HALIFAX — Liberals are having some "robust" conversations about the state of their party and its slump in popularity with voters but those talks cannot happen in public, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Monday.
"The reality is we have to have these conversations behind closed doors," Miller said at the federal cabinet retreat in Halifax.
The cabinet always meets at the end of the summer to plan out the fall sitting of Parliament, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau moved Monday to address two significant issues for his government: rolling back changes that saw a massive uptick in temporary foreign workers and announcing plans to impose new tariffs on electric vehicles made in China.
But this year the agenda is almost taking a back seat to talk of survival.
The poll decline the Liberals began to see last summer has become a crash, with the Conservatives and Leader Pierre Poilievre maintaining a double-digit lead over the Liberals since last fall.
Trudeau's personal popularity once lifted his party's spirits but he has now become a drag on the Liberal brand after nine-years in office.
Trudeau refused to even speculate Monday whether there are lessons for him in recent developments with the Democrats in the United States. President Joe Biden, who was intensely unpopular with most American voters, including many Democrats, stepped down in mid-July and his successor, vice-president Kamala Harris, has injected unexpected energy and momentum into the campaign.
Trudeau has ignored pressure to step aside for months, calls that grew even stronger after the Liberals failed to hold a Toronto stronghold in a byelection in June. He has been less visible since that day, holding fewer media availabilities than usual and taking far fewer questions.
He said he spent the summer listening to Canadians who have real concerns that his government is working to address and if there are any lessons to take away from the Democratic surge south of the border, it's to ensure he is listening.
"I think the big lesson is in responding to the things that people are actually worried about," he said, listing issues like child care and the national school food program as areas where his government is responding to concerns about the cost of living.
"We believe that using that strong economy to support Canadians in responsible ways is the best way to build the future," he said. "That's what we're focused on. We're not focused on culture wars, on complaining that everything is broken, going off on strange tangents that, quite frankly, Canadians are scratching their heads about."
He was referring to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has seen success in the polls by making the case to Canadians that Trudeau has left people poorer and less safe than they were a decade ago.
Poilievre has said this retreat is just a "reward" for cabinet ministers who have made Canada worse off. Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman slammed the entire notion of the cabinet retreat Monday as anything but more of the same failures from the Liberals.
"After nine years and multiple cabinet retreats life is still going to be unaffordable in Canada, even after this one. More of the same. It's like Groundhog Day," she said.
"After nine years, housing prices have doubled, drugs chaos, disorder in our streets, and after nine years life has just become unlivable in cities across this country. Today’s announcements are more of the same."
The Liberals insist the Tories have little more to put in the window than snappy slogans.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller said it's not hard to come up with a catchphrase.
"Cut the crap, shut your yap," he said. "I could shoot that off all day, but it's not something that I really want to be seen as."
Publicly, Trudeau appears to have the backing of his party. There were signs of growing discontent within the Liberal caucus after the June byelection, but only one or two publicly supported his departure. On Monday any minister that was asked clearly threw their support behind him.
"Absolutely not," Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said when asked if Trudeau should follow Biden out the door.
"All of us here have tremendous confidence in the prime minister. We have confidence in him as the leader of our government, as the prime minister of Canada and we have confidence in him as our party's leader, as the guy who is going to lead us into the next election.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Trudeau has her "full support."
But they don't deny they have a problem.
“When it comes to politics, it's all about trust and whether people trust the work you're doing as a government," Joly said.
"And I think the challenges we're facing are real and we're not the only country facing these challenges. But we have to be better at it to make sure that we're delivering results, period. And so the proof is in the pudding. That's what we'll be working on."
Freeland said she had also spent the summer "listening," saying she had one-on-one discussions with at least 70 Liberal MPs, or almost two-thirds of the caucus members who aren't in cabinet.
There is still more reckoning to come. In two weeks the Liberals will gather for their pre-session caucus retreat, and Miller acknowledged discussions aren't going to be easy.
"We have a number of political conversations coming up and I expect them to be quite robust," he said.
Another of those conversations could also be with the NDP, whose support through a supply-and-confidence deal has been critical to keeping the Liberal government going since 2022.
That deal is supposed to last until the spring but NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been under more pressure to tear it up, particularly after the Canadian Industrial Relations Board agreed with the Liberals' request to end a lockout at the two major railways by ordering it to binding arbitration.
Singh has been highly critical of the order.
Lantsman slammed the government's handling of the dispute that shut down both the Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City on Thursday.
The Teamsters union intends to fight the decision in court and Teamsters president Paul Boucher travelled to Halifax and plans a protest on Tuesday.
"An injustice against us has been done by government," Boucher said in an interview. "What they have done to the railworkers … to stop the work stoppages, fundamentally takes rights away from the rights to free collective bargaining, and we're protesting against that."
Trudeau and the Liberals argue the work stoppage was having a massive negative effect on thousands of other workers, as it disrupted supply chains.
"The best results happen at the negotiating table. That's why we've done everything in our power to continue to look for negotiated resolutions," Trudeau told reporters Monday.
"In this case we needed to take action after talks had broken down … because too many Canadian jobs and livelihoods were at stake."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 26, 2024.
Mia Rabson and Lyndsay Armstrong, The Canadian Press
