GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau Liberals just playing for time

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In an interview with Bloomberg News in which Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland denied reports of a rift with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, amid speculation he wants to replace her with Mark Carney, she also indicated the Liberals’ strategy for winning next year’s election.

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Basically, they’re just playing for time.

Or as Freeland put it:

“I think time is our friend. We have the investments in place that are starting to kick in. I think when you look at the macro cycle, getting to actually having the soft landing is really important for everyone.”

In other words, the Liberals are hoping that by next summer, when their supply-and-confidence deal with the NDP expires, thinks will be looking up for them.

That is, the economy will be in better shape, inflation will be lower, national employment will be steady or on the upswing, federal housing initiatives will have begun to produce results and the kinks will be out of their new dental care plan, all leading up to an election that must be held on or before Oct. 20, 2025.

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Or, as Freeland put it, in releasing this year’s federal budget in April:

“We have a plan to build a Canada that works better for you, where you can get ahead, where your hard work pays off, where you can buy a home – where you have a fair chance at a good middle class life.

“First, we’re building more affordable homes … Second, we’re making life cost less … Third, we are growing the economy in a way that’s shared by all.”

That’s been the Liberal strategy all along, which is what made all the recent talk about some Liberal MPs demanding an emergency national caucus meeting with Trudeau in the wake of their unexpected loss in the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection to the Conservatives, much ado about nothing.

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First, that talk swiftly disappeared – the official excuse being it would have been logistically impossible to organize such a meeting heading into the dog days of summer – with the next caucus meeting scheduled for September around the time the House of Commons resumes sittings on Monday, Sept. 16.

Second, there would have been nothing to discuss because Trudeau has already laid out the Liberals’ plan to recapture public support.

Again, as Freeland put it in her budget speech:

“We are moving with purpose to help build more homes, faster.

“We are making life cost less.

“We are driving the kind of economic growth that will ensure every generation of Canadians can reach their full potential.

“And we are making Canada’s tax system more fair – by ensuring that the very wealthiest pay their fair share.”

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True, Freeland jumped the shark when she tried to turn the capital gains tax hike contained in her budget into the opening salvo of a class war against the rich.

As Freeland put it on the day people were voting in the St. Paul’s byelection, it was either vote Liberal and hike the capital gains tax or watch Canada descend into the Conservatives’ “cold and cruel and small” dystopian vision of Canada.

One in which, Freeland warned, children would go hungry, teenagers would become pregnant and where, “those at the very top live lives of luxury, but must do so in gated communities, behind ever-higher fences, using private health care and airplanes, because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less privileged compatriots burns so hot.”

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Such rhetoric fell flat, however, when the most vocal opponents of the capital gains tax hike, which is now in effect, turned out to be doctors, farmers and small business owners.

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The problem for the Liberals is that none of their class warfare rhetoric, or the weeks of housing announcements and other initiatives they made leading up to the federal budget, made a dent on the double-digit lead the Conservatives have had over them in the polls for months.

In reality, the Liberals have already laid out their re-election strategy, none of it has worked, and they’re running out of time, when the only real game-changer would be for Trudeau to announce he’s resigning, which he’s given no indication so far of doing, suggesting he’s playing for time as well.

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