Crisis upon crisis

Well, isn't this just what Canada needs right now?  With the coronavirus pandemic still far from over, with major decisions still to be made, we now have a full-fledged crisis in Justin Trudeau's Federal Government.

Last evening it emerged that Finance Minister Bill Morneau had met with Trudeau and tendered his resignation.  Morneau's departure has been mooted in the media for some time: both he and Trudeau have been caught up in a tawdry little scandal involving the well-established WE Charity*, and the way of politics is that if someone has to be sacrificed to defuse the situation, it's unlikely to be the boss. The Federal Ethics Commissioner is on the case, and it might be noted that this is the third time that Trudeau's actions have attracted attention from that quarter.

Morneau insists Trudeau did not request his resignation.  He claimed that he simply decided that this was the right time for someone else to take over.  Frankly this is about as credible as the idea that  General Eisenhower would have quit when the troops were part-way up the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Alongside the WE scandal, there have been rampant rumours of disagreements between Morneau and his boss, whether over the huge sums that have been committed to fight the pandemic, or over Trudeau's apparent wish to use the recovery phase to force through a major "green" shift in the economy. 

A Cabinet shuffle is imminent, but it is already clear that Chrystia Freeland will take over Morneau's job.  And why not? As Deputy Prime Minister, she has already been doing a lot of Trudeau's job since last year's election; one more massive responsibility can't hurt, right? It's not that she is unqualified -- after all, she took charge of the often tricky negotiations for the replacement NAFTA treaty with the US and Mexico, so she knows her way around the economy. Still, it is becoming hard to avoid the impression that she is the only member of the Cabinet Trudeau really trusts, which can't be a good thing.  

Don't go away -- there's much more. Trudeau reportedly plans to "prorogue" (i.e. suspend) Parliament  for a month or two, to allow him time to reset the agenda. An October resumption, starting with a new Throne Speech quickly followed by a budget statement, seems to be in the works. To suspend Parliament, Trudeau has to seek the approval of the Queen's representative in Canada, the Governor General.  

That should be an interesting conversation. The G-G, former astronaut (really!) Julie Payette, has a couple of ongoing scandals of her own, involving allegedly toxic conditions in the workplace and excessive spending on her security details. Until yesterday, it seemed likely that any early meeting between Trudeau and Payette would involve his quietly suggesting her resignation, but it appears that the bus took a wrong turn and ran over Morneau instead.   

Assuming that Ms Payette accedes to the request to prorogue Parliament, Trudeau's problems will still be far from over. His government does not command a majority in the House of Commons. A vote of non-confidence at the earliest opportunity is certain and it would not be easy for Trudeau to win. A loss in that vote would trigger an election in the middle of the pandemic, so Trudeau's best hope may be that none of the opposition parties wants to take responsibility for that. The Bloc Quebecois is offering the sensible suggestion that Trudeau hand over the reins to another minister (presumably Chrystia Freeland) while the Ethics Commissioner investigates the WE scandal. 

It may yet come to that.   Stay tuned -- Canadian politics is rarely this interesting, but Trudeau's frequent blunders are changing that.  

* In brief, the government awarded a lucrative contract to WE earlier this year, without putting the business out for tender.  Trudeau and Morneau chose not to recuse themselves from this decision even though both had allowed family members to benefit financially from it. In Trudeau's case, his brother and mother had both reaped substantial fees for appearing and speaking at functions arranged by the charity.  As for Morneau, the fact that two of his daughters worked for WE did not appear to bother him at decision time, but his failure to repay WE for a family trip to Ecuador a few years ago has proved harder to shake off, although he has recently scribbled off a cheque for C$ 41,000 by way of reimbursement.