For weeks, the Conservatives have been snarking about how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apparently considers his job to be "ceremonial," like the Governor General, and this past week, Andrew Scheer has been repeating the same point as he headed off to the United Kingdom on a "trade mission" to meet with senior officials there. Of course, as with anything the Conservatives try to use as a cudgel against the government, it's largely disingenuous and just a wee bit mendacious, but it does raise the question about just what is the role of the prime minister when it comes to high-level meetings?
By way of context, Trudeau's comments came up as part of now-former Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson's report on his vacation with the Aga Khan at his private island, and the finding that he violated the Conflict of Interest Act. In it, Dawson recounted Trudeau's views of the relationship with the Aga Khan, and how that played into a bilateral meeting in May of 2016.
"The meetings he attends as Prime Minister are not business meetings," Dawson stated about Trudeau's testimony. "Rather, they are high-level meetings centred on relationship building and ensuring that all parties are moving forward together. Specific issues or details are worked out before, subsequently or independently of any meeting he attends."
Further on, Dawson added that "He said his role in any meeting is to further develop a relationship between the individual and Canada. Mr. Trudeau views his involvement with the Aga Khan and his Canadian institutions as ceremonial in nature, similar to interactions he would have with any global leader or distinguished global citizen."
From this, the Conservatives derived that Trudeau allegedly views his role as "ceremonial," but of course, that's a stretch. Part of this is likely the lasting impression left by Stephen Harper, who was a famed control freak who kept an active hand in all aspects of the government, and this mythology that developed around him as being a one-man government. The truth is a little more exciting than that, and he certainly had ministers and ministers of state for whom he let them run their departments without much in the way of adult supervision, but this notion that the PM should be the alpha and omega of the Government of Canada persists nevertheless.
Since coming to office, Trudeau has had a different leadership style, which he stated early on was to be "Cabinet government." Staffers I had spoken to who came from places like the highly centralized Queen's Park affirmed that in comparison, Trudeau's cabinet was positively free-wheeling. We have seen some of that in public as well, with uneven performances by ministers, at least one of whom was bounced from Cabinet as a result, and others for whom they have had a nearly legendary inability to get their offices staffed properly and to move their (substantial) files along at a speed that is merited for the workload that is expected of them.
Which isn't to say that there still isn't a centralizing influence by Trudeau he has absolutely made moves that centralize power within his office, whether it's in kicking the senators out of his caucus, thus depriving them of both institutional memory and voices that will push back in the caucus room when he oversteps his authority among a large number of first-time MPs who don't know any better, or in how he rewrote his party's constitution to consolidate power in his position as leader, eliminating most of the provincial grassroots structures that could have challenged his dominance. Unlike Harper, however, Trudeau has managed to do that centralizing with a smile rather than the "laser eyes of death" or kicking furniture as Harper was known to do. There have also been staff changes that point to a shifting focus by the PMO to take a firmer hand with some ministers, but again, this doesn't seem to be anything like the level of control that the Harper PMO exerted in all aspects of parliament to the point that they tried to illegitimately extend that reach to independent institutions like the Senate (and recall Nigel Wright's complaints that there weren't sufficient levers for the PMO to pull in the Upper Chamber when it came to trying to get recalcitrant senators to do their bidding).
With that in mind, this ethos of cabinet government certainly extends to how Trudeau has dealt with foreign heads of government, and senior officials. By letting his ministers and officials do the work (and indeed, take the credit where it is due) without micro-managing, he does seem to be living up to the notion that the prime ministers is the "first among equals" at the cabinet table (though this isn't really true he is, after all, the one who has the power to appoint and dismiss ministers at his pleasure). And by leaving his own role to do the relationship building, and the public relations, he's playing to his own strengths, and letting his officials play to theirs. For the life of me, I can't see why this should be viewed as scandalous or as some kind of dereliction of his duty.
This having been said, I have to wonder what kind of signals Andrew Scheer thinks he's sending when he is taking it upon himself to jet off to London under the pretence that he's building relationships for when he becomes prime minister an enormous presumption if there ever was one. He says Canadians want to see someone taking the job seriously and yet he undertakes the trip under the guise of laying the groundwork for a post-Brexit free trade agreement that the current government has already committed to working toward (which they can't even start until Brexit happens, and we still don't have a timeline for that), and has the gall to refer to it as a "trade mission" despite having no authority to engage in any kinds of talks. And if it's a mission with no authority and is dedicated to something already in progress, it would seem to me that the trip is entirely ceremonial, no?
