In politics, no one is too big to fail.
When no one applies a consequence to stupid risks, people suffer.
The fallout of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis was grim. Many big banks, once deemed too big to fail, did exactly that. In the smoking ruins of the economy, jobless and homeless people asked the obvious question - how was this allowed to happen?
The answer was simple. Many people with a lot of power profited from shady, unethical, and risky business. Because the reward of turning a blind eye was significantly greater than doing something to stop it, no one did.
It's easy to draw a parallel between what happened in the financial crisis to what's currently going on in the broader universe of Canada's federal Liberal Party. With the Party's bi-annual convention coming up in less than a month, the rank and file membership should be asking themselves, why aren't they doing something to stop the litany of stupid risks the Party's upper echelon has taken?
Take, for example, today's news that Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau's eponymous family foundation accepted a sizeable donation under highly questionable circumstances from sources linked to Beijing's ruling Communist Party. This revelation comes after Trudeau eschewed a public inquiry and appointed a man who had a senior role in the Trudeau Foundation to oversee a non-independent investigation into claims that senior Liberal officials were aware of allegations surrounding Beijing’s influence in Canadian elections, but did nothing.
This scenario has explosive national security and sovereignty implications and the potential to permanently rock public confidence in the integrity of Canada's democratic institutions. It’s wrong for anyone with close ties to the Trudeau family to lead an opaque, non-public review of the issue. Doing so wastes time Canada doesn’t have and presents risk to the Canadian public. So why is the Liberal party allowing Trudeau to proceed?
It’s a question worth asking.
That’s because even setting aside his policy positions, Trudeau has habitually demonstrated poor ethical judgment but has faced no internal punishment from his party. For example, the federal government desperately needs to restore trust in public institutions after the pandemic. But the Liberal Party has allowed a man who has breached federal ethics laws on multiple occasions to continue to lead without facing any internal consequences. While Canadian women need more justice against sexual harassment, the Liberals continue to turn a blind eye to Trudeau’s own allegations and the fact that he allowed others facing criminal harassment charges to be candidates for the Party. While Canada desperately needs to cultivate peer-to-peer relations with countries with which the Commonwealth has a colonial past, the Liberal Party has been content to allow a man with a history of blackface to continue on as their leader.
Maybe, if Trudeau had faced significant internal blowback over any one of these issues, he would have felt less inclined to continue to take stupid risks. But failing that, the Liberal Party now finds itself yoked to a leader that is leading the Party into the polling toilet.
Some will read this and immediately point at the Conservative Party. But in contrast to the Liberals, the Conservatives have a long history of internal constructive dissent. The Conservative Party's governance contains several mechanisms to turf a leader, and it has not been shy to use, or openly threaten to use them. The Liberal Party’s constitution has contains nothing of the sort. But the most important contrast is that Trudeau has had so many serious scandals that even the most ardent Liberal partisan would be hard-pressed to find an example within the Conservatives that compares with the mountain of ethical issues that Trudeau’s leadership has confronted the Liberal Party with. That should be indictment enough on the state of Trudeau’s leadership for any Liberal Party member.
And yet, the Liberal Party’s membership and caucus has largely chosen to stay silent.
This week marks the tenth anniversary of Trudeau's ascension to Liberal Party Leader. Allowing his chronic judgment issues to escape without internal party consequences is now becoming a broader failure of the party that should see it take on deep brand damage within the Canadian public.
That’s because ordinary people know that in any other organization, in any other workplace, there is no possible way Justin Trudeau wouldn't have faced internal consequences for his actions by now. A corporate board of directors that turned a blind eye to his actions for this long would have been sacked. But somehow, perhaps because Trudeau has his hands on public coffers and has deep ties to Canada's old-money and old-power families and corporations, few in the Liberal Party seem to care.
For their part, former cabinet Ministers Jane Philipot and Jody Wilson Reybould stood up to Trudeau's lack of judgment during the SNC Lavalin scandal. But instead of being rewarded for trying to save the Liberal Party from itself, they paid a high personal cost. For the sake of the country and their own political movement, the Liberal Party should have treated them like heroes instead.
Rather, they rallied behind Trudeau.
On that point, Andrew Perez, a consultant and Liberal party volunteer, recently tweeted that Trudeau's legacy will have been his ability to unify a fractious party after a decade of defeat. Unity within a political movement is essential under certain circumstances. But when unity becomes about continuing to turn a blind eye to a core team that continues to expose a political party to excessive, stupid risk, innocent people get hurt. And many in Canada are already hurting.
After the financial crisis, millions found out the hard way that even big banks aren’t too big to fail. Same goes for Liberal leaders who continually break the rules to the detriment of the people they’re supposed to serve. Between elections, it's up to political parties to hold their leaders to account.
Saddled with a scandal plagued leader who is facing an invigorated Conservative Party, if recent polls are to be believed, the Liberal Party might find out that their failure to hold Trudeau to account means Canadians are in the mood to do the job for them.