After five years, Bill Morneau can correctly claim there are fewer Canadians in poverty than when he became finance minister. This is no small claim.
He can’t claim a lot more. He has to downplay a lot more.
He ran large deficits during good economic times. He lost the faith of the business community by launching into a taxation attack on small and self-employed businesses. And when it came time to write the big cheques for the first waves of pandemic relief, he got miserly and alienated the boss.
And, and, and...there’s that shambles with the Kielburgers, not realizing a conflict of interest, not earlier telling the boss when he took WEcations to Kenya and Ecuador and forgetting for three years to pay $41,366 – not that it was possible he wouldn’t forget, considering his familial wealth.
His announcement Tuesday that he was resigning his post and seat and seeking the secretary-general’s job at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was sad, in that in five years by Justin Trudeau’s side, he had not inherited the prime minister’s acting prowess at pinched moments.
His brave face on what he said was a decision he had made entering politics not to stay for more than two terms, a decision to leave he had been thinking about for some time, a decision a year after an election, a decision that abandons the post in the middle of the country’s largest economic challenge in this lifetime, a decision he chose only after reports surfaced of his rift with his boss, could have used a little more of the boss’ performative acumen.
Instead the news conference, held in the evening hours of Ottawa, was a delivery package of slow-cooked fibs. He is walking the plank, not crossing the bridge, and he would have earned more points to call it as we all saw it. If this were his call, it would be conveyed during business hours, the boss beside him, heads held high in time for the dinner-hour news and not the late-night finale. Instead he is playing for his next job, dependent on his estranged boss to lobby the OECD.
Morneau acknowledged what we’d known for some time, that he and Trudeau fought over coronavirus relief, what he referred to as a “necessary vigorous debate” – obviously leading to the necessary vigorous departure. He said he wasn’t asked to resign, which may be true – he might have been told.
The two met Monday, certainly socially distant, more than six feet apart on policy. Even if his minister had no designs on his job, Trudeau couldn’t countenance the challenge. He has never been that kind of leader. Besides, we are now in the era of the salvation of the Trudeau brand, what backbone there is to the Liberal minority, and it is dependent on a brilliant next chapter.
For that Trudeau has reportedly turned to Mark Carney, former Bank of Canada and recent Bank of England governor, for advice on the recovery plan. The best of both worlds would have been for Carney to instigate and Morneau to implement, because with his departure the Liberals had no obvious minister-in-waiting. So he has turned to his Fix-It Minister of All Trades, Chrystia Freeland, for the immediate kick-start to the recovery. Their chemistry is better and time-tested. There she can further build her bona fides to succeed him when the time comes.
This parting of the sunny ways from his minister has shown Trudeau capable of producing large personnel challenges, larger given the timing than the loss of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott over the SNC-Lavalin mess. For a prime minister who speaks of inclusiveness, respect and consensus, he has an odd way of walking the talk.
His government, like all governments, will survive only by meeting the tests of the recovery. His team must know with Morneau’s departure that the boss is not in the mood for any more vigour in the debate on how to get there from here.
Back to the OECD: It has been run by Mexico’s Ángel Gurria since 2006, but if Morneau thinks it’s Canada’s turn, it bears noting that Gurria’s predecessor was Donald Johnston, another former Liberal minister. Trudeau will need to be more charming to get his former wingman the job than he was in trying to secure a United Nations security council seat. Mind you, the American candidate is Donald Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, so Morneau already has an edge on at least one applicant.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
