Canada’s Parliament returns: Trudeau looks to address unfinished business as Conservatives squabble

They delivered their verdict in September, reelecting the telegenic Liberal Party leader but depriving him again of the majority he sought. Now, a new session of Parliament is set to open on Monday — more than two months after the election, a period opposition parties have complained has been unnecessary dillydallying.

As leader of a minority government, Trudeau must depend on the backing of opposition lawmakers to pass his agenda and stay in power. But with his main foes mired in internecine feuds and alignment in key policy areas with the left-leaning New Democratic Party, there’s opportunity to address some unfinished business.

“What’s at stake for him is to try to make some progress on what he will identify eventually as his legacy pieces,” said Lori Turnbull, a political scientist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. “So can he do something meaningful on climate change, reconciliation, improving the housing situation, getting his child-care package through?”

Trudeau has noted “early priorities,” including reintroducing legislation to ban conversion therapy and guaranteeing 10 days of paid sick leave to federally regulated workers. His agenda will be detailed in the throne speech on Tuesday, which is read by the governor general, Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Canada, but written by the prime minister’s office. The speech is typically put to a vote, which the government must win to stay in power.

During the campaign, Trudeau promised more than $60 billion over five years in new spending in areas such as health care and housing. That’s in addition to the more than $80 billion in new spending over three years earmarked in his government’s 2021 budget and other big-ticket items such as a nationwide child-care program.

Analysts said Trudeau is likely to face pressure from some opposition parties to roll back spending and/or address the rising cost of living. Canada’s inflation rate hit its highest level in nearly two decades in October, and consumers are feeling the pinch at gas pumps and supermarkets. The Bank of Canada has said inflation is temporary and tied to supply chain disruptions and energy prices.

“While economists have used words like ‘transitory’ and ‘minor,’ the rising cost of living is already being felt across income levels,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a polling research group. “Economic policy will matter a lot.”

Since the election, Trudeau has unveiled a mandate requiring federal civil servants, employees in some federally regulated industries and passengers traveling on planes, trains and some boats to be fully vaccinated. Those federal civil servants who don’t attest to being fully vaccinated by Nov. 30 risk being placed on unpaid leave.

Trudeau has also overhauled his cabinet, putting women in charge of several key portfolios, including foreign affairs and defense. Chrystia Freeland, a close ally viewed in some circles as his heir apparent, remains deputy prime minister and finance minister.

He named Steven Guilbeault, a former climate change activist, minister of the environment and climate change. Analysts said the move signaled that Trudeau, whose bona fides as a professed climate warrior were questioned after his government bought an oil pipeline in 2018, intends to take climate change more seriously.

September’s election resulted in a Parliament with a makeup almost indistinguishable from the last one. For the second election in a row, Trudeau’s Liberal Party lost the popular vote to the Conservative Party.

Much has changed since Trudeau resurrected the moribund Liberals and swept to power in 2015 on a wave of adulation much like the Trudeaumania that his father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, generated several decades earlier.

He promised “sunny ways” and a more transparent government and cast himself as a champion of diversity and feminism. But several ethics scandals and the revelation that he wore blackface makeup as a younger man have chipped away at that image.

A favored attack of Trudeau’s political foes is that he isn’t really who he says he is.

Such charges resurfaced in September after Trudeau took a beach vacation with his family in Tofino, British Columbia, on the day that Canada marked its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a holiday to commemorate Indigenous children who attended residential schools and the thousands who died there.

Trudeau’s government passed a law establishing the holiday this year, after ground-penetrating radar uncovered evidence of hundreds of unmarked graves near former residential schools. The government-funded, church-run institutions operated for more than a century until the 1990s to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children.

Trudeau has often said that his government’s most important relationship is with Indigenous people. To his critics and several Indigenous leaders, decamping for the beach was an example of the gap between the prime minister’s rhetoric on reconciliation and his actions.

The prime minister later said that he regretted his personal travel that day.

But Trudeau’s political opponents face their own challenges.

At a time when climate change is a key issue for many Canadians, factions of the Green Party are feuding and its leader has resigned. The New Democratic Party and separatist Bloc Québécois failed to make notable gains in September’s vote, but they’ll probably be content to hold the balance of power rather than return to the polls.

Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole, Trudeau’s main rival, is also taking heat — from within his party. The former Canadian Forces helicopter navigator pitched himself as a “true blue” Conservative during the party’s leadership race, but his election platform was far more centrist.

O’Toole’s opponents argued that he was willing to say anything to get elected. Some members of his own party worried that such an approach risked fracturing the “big blue tent.” One Conservative senator launched a petition this month calling on members to back a review of his leadership within six months.

“Mr. O’Toole has watered down and even entirely reversed our policy positions without the input of party or caucus members,” the senator, Denise Batters, said in a video on Twitter. “On carbon tax, on guns, on conscience rights — he flip-flopped on our policies within the same week, the same day and even the same sentence.”

The petition drew criticism from other conservatives. One lawmaker said that the Liberals had probably greeted it by popping champagne. The next day, O’Toole booted Batters from the Conservative caucus — via voice mail, she alleged.

The party has also been riven by divisions over coronavirus vaccines. O’Toole said during the campaign that he encouraged vaccination but wouldn’t mandate it. He has chided some lawmakers from his own party for spreading misinformation about vaccines. A group of them have formed a “civil liberties” caucus to oppose vaccination mandates. The mandates enjoy widespread support in Canada.

Kurl said the Liberals won’t have to worry about the longevity of the new Parliament as long as the bickering between the right and more moderate wings of the Conservative Party continues.

“But make no mistake, while the prime minister claims he has been given a mandate by Canadian voters, only 32 percent voted for his party,” she said. “This was, like 2019, a case of choosing the ‘least worst’ option.”

Minority governments here don’t tend to last longer than two years. Trudeau has indicated that he intends to lead the Liberals into the next election.

“At this point, I know of no challenger,” Turnbull said. “But people will get itchy at some point.”

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