Trudeau brought sunny ways but Opposition pushed attitude of its own

[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives at an end-of-session news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 22, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld]

Justin Trudeau won a federal election on Oct. 19, 2015, and promised that as the next prime minister he would bring “sunny ways” to Ottawa.

Now, shortly after the Liberals’ first session in Parliament as government, has Trudeau succeeded in bringing change to the House of Commons?

For Warren Kinsella, a former advisor to prime minister Jean Chrétien, there was definitely at least one change in how the Liberals handle themselves in the House.

“Being prepared to admit they’re wrong, or making a change when a change is dictated… the Harper guys really had almost a genetic inability to do that,” Kinsella tells Yahoo Canada News.

When in government under Stephen Harper, the Conservatives used time allocation to limit debate over 100 times. In one of the few times the Conservatives did admit wrongdoing, MP Paul Calandra gave an apology for answering a question about the war in Iraq with a statement about the NDP’s position on Israel. Calandra was reportedly put up to the responses by a staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Liberals, on the other hand, made some concessions on the democratic reform committee by giving the Opposition a majority, and admitted that they wouldn’t be able to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees as quickly as they said, Kinsella notes.

“They’d admit when they couldn’t meet the bar, and I think people liked that.”

Yet, it could be this very attitude that has left the government open to constant push-back from the Opposition, specifically the Conservatives, says Dennis Pilon, a political science professor at York University.

“Maybe in some ways [Trudeau] invited a degree of conflict in that he suggested he was not going to be a typical prime minister,” Pilon told Yahoo Canada News. “Trudeau was trying to operate in a different way, and in that sense he may not have been pushing back” as hard as he could have.

Pilon, like Kinsella, also looks at the many concessions made to the Opposition and sees a different style emerging from the government, calling the change it made to the electoral reform committee “unheard of.”

The Liberals did use time allocation to shut down debate on their assisted dying bill, but it can be argued that they did so under the pressure of a Supreme Court of Canada deadline, Pilon says.

Yet, if the Liberals were trying to set themselves apart from the Tories the so-called Elbowgate debacle wasn’t a way to do it. Although Trudeau was quick to apologize for the “kerfuffle,” it didn’t stop the outrage coming from the Opposition.

Although it was an “unmitigated disaster,” says Kinsella, the incident played more to the media than to average voters. And while Elbowgate received more attention than the normal goings-on in the House, most people don’t notice the small things.

“[John] McCallum will make some jokes that are inappropriate. Andrew Leslie or Dominic LeBlanc may get some of the rules wrong,” Kinsella says. “But for the most part they’re not the kind of things that your average person, Joe and Jane front porch, notice. They’re definitely noticed by people in Ottawa who are paid to pay attention to that kind of stuff.”

And as Pilon points out, the scandal may have even helped Trudeau’s image.

“The blogosphere goes crazy and the media pundits are like ‘Oh my god!’ and the public says, ‘Yay,’” Pilon says. “People respond by saying ‘Yeah, stop with all the tomfoolery. Let’s start getting stuff done.’”

While the Liberals have tried out their “different” style of government for a session, it may not always be in their interest to let the Opposition have so much sway over their actions in the House later in their term.

“If a government is worried that the Opposition is just using the time to slow down their legislative agenda… they might start becoming more aggressive in their reactions to the Opposition — try to shut them down,” Pilon says.

As the Liberals show signs that they may be carrying through on their promise of doing things differently from the previous government, it will take a few years to see if Trudeau’s sunny ways are here to stay.