One can hardly call the Cabinet shuffle involving the departure of Bill Morneau and the promotion of Chrystia Freeland as heralding out with the old and in with the new. Despite alleged policy differences (Trudeau supposedly is a more profligate spender of government money than Morneau), it was more a question of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
As far as the media is concerned, the brouhaha makes for a welcome diversion from the humdrum and depressing cycle of news stories around COVID-19. Just like the SNC-Lavalin affair of 18 months ago, but less intense and drawn out, we have a scandal in the form of WE, we have the human interest drama of high level Liberal politicians falling out and then we have Cabinet resignations.
It’s clear that the new Minister of Finance is cut from the same cloth as her predecessor. On political philosophy, Freeland is probably more right-wing than Morneau. The fact that one of the most right-wing politicians in Canada, Ontario’s Doug Ford, is her number one fan, speaks volumes. “I absolutely love Chrystia Freeland. She’s amazing. I’ll have her back. I’ll help her any way we can,” effused Ford.
And Freeland has her own right-wing family skeleton which has hardly been mentioned in the media over the last few days – her grandfather’s role in WW2 where he collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of Poland in producing a fascist anti-Semitic newspaper. It’s true that Freeland can’t be held responsible for the sins of the grandfather, but the point is that she has tried to underplay or even deny it, although aware of it – even helping to edit a scholarly article in 1996, which revealed her grandfather to be a Nazi propagandist. Sealing the case for her to be labelled as right-wing, was the case of Venezuela where she even outdid Trump. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Freeland was the one who took the lead among the so-called Lima group of countries in their attempts to remove the left wing, legitimate Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and substitute the upstart pro-imperialist politician, Juan Guaidó. The failure to engineer a coup in Venezuela should go down as one of Freeland’s embarrassments but it hardly got a mention as the media dwelled on her so-called strengths such as “an ability to get along with everybody.”
And what of Bill Morneau, the man on his way out. Unlike many Canadians who lose a job, Morneau won’t be hurting. He has considerable personal wealth, being a former CEO of the Bay Street human resources firm that his father founded, worth around $2 billion on the stock market. And if that’s not enough, he can always fall back on his wife’s wealth – she is part of the McCain family (owners of the multi-billion-dollar food empire). He now plans to become secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with a basic salary of $350,000, plus expenses. This from the man that told young people to get used to the gig economy!
However, being blessed with money doesn’t necessarily endow you with ethics. Perhaps one of the defining moments of the WE investigations, and probably the one that cost Morneau his job, was his revelation of forgetting to pay the $41,000 for a WE sponsored family trip to Africa in 2017. Morneau is part of the 1%. So is Trudeau. Let’s not forget Justin and family going on their own freebie trip courtesy of the Aga Khan in 2016.
So, what lies ahead for the newly reconstituted Liberal government? Much is being made of Freeland becoming the first woman to take on the finance portfolio. For those who are into identity politics, this might be a big deal. For the vast majority of working-class women, however, it’s not. Their concerns are about schools reopening, what happens when CERB ends, finding affordable child care, not whether it’s the dawn of a new age to have a female finance minister. Most workers, up to now, have given the benefit of the doubt to the Liberals as far as managing the economy is concerned during the pandemic. How long will this last? School reopening, the impending winding down of CERB and whether or not we see a resurgence in COVID -19 will be key factors in determining people’s outlook towards both provincial and federal governments.
Already there has been a decline in support for the Federal Liberals, compared to April and May, when most voters were relatively well disposed to them. However, the decline so far is modest – reflecting in part the weakness of the opposition. The Liberals come from money. Despite the social justice rhetoric and the shedding of tears for this or that wrongdoing in Canadian history, Trudeau and Freeland will continue with policies that support capitalism and the continuance of this rotten system. Socialist Alternative will be doing our best to counter those ideas.
