If William Morneau, the former Trudeau finance minister, is positioning himself to take a run at his old boss’s job, as the timing of the release of his new book suggests, he might be wise to pause and take a hard look at both his timing and his ambition.
Where To From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity includes Morneau’s account of his five years (2015-20) as Justin’s first finance minister. They were five years of accomplishment; Morneau took on some tough files and by all accounts handled them well. They were also five years of frustration. When he brought proposals to cabinet, some were rejected, and others amended. He discovered, as others before him had, that a prime minister doesn’t always have his finance minister’s back.
The book accomplishes three things. It reintroduces Bill Morneau as a loyal Liberal, still an establishment Blue Grit, and not a disgruntled ex-minister. Second, it sets him apart from the Trudeau crowd that runs the party and government; he registers respectful disagreement with, rather than direct criticism of, the crowd’s priorities and methods. More in sorrow than anger, or so it seems, Morneau came to see Trudeau as a failed leader – “I came to realize that while his performance skills were superb, his management and interpersonal communication abilities were sorely lacking.”
Bear with me for a moment. Imagine Morneau standing on a stage pondering his future. Before him are four doors. Each leads to a different political outcome. Which one will he choose? If he opens the first door, he will see Justin running for re-election in 2025 (which the PM has said repeatedly is his intention, and I, with no inside knowledge, believe him) and winning handily (I have no idea); so, the Conservatives will change the nameplate on their leader’s door for the fourth time in 10 years, and Bill Morneau will resume his position as a pillar of Bay Street.
The second door leads to an election much like the last two: Trudeau runs; the Liberals may not win the popular vote, but they take the most seats again; they carry on, another minority government with NDP support; meanwhile, the one-strike-and-you’re-out Tories dump Pierre Poilievre; Trudeau may carry on as leader for only year or two, but Morneau is past his best-before date.
Door three: Trudeau runs; the Conservatives win a plurality of seats but cannot attract third-party support to form a government; Poilievre demands a new election while Trudeau insists the governor general call on the Liberals and NDP form a government; it’s the King-Byng crisis all over again, and there’s no role for a finance minister retread.
Door four is Morneau’s best shot: Trudeau announces his retirement about a year from now; Morneau, already set in position, has a jump on the rest of the field when the leadership race begins.
Can he achieve his ambition and win the leadership? I don’t think so. He wasn’t a bad minister. He wasn’t incompetent. He was a rich man who had turned his father’s personnel company, Morneau Shepell, into a human resources powerhouse, married into an even richer family (the McCains), owned a villa in Provence, was philanthropist, and had earned the admiration of his peers. Why wouldn’t a man who had conquered the world into which he had been born look for a new challenge? Politics beckoned.
It may have seemed like a natural transition – from board room to cabinet chamber – but it wasn’t. Out of his element, Moreau turned out to be a mediocre politician. He never learned how to play the game. Politics takes a different skill set than business. It requires patience; the decision-making process is slow, often frustratingly slow; it demands a willingness to communicate extensively, consult widely, accept criticism and comprise to build support. Ambition matters, but it is not enough to win a federal party leadership or a national election. Leaders don’t have to ooze charisma, but they do need to have public appeal. Several members of the current cabinet have more of it than the worthy but unexciting Morneau.
In his book, he implies that Trudeau is a prime minister who never learned how to be a leader. My problem with that assessment is this: It is based on Trudeau’s first term, when Justin was in his fancy-socks phase. Morneau resigned under pressure in the summer of 2020. He wasn’t in cabinet or Parliament to observe Trudeau during some of the toughest days of the pandemic and the vaccine mandates. He wasn’t there when the prime minister negotiated his way through a minefield of objections from 10 provinces and three territories to get everyone onside with his universal $10-a-day daycare program. And he was long gone when the “Freedom Convoy” came to town and refused to leave until Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act – and defended it impressively in his appearance before the Rouleau inquiry. It can be argued that if Trudeau didn’t know how to lead between 2015 and 2020, he’d figured it out by 2023.
I think it would be more accurate to say that Morneau, frustrated when his proposals ran aground, never learned how to be a follower – to follow the conflict-of-interest rules, for example, or to grasp the political reality that while a cabinet minister’s role is to advance policy, the prime minister’s is to make decisions. Or, if you will, to paint lipstick on ministerial pigs and sell them to the country as beautiful creatures.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com