a virtue to service, he has the ideas that would help on policy grounds, and he would be a good Minister. It’s safe to say, given some of the other idiots in the cabinet or entering it today, that Nate does represent an intellectual upgrade over some of the clapping seals apparently up for promotion and elevation. But none of this really gets at the true problem, which has extremely little to do with Erskine-Smith and everything to do with the man he’s about to be serving at the pleasure of.

I can pretend to be pissed about this or that but my anger this week is all about one thing - a man I believe to be destroying this party and the country by extension hasn’t gone yet, and my anger at the initial news that Nate was going to enter the Cabinet was anger about that basic truth manifested in a stupid and useless way. There is little knowable about the exact nature of how the next weeks will go, and getting mad at somebody stepping up when asked is stupid.

Now, to the extent that having my favourite MP in Cabinet might change my tone, it won’t. Trudeau needs to go, and one good cabinet appointment doesn’t change that. But it’s not any good to vilify someone for working within the realities as they currently exist just because I want those realities to be different. It’s also very easy to tell someone not to take a cabinet job - and a fairly high level one at that - when the prospect of serving in anything close to the importance of it has never been even remotely on the table for me, nor does it seem likely it ever will given my status as an asshole.

I don’t know if I agree with this decision. I don’t know that I would have made it in his shoes. But it’s not my decision to make, it’s not my choice, and it’s not my career. What this whole thing has reminded me is that when people show themselves to be worthy of respect and trust, it’s on us to show them that even when you think they’re wrong.

Nate is going to do a great job at the Housing portfolio. Let’s let the rest of it fall where it may. But I just can’t maintain my anger at him stepping up when asked when it’s the PM who actually deserves the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune coming for him. Smooth sailing, friend.