Schrodinger's Cabinet Shuffle
On What The Liberals Should Do
How fucked do they think they are?
It’s been pretty well leaked that there’s a cabinet shuffle coming this summer – we don’t know if it’s gonna be early or late summer, but I’d guess it’ll be fairly soon, so the relevant Ministers moved can get their feet under them – and so the fantasy cabinets are flying. I’m not going to really do that, mostly because I’m too lazy to actually bust out a full list (Duclos to Immigration is my one ask, if you’re reading Justin), but this reshuffle is coming at a very interesting time.
If you use the byelection results, the narrative about this government as stale and lacking is complete bullshit. If you use the polls, this government needs a serious and substantial remaking to have any chance at winning again. And what’s notable is that we don’t really get many glimpses into what the government thinks about themselves, but we do in a shuffle.
We all know Marco is moving (and I beg to God out entirely) after his disastrous handling of the politics of the Bernardo transfer, and there’s probably a need for a new Housing minister if you want to get a new national strategy off the ground in the fall (maybe Qualtrough? She’s one of the better delivery focused Ministers and the Disability Benefit is now law), but there are two versions of a shuffle possible.
One is a targeted shuffle – two or three new names, limited movement, the big 4 (Freeland, Joly, Anand, Lametti) stay in place – and then there’s the big shuffle, where you see more dropped Ministers, more new ones, bigger turnover, and some big change within the big 4. I’m not expecting that big of a shuffle, but the thing about this is that we’ll get to see what the Liberals think – and how far they are from an election winning position.
If the Liberals think they’re in decent shape, I’d expect a shuffle that looks more like the former option. But if the Liberals think they’re in trouble and the byelections aren’t reflective of their strength, we’ll see a different – and bigger – kind of shuffle. And so, given I’m not gonna play fantasy cabinet maker, which should the government think?
…
The narrative that this government is growing tired and stale is odd, because the thing that people don’t like this government for has been what people haven’t liked this government for for 4 years – the communications incompetence and the fast and loose ethics stuff. This is a government that has a lot of paper cuts on ethics – from Dom LeBlanc’s sister in law as the temporary Ethics Commissioner to the media training contract given by a Liberal Cabinet Minister to a friend who happened to have a P&P slot – and some legitimate(-ish) questions to answer on the China front, but the problem this whole time has been it has a good legislative agenda and kinda suck at everything else.
Now, the legislative agenda is getting better and better, but the government feels like it’s doing worse and worse. If you’re the Liberals, there’s two answers – stay the course and try to do it better, or find a spark of radicalism and change the agenda. What they would do well to do is keep continuity, because the message they have will work – so long as they don’t lose their heads.
I have spent the week trying to square the results Monday night with the polls, and the only way to do it is to believe that the polls are accurate but that when people key in to the facts, their tolerance to vote Liberal rises hugely. And given that that makes a lot more sense than a fairly anti-numeric byelections are bad take, the Liberals don’t need major surgery, just targeted help.
This government needs better comms and PR, clearly – getting caught off guard strictly from a communications perspective on Bernardo is unacceptable, and it should not be taking 2 days for the PM to give denials to what shows up in the Globe – but those are issues of tactics, and they can be fixed. There is nothing inherent in this government that suggests they should suck at comms, so given that, their inability to communicate an overarching message can be fixed.
So what does need fixing? This government has been reactive since the Convoy – it cannot get on the front foot and it cannot make the story be their accomplishments and their ideas. A government that dies usually does so because their legislative agenda shrivels up, but here, this term of government is going to be much more transformative, for good or ill, than the majority Parliament. But this government cannot get their heads out of their asses and cannot move forward coherently.
The problem comes down to personnel, kind of – having a Minister more interested in doing his fucking job and not having staff not just able but comfortable hiding information from him at Public Safety would have for sure helped, but the bigger problem is that the Liberals need to stop playing Whack-A-Mole. The cadence of politics goes that the people dictating the agenda are the side that benefit, and the Liberals have been reacting to an agenda set by the Opposition benches.
This government has to lead again – they need to come out with a new Ministry and a narrative about how their online news bill and their Grocery Rebate and their support for Ukraine connect, because whether the slogan’s vacuous or not, Poilievre is running every criticism of the government through a central narrative, and he’s winning the day most days.
That might not matter when the bill comes due and this Parliament ends, but why risk it? The Liberals need to start winning some days, and they don’t need an entirely new cabinet to do it. What they need is a cabinet, whether Ministers are status quo or moved, where people don’t make asses of themselves every time they get behind a mic. Get a better centralized communications message and give Ministers more room to admit things haven’t always been perfect and the Liberals will cruise back to the front.
This week has shown that the Conservatives are weaker than consensus opinion. The Liberals don’t need to rock the whole boat, but just get the moves they make right, to take advantage. With this reshuffle they have their chance.
Don’t fuck it up.
I think there is a risk that the Liberals focus too much on individual names and not enough on policy & process. Before talking about names, the Liberals should focus on a few other things first:
1. Process - avoid another passport debacle at all cost. Which government process are struggling at the moment? What do you need to do fix them? Right now wait times are unacceptable for immigration issues, what is the government doing to fix this? Ideally make the key performance indicators public and show progress.
2. Celebrate successes - this government has achieved a few key successes despite the pandemic. Safe drinking water for indigenous communities is making great progress. It is not complete yet, but it is worth celebrating what has been achieved. The press will try to dismiss this as gimmicky, but most Canadians will be interested to see what has been achieved.
3. Pick 2-3 big achievable priorities that a large part of the population can get behind and make this front and centre of the reason why people should support the current government. Key is to pick objectives that are within the control of the Federal government, achievable and measurable. Housing should be part of this and there is room to be bold on this file. Poilievre will scream murder that the government is stealing his ideas, but there are more points to be gained by acting on ideas than generating ideas.
Once the Liberals have decided on these 3 topics, then they should determine who should drive these and assign ministers accordingly. And of course that would be a good time to address some of the dead wood and clumsy wood in the current cabinet.
The accomplishments are real and the communications are terrible. I just had a long discussion with a neighbour about politics and the first thing she said was how terrible it is that Trudeau pretends to care about indigenous people and has done nothing about fixing water quality on reserves. Several more false statements about China etc. She is open to being told that she has the wrong information. I just emailed the stats on the water situation. It’s frustrating.