Minister of Labour and Seniors Steven MacKinnon participates in a media availability after a cabinet swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on July 19.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
You might not know much about Steven MacKinnon, but for the past six months, his job in the House of Commons has been to take the questions the Prime Minister would rather avoid. Those are the ones without easy answers where the government wants to deflect blame, drown debate, or stall.
As the government’s acting House Leader, filling in during the maternity leave of Karina Gould, Mr. MacKinnon fielded all manner of uncomfortable questions. And right after he was sworn in as Labour Minister on Friday, he was doing the same thing outside Rideau Hall.
That was very unusual because Justin Trudeau had been with him at a swearing-in ceremony only minutes before. But Mr. Trudeau slipped out the back door while Mr. MacKinnon, a permanent member of the cabinet for less than an hour, gave a press conference fielding a bunch of questions about what the Liberal government will do now.
The understudy had been called in. The Trudeau Show is on summer hiatus.
The Prime Minister attended a cabinet meeting later Friday, but it was virtual, even though he was in Ottawa. Then he left for two weeks’ vacation.
In fact, Mr. Trudeau’s public appearances in recent weeks have been sparse. At least he wasn’t answering tricky queries. He has taken questions from the press just twice in the four weeks since the Liberals’ shock by-election loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
At the first, he rebuffed demands from Liberal MPs for an emergency caucus meeting and in the second, at the NATO summit in Washington, he deflected questions about whether he is going to replace Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland with former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney. No wonder he left the microphone to Mr. MacKinnon on Friday.
There has been a lot of shouting for Mr. Trudeau to do something. Prominent Liberals have called for him to step aside. Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Globe and Mail that they were concerned about Ms. Freeland’s ability to communicate the government’s economic message. Liberals wanted him to signal some kind of change.
Instead, Mr. Trudeau has tried to avoid the line of fire. And now, he’s taking a break. He has apparently decided to wait for things to cool down. Check back later.
In the meantime, Mr. MacKinnon went out to deliver the holding lines.
Members of the government are proud of the things it has done, such as dental care, and they’re going to continue on, he said Friday. It’s a challenging time for people, and things are changing fast, but Liberals will keep on course, and highlight the “contrast” with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
He countered the suggestion that Toronto-St. Paul’s voters rejected the Liberal government by arguing that things can change dramatically with time. In French, he said Liberals are “serene.”
“I’m a part of a team as well, a team of caucus colleagues that wake up every day and try to do the work for Canadians. That work is going to continue,” he said. The messages were simple: no panic. Keep on keeping on.
Perhaps there wasn’t much choice but to try to change the channel on all the calls for change. Every question for Mr. Trudeau is about how he plans to dig out of a hole. His MPs screamed for a plan to get the government back on track – a reboot, a shakeup, or something. The call for him to change things, immediately, has been loud.
The buzz around Liberals was about them flailing around looking for a plan, but Canadians outside of the Ottawa bubble don’t particularly want to see the Liberal government working obsessively on strategies to save the Liberal government. Maybe it’s best for the Liberals that Mr. Trudeau disappears for a while.
The swearing-in of Mr. MacKinnon to replace Seamus O’Regan in a limited, one-person shuffle suggests that Mr. Trudeau probably won’t embark on a major cabinet shuffle for months.
Still, it’s a little much for Liberals to accept Mr. MacKinnon’s suggestion that events and time might change things and that they’ll just have to keep working and wait for the wheel of fate to stop spinning.
Mr. Trudeau will inevitably be back on centre stage soon. A reboot might bring in new characters but as long as he’s Prime Minister, the focus will be on him. For now, he’s on hiatus.