The dogs bark, the caravan moves on
Steven Guilbealt's departure from cabinet ‘is unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage,’ writes Ken Polk. / TWITTER PHOTO
It has been said that cabinet government is about making hard decisions, but Prime Ministership is about making impossible ones.
This came to mind as political Ottawa continued to reverberate about the resignation of former Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault following the MOU on energy development that Prime Minister Mark Carney had agreed to with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.
Apart from the predictably breathless discussion by columnists citing its broader political implications, at one level, Guilbeault’s resignation demonstrated that the theory of cabinet government can actually work in practice: he resigned due to his principled opposition to the MOU.
Not a hard choice for the Prime Minister
The bedrock principle that underpins cabinet governance is collective responsibility. Once a policy is approved by the cabinet, all its members are required to publicly support it. In this light, Guilbeault’s decision was refreshing, even heartening. It is widely assumed that MPs would happily abandon any personal principle to get a seat at the top table, with all the financial perks, the ministerial limousine, and, above all, the power that comes with it. Guilbeault's choice reminds us that this is not always the case.
But from Carney’s view, the price that Guilbeault may have set to remain in cabinet was too high. Losing a cabinet minister under these circumstances is always regrettable for any prime minister, but accepting the minister’s resignation would also not be a hard choice.
The former minister had taken a position against a policy outside his cabinet portfolio. One would wonder how Guilbeault would have responded if he were forced to backtrack, as he seemed to insist here on one of his own cabinet-approved policies after it was announced.
Acceding to whatever the former minister’s demands were would, in turn, have meant throwing under the proverbial bus the ministers of Energy and Natural Resources and Environment, Climate Change and Nature, both of whom have portfolio interests at stake and both of whom supported the MOU.
Trickier still, it would have brought into question the Prime Minister’s judgment for entering into the MOU in the first place. Canadian prime ministers have demonstrated their ability to take unexpected actions to achieve core political objectives, but throwing themselves under the bus in deference to a cabinet colleague's wishes has no precedent.
Juggling crises: A Prime Minister’s job
This lifts us to the “impossible” level of prime ministerial decision-making.
Once upon a political time, Guilbeault was feted as a “star candidate” in Quebec for then-prime minister Justin Trudeau in the 2019 election. His personal credentials as a forceful advocate for action on the climate crisis followed him into Trudeau’s cabinet. He became the public face of the policy tools that the Trudeau government adopted to achieve this, particularly the carbon tax, the proposed cap on oil and gas emissions, and the electric vehicle emissions standard. All three drew political and economic pushback of varying intensity, depending on the party and the industry sector.
As the poster boy for a series of unpopular policies, it was surprising for many to see Carney tap Guilbeault for a cabinet position, albeit at a politically safe distance from the controversial clean energy file. From his perspective, Guilbeault may have thought that Carney's having been a public champion of green energy investment made it safe to accept the appointment.
What makes Guilbeault's decision odd, however, was that the prime minister had also been sending unmistakable signals that his commitment to clean energy was tempering in the face of the tariff war triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Guilbeault may have told himself that Carney’s leadership campaign pledge to scrap the carbon tax was an understandable concession to unavoidable political expediency. But even as he entered the prime minister’s first cabinet, Carney played down the gathering climate crisis to address the immediate economic one posed by Trump.
Juggling crises when required is part of a prime minister’s job description. The MOU with Alberta was an essential part of Carney’s juggling act; the price he had to pay to bring Alberta onside in making Canada an energy superpower.
Unlike Guilbeault, the prime minister does not have the luxury of enforcing a green energy litmus test on the Alberta premier. He has a truculent president to face down, an economy to save and a country to unite toward those ends. In this context, Guilbealt's departure is unfortunate but unavoidable collateral damage.
True, this may cause the prime minister damage among climate change purists in his caucus and among voters. But he is gambling that this will pale in comparison to the political gains he will make by delivering a transformational economic agenda.
Let the commentariat percolate. Let Guilbeault continue his post-resignation “victory” tour. But this too shall pass.
The prime minister may take comfort in an old aphorism about passing political controversies: the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
