Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on budget day/Adam Scotti

By John Delacourt

April 17, 2024

The parliamentary convention – notably, not the obligation in Canada – of governments to table an annual budget is a ritual that is never solely about defining an economic narrative for a fiscal year. The primary objective for doing so, however, is straightforward enough: the government is outlining policy priorities and commitments that will extract more growth and productivity from the economy, and fuel more of the electoral oxygen of hope and optimism for an electorate that can have limited reserves of both – especially through periods of great change and upheaval. But there is another, partisan imperative that takes hold over time; a serial reading of annual budgets inevitably creates a plotline for a government, and with it, a kind of forecasting document on the shelf life of any party in power.

It is this writer’s contention, as it is with so much narrative content that we consume now, that voters have ultimately become an audience as well, and that there is an implicit, formal orthodoxy that’s taken hold; it’s hard to conceive of any government going beyond its third act in power.

The three acts for Trudeau’s Liberals have played out in different time frames, but they’re clearly distinct. The “Sunny Ways” first act closed with the loss of its majority and the fallout of the SNC-Lavalin affair. The Polycrisis second act began with the downing of a Ukraine International Airlines plane in Tehran, just weeks before the pandemic locked the country down and fomented the kind of weird-vibe, disinfo-populism that metastasized with the convoy occupation of Ottawa. The transition into the third act began with the resignation of Erin O’Toole as Leader of the Opposition and was boldly signalled with Pierre Poilievre’s overwhelming victory with the party faithful to lead the Conservatives.

For many Liberals, to see how Poilievre has reinvigorated his base, revived the Conservative brand and intuitively read the tonal shift and cranky mood of the electorate has been to despair at the open space afforded the new Leader to dominate the narrative in Ottawa. The Conservative “Axe the Tax” campaign landed like a flurry of jabs to put the Liberals on the ropes and, given that the prime minister has some knowledge of the sweet science, it seemed surprising that the government was not capable of punching back effectively.

The consensus from media and even some Liberals attested to the implicit power of the three-act structure: the government was “tired.” People are “ready for change” – any kind of change, apparently, as long as it responds to how they feel when presented with the grocery bill or see how much they owe at the gas pump. Key performance indicators on Canada’s economic recovery, not least significant data on the effectiveness of some of the policy decisions the Liberals have made over the last nine years (like, say, the number of children who have been lifted out of poverty by the Canada Child Benefit) have limited resonance right now, because more palpable indicators of economic decline, like the number of shuttered storefronts or of those unhoused in cities large and small, are in the foreground.

The federal government seems unable to manage these intractable issues. Also front, centre, and requiring urgent action is the looming economic impact of another summer of extreme weather events, and if politics were rational, this would bode well for the Liberal brand, given how much political capital they’ve invested in responding to this particular crisis with costed – and cost-effective policy planks. But no good deed is going unpunished now; it’s like the third hour of Oppenheimer in the theatre of government, when the seats start to creak and you can hear the car keys jangle.

And yet, if a third-act twist leading to a surprise fourth act could indeed be possible for Trudeau and the Liberals, this budget might just be remembered as the signal moment of its turn.

Compounding this issue is a disaffection with Liberal leadership itself. The Liberals in power are defined so indelibly as Trudeau’s “movement” that the same three-act plotline implies that the prime minister’s reaching his best before date, too. Any intimation of his exit would promise some higher stakes drama, burnished by the classical trope of a family legacy and an outsized villain in Donald Trump, illiberal populism’s spray-tanned Emperor. There seem few, if any, plot points remaining until we’re into the dénouement.

And yet, if a third-act twist leading to a surprise fourth act could indeed be possible for Trudeau and the Liberals, this budget might just be remembered as the signal moment of its turn.

For this Liberal, who wrote, rather impatiently, about the need for some strategic reboot of this government two months ago, the rollout of this budget has been a significant riposte. There are a select few gifted communicators in Trudeau’s Cabinet, and it’s clear that Trudeau’s team has found in Housing Minister Sean Fraser more than a rising star; they’ve got a player who can take the ball and run. Like Mark Miller at Immigration, Fraser does not speak like a deputy-minister- in-waiting but like someone who could be in line at a suburban grocery store with you, unafraid to speak colourfully about how much a cart of groceries will cost you, yet still able to expound when needed like a hardworking MP who’s done his homework.

The rollout of many of the housing commitments in the budget over the last two weeks was effective because it broke from budget convention and it played strongly outside the political bubble, with strong content for the X hellscape. Much like the prefatory paragraphs in the actual budget document, it resonated as content that was microtargeted and tonally adjusted for those Canadians under 30 who have felt particularly vulnerable in the ongoing affordability crisis.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland could credibly claim to be following through on the foundational commitments of the Confidence and Supply Agreement with the NDP too, with supportive language on childcare, dental care and the $1.5 billion initially committed this year for the components of the yet-to-be passed pharmacare bill. The $1 billion, five-year commitment for a national school food program was an initiative the Liberals put in their last platform but the NDP also championed it strongly and can legitimately claim their influence made a difference. Whether that meant this budget was “written in orange,” as Bloc MP Jean-Denis Garon quipped, is arguable, depending on where you land on, say, the capital gains tax increase, or what economic growth incentives, sector by sector, you might parse in the details. But the line items in this budget were largely aimed at those Canadians who are no longer feeling middle class, and are losing hope that they will anytime soon. How to address that central problem and yet still uphold the fiscal guardrails announced in last fall’s economic statement (including keeping the deficit below $40.1 billion) was a considerable challenge; now, Freeland just needs enough runway, in the coming months, to feel the wheels lift under the economy’s growth trajectory, and for Canadians to feel confident there will be no imminent crash-landing into a recession.

Renewed confidence in the Liberal vision would, like the announcements leading up to the budget, defy these implicit conventions of how we decide when a government must change and, more importantly, put the Liberals back on the offence, rather than defence, on the economy. Third-act plot twists are hard to manage credibly when crafting any narrative, but this budget at least reveals they’re bearing down and are prepared to think outside the frame at last.

Contributing Writer John Delacourt, Vice President at Counsel Public Affairs in Ottawa, is a former director of the Liberal research bureau. He is also the author of four novels, including his latest, Provenance, about the Nazi looting of European artwork, and The Black State, a political thriller which will be published here in Canada in April.