Matt Gurney: Joly's Halifax humiliation was at least on-brand for her government

Her terrible performance on stage was, if nothing else, consistent with how the Trudeau government approaches every issue: a comms plan instead of an action plan

Oh my God.

By: Matt Gurney

Whoo boy. Mélanie Joly has got to go. Now. Today, if possible. Because we’ve got problems enough without, uh, well … maybe I should just explain what happened.

Joly is, of course, our foreign affairs minister. She and Bill Blair, the national defence minister, constituted the “star power” the Trudeau government sent to the Halifax International Security Forum, which I attended late last month. Joly would have, no doubt, taken part in many direct meetings with allied counterparts and various stakeholders behind closed doors during the three-day event. I can’t tell you what happened there. I can tell you, though, what happened during her public, on the record appearances. One of them in particular. And I can tell you what happened after it.

It wasn’t good.

I covered a bit of the basics about the Forum itself — what it is, who funds it, who shows up — in my last column about this year’s event, so I’ll skip the recap this time. Except for this: the event schedule is divided up into on-the-record panel discussions, off-the-record sessions (generally, those are the more interesting ones), and just lots of slack time for networking and gabbing over coffee and routinely excellent food. Joly took part in two of the on-the-record sessions. In one, she gave introductory remarks. They were about what you’d expect. The other time, she was a panelist. And that’s the one where things went wrong for Joly.

Joly was on a panel titled “Era of Unity: Victory for Ukraine,” moderated by Russian political dissident and chess grandmaster (uh oh) Garry Kasparov. Kasparov can be an aggressive moderator, and he and Joly sparred about the value of the United Nations. (I’m more of Kasparov’s view on the value of the UN, to put it mildly, but Joly more or less held her own under his questioning.) Kasparov followed up with a question about tangible support by Canada for Ukraine. He set it up as a hypothetical — he alluded to the recent re-election of Donald Trump, and noted that there are many who’d be happy to sell out Ukraine to secure some kind of peace with Russia. “Will Canada step in … will Canada play a bigger role? Canada is an important country, as you said,” Kasparov put to Joly. “When you have free time from diplomatic victories at the United Nations,” he asked, a bit mockingly, “can you help Ukraine win?”

Oh dear, I thought. This could be bad.

And it was. And then it got worse.

To Kasparov’s specific question — would Canada help Ukraine win? Would Canada step up and do more? — Joly replied at length about how much she believes in defence. And collaboration. And working together with allies. And why we need an Arctic strategy. And the value of deterrence. And the need for a stronger security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. And then some stuff about North Korean missiles. And then a nice bit about Canada’s long friendship with Ukraine. And how Canada, even though we’re smaller than the U.S., will always advocate for Ukraine at the NATO table.

I haven’t quoted directly from what the minister said. I am conscious about not wanting this entire column to become long quotes. You can see the entire exchange between Kasparov and Joly here, starting at around the 37 minute mark. What I can tell you as someone who watched it in person was that there was a real vibe shift — see, I can talk about vibes, too! — in the room as Joly spoke. Kasparov had asked a straightforward question and he’d gotten an answer that seemed as if Joly was envisioning a globe in her head, and spinning it, and just commenting on everything that came to mind as a different region came into view. Oh! There’s the Indian Ocean! Say something about the Indo-Pacific!

It was bad. Everyone in the room knew it was bad, with the possible exception of Joly.

But Joly hadn’t hit bottom yet. And this time, I will provide some quotes.

After Joly wrapped up answering Kasparov’s specific question about how Canada could step up its support for Ukraine by listing a variety of geographic locales that can be found on Earth, Kasparov said that he knew he was running out of time and that there was more to discuss, but that he wanted to ask one more question. He then qualified that by saying, well, actually, it was an expensive question. Here’s what happened next. (All the quotes have been cleaned up for clarity, as there was quite a bit of crosstalk; see the video if you don’t trust me.)

Kasparov: “Everyone talks about seizing Russian assets. We don’t know exactly how much, if it’s $250 billion, or $300 billion, but one thing we know is that there is $191 billion sitting in Belgium at Euroclear. And I think you know that about 10% of this amount is in Canadian dollars. You can recall this money and give it to Ukraine. It’s your money. It’s yours. Canada has all the rights to go for the money that is allocated in Canadian dollars.” (Note from author: For clarity, “Euroclear” is a European bank that is holding the seized Russian assets.)

Joly: “Garry, we’ve said that for a long time.”

Kasparov: “Said is not, said no — words are cheap. We’re talking about money.”

Joly: “No, but. We’ve been working among the G7 …” [Trails off.]

Kasparov: “Okay. Fine. You’re working.”

Joly: “We were the first country in the democracies that created legislation that is about not only being able to …. [some verbal stumbling here, with a few attempts to start a sentence that go nowhere] … also seize people’s assets and sell them. So.”

Kasparov: “They are sitting in one place.”

Joly: “I hear you.”

Kasparov: “I can give you more information if you want.”

Unintelligible crosstalk, but then Joly: “She is aware of it. And she’s of Ukrainian descent.” (Note from author: She was almost certainly talking about Chrystia Freeland here.)

Kasparov: “Excellent!”

And there was laughter in the room. Not a lot. But some. They were not laughing with Joly, I’m afraid.

And then Kasparov moved on.

And I sighed a little bit in relief, for Joly. I honestly did. It had become uncomfortable to watch. I think the transcript above tells the story. And I’ve tried to be as fair as I can be. Check out the video and judge my efforts for yourself. But what the transcript can’t show, and what the video doesn’t fully show, is the awkward shuffling in the room during that exchange. During quite a bit of it, but especially the section quoted above. Kasparov wasn’t being cruel. He was just asking specific questions about what specific things Canada could do. And Joly couldn’t handle it.

I should note two things. Joly wasn’t speaking in her native language, and her English is a lot better than my French! But, mind you, Kasparov isn’t a native English-speaker, either. And, Canada actually has done a lot for Ukraine. Not enough. But a lot. And I don’t think it was unfair for Joly to point that out.

But the problem that was made so clear on that stage is that Joly, and the country she represents as foreign affairs minister, is still a lot more about talk-talk than it is about doing the things. I’m going to talk a bit more about the overall vibe at the conference in a third Halifax column, one that will wrap up some thoughts in a bits-and-bites format, but if there was one thing I noticed from other people I spoke to in Halifax, across the whole of the Western alliance, it’s that the time for talking has run out. It’s time to do things.

And Canada either hasn’t accepted that yet, or hasn’t been able to do anything yet. And I’m not sure it can — the constant confusion between saying a thing and doing a thing is a rot that runs pretty deep in the Trudeau government, and it comes from the top.

And that’s a critical thing to understand. There has been a lot of criticism of Joly and her job performance. I heard a ton of it after her remarks in Halifax, and was asked more than once some variation of, “Oh my God, what’s up with your foreign affairs minister?” Justin Ling, a Canadian journalist and friend of The Line, was also at the Forum, and wrote for the Toronto Star a column that was snappily but accurately headlined “It’s time to fire Mélanie Joly.” My colleague Jen Gerson was also quite savage toward Joly’s performance in our latest The Line Podcast episode.

And I agree with both of my friends. They’re right. But what I think isn’t getting the attention it deserves is that Joly is downstream of the real problem. Our foreign affairs minister, or what was left of her after Kasparov moved on in his questioning, is actually a pretty conventional Trudeau-government minister. They all try to get away with this rhetorical nonsense at least some of the time, and some of them seem to have no other setting at all. Joly might be especially bad at doing it in public, but she’s not out of step with how Trudeau and his party have governed this country for the last nine years.

Let me give you an example that has nothing to do with defence, the Halifax Forum, Joly, and all the rest. Shortly after I returned home to Toronto, I was watching the news and happened to catch a few minutes of Justin Trudeau answering reporters’ questions. I don’t remember what event it was at — I really just caught the tail-end of whatever the event had been. But I was able to get a quick recording of one of the reporter’s questions (I’m sorry, I don’t know her name or what outlet she works for), plus the PM’s response. Check it out.

Reporter: Some Atlantic governments say they were blindsided by your GST holiday. Will you compensate the provinces for lost revenue?

Trudeau: I think every provincial government across the country understands how important it is to be there for Canadians who are facing real pressures around the cost of living. That’s what we’re doing. That’s why we’re stepping up to support Canadians. I’m expecting provinces who see the challenges that their citizens are facing to realize that this is a way they can be there for people as they face the challenges of the next few months.

See? See what he did there? The question was about a financial transfer from one order of government to another to offset a financial loss caused by a shift in federal taxation policy. The PM responded by talking about how Canadians are feeling and how he’s here to help. The question, and it was a perfectly good question on a matter of genuine public interest, was utterly ignored.

I don’t think that this PM, or his government, have ever properly grappled with the kind of damage they do to our democracy and our civic life when they approach literally everything like it’s a chance to spin a message. And I don’t think they ever will until they’re blown out of office in the kind of landslide walloping the polls tell us is heading their way. It’s the kind of political realization that only seems possible in the aftermath of a catastrophic defeat, which is probably what makes the defeat impossible to avoid once a government reaches this stage of terminal decline.

I’m not the first to notice this failure in the Trudeau style of governing. It isn’t even the first time I’ve brought it up. And it’s not the worst example of this instinct I’ve seen; that was during the 2021 election, when Trudeau was asked a question that had absolutely nothing to do with abortion, couldn’t come up with an answer, so he put on his most serious voice and intoned, “We will never apologize for standing up for a woman’s right to choose.”

Great! Me neither! But that wasn’t the question.

One of the inherent failings of this prime minister and his government is that they approach everything as if it’s a communications exercise, in need of only the properly constructed and capably delivered talking point. This is a government that doesn’t answer questions, but instead uses questions as opportunities to deliver an approved message. In a perfect world, the approved message, like the one the PM gave to the reporter who asked a totally fair question about the financial impact of the GST holiday, is at least somewhat related to the question. But as noted above with the abortion example, an actual tangible connection is a nice-to-have, not a must-have.

Joly got gutted like a fish on stage by a Russian chessmaster. It was embarrassing to watch — it was painful to watch. And I really do have some human sympathy for her — we’ve all had someone get the better of us at some point, and it ain’t fun. But this was too big a flop. Ling is right — she’s gotta go. It’s time. It’s past time.

I’m well aware of the fact that this column will run on the same day that The New York Times is running a profile of Joly, and wondering whether she might be a Trudeau successor, should the PM step aside or be tossed. And the hell of it is, I don’t reject the premise of the NYT piece at all. I have no doubt that for a faction of the Trudeau-era Liberal party, Joly would indeed be the preferred successor. That’s true. This is also true: that’s the faction of the party that is largely responsible for the fact that Pierre Poilievre, of all people, is currently tracking for possibly the largest parliamentary majority in Canadian history. These things are related.

Joly has got to go. But unless her departure also marks a fundamental shift in how the Liberals approach governing, unless her last day at foreign affairs is also the day when they realize that they’re going to need to present our allies with accomplishments and tangible proposals for doing more immediately, not comms plans and spin about hitting our goals eight years from now, swapping out Joly with a competent minister — Anand? Anyone else left? Bueller? Is Marc Garneau in orbit, or can we throw him back in? — isn’t really going to fix the real problem here.

Because the honest answer to Kasparov’s questions probably goes something like this: no, Canada wouldn’t step up. No, Canada wouldn’t help Ukraine win. We’d want to, and we’d give the best speeches in NATO about why Ukraine should win, but we wouldn’t be able to actually do anything. Because this country, especially under this government, is a lot better at talking than doing. And we’ve invested so much time and energy in the talking that I sometimes have this awful, creeping feeling that it’s not per se that we’ve decided not to do things, it’s that we have leaders who have genuinely forgotten that saying a thing isn’t the same as doing a thing. They may be honestly and sincerely confused on that point, victims of their own messaging plans. They’ve spun us so much they may have lost their own bearings.

And we’ve got the foreign affairs minister to prove it.

One more column from Halifax to come.

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