Cabinet retreat begins in Montreal as Trudeau stakes hopes on a comeback

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Canadians can expect a more disciplined Liberal government this year, starting with immediate announcements out of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet retreat, according to a senior government source who said the focus will be on middle-class issues.

Mr. Trudeau gathered with his cabinet in Montreal on Sunday for the start of a three-day meeting. The Liberals are looking to regroup after a rocky 2023 in which the party and the Prime Minister saw their polling numbers slide dramatically against the Conservatives and as the government’s own MPs said it was slow to respond to the affordability and housing crises that continue to grip Canadians.

Those issues will top this week’s agenda, but cabinet will also begin preparing for the U.S. election and the impact of a potential second Donald Trump presidency.

The source said the Liberals are working to avoid a repeat of 2023. Last year, they acknowledged that they too often allowed Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to shape the narrative and the government was left to react.

The change in tack starts this week with the cabinet retreat, the source said. The approach would mark a change from the past retreat in August in which the Liberals belatedly acknowledged the housing crisis but pushed off any policy announcements until the fall.

The source said the minority Liberals are seized with sharpening their message and presenting Canadians with a clear vision that explains what the government is doing for the middle class and what it wants to do next. The source acknowledged that this vision has been lacking.

The Globe and Mail is not identifying the official because they were not authorized to disclose internal government plans.

Mr. Trudeau’s personal popularity among voters trails that of Mr. Poilievre, according to tracking from both Nanos Research and Abacus Data. The Liberals are also trailing the Tories by 12 points in the latest Nanos survey and 17 points in Abacus. Those numbers have gotten worse since the previous cabinet retreat in late summer, which was also focused on affordability pressures and housing.

Ministers arriving at this retreat though suggested that they don’t need to change course but rather double down on those issues.

“We’re going to continue to do the work that Canadians expect us to do,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said, pointing to housing and affordability as the top concerns. “We haven’t taken four months off, we’ve been very much on the job.”

Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that under the affordability plank, he plans to increase the pressure on grocery chains. “We’re going to push like ever before on competition,” he said, “more choice for Canadians will stabilize prices.”

Last fall, Mr. Trudeau pledged to bring down grocery prices. That promise though has had little impact, with the latest Statistics Canada data showing food-price inflation is still outpacing overall inflation.

On Sunday, Mr. LeBlanc also announced that the government will hold a summit on Feb. 8 in Ottawa to combat the rising threat of auto theft. The crime has increasingly become a problem in Canada, with thefts growing by 50 per cent in Ontario and Quebec between 2022 and 2023.

Immediately after his meeting with his senior team, the Prime Minister will head to Ottawa for a Liberal caucus retreat before the House of Commons returns for the winter sitting a week from Monday. The senior government source said Mr. Trudeau will use both retreats to show he is focused on the task ahead and unite and motivate his team behind him.

On that front, he has one less headwind than he had midway through last year when he was facing widespread internal discontent over the government’s direction. By the end of the fall sitting, many Liberal backbenchers said they were feeling less panicked knowing that an election was not imminent and believing that the government was focused on the right issues.

The change in mood is in part attributed to a shift in perspective, said Dan Arnold, the Prime Minister’s former director of research and advertising and now chief strategy officer at Pollara, a polling and research firm.

“It’s scarier when the quicksand is at your knees and you’re sinking than when it’s at your waist and you’ve stopped sinking,” Mr. Arnold said.

“MPs are not panicking, as much. They’re trying to figure out how to pull themselves out of the quicksand.”

He said Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet will likely spend the retreat figuring out what pieces they need to put in place to make a comeback possible in 2024, that includes hammering out key planks in the budget and figuring out the next steps to tackle the housing shortage.

But he cautioned that much of what needs to change is out of the government’s control. For the Liberals to be competitive in the next election, Mr. Arnold said the economic malaise in the country needs to lessen, meaning interest rates need to go down and inflation needs to slow.

The chief economists of Canada’s largest banks are widely expecting the Bank of Canada to cut interest rates this year but when that happens remains unclear and the latest Statistics Canada data show that inflation ticked up last month.

“The path to Liberals getting re-elected is a better economy and fear of the opposition,” Mr. Arnold said.

The government’s renewed focus on the middle class and pledge of improved communications signals that it knows it wasn’t on its game in 2023, said Scott Reid, who was previously former prime minister Paul Martin’s director of communications.

“They’re telegraphing a back to basics, which to me sounds like something of a concession that they have drifted off lane for a bit,” said Mr. Reid, with the strategy and communications firm Feschuk.Reid.

He said the expectations that the government is setting for itself suggest a desire to get back to the core middle-class appeal that won Mr. Trudeau his first mandate in 2015.

He cautioned though that doing that eight years into government is much more challenging when events like the Israel-Hamas war and the American election can quickly take over a Prime Minister’s focus.