The Speech Trudeau Should Give

How To Reset The Fight Against Poilievre

(At some point, arguing about the leadership of the Liberal Party is useless until caucus decide to either back the leader or get rid of him. So, in the meantime, I am going to do what so many of my critics claim I’m not able to do and be productive. Trudeau, if he’s intending on keeping the job, needs to step up to the plate and talk to Canadians honestly about this government in a way that will be heard. 

We need to make the case for this government to those who have benefitted from this government and those who haven’t. And we need to be honest about our failures as we tout our successes. And so, here’s the speech Trudeau should make next week.)

My fellow Canadians,

It’s been an undeniably rocky few months for the Liberal Party. Canadians in Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg have made clear that they want more, and better, from this government. Losing seats and votes across this country is unacceptable, and we have a duty to listen to what the people are saying. And it’s clear that there is work for us to do.

I’m incredibly proud of this government and what it’s achieved. From reducing child poverty for hundreds of thousands of kids with the Canada Child Benefit to making it cheaper for families to get the child care they need, we have strengthened the Canadian economy now and set it up for the future. We have more women in work than ever before and more financial security for those families that need the most help. Families are saving on their child care fees, and it’s enabling families to take that trip they couldn’t afford previously or afford a new car for the first time in their lives. Families having more money to spend helps all of us, whether it’s the small business that survives because they have more customers and the general benefits of a strong economy. 

When I travel across the country I hear stories of mothers able to return to work because it won’t cost her entire paycheck to get child care, or of parents who are able to start a business because they have the financial security of the Canada Child Benefit. I’ve met parents and their kids who are now able to afford to eat every meal and have their kids wear clothes that aren’t worn down or a winter jacket that will actually keep them warm. These accomplishments aren’t just lines on a graph or abstract concepts, they’re real people who are better off for our actions and better off for a government that wants to help people.

We have increased defence spending, with a nearly 40% boost since the lows of the Harper Conservatives. We are working towards our 2% NATO target, because we believe that standing with our allies is crucial. We know the values of internationalism, of cooperation, of openness, and we know that the only way we achieve any real progress is through working with countries and not pretending we can go it alone.

We defended Canadian interests in a renegotiation of NAFTA none of us wanted, forced upon us by the election of Donald Trump. We worked with industry, labour, Premiers, and stakeholders across the country to get the best deal that we could and to mitigate the consequences of a protectionist American government. We have been willing to work with people we certainly don’t agree with because we know that Canadian interests come before personal grievance. We also made sure that working with Donald Trump when necessary didn’t mean forgetting about Canadian values, including the value of telling people when they’re wrong.

We’ve strengthened the financial position of seniors and ensured those who will be seniors are able to retire with dignity. We lowered the age for OAS and GIS back to 65, we raised CPP to ensure people have more money in retirement, and we’ve boosted both OAS and GIS. We are open to going even further as part of our commitment to those who have given so much to our country over their lives.

We’ve fought for real climate action that has also reduced Canadian emissions 5% since 2015 and given us the opportunity to drive emissions even lower in future years. With our strategic investments in clean energy, battery technology, and electric vehicles, we are absolutely reducing the dependency on oil that causes so much emissions. We have invested billions in new transit projects across this country, because the tradeoff of public transport shouldn’t be that it takes triple the time of a car trip to go the same distance. We have made investments in Canadians who want to make their own lives better on the environment as well, through rebates and cutting the cost of going green. Our Carbon Tax returns more money to the bottom 80% in rebates than they pay in taxes, resulting in lower emissions and financial help to the poorest amongst us.

We have so much to help Canadians, but we have by no means been perfect. Our handling of the pandemic is a great example of both the successes and the failures. Our economy held up despite the unprecedented challenges, and we hit our return to pre-pandemic employment sooner than the US did - and while saving countless lives that could have been lost with looser policies. We faced hard choices and crucial tradeoffs as the world came crashing to a halt, and we supported workers and businesses at a critical time. Had we not, the economy would be destroyed for generations.

We also didn’t get every decision right. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight there are absolutely decisions we would take differently, because we know we’re not perfect. There was so many aspects of the pandemic to manage that things fell through the cracks, but we did as well as any country could given the unprecedented and rapid circumstances we were in.

Coming back from the pandemic has also been a challenge, and it’s been one we’ve been imperfect at as well. We were hearing from provinces, businesses, colleges and universities, and so many that the country needed higher levels of immigration and more international student visas. Given the warnings of business closures and schools potentially going out of business, we made the choice to raise the immigration target, loosen the rules around Temporary Foreign Workers, and continue to approve what the provinces asked for on student visas. We were wrong to do so.

Yes, those requests came from all quarters, but it is incumbent on us to look more holistically than the narrow interests of businesses that wanted cheaper labour or provinces that wanted to avoid tough budget conversations with their higher education institutes. Immigration is an incredible thing that has given so much to this country, but we took that truism too far. We didn’t have the capacity - in health care, schools, and especially housing - for the levels we said yes to. We got it wrong, and we’re fixing it.

Canadians are a tolerant people who support immigration, and it’s on politicians to make sure that we don’t risk that consensus. It is one of our great strengths as a country that we have not given in to the nativism and the insularity that has risen in so many places, even amongst allies. We must stand strong against hatred and anti-immigrant sentiment, and part of that is acknowledging that it’s not the fault of individual people who came here for a better life, but the government that let in too many people that we couldn’t accommodate.

We’re seeing reports in university towns that our reversals on student visas are having an effect and lowering rents, a crucial start to putting our housing market less out of whack. Our Housing Accelerator Fund has done great work in liberalizing zoning and planning law across the country, and the benefits of greater density will come to fruition as the time continues. It’s fair to say we should have done this sooner, but at the same time there’s no denying that we will see greater housing because of the Housing Accelerator Fund than we would otherwise.

What we cannot do is solve the housing crisis alone, nor any of the problems this country faces. Yes, we have been imperfect, and we have to take our fair share of responsibility. But we are not a dictatorship and the provinces have plenty of powers to do and not do what they please. The Federal government is not why we haven’t seen province wide zoning reforms that would allow 3 and 4 units per lot without review in Ontario like the ones we’ve seen in BC. We are not responsible for the choices of provincial leaders to underfund health care despite our increased federal funding. We are not the ones choosing to introduce unconstitutional provincial Bill Of Rights that are as toothless as they are time wasting instead of working towards solutions to any of our problems.

It is perfectly understandable that Canadians are upset with the state of the country right now. No governments are perfect, and given the challenges of the last five years, even a perfect government would not be enough. But elections are not merely contests about a government, but a choice. At the next federal election, whenever it is, there will be a choice, a stark one, between a government that believes that government can be good and helpful to its citizens and one that believes that the best government is one that gets out of the way and lets corporate interests trample over the wellbeing of Canadians.

We have a choice between a Prime Minister who thinks climate change is a real and active threat to this country and someone who wants to pretend that if we just don’t do anything about it it’ll go away. We have a choice between a Prime Minister who will fight for the poorest and those who need government the most to get more from government, be it from cheaper child care, finally getting access to dental care and coverage of prescriptions, and an Opposition leader who can’t answer whether they would keep a program that’s let half a million Canadian seniors get dental care already.

Moreso than just a choice between leaders, we have to make a choice about who we are. We have a Conservative Premier who is telling people on disability supports to get off their ass and work. We have a Conservative leader in BC who thinks hardworking doctors should be fired for telling the truth that vaccines are effective but who listens to Jordan Peterson’s quackery. We have Premiers wanting to make it illegal for cities to deal directly with the federal government, because apparently the most pressing concern for Conservatives is making sure their cities can’t make their residents lives better with our help.

Pierre Poilievre will not stand up to these Premiers. Poilievre and his Conservatives won’t criticize the biggest gatekeeper stopping meaningful housing reform in Doug Ford, because their commitment to good policy only extends as far as they can criticize and play political games. They would rather attack Stephen Harper’s Governor General than get a security clearance and actually read what our intelligence agencies have said about foreign interference in our democracy. They would rather attack Stephen Harper’s Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney instead of putting forward any ideas to grow the economy other than taking money from the poorest by taking the carbon tax rebates away.

The Conservatives are good at identifying ways to whip up anger and good at identifying snappy one liners that play well to their base, but they can’t answer basic questions about a Conservative government would look like. They can’t because they know if they admit they’d cut our accomplishments in dental care and Pharmacare and child care they’d get laughed out of the room by Canadians. But they also can’t ever admit we have done anything right, because to them political expediency stands above everything - including, plainly, the truth.

We haven’t been perfect, and there’s no use pretending to Canadians that we have been. But there is too much at stake to let perfect be the enemy, and we must do everything we can to stop a government that will undo all of the good we’ve achieved. I’m committed to doing everything I can to earn back your trust, to listen to your message, and to do as much as possible before an election to help this country be as great as we all know it is.