Twilight of the Liberal Gods

It’s like watching the Titanic sink.

I predicted Justin Trudeau was dead as last week’s cheese curds when Jodi Wilson-Raybould first testified. But I had not anticipated the entertainment value of watching the ship slowly cleave in two, upend and slip below the waves. It’s the best political theatre since Stephane Dion’s attempted coup against Stephen Harper.

Among other things, we have actually gotten a chance to see Andrew Coyne get angry. Usually the most cerebral of commentators, he pulls no punches over Trudeau’s conduct in all this. He regularly appears on the CBC’s At Issue panel with Chantal Hebert, who is pretty shameless about being a partisan Liberal hack. And he always politely lets her get away with it. But not this time.

Trudeau’s team has now done something magnificently stupid. The stuff of later history. No, the stuff of political legend.

They send Andrew Scheer, the Leader of the Opposition, a lawyer’s letter threatening to sue for libel if he did not shut up.

They could not have done Scheer a bigger favour. First, the thing is an attempted end-run yet again against established democratic traditions, tending to reinforce the original claim from Wilson-Raybould. It does not help that Trudeau had just expelled the two resigned ministers from caucus for dissent, a move that of itself violates the established principles of a Westminster democracy. In a Westminster system, the prime minister serves so long as he has the support of parliament and caucus. Trudeau’s action reverses this: parliamentarians serve in caucus so long as they have the support of the prime minister. As someone has said, this is the Soviet, not the Westminster, system.

Trudeau has also deftly managed by this to turn the spotlight and the stage over to Scheer. Up to this point, the heroes of the narrative, assuming you did not support Trudeau, were Wilson-Raybould and Philpott. People might have been fed up with Trudeau over it all and have wanted to show their support for the two former ministers; but, unless they chose to run next time in your local riding, how? Disaffected Liberal voters still did not have any definite reason to vote for Scheer. He seemed only a spectator. Should an anti-Liberal voter go Tory or NDP, or just stay home?

Now Trudeau has made Scheer a hero and a designated defender of Wilson-Raybould, and given everyone a definite reason to vote for him as an expression of their opposition. Brilliant move. If you’re a Tory.

Up to this point, there had been grumbling over Scheer in Conservative ranks because he seemed too soft and cuddly. Too Canadian-nice. Not a fighter, not a real leader. Witness the departure of Bernier from his shadow cabinet, then caucus. Now Trudeau has given Scheer a golden opportunity to look both tough and principled. Great job. If you’re a Tory.

Scheer, of course, has called his bluff. Trudeau now has two choices. Most likely, he does nothing. This proves Scheer’s original accusation in effect, that Trudeau is a liar. First, by not contesting the claim after saying how serious it is, and second, by having just told another demonstrable public lie, in saying that he was going to sue, then not doing so. Winning goal, scored on own net.

Second choice: Trudeau goes ahead and files suit. Even better. Now the matter winds through the courts, generating news coverage all the way, as ministers and aides are subpoenaed and called to testify over whether Trudeau lied. It automatically becomes the public inquiry into the SNC-Lavalin affair that the Conservatives and NDP have demanded, and which the Liberals have shut down. It would be certain to keep the scandal in the nightly news until past the next election.

It seems highly improbable too that Trudeau would end up winning the suit. Pierre Poilievre has, after all, cornered him in the House already into publicly admitting he had lied about never being told of Wilson-Raybould’s concerns with political interference. This is largely the issue over which he is suing. Suing an opposition leader for criticising the government is a dangerous and unheard of precedent in any case. Precedent is at the heart of the common law. Any thoughtful and principled judge would be unlikely to let it by, barring some exceptional circumstance.

But even were Trudeau to win the suit, the game for Scheer would still be worth the candle. He might in the end have to pay a fine; but he would be prime minister. And possibly a folk hero on the level of Joseph Howe. Go fund me!

Such a remarkably stupid move perhaps reveals something else.

I don’t think anyone was under any delusion when the Liberals elected Trudeau as leader that he was anything more than a mascot, a pretty face for the cameras. It was a pure PR move. After all, the backroom operators could make all the real decisions. This has always been their strength, in the Liberals’ own self-estimation. They were the Natural Governing Party. They were the experts, the professionals. They ran the civil service no matter who was nominally in power. It was just a matter of electing someone who would leave it to them.

There is a necessary flaw in this thinking: it requires enough humility and insight in the mascot to understand he is not to make decisions. Because if he ever chooses to, he does have the power. The comparison is extreme, and must not be pushed too far, but the German elites thought the same when they named Hitler Chancellor in Germany—that he would be held in check by the civil service, the army, and the cooler heads they also put in cabinet.

And even if the mascot buys in, and does his best to stop thinking and just parrot the required talking points at question period—a good description of exactly what we see from Trudeau on C-Span—there is another problem. If he is given two different directives by two advisors, as will inevitably happen, how does he know which one to listen to? Advice does not come with labels marked “good” and “bad.” Sometimes, he will have to choose, and he is not equipped to choose well.

I think we have seen this playing out throughout the SNC-Lavalin affair. I think to begin with Trudeau made a bad decision, in trusting the advice of SNC-Lavalin’s board over that of his Attorney-General. We can only guess what his backroom advisors were saying, but it might well have come down to what Wernick suggested in his recorded phone call with JWR: Trudeau had firmly made up his mind, considering what he saw as his own interests as member for Papineau, and his advisors had no choice but to appease him on this one.

But now we see something else. When the scandal broke, the Liberals really had only two choices: blame it on Trudeau, and have him resign; or blame it on his advisors, and have them resign. Since the ultimate choice lay with Trudeau, it was, of course, his closest advisors who resigned.

But that means Trudeau is now flying on his own. There is no one else beside him in the instructor’s seat—at least, no one he personally knows and trusts. The wise heads who were supposed to manage things, and manage him, are gone. Now things are getting really crazy as a result. He is beginning to show signs of panic.

In a way, it is painful to watch. I wish he would spare himself this, and resign.