Steven Guilbeault and the Resistance We Need

In response to the federal government’s memorandum of understanding with the Government of Alberta on a new oil pipeline, prominent Quebec Liberal member of Parliament and longtime climate activist Steven Guibeault resigned from cabinet, declaring the agreement a “fire sale.”

His act of conviction is one that more Liberals need to emulate, for the good of the country, and their party. The stakes could not be higher.

Canada faces four immense and interconnected threats: widening income and wealth inequality, deepening disinformation and societal division, the worsening climate crisis, and rising fascism exemplified by Donald Trump and the U.S. MAGA movement.

Through its policies and political decisions, the Mark Carney-led Liberal government has only intensified these threats. Without a significant course correction these threats risk becoming entrenched.

Eager to appease?

Prime Minister Carney is proving himself willing to abandon federal climate change policies, ignore concerns from the government of British Columbia and undermine Canada’s relations with Indigenous Peoples. He is also ready to appease Smith and her separation threats even as she stomps on multiple Charter rights.

What, then, would Carney sacrifice to appease a potential Parti Québécois premier of Quebec? Or President Trump?

If it is not appeasement, then it is agreement.

Currently, there is no credible political alternatives to the Carney government. The NDP is without a leader, the Greens are without a caucus, Conservatives are flirting with far-right views, and the Bloc Québécois remains fixated on sovereignty. And so opposition must come from Liberals, inside and outside of Parliament, who believe in progressive values, or are at least committed to the “elbows up” mandate the party was elected on.

Signs of resistance within the Liberals

Encouragingly, Guilbeault is not the only Liberal speaking out.

Victoria MP Will Greaves expressed his own opposition to the pipeline MOU.

Toronto MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has raised concerns about his government’s recent budget.

Another B.C. MP, Ernie Klassen, publicly refused to join his Liberal colleagues in a standing ovation in the House of Commons for Charlie Kirk.

Two unnamed Liberal MPs denounced the invitation to Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts to address cabinet, with one calling it “an utter disgrace for a self-respecting democracy facing the rise of fascism next door.”

Nor is the pushback limited to current Liberal MPs. Catherine McKenna, a past Liberal minister for the environment and climate change, was critical of Energy Minister Tim Hodgson’s dismissive approach to Coastal First Nations’ meeting requests about the Carney-Smith MOU.

A former adviser to Justin Trudeau, Supriya Dwivedi, lambasted Carney’s “capitulation” to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Lloyd Axworthy, who served as foreign affairs minister under Jean Chrétien, has raised a number of alarms, including about the government’s underwhelming commitment to international law.

And former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps has warned Carney should not take female supporters for granted after his refusal to embrace a feminist foreign policy.

Tearing the tent

The Liberal Party of Canada is, and has long been, a “big tent” party, made up of “blue,” free-market-focused types and activist, “small-l” Liberals. That tent is key to the party’s electoral triumphs. Notably, though, the party’s activist wing has supplied most often the rhetoric and policies that have won Liberal campaign victories, including the last one. With rare exception, the Liberal party performs better when it runs from the left.

Activist Liberals also have had the most success advancing progressive policies and blocking regressive actions within the party. This wing of Liberals pushed a cautious Chrétien government forward on same-sex marriage and persuaded the Paul Martin government to back down on joining the George W. Bush-era U.S. missile defence scheme.

Given such precedents, more Liberals should be willing to confront the reality that their party under Carney — a neophyte to both politics and the party — is not just occupying one side of the tent but increasingly straying outside it.

Consider last month’s federal budget. Rather than the promised transformation, Carney delivered a “trickle down” investment strategy reminiscent of the failed policy approach of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. While providing subsidies to the fossil fuel and big tech sectors, the Liberal government is eliminating 40,000 public service positions (in addition to the jobs that will be lost due to cuts to Canada Post).

While helping the wealthy by scrapping the luxury tax on yachts, fancy cars and unoccupied second homes, Ottawa is making life harder for those struggling by reducing tuition grants to low-income students, mandating a new co-payment for refugees to access some health-care services and even ending free postage for people who are blind.

As they embrace the oil and gas industry, the Carney Liberals are cosying up to the tech sector, including with generous public funds for artificial intelligence despite widespread concerns and expert warnings.

In fact the Liberals are taking policy and speech ideas from Build Canada, a controversial coalition of tech elites promoting a policy vision deemed “indistinguishable from Silicon Valley clichés.” That news followed the revelation Ottawa is embedding tech industry representatives within government, a specific Build Canada proposal.

It’s shocking that the Liberals are doing this even as the leadership of these industries continues to work, directly or through dark-money-funded surrogates, to undermine Canadian ideals and achievements like medicare, the Charter and even our national sovereignty.

Equally baffling is the government’s lowering of its elbows with regard to the Trump administration even as the U.S. releases a new national security strategy that provides a blueprint for foreign meddling. Vice-President JD Vance foreshadowed this recently, claiming Canada’s living standards “have stagnated” and blaming “diversity” and “immigration insanity” that was the “fault” of Canadian leaders and voters.

The time is now

For Liberals who think they are playing for time in pacifying Trump or being politically astute in appropriating Conservative policies or undercutting Alberta separation by signing the MOU, it is worth invoking the now-clichéd phrase “Skate to where the puck is going.” As it stands, the Carney government is fanning on the shot and sliding headfirst into the boards.

The private sector jobs the Liberals promise to “catalyze” are, at best, in the future. In the present, too many Canadians are struggling to afford food, rent and mortgages. Public sector workers whose jobs will soon be cut will only increase the number of Canadians struggling. There are no new income supports being provided by the government to help these Canadians, and the promised generational investments in housing are proving underwhelming, squeezed out by military spending.

Carney’s disparity-widening tax cuts for higher-income Canadians are likely to breed resentment that will be exploited by powerful private interests using tech platforms the government declines to regulate.

The Liberals’ rollback of climate policies will exaggerate, not ease, health and safety risks from floods, forest fires and heat waves.

Eventually, the compounding layers of public despair will create the conditions for authoritarian movements to thrive.

None of this bodes well for the Liberal party. There is a wide body of evidence demonstrating that adoption of right-wing policies does not benefit progressive political parties. Indeed, oligarchs and authoritarians do not like Liberals, which is why they backed the Pierre Poilievre Conservatives in the last election.

More importantly, none of this bodes well for Canada.

This moment demands, in the words of former interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, “our moral integrity.” Canadians need a much stronger, more ambitious and more values-based effort from the Carney government — one that more closely aligns with the mandate given by voters last spring.

It is time to fight. Guilbeault stepped down from cabinet to do just that. It is time more Liberals — from ministers and MPs to party elders and grassroots partisans — step down, speak out and stand up for the good of the country.

[Top photo: Liberal MP Steven Guilbeault resigned from cabinet on Nov. 27 after PM Mark Carney signed a pipeline-affirming MOU with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Photo by Adrian Wyld, the Canadian Press.]