On Tuesday, the Liberal government wrapped up their cabinet retreat in Halifax. Amidst their poor polling numbers, the resignation of a long-time minister, and rising tensions between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his government, this retreat provided a crucial opportunity for the Liberal Party to recalibrate as it attempts to find its footing. The Hub’s editor-at-large, Sean Speer, spoke with Ian Brodie, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to get his perspective on the importance of cabinet retreats. You can find more of Brodie’s commentary and other writings at his Substack here.

SEAN SPEER: How do cabinet retreats generally differ from regular cabinet business?

IAN BRODIE: The end-of-summer cabinet retreat is primarily a chance to get the team back together—usually, ministers haven’t seen each other in person since mid-June—and get an overall picture of the government’s agenda and challenges for the fall. It’s not a time for detailed policy decisions but for the prime minister and his team to get some feedback from the group about where they’re going to put their main effort from Labour Day through Christmas.

In the Harper days, that started with a fiscal briefing on where the government was financially and a big-picture public opinion presentation. The two anchors at that time were money and the public landscape.

SEAN SPEER: Reports claim that there are several external presentations at this week’s cabinet retreat, including from Biden administration official Jake Sullivan. What are your thoughts about bringing in different people to participate?

IAN BRODIE: I was never keen on having outside presentations at these retreats. You want to reserve the time for ministers to have their say and to draw them out on issues outside their portfolios. In his great book, The Way It Works, Eddie Goldenberg tells some funny stories to show how hard it is to get ministers to think about the broader government agenda, but if you can’t get broad advice from ministers at a cabinet retreat, you’re missing an opportunity to shape the team and the agenda.

SEAN SPEER: The Trudeau government is behind by something like 20 points. What, if anything, should it be doing to try to recover control of the political agenda and restore ground with the Conservatives?

IAN BRODIE: At this week’s retreat, it will be especially important to hear from ministers. The Liberals have a serious crisis on their hands, and the most important agenda item will be to hear if ministers think Mr. Trudeau can lead them through it. The sudden turnaround of Democrat fortunes in the U.S. with their sudden change of leadership is the number one challenge facing the prime minister. He can try to avoid dealing with it—showing his ministers he has the energy, the mettle, and the plan to gain back lost ground—or he can force that debate underground.

If I were his chief of staff, I would advise him to get all the bureaucrats and outside officials out of the room, to speak directly to his cabinet, and if he can’t win them over to his view of the coming year, he should give serious thought to retiring.

SEAN SPEER: As Parliament gets set to resume next month, what would be your advice to the Conservatives? What should they be doing to prosecute their case against the government and prepare themselves to possibly become the government?

IAN BRODIE: Conservatives, for their part, can give soft ideas of their governing agenda but, for now, should let the turmoil inside the governing party take centre stage as Parliament returns to business in a month. Neither Mr. Scheer nor Mr. O’Toole were quite successful in making the case for a change of government, and that remains job one for any Opposition party.

Kevin Falcon’s decision in 2012 to leave British Columbian politics was understandable, as was his decision in 2022 to return.

His decision in 2024 not to leave again—to not unite the Right as an election looms, to not resign before he even finishes his first campaign as a party leader—is shaping up to be the most significant decision in B.C. politics in a generation.

And it has been a lot less understandable.

Falcon’s first departure a dozen years ago wasn’t much of a surprise. He had lost in the BC Liberals’ leadership race to Christy Clark a year earlier, so the top role would be sealed off for some time. He had a young family, and you only get to experience those years in that way once. And there was money galore to be made with a prominent real estate developer, so financial opportunity knocked.

But his departure left a discernible gap in the ruling party—that of a strong-willed, high-octane, heavy-lifting, can-do quality that drew admiration inside and trepidation outside it. He had held the most senior portfolios to reflect that prowess: he was the Finance minister and deputy premier when he departed and had manned Health and transportation and been a red-tape-cutting minister of state for Deregulation—a job that he relished—along the way.

Falcon’s reputation only progressed in the private sector, as it can when a politician graduates into business. Eventually, too, follows an appetite within a political party in its throes to retrieve that talent in the belief of the saviour narrative in politics, premised on the idea of the leader-in-waiting.

In several respects it made Falcon the party’s John Turner: a successful post-politics figure envisioned as a compelling and agile solution for a party in need of an exciting injection of leadership. Four decades ago that described the federal Liberals under the fatigued Pierre Trudeau, and in 2022 it described the lacklustre BC Liberals under Andrew Wilkinson.

Falcon’s ascension to the leadership had strong but not overwhelming caucus support, much like Turner’s 1984 campaign, and his victory was also far from friction-free—a fifth-ballot win after his rivals accused his campaign of irregularities in membership sign-ups. It was a messier-than-usual leadership race that, in hindsight, now seems to have been a sign of Turner-like turmoil to come.

Upon reentering the legislature as Opposition leader, Falcon didn’t find just any rival across the aisle. He found John Horgan, the country’s most popular premier and a more centrist NDP leader who, of all things, balanced the budget. Even his opponents in the private sector had to admit he was pretty damned good in the job.

Only months into their rivalry, however, Horgan resigned as premier, stricken with cancer (he subdued it, but it has since returned). The NDP then chose in David Eby a leader who shifted the party leftward, contentedly produced deficits, and expanded taxes, social programs and the public service—and presumably provided a better target for Falcon.

Even so, public opinion didn’t penalize the NDP and there was little gravitation to the BC Liberals. Horgan’s halo adorned Eby, and Falcon found it hard to define his leadership. Like Turner’s caucus rift back in the day, he also had party divisions in the amalgam of conservatives and liberals alike in the BC Liberals fold.

Then came two serious unforced, inadvertent errors—ideas that looked good and then didn’t.

The first involved firing a former cabinet colleague, MLA John Rustad, because he questioned the extent of human contribution to climate change—hardly a radical view in a province dependent on resource development. A Tweet expressed skepticism of the science on the matter, which was a stance at odds with party policy. Wilkinson had taken criticism for tolerating social and climate conservatives, and the new leader wanted to demonstrate new boundaries. So Rustad was booted, and on his birthday, no less.

Rustad was unlikely to run again in 2024, but Falcon’s firing proved more of a backfiring. It rejuvenated Rustad, who joined the BC Conservative Party, assumed its leadership a month later, and made a home for those disaffected in Falcon’s fold. In little more than a year, it has gone from four to about 40 percent support in the province and in a statistical margin-of-error tie with Eby’s party. Its ascent coincides with the descent of Falcon’s party. How tough has it been? Even if a significant number in the province don’t know Rustad, he is still more popular than Falcon.

The second error involved a regrettable rebrand. The BC Liberals had been a coalition of everyone to the Right of the NDP, dating back to the 1990s. Falcon surmised, among other things, that conservatives didn’t like the nomenclature, and so the party renamed itself BC United. A year-and-a-half later, nearly one-third of voters don’t know that, so Falcon has asked ElectionsBC to include both the current and former party names next to his candidates when the province votes in two months. If the new name is reminiscent of a soccer team, the ballot maneuver is reminiscent of The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

In essence, Falcon tried to assuage conservatives with a name change, but they fled and fled and fled because he couldn’t assuage conservatives with anything else as red-meat policy.

There has proven to be a combination of factors working against Falcon so far: a yesterday’s man image akin to Turner’s 1984 rust; a problem with differentiating the party from the NDP without losing the centrist vote; the confusing rebrand; a housing crisis that they’ve been unable to propose any meaningful solutions to; and the siphoning of the conservative vote to the Conservatives.

Depending on the poll, BC United is either in single-digits or rock-bottom double digits, and seat projections suggest zero, one, or maybe two MLAs among the 93 candidates will be elected on October 19. Falcon insists polls are faulty, that Rustad is only riding federal Conservative coattails that will soon be yanked from him, and that if he can just somehow show people he’s a capable alternative then everything will be fine.

But many wise elders in the party are telling him enough is enough, that it’s time to fold the big tent that accommodated such differing views for so long. They worry Falcon is an impediment to the unseating of the NDP—that his prolonged presence is in fact the government’s greatest asset if BC United and the Conservative Party of BC split the vote on the Right. Falcon is indignant and in a Joe Biden-like denial for the time being, and the value of his resignation diminishes as days pass and the Conservatives produce even better poll numbers.

If regime change at all costs is the objective, Falcon ought to be stepping aside for the sake of voters who want change. But if BC United party preservation is the objective, or if the party doesn’t believe the Conservatives would win even with their support, then it’s understandable that Falcon believes he should stay on and maintain BC United as a distinct entity from the Conservative Party of BC. An amalgamation would be a point of no return—not just for him, but for the party that has governed B.C. for two-thirds of this century. It ought to happen, but it looks as if it won’t.