Law number one in Robert Green's book, the "48 Laws of Power," is pretty self-explanatory: never outshine the master.
For a while, it seemed like Nova Scotia Liberal MP turned federal cabinet Minister Sean Fraser was intent on ignoring that advice. Mr. Fraser has been the subject of glowing media pieces that do not shy away from framing him as a younger, more talented, and less baggage-laden version of his boss, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Fraser also has yet to actively quell the possibility of him running for his boss's job. His name is usually included in articles about who might eventually succeed Trudeau.
If there's one thing one could imagine that Mr. Trudeau wouldn't take kindly to, it would be reports that a younger, more modern version of himself is ready, willing and waiting in the wings to take over for him at a time when his personal press is dismal.
That's not to say that aggressively building one's profile isn't de rigueur in politics. But even casual political observers would be able to see the political danger of Mr. Fraser's situation.
And thus begins the story of Mr. Fraser's foray into Mr. Trudeau's cabinet.
There are some files where if a Minister manages to fix big problems, it would be a win for their boss. But if they fail, it's simple for their boss to finger them with the blame. It's an easy way to for party leaders to keep the efforts of talented caucus members who are also potential troublemakers focused on productive work rather than plotting against them. Experienced politicians can spot these circumstances a mile away, accept the situation, and ensure their efforts strictly fall into the "win" category.
At the time of Mr. Fraser's elevation to cabinet, the immigration file squarely fell into this category of appointments.
In Canada, the immigration Ministry is a substantial portfolio that directly impacts the lives of millions of people. At a minimum, it requires someone in charge with senior-level ability to spot and fix complex system challenges before they become disastrous, and to manage a multitude of highly sensitive stakeholder expectations. For that reason, historically and even at the best times, the best immigration ministers have not been rookies.
But at the time of Fraser’s appointment as Immigration Minister, it was not the best of times by any stretch of the imagination. The Liberal government had amassed a massive backlog for various types of immigration applications while spending years justifying damning policy failures like the Roxham Road illegal border crossing, failing to mitigate immigration consulting fraud, and succumbing to industry lobby pressure to rapidly raise Canada's immigration intake amount without first augmenting social infrastructure and health care.
But Mr. Fraser seems not to have seen these warning signs flashing when he was offered this file as his maiden posting.
Fraser's instinct should have been: I MUST NOT MAKE ANY OF THESE PROBLEMS WORSE.
Instead, inexplicably, he poured gas on them, lit a match, and gave them oxygen by personally making decisions that resulted in them ballooning into a mushroom cloud of policy disaster.
Take, for example, Canada's current international student housing crisis. During his first year on the job, and now by his own admission, Fraser increased the number of international study permits processed by nearly 100,000 at a time when the effects of Canada's present housing crisis were already apparent to the general public, and questions should have already been raised about matching permits to available housing.
Further, and again, while housing costs and healthcare capacity were already a matter of regular headlines, Fraser never qualified his plans for Canada's immigration levels with the need to ensure adequate social infrastructure was in place before continuing to increase volume. He also put the additional strain of increased levels on federal immigration application processing systems he already knew were severely failing without first setting them right.
Before last week, Fraser might have been able to have earned a lot of benefit of the doubt. Perhaps his errors were the product of a new Minister who was cutting his teeth, or that he was learning how to challenge a recalcitrant bureaucracy. But that premise got blown out of the water when the CBC reported that Fraser was directly warned by the public service that the housing market could not keep up with the immigration levels he was setting.
With this now out in the public, its clear that Fraser ignored that warning and held press conferences to tout his decisions to the contrary.
Disappointing stuff, to put it mildly.
And Fraser's blunders could not have come at a worse time. Implementing his policies as inflation rose and the healthcare system was already under severe strain compounded an incredible problem. The direct attributable result of Fraser's increase in things like international student permits while forgetting that each of the recipients of these permits needed a habitable place to live is that countless refugees are sleeping on the streets, international students sleeping in cars and under bridges, and millions upon millions of other Canadians are facing rents that have doubled or homelessness themselves. All of these impacts have also led to mainstream questioning of Canada's consensus on immigration for the first time in recent history.
Utter disaster.
Predictably, some more senior Liberals have begun to tacitly question Fraser’s actions. Liberal Marc Miller, who was shuffled into the immigration portfolio over the summer, recently suggested that the immigration system had been allowed to "get out of control." While Miller didn't directly name Fraser in his comment, it certainly felt like an attempt to distance himself from the rapidly expanding fallout of his predecessor's decisions.
Much has recently been written, even by more liberal-leaning columnists, about how Mr. Trudeau's inability or unwillingness to see blind spots has led him and the country into serious trouble. Perhaps this failing drove Trudeau to name Fraser, after all of his highly consequential-to-Canada's housing crisis blunders, and without a period of cooling off or serious mentorship, to be Canada's Minister of Housing last summer. Or perhaps Trudeau simply handed Fraser a further opportunity to hoist himself by his own petard, impact to the country be damned.
One thing is sure. Given both Trudeau and Fraser's demonstrated willingness to careen down policy paths with warning signs of certain doom ablaze, it's hard to say who will eventually outshine who in this regard, master or pupil.
Suffice it to say, Canadians are done trying to find out.