{"id":404347,"date":"2022-02-08T21:37:25","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T18:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-joel-lightbound-crisis-in-the-liberal-party\/"},"modified":"2022-02-08T21:37:25","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T18:37:25","slug":"the-joel-lightbound-crisis-in-the-liberal-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-joel-lightbound-crisis-in-the-liberal-party\/","title":{"rendered":"#The Jo\u00ebl Lightbound crisis in the Liberal Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The Jo\u00ebl Lightbound crisis in the Liberal Party<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Paul Wells: The MP’s astonishing criticism of Liberal policy on COVID restrictions is the most serious threat to Trudeau’s leadership since Jane Philpott quit the federal cabinet\n <\/div>\n
\n Here\u2019s Dillon McGuire, Operations and Tour Assistant to the Minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion (that\u2019s Ahmed Hussen, I learn), calling for Jo\u00ebl Lightbound to be removed from the Liberal caucus<\/a>\u00a0\u201cas swiftly as possible.\u201d I haven\u2019t met McGuire and my interactions with Lightbound have been limited, but the young staffer\u2019s tweet hints at the very large difficulty Lightbound now presents to the Liberal Party of Canada.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re forgiven for not knowing Lightbound. He\u2019s the Liberal MP for the Quebec City riding of Louis-H\u00e9bert, and his astonishing Tuesday-morning news conference<\/a> was a detailed prosecution, not only of Liberal policy on COVID-related restrictions, but of the Liberal manner of governing over at least the last several months. \u201cI think it\u2019s time we stop dividing the population,\u201d he said. And, \u201cNot everyone can earn a living on a MacBook at a cottage.\u201d I mean, he\u2019s criticizing the government\u2019s timetable on health-care transfers<\/em>. Whatever a backbench MP\u2019s knitting is supposed to be these days, Lightbound is spectacularly not sticking to it.<\/p>\n

And all of this is happ<\/a>ening while a bunch of truckers and \u201ctruckers,\u201d some fraction of whom hold pestilential views and some of whom control immovable and potentially unstoppable concentrations of rolling metal, continue to occupy downtown Ottawa. Which is also part of Dillon McGuire\u2019s point. Lightbound will be accused, is already being accused, of advocating surrender to blackmail.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m torn here. On one hand, it was disappointing that so many questions at Lightbound\u2019s news<\/a> conference were about the very caucus politics I lead with here, instead of about the substance of his argument. On the other hand, I do believe Lightbound\u2019s sortie today constitutes the most serious threat to Justin Trudeau\u2019s leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada since Jane Philpott quit the federal cabinet.<\/p>\n

So, as I say, torn.<\/p>\n

A few things about Lightbound. He\u2019s not super-likeable, in the way smart guys can sometimes be a bit much. He\u2019s chippy and has no discernible sense of humour. Honestly I am pleased when anyone<\/em> in this city shows any<\/em> personality, so do not take this as a criticism.<\/p>\n

Today is apparently his 34th birthday.<\/p>\n

He won the National Laskin Moot as a student at McGill Law, which is even bigger than being on the McGill debating team and suggests Lightbound is a dangerous guy to get caught in a debate with. He became a lawyer at Fasken in Montreal, which suggests a good start on a life of hard work and ever-increasing financial reward, before he ran for the Liberals in 2015 in Louis-H\u00e9bert, a riding that\u2019s been held by four different parties<\/em> since 2006. Conservative, Bloc, NDP, Liberal. That\u2019s a significant part of the day\u2019s puzzle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So\u2019s this. At home, Lightbound gets coverage like this<\/a>\u2014wunderkind sacrificing the gravy train for a chance to make a difference.\u00a0And indeed, in the first year of this government, it was not uncommon to hear Lightbound mentioned around Ottawa as one of the Liberals\u2019 brightest talents. But he hasn\u2019t clicked. He was parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance before the election. Just about every other person in that hard job has been promoted to cabinet: Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Sean Fraser. Lightbound, instead, was dumped<\/del> from his parliamentary-secretary job after the 2021 election. [UPDATE: I\u2019m told, by somebody outside his office, that he asked to be relieved of that gig after the election. \u2013 pw] He\u2019s the chair of the Industry Committee, which isn\u2019t nothing. But all of this suggests uncommon ambition thwarted.<\/p>\n

Two more data points. After six years in Parliament, he\u2019s eligible for a full pension, as some people were pointing out on Twitter<\/a> today. And while he\u2019s been winning lately by 11- and 12-point margins, Quebec City is a strange bubble, a place with a distinctive centre-right political culture that makes it Quebec\u2019s current capital of frustration with restrictions and mandates, which means Lightbound will have been hearing a lot about those restrictions from constituents with a documented history of partisan fickleness.<\/p>\n

This adds up to Lightbound as a mix of real smarts under real pressure with a strong feeling of nothing to lose. It\u2019s funny how the nines and 10s are so often the ones to snap around here.<\/p>\n

On the substance of the argument, I think he\u2019s right that the government would have a hard time defending each of its policy decisions in turn, which is one reason the government never comes anywhere close to bothering to try. (Another reason is that this government is simply incompetent at making any coherent argument. I mean, it\u2019s breathtaking. This comes from the top.) There\u2019s a line in Lightbound\u2019s prepared remarks about wishing for evidence instead of talking points. That\u2019s the sort of thing music collectors call a \u201cdeep cut.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bit about how we\u2019re in the middle of a crisis\u2014about how everyone should just hold the line until the truckers and \u201ctruckers\u201d and many well-meaning protesters and small cohort of serious troublemakers simply leave town\u2014I have a lot of sympathy for that argument. I\u2019m not big on rewarding convoys when making policy decisions. I was appalled last week when Quebec Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault mentioned truckers and \u201ctruckers\u201d among his reasons for dropping a no-vax tax that could not have been implemented anyway. Way to ensure that anyone with access to some trucks will use them in any policy dispute forevermore. So I don\u2019t want to dismiss that real concern.<\/p>\n

But if you can\u2019t defend your policy, it doesn\u2019t much help if you ball up your fists and demand that everyone be a team player. If you can<\/em> defend your policy, great: defend it. Lightbound\u2019s broader argument\u2014that this government has been leaning way too hard<\/em> on \u201cget with the program\u201d as an argument for way too long\u2014is not only reasonable, it\u2019s obvious to anyone who can see. Including many Liberals of my acquaintance.<\/p>\n

The truckers vs the lockdown is a perfect illustration of a central characteristic of the Trudeau government and, I might as well say it, of Justin Trudeau: the strong belief that there will be a perfect time to make a decision later, after the crisis is over. The early-2020 \u201cbuild back better\u201d rhetoric amounted to a hope that, after the icky virus went away, Canada could get back to building light rail, which sometimes seems to be the only thing that excites this gang. The nasty political sideswipe from the collapse of Kabul in the first week of the 2021 election campaign was similar: How dare there be a mess when he was trying to build the future? Everyone in Ottawa can list a dozen decisions that are way overdue, and the reason they\u2019ve heard for the delay is some variation on, \u201cNot yet. The time\u2019s not right yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing. The time\u2019s never right. The crisis is the job. I\u2019m not sure how \u201cissues management\u201d came to be synonymous with \u201cmaking issues go away so we can do what we want.\u201d What it could mean is, manage the issue. Canadians are less and less sure the way they are governed makes any sense. That is true whether there are trucks or not. So manage that issue.
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