Roundup: The measure of a political promise

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There’s been a lot of hay made, ink spilled and electrons converted into pixels over the last 36 hours or so about the value of political promises, and how terrible it is when politicians break them. It makes people so cynical, and it’s no wonder that people hate politicians, and so on. We had Liberal MPs Nate Erskine-Smith and Adam Vaughan prostrating themselves about how sorry they are that the promise was broken, voter reform groups wailing about how terribly they’ve been betrayed, and columnists pontificated on broken promises (though do read Selley’s piece because he offers some great advice, not the least of which is telling PR advocates to tone down the crazy. Because seriously).

But in the midst of this, we had Conservative leadership candidates laying out a bunch of promises of what they would do if they a) won the leadership, and b) won the next general election, and some of those promises were hilariously terrible. For example, Maxime Bernier thinks it’s cool to freeze equalization payments so that the federal government can tell provinces how they should be managing their own fiscal houses, or Andrew Scheer saying that he would enshrine property rights by using a novel approach to amending the constitution through the back door, as though the Supreme Court of Canada would actually let that pass.

And while everyone was tearing their hair out over Trudeau’s “betrayal” and “lies,” what were these two other, equally implausible promises as Trudeau’s on electoral reform, met with? A few pundits tweeted “good luck with that” to Scheer. And that was about it. So forgive me while I try to calibrate my outrage meter on political promises here, as to which ones we should take seriously and which ones we know are bad or wholly improbable but can safely laugh off.

To be clear – I’m not looking to give Trudeau a free pass on this one, and I’ve written elsewhere that I think he needs to own up to the fact that it was a bad promise made when he was a third-place party who were blue-skying a number of things. And I think that it should give parties and candidates pause so as to caution them against being overly ambitious in what they promise (preferably, though, without draining all ambition out of politics). But come on. Let’s have a sense of proportion to what just happened here.

Good reads:

  • NAFTA negotiations could begin as early as May.
  • The government and the PBO disagree about the pace at which infrastructure money is flowing.
  • Irving Shipyard wants federal dollars and a project to keep them busy during the “gap” between building Arctic patrol ships and delayed surface combatants.
  • Here’s a look at the interoperability of the Super Hornets with existing domestic and foreign fighters. And yes, they’re just going to be interim craft.
  • One of the picks for senator from Manitoba wound up declining after he had been announced but before he was formally appointed.
  • Trudeau wants the citizenship oath amended to include respecting treaties with First Nations. Leonid Sirota is unimpressed (for good reason).
  • CSIS doesn’t know how many people were caught up in its illegal metadata retention programme. Oops.
  • Kellie Leitch’s campaign manager has quit after his comments became national news fodder.
  • While the Ste-Foy shooting victims’ funeral was being held, Kevin O’Leary posted a video of himself at a firing range. He later took it down citing a confusion.
  • John Ivison notes that while O’Leary lacks political instincts, his rivals still aren’t mounting a credible challenge to him.
  • John Pepall writes about how Trudeau’s use of mandate letter betrays the principle of cabinet’s collective responsibility, and he’s got a very good point.
  • Kady O’Malley writes about the problem that Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson finds herself in while she serves on an interim basis.

Odds and ends:

Tristin Hopper explores the unique Canadian phenomenon of government vanity advertising.

3 thoughts on “Roundup: The measure of a political promise”

  1. A political promise becomes important when a politician repeats over 2 years and up to the last moment gives the impression that he will implement it. Which is what we have here and this is what Canadians see. This broken promise will cost Trudeau politically and his credibility is damage. In the months to come there will be other big issues like NAFTA and how to deal with Trump and Trudeau will find himself having to make some serious compromise to appease the US President. The broken promise and the Sunny ways will come back to haunt him, he will be perceived my many as not serious and not up to the task. Is it too much to ask today that politicians show vision and leadership? Obviously it is, when they constantly put Party before country.

  2. The huge difference here is that the electoral reform promise was broken by a government in power, that won an election partly based on their promise that “2015 will be the last election carried out under FPTP” (repeated a gazillion times). Scheer and Bernier have yet to collect a single vote in the leadership race, and while their promises are head-bangingly stupid, they haven’t broken any yet. Not even in the same ballpark.

  3. I agree with readers Norman and larrymuffin that there are “yuge” differences between Mr. Trudeau’s action in breaking his electoral reform promise and those made (but not yet broken) by Scheer and Bernier.

    I would add one additional element of difference. Mr. Trudeau was promising to change something that some voters cared deeply about. People like me felt it would be depriving me of jtheir electoral voice without due process. People like PR proponents felt it would, finally, bring justice to the electoral system. It is no wonder that breaking that promise was noticed and commented on.

    Freezing equalization payments? Enshrining property rights? Not so motivating.

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