Thinking Government

Here you will find a series of regular postings scheduled for fall, winter, spring, and summer. Each short article will deal with an important current issue that relates to one or more of the chapters in the book. These articles can form the basis for seminar or tutorial discussion or assignments.

You can also get practical advice on landing that first public sector job and launching your career with our New Professionals and New Professionalism Series.

Fall 2023

As William Shakespeare long ago knew, “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” And the person who wears the figurative crown of national governmental authority and power in Canada today is none other than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Becoming prime minister in October of 2015 having led his Liberal Party to a majority government victory over a tired and increasingly unpopular Conservative Party then led by Stephen Harper, Justin Trudeau came to power in Ottawa promising that “better is always possible.” He offered “sunny ways,” better social policies, a stronger economy, a more responsive and accountable federal government committed to serving the interests of the middle class and those working hard to join the middle class. His was to be a government serious about equity and diversity policy, Indigenous truth and reconciliation, addressing and mitigating the problem of global warming and climate change, all while protecting and promoting the Canadian natural resources industrial sector.

Eight years later, the bloom has gone off the Trudeau Liberal rose. Reduced to a minority government in the federal election of 2019 the Trudeau government soon found itself grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and the extraordinary health care, social, and economic responses necessary to address this global, national, provincial, and local crisis. While public opinion polling numbers significantly increased for the federal Liberals over 2020 and into the summer of 2021, as Trudeau became the face of a government taking sweeping measures to protect the multifaceted interests of Canadians, such enhanced popularity was not sufficient to allow the Liberals to win a majority government in the fall election of 2021.

Returned to another minority government, by the spring of 2022 Prime Minister Trudeau had entered into a Confidence-and-Supply agreement with Jagmeet Singh and the New Democratic Party of Canada. This deal would commit the NDP to sustaining the Liberal government in parliament until the summer of 2025 in return to Liberal initiatives to establish a national dentalcare system, to make progress on a national pharmacare program, to enhance funding for the Canada Housing Benefit, and for the federal government to oversee the building of more rental accommodations in this country.

While the federal government has made some progress on some of these items, most notably with respect to dental care, all through 2022 and into 2023, polling numbers for the Liberals were stagnant to declining. As the pandemic abated over 2022 the economy began to recover but only slowly. Global and national supply chains remained slow and congested, inflation increased, consumer prices increased the cost of living, wages failed to keep pace, and most Canadians came under increased financial stress. Bank of Canada decisions to increase interest rates as a means to reduce inflation saw more and more Canadians suffering from such increased borrowing costs, especially those with household mortgages and those looking to purchase a house.

Over 2022 it seemed everything was getting much more expensive, including the cost of food and basic consumer goods, while all sorts of things we used to take for granted weren’t working as well as they did before the pandemic. Air travel became a pain, trying to get a Canadian passport renewed was a headache, and trying to find affordable rental accommodations became a nightmare to many Canadians, new immigrants, and international students. Homelessness increased, as did the number of foodbanks and the number of people needing foodbanks.

During this time period, the Conservative Party of Canada sought a new leader and, in September of 2022, Pierre Poilievre came to be their standard-bearer. He quickly began to give Canadians answers to their questions as to why things were so amiss is this country. His answer, time and again, was that everything could be blamed on Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government – inflation, the cost of living, increasing interest rates, increased costs at the gas pumps, the cost of food, the cost of housing, travel disorders, weak government services. To Poilievre, it all comes back to Trudeau.

As simplistic as this sounds, this message began to make an impact on how an increasing number of Canadians began to view Trudeau and his leadership. While the Liberals tended to remain the most popular party in national public opinion polls, a few percentage points ahead of the Conservatives throughout most of 2022, by the summer of 2023, Poilievre’s team was beginning to outstrip the Liberals. The Conservatives were coming to be the leading choice for a plurality of Canadians if a federal election were to be held at the time the poll was taken.

By mid-September of 2023 an Abacus public opinion poll was showing the Conservatives with a 14-point lead over the Liberals – 40% to 26% and far outpacing the New Democrats at 19%. Around this same time the Canadian public opinion and seat projector website 338Canada was suggesting that if there had been a federal election leading to such results, the Conservatives would have won a majority government in the House of Commons with 179 seats, followed by the Liberals in a distant second place with 99 seats, with the Bloc Quebecois coming third with 37 seats. The New Democrats would have been fourth with 21 seats, while the Greens would have gained 2 seats.

So, if an election had happened in September of 2023, Justin Trudeau and his Liberals would have been out of power, Jagmeet Singh and his New Democrats would be, once again, a small opposition party in the House of Commons, but now with no Confidence and Supply Agreement with the government providing them with some influence over the future course of federal policy, and Pierre Poilievre would be prime minister, looking ahead to leading this country for four years with a secure majority government.

All of this suggests that if current polling numbers continue to favour the Conservatives over the Liberals as fall of 2023 gives way to winter and spring of 2024, it’s highly unlikely that Prime Minister Trudeau will be wishing to call an early election to try to take advantage of a certain degree of public unease at Pierre Poilievre’s more hard-line, strident, and adversarial public image. While elements of Justin Trudeau’s public persona (such as an awkward speaking style and his eagerness to engage in virtue-signaling) grates on certain Canadians, even those ideologically sympathetic to his policy positions, Trudeau has political “savoir faire.” No prime minister will call a snap-election when his or her party is trailing badly in the polls with the likely result being that his or her party ends up in an even worse parliamentary position. With two years to run on the existing Liberal-NDP Confidence-and-Supply agreement, we will likely see the current Liberal government continue in office into 2025.

So, what issues will come to the fore as the Trudeau government leads this country into 2024 and beyond? It’s not hard to get a sense of the policy matters that will dominate discussion and debate in the House of Commons, and the country generally. Housing, immigration, cost of living, inflation, the price of gasoline, the price of groceries, economy issues in general. These are all current issues, so called “bread and butter issues” that are felt by most every Canadian on a daily basis. But other matters, more long-term, will also continue to be on this government’s policy radar - the environment and climate change, carbon taxes and programs to promote green energy options, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the upcoming federal budget for 2024.

As Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King would often say “six months is an eternity in politics.” While Pierre Poilievre may have the wind in his Conservative sails as of autumn 2023, who knows where the polls will be come the spring of 2024. If inflation continues to decline, if cost of living issues moderate, if new federal policies to address the housing crisis are effective in increasing housing supply and reducing housing costs, and if the government can slightly moderate the inflow of international students into the country, Canadians may come to view the Trudeau Liberals more favourably. And if these same Liberals can paint Poilievre as a rather simplistic and angry populist unfit to be prime minister, the polls may present a very different picture to Canadians by the summer of 2024.

And as we get deeper into 2024, another issue will very likely enter Canadian political consciousness. If it looks like Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for the American presidential election in November of 2024, and if American public opinion polling shows that Trump might have a good chance of becoming president of the United States again, then Canadians will increasingly be confronted with the issue of who would be the best prime minister to deal once again with a Trump presidency.

As the old Chinese curse goes, “may you live in interesting times.”

Winter 2023

There is the apocryphal story that Harold Macmillan, British prime minister from 1957–63, was once asked by a young journalist what he most worried about as head of government. “Events, my dear boy,” he supposedly replied, “events.” While the “story” is a myth, the central truth of the tale remains valid to this day. While all governments seek to be in control of their policy and program “environments,” all leaders live in fear of “events” that may burst on the scene at a moment’s notice, placing the best laid plans of “mice and men and women,” to paraphrase Robert Burns, “awry.”

So, what are the likely “events” that we should be looking out for in Canadian federal politics in the first half of 2023?

The list is actually rather lengthy, and it moves from the more specific to the more general as we look further down the political “road.”

First off comes the economy, public concern over inflation, the rising cost of living, housing and mortgage rate issues, and the need to build more affordable homes and apartments. All of these matters will be front and centre in the federal budget that will come down this spring. This budget will also highlight growing federal spending across the board as the federal government invests more money into childcare, pharmacare, and dental care. The latter two issues are key features in the Liberal-NDP Supply and Confidence Agreement of 2022 which secures the Trudeau Liberal minority government continued NDP support in all House of Commons confidence votes so long as the government fulfills its obligations under the agreement.

This budget will also likely see increased federal spending on immigration, the hiring of more officials to oversee growing annual immigration levels moving toward 450,000–500,000 new immigrant arrivals per year, and more social supports for new immigrants. Also look to see this budget spending more on the Canadian military as it has to replenish its weapons supplies after having given so much of its existing stock to Ukraine over the latter half of 2022. The military will also be looking for new armaments from ships, new jet fighters, mobile artillery, and armed drones, and anti-aircraft artillery designed to shoot down enemy drones. These “asks” will all derive from “lessons learned” from the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.

In this budget there will also be attention devoted to the federal government moving to meet its climate change policies by promoting greater initiatives to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions, to ramping up the greater production and sale of electric vehicles, and the establishment of a made-in-Canada EV engine industry. Also look to see more money devoted to Truth and Reconciliation programs with Indigenous peoples, more money to the health care system, and more money to public transportation systems.

Finally, as for the deficit and debt, the Minister of Finance will likely talk about how the deficit and national debt will be declining as a proportion of GDP in future years. Such a budget likely will be denounced by Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party as “socialist-liberal waste and idiocy” but it will garner the support of Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats, meaning the Trudeau government will live on into 2023.

Looking further ahead, 29 May will witness the next Alberta provincial election. Danielle Smith, current Alberta Conservative premier at the time of writing will be facing off against NDP Leader of the Opposition, and former premier, Rachel Notley. Much of the heat with this campaign will come from Smith’s Conservatives promoting and defending their Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. This Act provides the Alberta government with the authority to order provincially-regulated institutions not to enforce federal laws and policies deemed by the Alberta government to be harmful and unconstitutional to Alberta.

If Rachel Notley’s NDP manages to defeat the Alberta Conservatives on 29 May, Justin Trudeau will be the second-happiest political leader in Canada that night. An NDP win in Alberta will have the effect of throwing cold water on populist-authoritarian political extremists throughout the country. But if Danielle Smith wins re-election, Justin Trudeau will be facing certain headaches. These, though, won’t be legal ones. It’s highly likely that the Alberta Sovereignty Act will have already been challenged in the courts and it’s also highly likely that the courts will find most, if not all of it, unconstitutional. The federal-provincial headaches that Trudeau will be dealing with will be from the government of Alberta challenging the very legitimacy of the federal government to develop policies and programs that affect Albertans, period. And in these challenges, the Albertan conservative populist-authoritarians will be joined by similarly-minded politicians from Saskatchewan and Quebec and Ontario promoting similar pro-provincial, anti-federal policies and programs.

Now, moving beyond Canada’s borders, developments on the international stage in 2023 will also be great concern to Canadians and thus to Canada’s prime minister and those ministers dealing with foreign relations, national defence, and Canadian-American relations.

The ongoing war in Ukraine will continue to dominate the news in 2023 and Canada likely will be consistently asked by the Ukrainian government for more heavy weapons – artillery, armoured fighting vehicles, tanks, helicopters, aircraft – with which to fight the Russians. If the Ukrainian military can continue to beat back the Russian army on their soil, what will Putin do? Escalate the conflict through the use of chemical and battlefield nuclear weapons? What should Canada’s, and NATO’s response be to such actions? Or will Ukrainian successes on the battlefield induce the Russians to come to the “peace table” to negotiate a ceasefire and an eventual armistice? In such peace talks should the Ukrainians be encouraged to reclaim all of their territory in the Donbas – Luhansk and Donetsk – as well as the Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014? Or would a viable peace require Russia retaining parts of these territories they claim as their own? These are tough questions with no easy answers. But as major military supporters of Ukraine and its government, the NATO nations, including Canada, will claim the right to be advising the Ukrainian government on the best type of peace agreement with Russia that can, hopefully, secure the end of military operations between these two countries. Rest assured that NATO and Canadian military and foreign policy advisers are role-playing various military and peace negotiation scenarios to assess the best courses of action in dealing with such “events.”

Another foreign policy headache for Prime Minister Trudeau and his senior officials in Global Affairs Canada is China. China is a major trading partner with Canada but it is now being increasingly seen by Canadian and other western diplomatic corps as a growing foreign policy threat to the Asia-Pacific part of the world. The arrest of the “Two Michaels” (Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig) in December 2018 and their detention by the Chinese government until September 2021 on trumped up charges of espionage, sent a chill through Canadian-Chinese diplomatic relations. These years were also marked by China placing punitive tariffs on Canadian trade goods. To many Canadians, China came to be seen less as a reliable trading partner, but a country to which we were too reliant upon for trade. Over these same years, as China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping has entrenched his position as de facto “President for Life” China has become ever more belligerent on the world stage. Hong Kong is losing its freedoms, China is claiming most all of the South China Sea as its own, and it is increasingly threatening Taiwan with a full-scale military invasion. It’s not hard to see how certain future “events” concerning Canadian-Chinese relations could lead to severe foreign policy crises – trade wars between Canada and China, perhaps triggered by Canadian moves to freeze Chinese businesses out of investing in industries developing Canadian critical minerals and related electric vehicle engines; diplomatic tensions with China as Canada opens its doors to more Hong Kong immigrants seeking to flee from China’s increasing control over that city; and, worst of all, a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan. It’s not hard to foresee Canada wanting to have less to do with China as this decade unfolds. And as we focus less on China we will focus more on friendlier partner-nations in South-East Asia and India.

And then there is the United States. It’s fair to say that the Trudeau government, and Canada, survived the Trump administration somewhat bruised but relatively unscathed. The deeper forces in the United States that led to Donald Trump winning the White House in 2016, however, are still present in America – hyper-partisanship, extreme polarization and division, the continued sentiment of “America First,” the belief, amongst many in the US, that free trade with Mexico and Canada is ruinous to America and that American businesses should contrate their supply chains within the United States. These ideas and challenges will continue to haunt the Trudeau government for the foreseeable future. While legislative gridlock will bedevil American federal politics for the next two years, continued sentiments amongst many Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, that free trade deals are harmful to American jobs will continue to force Canadian leaders - the prime minister, premiers, and Canadian diplomats – to speak to American legislative and governmental leaders, and the American public - about the benefits of free trade to American businesses. The 2024 presidential election is probably already cause for concern, and future contingency planning, for Canadian diplomats in Washington, DC.

This brings us back to Canada and the issue of leadership. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing many tensions, problems, and threats as he looks ahead to his future and the future of his Liberal Party: a sense of national fatigue, weariness after seven years in power, a pile-up of grievances over broken promises, ethical scandals, and concerns over the cost of living, inflation, a weak economy, climate change, deterioration of health care, Indigenous reconciliation, and bungled military procurement issues.

It’s not surprising that the Conservative Party under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre is now leading in public opinion polls. In a mid-January 2023 Nanos Research tracking poll, the Conservatives were rated the preferred party to lead the country by 35.6 per cent of respondents. The Liberals came second with 28.3 per cent support, followed by Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats with 20.7 per cent support. The Bloc Quebecois trailed at 7.4 per cent, with the Greens registering 5.8 per cent and the People’s Party at 2.1 per cent.

If an election had been held then with these numbers, the result would have been another minority parliament but with the Conservatives holding the most seats. The Liberals might still have been be able to form a minority government with the support of the New Democrats but that might require them also gaining the support of the Bloc Quebecois.

These Nanos numbers indicate two things. One is that Justin Trudeau is now a drag on the Liberal party and, after his leading the Liberals to two consecutive minority governments in 2019 and 2021, most Canadians no longer see him as a preferred prime minister. The other is that neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats will be wanting to see an election in 2023. Neither of these parties will willingly enter into an election they are likely to lose. So, the current minority government will live on.

This year then marks a time of decision for Justin Trudeau and senior members of the Liberal party. If he wants to lead the party into an election in 2024 or 2025, he needs to dramatically improve his and his party’s standing in Canadian public opinion. This may be easier said than done. Or maybe its time for him and ponder retirement while he’s on top. A graceful curtain call in late 2023 may position his party, and a new Liberal leader, for electoral success in the following years.

Winter 2018

As we enter the New Year, we truly enter into the second half of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s mandate dating back to the October 2015 election.

Although the constitution sets the maximum life of a parliament at five years, by custom a majority government tends to last four years. In 2007, the Parliament of Canada passed legislation brought forward by the then Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to amend the Canada Elections Act by imposing fixed election dates for federal elections. Now, by law, a federal general election is scheduled to take place on the third Monday of October in the fourth calendar year following the previous federal election.

Rest assured that everyone in official Ottawa knows this and that they all have October 21, 2019 circled on their calendars. If you follow Canadian politics and government closely (and you obviously do if you’re studying Canadian Public Administration and reading Thinking Government) you’ll sense that the next federal election has already started. Not officially, of course, but unofficially, pragmatically, and in the minds of the senior players active on Parliament Hill and throughout the backrooms of the federal parties.

Whether Justin Trudeau wins a second majority government in the fall of 2019 very much depends on what he and his government do between now and then. There is an old saying in politics that governments aren’t elected, they’re defeated. Meaning that Trudeau and his Liberals need to be working to assure they retain sufficient popularity that a winning plurality of Canadians still want to see them holding the reins of power as we move into the 2020s.

So, what are the big issues that the Trudeau government needs to get right over the next two years in order to set them up for a winning campaign once the 2019 federal election gets going in earnest in the fall of that year? You know that all prime ministers think strategically and they all tend to focus on five or so key issues that they wish to define their leadership competency. So what are these issues for Justin Trudeau? What are the five or so prominent matters that Justin Trudeau will want to be able to point to in Election 2019 as examples of his leadership competency? Here are a few to watch.

Managing the Economy and Trade Relations

It’s a given that the health of the economy is always an issue in any federal or provincial election, so look to see Trudeau work to demonstrate that he is a sound and safe manager of the national economy over the next two years. This task, however, will be complicated by two phenomena that weren’t even on the horizon back in 2015: the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the presence and unpredictability of United States President Donald Trump.

All Canadian governments face the reality that Canada is intricately tied to the American economy. In 2016, 53% of all goods imported into Canada came from the United States while 76% of total Canadian exports went to the United States. The health of the Canadian economy, simply put, is contingent of the health of the American economy. If the U.S. economy coughs, we get a cold. Between 1989 and 1993, trade relations between these two countries were governed by the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and, in 1993, this trade deal was expanded to include Mexico in the NAFTA.

Now, in the quarter century since NAFTA has been in effect, the economies of all three countries have grown but none more so than the United States. Right now, the American economy is booming, stock markets are up, inflation is down, job growth is up, and unemployment is down, far below Canadian levels. Yet President Trump continues to tweet that NAFTA is the worst trade deal in history and it needs to be renegotiated to benefit America. He has even suggested that it may be best for the United States to rescind the deal altogether.

This approach, coming from the White House, puts great stress on the Canadian federal government. NAFTA renegotiations are underway; watch to see how they play out over 2018. Adding to the complexity of these trade talks is an American negotiating team advancing a blatantly hard-line “America First” priority to trade. The Trump administration seeks guaranteed American production quotas in automobiles, the elimination of independent tri-lateral dispute mechanisms, the ending of Canadian supply management respecting dairy products, and access for American companies to bid on Canadian public sector service contracts while maintaining “Buy American” rules for similar contracts in the United States.

The Canadian negotiating team has stood strong against these American proposals that, if accepted, would deny the very logic of free trade while severely disadvantaging Canadian economic interests. Compounding the challenges facing Canadian negotiators in dealing with an aggressively protectionist and isolationist American side is the erratic behaviour of the American president who has demonstrated through a host of public statements that he has a rather weak grasp on such basic facts as the value of trade between the NAFTA partners, the size of American trade deficit/surplus, the economic benefit of NAFTA to the American economy, and the economic damage that would befall the American economy if NAFTA was rescinded by the United States.

Given the complex trade negotiations currently underway, with the clear possibility that the American president may act in a temperamentally and strategically unsound manner with respect to American economic interests, it's noteworthy that the Canadian government has been playing a two-track long-game. One track is to engage key American political and economic actors independent of the White House. Here, look to see senior political and bureaucratic leaders in the federal government, as well as provincial premiers and their confidantes, meeting with members of the United States Congress (House of Representatives and Senate), state governors, and leading American business interests, to discuss the future of NAFTA.

Even if President Trump moves to terminate NAFTA, it’s highly likely that such an action would trigger a constitutional and economic crisis within the United States, with the U.S. Congress asserting its right to legislate for all foreign trade treaties. It’s also likely that state governments and American business interests benefitting from NAFTA would challenge any unilateral presidential action seeking to kill NAFTA, both in the courts and in the court of public opinion. Just because Trump may ill-advisably want to “Make America Great Again” by ripping up NAFTA does not mean that he possesses either the legal or political capacity to follow through on such a desire.

As 2018 unfolds, the NAFTA issue may come to be increasingly a domestic American political and legal crisis, with Canadian federal and provincial governments intervening from the sidelines.

The second Canadian long-game track in dealing with the threat to NAFTA is to seek greater economic relations and free trade agreements with countries other than the United States. The Trudeau government ratified the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2016 with this deal coming into force on September 21, 2017. The federal government has also been involved in negotiations respecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a variety of countries (minus the United States and China) bordering the Pacific Ocean, while exploring free trade possibilities with China. Look to see these negotiations continue in 2018 with the government hoping to secure a TPP treaty in time for the 2019 federal election.

Balancing Economic Development and Environmental Stewardship

Beyond trade relations there is another matter upon which the Trudeau government will need to show successful leadership by time Election 2019 rolls along. This one is the ability to promote both economic development and environmental protection at the same time. In practical terms, the Trudeau government will be judged on its ability to secure (A) the construction of the Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipeline designed to carry Alberta bitumen to Burnaby, British Columbia from where it can be shipped to markets in Asia, while achieving (B) reductions in Canadian greenhouse gas emissions in keeping with commitments made by the Trudeau government in the Paris Climate Change Agreement of 2015.

This is going to be difficult. The Trudeau government has pledged to fulfill both goals stressing that economic development and environmental sustainability can coexist. To this end, the government promised to meet our Paris commitment of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. But the government is also committed to the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline with the potential of doubling bitumen exports from Alberta, meaning a consequent increase in fossil fuel production in the Alberta oil sands. The Pembina Institute, a non-profit environmental policy research body, has already warned that, given anticipated production increases in the Alberta oil and gas sector, rather than witnessing a significant decline in Canadian greenhouse gas emissions, we will likely see an increase from 730 megatons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases in 2014 to 742 megatons in 2030.

If this latter trend-line continues into 2019, Canada will be hard-pressed to meet the Paris commitment and the Liberal Party will be vulnerable to losing support from Canadians very concerned about environmental policy, with such support probably drifting toward the New Democrats. But if the development of the Kinder Morgan pipeline is delayed or cancelled due to political and legal opposition within British Columbia, the federal Liberals would look to lose support across Canada, but especially in the West, from more centre-right voters keen to see the promotion of the Canadian oil and gas industry. However this issue plays out, the odds of the Liberals losing some significant degree of popular support is strong.

Getting Marijuana Legalization Right

While the first two issues pose real challenges to the Trudeau Liberals to being seen as sound managers of complex problems, they highlight the need of the government to show that it can organize policy and program successes. And where the government clearly needs to exhibit such a success to the Canadian public by 2019 is with respect to marijuana legalization. This was a keynote campaign promise in the 2015 election, attracting much interest and support from younger voters while probably eliciting some cautious concern from older Canadians.

The government has set July 1, 2018 as the day they hope to see their new legal marijuana regime come into force throughout Canada. While the Senate may marginally delay this timeline, by Election 2019 legal pot will be a fact of life with the government having a track record of over a year for Canadians to judge how well they have implemented this policy change. Here, the government needs to demonstrate they have made marijuana accessible, at reasonable prices, to those who wish to use it, while showing to all Canadians that they are reaping tax benefits from its sale, that criminal elements have been frozen out of the pot business, that underage youth are prevented from buying the product, that the provinces receive a fair proportion of marijuana sale revenues to cover their costs of regulating the production and sale of cannabis products, and that police enforcement of driver impairment laws are well established and working.

In December of 2017, the federal and provincial governments came to an agreement on revenue-sharing, with the provinces and territories scheduled to receive 75% of all marijuana sales’ revenues to cover their administrative costs of legalization and regulatory enforcement mechanisms. The other implementation issues are all ones that can be successfully achieved through sound management and careful administration. If such management and implementation is found wanting, however, this issue could come to haunt the Liberals in 2019.

Doing Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls

Another major promise from Election 2015 upon which the Trudeau Liberals need to show successful movement is the work of the national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). Established with much fanfare in 2016, and fulfilling a campaign commitment clearly distinguishing the federal Liberals from the former Harper Conservatives, the MMIWG inquiry should be a major instrument in providing justice for victims and their long-suffering families, promoting better policing practices in the future, and in building bridges of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

While the inquiry can still achieve all of these noble and necessary goals, the launch and early administration of the inquiry has left much to be desired, with Indigenous leaders, elders, and victims’ families calling for an inquiry and inquiry leadership more attuned to Indigenous traditions, discourses, and representation. Look to see the Trudeau government extend the two-year timeline for the inquiry to complete its report and recommendations with the inquiry being given beyond 2019 to finalize its work. The government would also be wise to heed the concerns from Indigenous groups that the inquiry leadership needs a shake-up, making it more attuned to Indigenous ways of seeing, hearing, and acting. If such reforms are not forthcoming over this upcoming year, the MMIWG inquiry could also come to haunt the Trudeau Liberals in Election 2019.

Keeping the Promise for Better Ethics and Accountability in Government

A final issue to keep an eye on in the lead-up to the next election is that of the combined matters of ethics, accountability, openness, and propriety. The Trudeau Liberals very much came to power in 2015 on the promise and expectation that they would be very different from the closed and controlling, harsh and domineering Harper Conservatives. As mentioned in the very outset of Thinking Government, Justin Trudeau promised in the election of 2015 that, “in Canada, better is always possible.” That Trudeau is no Harper is obviously true. And that the Trudeau government has governed Canada far differently from the manner of Stephen Harper is also true, though not absolutely so. Where Justin Trudeau and his Liberals may be most vulnerable both to partisan attack by the opposition parties and to disillusionment by the general public is on the reality and appearance of honesty and integrity.

Most people do not follow politics and government as closely as those of you who are reading Thinking Government and studying Canadian Public Administration in university courses. But people do sense when leaders and politicians are not being true to their words and are not behaving in and ethical and fully honest manner. It’s here where leaders and governments can get into trouble via the slow erosion of public support.

So far, the Trudeau Liberals have maintained healthy numbers in public opinion surveys. But there are vulnerabilities. The broken promise on electoral reform will be talked about in the next election, at least by the NDP. And if the Liberals have not taken actions in the first half of 2018 to strengthen federal ethics rules, to enhance and clarify the role of the federal Ethics Commissioner, and to insist that all ministers place any and all corporate assets in blind trusts, then the Liberals may find themselves with declining voter support as they head into 2019. Politics can be a cruel business and, while current federal Minister of Finance Bill Morneau has actually done an arguably decent job in managing the nation’s finances, it may nonetheless be in the best interests of the prime minister to shuffle this minister out of this portfolio given his lack of political “savoir faire” in failing to place his corporate assets, and his own political credibility, beyond reproach when he first entered cabinet. The appearance of a conflict of interest is just as bad as the reality of such a conflict, and governments that have too many appearances of impropriety will soon be on the slippery slope of declining popularity and once that slide takes hold it can be very difficult to reverse.

Conclusion

So, Justin Trudeau has much to think about, to worry about, and to plan around as he lays his plans in 2018 for Election 2019. And we have one last point to make. So far we have been talking about “known” issues. But there are always the “unknown” things that can arise as emergencies, or lightning bolts out of the blue, that demand instant action. And where wrong moves can be fatal to a government and a leader. Perhaps the most unpredictable thing to worry about for 2018 is North Korea and the threat of a nuclear attack, ordered by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, against South Korea, and/or Japan, and/or the United States, and/or Canada. Or a pre-emptive nuclear or non-nuclear attack against North Korea ordered by U.S. President Trump.

Let’s hope that the five issues listed above, or others like them, are the dominant issues facing this country come 2019, and not an international incident of catastrophic proportions. And let’s work to ensure that our leaders and international diplomacy is governed by considered reason and knowledge, not inflamed passion and ignorance.

Summer 2017

As we make our way through the summer of 2017, the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has been in power for slightly more than one-and-a-half years. The government is no longer new, the honeymoon period is over, and Canadians have had enough time to get a good sense of what this Trudeau government is like. It’s time for a little review of the successes and failings of Team Trudeau as they come to the mid-point of their mandate, and an assessment of some of the key challenges ahead as we start to look toward Election 2019.

Strengths:

If and when Justin Trudeau finds time this summer to sit back and relax and reflect upon the start of his prime ministership, he will likely be feeling pretty good. When he was sworn into office in early November of 2015, he consciously set a new tone for Canadian government and politics: his cabinet was fifty per cent female; he appointed an Indigenous Canadian, Jody Wilson-Raybould, as Justice minister, an historic first; he reinstituted regular meetings with provincial and territorial premiers; he ratified the Paris climate accord; he launched a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls; he welcomed thousands of Syrian refugees; and he pledged to balance the competing demands for environmental protection and the need to take action on climate change while promoting Canadian economic development and the need to ease the ability of the Canadian oil and gas industry to export Canadian oil to Asian markets. To these ends, his government has supported the establishment of a national carbon tax, has refused to endorse the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline while supporting the development of the Keystone XL line to the United States and the building of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain line to Burnaby, BC. His first budgets have offered more spending on health care, infrastructure development, urban transportation, veterans’ services, and tax reductions for middle class Canadians while the wealthiest Canadians have witnessed increases in their tax rates. These budgets have also witnessed the federal government once again slipping into deficit financing to cover these costs.

Justin Trudeau came to power promising “sunny ways” and, whether you agree or not with his policy approaches, he has certainly brought change to Ottawa. The Harper era is well and truly over with Trudeau very consciously working to expunge much of the Harper legacy. From a more activist government at home to a return to a more internationalist approach in Canadian foreign policy, Prime Minister Trudeau has worked to pivot Canadian federal policies and programs from being centre-right to centre-left.

While not all Canadians applaud this strategic shift, many do. Public opinion polls over the past year and a half have consistently shown the federal Liberals, with 41-43 per cent support, running well ahead of their Conservative, New Democratic, Bloc Quebecois, and Green Party challengers. If there had been an election called at any point in 2016 or the first half of 2017, the Trudeau Liberals would have been easily re-elected, possibly with an enhanced majority. It helped the Liberals, of course, that both the Conservatives and the NDP were looking for new leaders during this time. In late May of 2017 the Conservatives selected Andrew Scheer as their new chief, while the NDP leadership won’t be determined until the fall of this year.

Weaknesses:

But all is not well in Liberal-land. Although the Liberals have much to be happy about, they have had their missteps and failures, and it’s likely that some people who voted for them in 2015 would not feel like voting for them again in 2019. Perhaps the greatest broken promise was that regarding electoral reform. During the election, Justin Trudeau pledged that that it would be the last one held under the traditional single-member plurality, or first-past-the-post, system of parliamentary democracy. He promised that by 2019 we would have some new and better system for running parliamentary elections, either based on ranked ballots or some form of proportional representation. On February 1, 2017, however, the federal government announced that it would no longer be pursuing this reform, stressing that there was insufficient consensus amongst Canadians respecting the need for, and direction of, such change. Traditional New Democrat voters who opted for the Liberals in 2015 on account of this reform pledge must have felt betrayed, and it’s hard for the Liberals to build brand loyalty on feelings of betrayal.

Similar feelings are also being increasingly expressed by Indigenous Canadians about the excessive delays in getting the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls into operation. It’s one thing to make a nice announcement about launching such an initiative, quite another to have the inquiry well-established and making good progress, all the while sensitive to the needs and concerns of Indigenous Canadians, a people who too often have felt neglected and ignored by Canadian governments and mainstream non-Indigenous society.

To these problematic issues can be added others. In 2015, the Liberals promised modest deficit financing of around $10 billion per year for a couple of years, but with the budget being balanced again by 2019. That promise is long gone, with the federal government running annual deficits approaching $30 billion over the past few years, and with such deficits extending beyond the current term of the government. Military procurement remains a problem, with the Royal Canadian Air Force still awaiting a decision on new jet fighters, and the Royal Canadian Navy witnessing a doubling of the cost for its new ship program. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police still seem mired in an organizational culture rife with systemic sexism. The federal public service continues to struggle with the fiasco of the Phoenix pay system. Finally, many Canadians concerned with environmental issues, climate change, and global warming will have doubts about federal Liberal policies to promote pipeline construction designed to enhance Canadian exports of crude oil to international markets, thereby increasing the output of crude oil and bitumen from the Alberta oil sands. Does this truly square with our commitments under the Paris climate accord to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? The Liberals have also promised to increase non-repayable post-secondary financial assistance by $100 million by the year 2019/20. Will this reduce financial burdens of students in many economic situations, or just a select group (low income)? And is this enough to truly make post-secondary education less of a financial burden for most students?

Challenges Ahead:

Being prime minister is never easy because any prime minister has to deal with the complex environments of Canadian domestic and foreign policies. And now two words highlight the added complexities of managing these environments: Donald Trump.

While the American president may be an object of scorn and derision to many Canadians, Justin Trudeau faces the complicated task of having to deal with Donald Trump in managing the Canadian-American relationship, all the while defending Canadian interests with respect to economic, environmental, security, and international diplomacy.

Much of the remainder of 2017 and 2018 will be dominated by three-way talks between the United States, Mexico, and Canada on the renegotiation of the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Donald Trump has called this the worst trade deal in history, responsible for bringing disastrous consequences to the American economy and wiping out millions of good American jobs. Part of his pledge to Make America Great Again is to bring back those jobs. If the American president can’t get a better deal for the USA, he has promised to rip up the NAFTA agreement while imposing high tariff barriers against foreign goods entering the United States. His administration has already imposed punishing tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber, which may be just the start of a broader trade war.

The task for Prime Minister Trudeau and our trade negotiators in these talks is to remind the White House of the enormity of the two-way trade that crosses the Canadian-American border every day (almost $1.4 billion a day), and that the value of this trade is roughly balanced, with the U.S. actually having a trade surplus with respect to dairy products. The President may also need to be reminded that Canada is the single largest trading partner of one-third of American states, that the North American automobile sector and its supply chains are deeply integrated between all three NAFTA partners, and that a trade war between these three nations would bring economic calamity and major job losses to all involved.

Beyond NAFTA, other issues will pose points of tension between Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump. A significant drop in the American corporate tax rate will put pressure on the Trudeau government to reciprocate or face multi-national corporations preferring to invest in the United States rather than Canada. Canadian comparative advantage with respect to public funding for health care and a skilled workforce, however, may mitigate some of this pressure to replicate American standards.

A diminished American federal interest to address climate change and environmental protection will obviously pose major challenges to Canada. Canadian carbon tax policy will face criticism from Conservative quarters in this country, who will stress that such a tax places Canada at a comparative economic disadvantage vis-a-vis the United States. Defenders of such a tax in Canada will argue that it ensures that Canadian policy is consistent with international trends, while positioning Canada well for the future by encouraging the development of a greener economy and sources of energy. Canada will also face pressure from the United States to spend more money on national defence, and these demands may finally compel the Trudeau government to fix the military equipment procurement system.

The deep issue that may slowly rise to prominence over the years ahead is the relationship between jobs, employment and income security, automation, and the possible need for a universal basic income. For all the job losses in the United States over the past twenty years, changing terms of trade due to NAFTA account for only two in ten jobs lost. Fully eight out of ten jobs lost have been lost due to automation; automation of largely low-skilled, repetitive motions easily replicated by machines. And those jobs lost, everywhere from banks to warehouses to coal mines, are never coming back, and as technology advances, the range of jobs threatened by automation increases. In the next five to ten years, expect to see driverless taxis, driverless transport trucks, and far fewer jobs in retail industries as automated check-outs and internet shopping reduce the need for human beings as salespersons.

It’s been estimated that some forty per cent of all jobs currently found in the American economy will not exist in thirty years. The situation in Canada would be similar. While new technologies will create new jobs, it’s doubtful that they will fully replace all the jobs lost. And they will not replace current low-skilled, low-wage jobs, putting working class employees in grave jeopardy. As the economy changes, we will have to adjust to a future where technology reduces the amount of work and jobs that need to be done to keep the economy productive. But with far less work, there will be far fewer people gainfully employed, earning incomes, and being consumers. We’ll be facing a future with an ever greater disparity of income in society, a greater division between the rich and the poor, and a smaller consumer base.

And what does this mean for New Professionals who either are, or soon will be, searching for that elusive first career job? If there are fewer jobs and more people searching for work, there will be a larger amount of people applying for the same job. This is a disadvantage for New Professionals as more experienced and better educated applicants will likely get job offers first. The lesson here for all would-be New Professionals is to excel in your studies, seek advanced and specialized post-graduate education, and pursue relevant, career-oriented job experience while still completing your degree programs.

In looking at all the challenges in the future of the labour market, it’s not hard to think of the economic and social problems that loom ahead. And this is where a universal basic income may increasingly become a subject for public policy debate…

More about this to come in future Strategic Reports.

Introduction

Who says Canadian politics and government is boring? As we enter 2017, the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has a lot on its plate: promoting the development of oil pipelines to the United States and to the Pacific tidewater all the while seeking to meet Canada’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a way to address global climate change; trying to kick-start a sluggish economy through infrastructure spending and corresponding deficit-financing while also working to show fiscal prudence; and trying to improve the quality of Canadian healthcare programming while keeping costs down, patients content, and provincial premiers not up in arms. Throw in a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, initiatives to legalize marijuana, electoral reform, a new Canadian peacekeeping mission to Africa, the purchase of new military jets and ships, and you get the picture.

But there’s more. There’s always more. The American presidential election last November just made Prime Minister Trudeau’s life a whole lot more difficult. Rather than having to deal with a more ideological soul-mate in Hillary Clinton, Trudeau now has to work with Donald Trump. We can’t help but wonder what those meetings will be like. Does the new American President know that over a billion dollars in trade goods moves across the Canadian-American border every day? He’ll soon find out, with Trudeau and his diplomats working to educate the President and his White House staff on the importance of the Canadian-American relationship.

And closer to home our prime minister has simmering problems of his own making. The Cash-for-Access issue has the potential to become a running sore for his government if he doesn’t take corrective action. Once again, a Liberal government is facing pointed questions about how ethical and accountable it is for its method of raising party finances and its policy-making function.

So there couldn’t be a better time for the arrival of the fourth edition of Thinking Government: Public Administration and Politics in Canada. This book, now a staple in public administration and public sector management courses across this country, has been fully revised and updated to take account of the demise of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in 2015 and the rise to power of Justin Trudeau and his team. In the election of that year, Trudeau repeatedly said that “in Canada, better is always possible.” We now get to assess how well he and his government can match campaign rhetoric with policy reality.

All the core attributes that made Thinking Government the “go-to book” on Canadian public administration have been preserved in this latest edition. The introduction and the first chapter set the stage for what’s to come, giving readers a compelling look at the major social and economic issues that all federal governments are called upon to deal with as they strive to govern this country well. The second chapter takes readers into the world of ideas and ideologies and how they shape the way leaders, governments, and we as citizens think about power and politics and policies, and what the role of governments should be in this society. If anyone ever questioned the worth of studying ideology as a means to understanding governmental behaviour, the Harper years drove home the truth that all leaders and governments are ideological and they seek power to achieve ideological ends. After nine years of conservative rule we are back to a liberally-minded government. But how liberal will Trudeau be? Thinking Government poses some questions and offers yardsticks by which we can measure this. And watch this blog for regular updates on what the federal government is doing and how well it’s faring.

Central chapters in the book provide deep background to the structures of the federal government and its public service and the power relations between elected ministers and senior public servants. The fundamentals of organizational theory are covered in Chapter 5 while individual chapters give students in-depth coverage of both financial and human relations management. Latter chapters address issues dealing with on-going concerns about management reform, ethics, accountability, and the nature and quality of political and governmental leadership.

The Thinking Government website contains loads of additional information and material for each chapter. You’ll find relevant historical analysis, case studies, extension pieces, study questions, quizzes, and downloadable extras. The website has been thoroughly updated and refreshed by Alana Lawrence and she has made sure that it’s relevant, approachable, and student-friendly.

We will both be providing regular blog posts dealing with the life and times of the federal government, while also issuing Strategic Reports on federal politics every four months or so. Alana is also the Thinking Government website’s resident New Professional and she will be providing a wealth of information and insight on everything from New Professionalism theory and institutional initiatives to advice on landing that first public sector job and launching your career.

We hope you enjoy reading Thinking Government and experiencing the website and our blog posts. You are the reason all of this exists and we wish you well as you get into thinking government.

David Johnson is Professor of Political Science at Cape Breton University and author of Thinking Government, Fourth Edition.

Alana Lawrence is a graduate of Cape Breton University and provided updates to the Thinking Government, Fourth Edition website.

Election 2015 and the Trudeau Government: Promises and Challenges

Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party came to power through the federal election held on October 19, 2015. The general results of this election were as follows:

Party	% Vote	# Seats	% of Seats
Liberal	39.5	184	54
Conservative	31.9	99	29
NDP	19.7	44	13
Bloc Québecois	4.7	10	3
Greens	3.4	1	0.3
Total	100	338	100

Liberal Campaign Promises

During the longest election campaign in Canadian history since 1872 (a campaign designed by Stephen Harper supposedly to give the incumbent Conservatives an advantage in outspending their competitors), a 78-day marathon, the Liberal party released an 88-page party platform entitled Real Change: A New Plan for a Strong Middle Class. This document had score upon score of promises with some notable ones being:

Replacing the Conservatives’ Universal Child Care Benefit with a Canada Child Benefit more generous to lower- and middle-income Canadians
Cutting the middle-income tax bracket by 1.5%
Creating 40,000 youth jobs each year
Reducing poverty in Canada by lifting children and seniors out of poverty
Improving and enhancing the Canada Pension Plan
Making postsecondary education more affordable by enhancing the Canada Student Grant for low- and middle-income Canadian families
Investing $3 billion into the Canadian health care system over four years to promote better home-care services
Running short-term deficits of less than $10 billion between 2016 and 2018 so as to pump needed money into national infrastructure programs and create jobs
Spending $20 billion in public transit infrastructure over the next decade
Investing $775 million per year for job and skills training for Canadians
Enhancing parental leave for child care responsibilities
Making Employment Insurance fairer and more accessible
Making government information more accessible
Ensuring that Election 2015 will be the last election run under the first-past-the-post electoral process, with the government introducing legislation to establish a new and fairer system within 18 months after forming government (i.e., May 2017)
Creating a new, nonpartisan, merit-based Senate appointment system
Making Question Period more accountable
Creating a new, nonpartisan, and respectful Supreme Court appointment process
Making the Parliamentary Budget Officer truly independent
Strengthening parliamentary committees
Saving home mail delivery
Involving young people in government
Exploring new ways to use technology to crowd-source policy ideas from citizens
Restoring the long-form census
Taking action on climate change, putting a price on carbon, and reducing carbon pollution
Making federal environmental assessments credible again
Renewing the relationship with Indigenous peoples
Launching a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls
Repealing problematic elements of Bill C-51 (dealing with anti-terrorism matters) and introducing better legislation designed to balance collective security with individual rights
Legalizing, regulating, and restricting access to marijuana
Investing $150 million into the CBC
Promoting immigration to Canada
Welcoming 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by the end of 2015, and many more after that date
Promoting and enhancing free trade between Canada, the United States, and Mexico
Promoting peacekeeping or peacemaking missions for Canada’s military
Launching a new, open, and transparent process to determine Canada’s next jet fighter plane
Investing more money into new ships for the Royal Canadian Navy
Ending Canada’s combat mission in Iraq in 2016

This is quite the list of promises, and it is only a part of the commitments made by the Liberals in that election. But as we have seen through the pages of Thinking Government, it’s one thing to make election promises, but quite another to be able to fulfill all these commitments. Once your party has won power, it has to follow the discipline of power–circumstances may change, the economy may not be as strong as once believed, money will likely be much tighter, and some promises that sounded good during the height of the election campaign may look downright naive and simplistic in the light of a new, majority government.

As the Trudeau government matures in power, which election promises has it already kept, which ones look iffy, and which ones might determine Trudeau’s hopes of winning re-election in 2019?

First, the easy part. Which ones have been kept?

The Harper government’s Universal Child Care Benefit is gone, replaced by the new Liberal Canada Child Benefit
The middle-income tax bracket has been reduced
More money is earmarked for infrastructure spending
There are moves to enhance the Canada Pension Plan
The government is working on electoral reform
A new Senate appointment process has been introduced, resulting in nonpartisan and independent-minded Canadians being appointed to the Upper House
A new Supreme Court appointment process has been introduced, resulting in self-nominations from qualified lawyers and judges for the top spots on the Supreme Court, with much less direct partisan influence in the appointment decision-making process
The long-form census was restored in 2015
The federal government has made commitments to put a price on carbon and to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions
A national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls has been launched
The process to legalize marijuana has been launched
$150 million has been reinvested into the CBC
25,000 Syrian refugees had been welcomed to Canada by February 2016
A new process to pick the next generation of RCAF fighter planes has been launched
The Canadian combat mission in Iraq came to an end on February 15, 2016

But what types of problems await the Trudeau government in fulfilling many of the others? And which ones are most important for the government to meet if they wish to claim that their first mandate has been a success?

In thinking of problems working against promise-fulfillment, consider the following:

a weaker economy
the slowdown in the oil and gas sector
the unexpected Fort McMurray wildfire
higher than expected deficits
federal-provincial tensions over pension reform, pipeline construction, and economic development/public infrastructure initiatives
a new US president critical of NAFTA and having to appease his or her own American protectionist base
the uncertainties of global affairs: tensions with Russia, China, the European Union, Brexit, and, of course, international terrorism
the difficulties inherent in changing people’s opinions, behaviours, expectations, and traditional ways of doing things, especially in relation to understanding politics, accepting higher taxes, and getting serious about carbon emission cutbacks
and the sheer magnitude of having, perhaps, too many promises to keep with too little time and money to do them all.

These problems may very well make some of the Liberal government’s promises problematic, or “iffy” in common parlance. Promises that will likely prove difficult to keep in their entirety may be:

electoral reform
new military procurements, such as jet fighters and Navy ships
Employment Insurance reform
saving home mail delivery
making parliamentary Question Period more enlightening and productive
reducing Canada’s carbon emissions

So what might be the key priorities for the Trudeau government moving forward? If Justin Trudeau wants to be re-elected in 2019 (and what prime minister doesn’t want that?), what key promises will he and his government have to keep? We each have our own list, and you should draw up your own. Then analyze it, thinking about what it says–both about how you see a successful government and about how you see public policy development.

Alana and David think the following list of six key policy areas will be vital to the success of the Trudeau government come the next election:

Creating jobs and investing in infrastructure. Canadians will want to see that the economy is stronger, that more Canadians are working in 2019 than in 2015, and that our roads, bridges, ports, airports, and public transit are better than before.
Getting the budget back to balance. Canadians will want to see everything in the first bullet point achieved while also witnessing the federal government reducing the federal deficit back to near zero before the next election, showing Canadians that the government is a sound fiscal manager.
Pension reform. With an aging population, more and more Canadians will want to see the government enhancing federal pension benefits (Canada Pension Plan/Old Age Security), meaning that Canadians will feel more secure about their inevitable retirement.
Youth policy. Justin Trudeau was a champion of youth interests in 2015. If he is to retain and grow this voting bloc, he’ll need to prove that he has delivered on his promises to young Canadians. He will need to show he has created 40,000 good youth jobs each year, that postsecondary education is more affordable, and that young Canadians have better permanent job prospects than in the past.
Health care. As always, Canadians will be concerned about the quality of health care. Canadians will want to see better home care programs, but they will also want to see greater access to family physicians, shorter waiting times for hospital procedures, and reduced costs for pharmaceuticals.
Marijuana legalization. Although controversial to some, this is a Big Ticket promise that needs to be fulfilled. Failure to do so would seriously jeopardize Trudeau’s credibility as a leader. Pot need to be legalized yet strictly regulated by 2019, while also being kept out of the hands of minors (as far as that’s possible). It’s also likely that most Canadians would want to see marijuana taxed like alcohol and cigarettes, providing the federal and provincial governments with a new and lucrative revenue stream that can be directed toward a host of important policy fields.

Web Link

Real Change: A New Plan for a Strong Middle Class, www.liberal.ca/realchange/.