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Politics

    • Liberals believe time is on their side. Is it?

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    A politician—or anyone in politics—will never admit a poll means much. You've heard it dozens of times already: "the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day."

    But cabinet ministers are worried. Part of the retreat they just attended in P.E.I. was about relaying back to the prime minister and his staff what their constituents told them over the summer. What they heard very much depended on the part of the country they represented—but in key electoral regions for the Liberals, and on the key issue of affordability, ministers heard their government was falling short.

    In Atlantic Canada, where the Liberals have dominated to different degrees in the past three elections, the government's major climate policy plank—carbon pricing—is a bust. A senior Liberal in the province explained it to me this week by saying there are cars abound in most corners of the Maritimes with no easy alternatives, yet, all anyone sees is more expensive gas, and all they fear is an even more expensive heating bill in the winter. The rebate doesn't allay their worries.

    In big urban centres, also traditionally fertile electoral ground for the Liberals, it's all about housing. Constituents told ministers from this region that homeownership is out of reach, or if they own a home, the burden of their mortgage is becoming unbearable.

    None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has taken a deep dive into public opinion polls conducted over the summer. The lead for the Tories is not insurmountable, but widening, and the top issue for Canadians surveyed is the cost of living—the latter informing the former.

    And so they brought those worries to the cabinet table. There is a sense among those around the table—conveyed to me during the retreat—the Prime Minister understands the magnitude of the issues and the vulnerability for his party it has exposed. But—and it's a big but—they aren't convinced he will move fast enough to cauterize the wound.

    That's because the timeline he and the people around him are working with is for an election years from now. Don't get me wrong, there's an outsized chance that ends up being the case. But there is an acute sense among senior staffers and some ministers that once a wave or a desire for change takes hold, there is not much you can do to stop it.

    They don't believe they're at that critical nexus yet, but there is debate about how long a runway they have to counter a narrative that cemented over the summer; or in other words—to meet the moment.

    It is a significant moment, to be sure. In my 42 years I've never spoken to more people who feel less able to get ahead; who feel like no matter how much they work, they are aiming to simply survive and have given up on thriving. In 15 years of covering politics, I've never been stopped by more people who want to talk about how tough things are and what they want me to ask politicians. It is real.

    There's a vulnerability for the Tories there too, to be sure. People want to believe they still can thrive—not that the possibility of doing so no longer exists. It can't be all negative.

    But many Canadians are grieving—yes grieving—the loss of what they thought life would or could be like—and the Conservatives are rhetorically meeting that moment. Plus, the pressure to produce solutions is less pronounced because they're the opposition—for the government, the converse is true.

    There were no solutions to the housing crisis, a focus for the retreat, announced at the end of it. That too isn't a surprise—show me a government that wants to make a big announcement during the dying days of summer and I've got a shiny penny to sell you.

    But there also wasn't a promise of anything new soon. Anything bigger to meet the moment. There was talk of amplifying current efforts, of "doing more" but I'm not sure that speaks to anyone's grief. And behind closed doors there is discussion that there has to be something of that nature on the table at least by the fall economic statement.

    Even that is up to a few months away, more time for more interest rate hikes in the interim and more time for the opposition to fill the vacuum.

    In a few years the situation could be different—there could be more homes, less demand and lower interest rates. But there's nothing even close to a guarantee that will be the case.

    "I hope they're right, I hope we have time to get this right," one Liberal at the retreat told me in reference to the prime minister's office and their timeline for an election. With a shrug of the shoulders, he held up a pair of crossed fingers and walked away. 

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    N.L.

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