The Liberals' criticism of Mr. McCauley’s meeting is ironic because they once called on all players – unions, CEOs, mayors, premiers and political opponents – to lobby American counterparts on NAFTA. That effort has been influential. Now Mr. McCauley’s unsupervised chat is deemed disloyal.
In the early days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Trudeau’s team made NAFTA talks a bigger-than-partisan cause, asking former PM Brian Mulroney for advice and recruiting Tories like former interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose to an advisory committee. When Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Trudeau at the G7 summit in June, Mr. Scheer and several other prominent Conservatives closed ranks. Mr. Trudeau made a show of thanking them for their solidarity.
But many Tories are itching to criticize – not the Canadian position, but the way Mr. Trudeau has handled negotiations. Some are starting to suggest the PM should have wrapped up a quick deal with Mr. Trump, but didn’t. And while there’s no solid evidence Mr. Trudeau’s missed such an opportunity, it’s not high treason to question the way he did things. In Mr. McCauley’s case, the Liberals showed they are too eager to judge their opponents as disloyal.
No comments:
Post a Comment