MacDougall: Even the city of Ottawa may not be safe for the Liberals

Pierre Poilievre, in Carleton riding, is ready to pounce. A test of the government’s confidence could come as early as next week.

Published Sep 19, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  3 minute read

The Liberals' secret weapon may be the swollen public service, with tens of thousands of new hires since 2015. Photo by Justin Tang /The Canadian Press

When former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff took his party to the polls in 2011, it didn’t end well. Or rather, it ended a bit too well, with more than half of the Liberal caucus finding themselves in the unemployment line, returning a caucus of only 34 MPs. Ignatieff soon found himself another line of work.

If current trends continue, 2011 could soon look like halcyon days for the Liberal Party. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in a funk. A deep funk. Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives are streets ahead in the polls. Toronto has fallen. Montréal, too, with the Bloc Québécois taking former prime minister Paul Martin’s onetime seat in this week’s byelection. Can Ottawa be far behind?

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The nation’s capital is one of the last redoubts of big-L Liberalism, what with it being a region stuffed with public servants working for the party that loves government. When I worked for Stephen Harper, we used the riding of Ottawa-Vanier as a barometer. No matter how bad things got for the Liberals — and they were bad from 2006 to 2011 — they didn’t have to worry about Ottawa-Vanier, then held by Mauril Bélanger. If Ottawa-Vanier fell, it would mean the Liberals had suffered an extinction-level event.

Welcome to the apocalypse, Liberals.

And while Ottawa Centre and Ottawa-Vanier held firm in 2011, even MPs Yasir Naqvi and Mona Fortier aren’t sleeping well these days as they watch Trudeau cling to power. They see Poilievre crouched over in nearby Carleton riding, ready to pounce. A test of the government’s confidence could come as early as next week.

Then again, Ottawa might be safer for Liberals now than it was in 2011’s cataclysm. For one, there are far more public servants around, what with Trudeau having boosted the size of the federal bureaucracy by a whopping 43 per cent. That’s a lot of people who owe their daily bread to Team Red. Sadly for the country, the government doesn’t feel 43 per cent more competent or efficient, which is one of the reasons Trudeau is heading for a fall.

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More to the point for Ottawa residents, Poilievre has a far more blinkered view of the bureaucracy, vowing to rein in federal spending, which presumably includes reducing the headcount. The last mandate of the Harper government saw a decrease in the size of the public service and Poilievre will aim to do the same, beginning with the newsroom of the CBC at Queen and Sparks streets. For the public service, it’s a clear choice.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada is certainly treating Poilievre’s imminent arrival as an opportunity to mount a last stand, even if it is more custard than Custer. There is simply no way, PSAC says, that Ottawa’s well-paid public servants can be expected to go into work for (gasp) three days a week. Leave aside that Ottawa is structured to live and breathe off public servants spending as they migrate daily into the downtown core from their suburban redoubts. To propose a boycott of the very businesses that are dying because bureaucrats are afraid of their offices is short-sighted, misdirected, nonsensical and mean, even if PSAC did eventually recant.

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Sure, there isn’t as much federal office space in the downtown core these days, and not all of it is in great nick, but there won’t be an increase in efficiency or capacity if teams remain scattered in the digital wind. It is time to reconsolidate. The best way to show a new boss your value is to turn up to work — in a very visible way. And we need that work to be done, as the country is stacked up with seemingly intractable problems.

When facing certain defeat, one can either acquiesce or rage. PSAC’s latter needs to transmogrify into the former, and right quick. The party affiliation of the MPs serving Ottawa’s constituencies might be about to change, but the challenges facing their constituents still need solving.

Instead of worrying about feathering their nests, public servants need to think about how to best serve their future new masters. It’s the best way to avoid their own extinction-level event.

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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