The federal Liberals managed to score yet another own-goal this week with the announcement of some technical changes to the federal carbon price backstop rules.  When the changes were leaked to the Globe and Mail, the paper spun them as a major walkback on the government's climate change plans, which it absolutely wasn't.  But rather than come out with the correct version of things, we got some empty platitudes from minister Catherine McKenna, while federal and provincial conservatives filled the airwaves with gloating and triumphalism about a supposed victory against the carbon tax. It was all wrong, but the government let them do it.

This government's inability to communicate their way out of a wet paper bag is proving to be one of their most baffling foibles beyond how baffling it is that they can't seem to muster enough competence to run proper appointment processes for vital positions like judicial posts.  On an issue like carbon pricing, where they know that the media has both a short attention span and an inability to grasp details (recall the days of Stéphane Dion's Green Shift plan, when all media coverage amounted to "it's complicated *shrug*" even though it actually wasn't), you'd think they'd actually make an effort to offer clear and concise explanations.  But no.  Instead we get Catherine McKenna to repeat, yet again, that the environment and the economy go together, and not actually explaining what the changes were and why they matter.  Oh, and McKenna will retort that the Conservatives don't have a plan, which doesn't actually counter the narrative that the Conservatives are putting forward.  Hell, the government didn't even come out with a technical briefing for the media on those changes until a full day-and-a-half later, by which point the news cycle had moved on and the narrative was set.  This should have been basic stuff, but they couldn't get it right.

The carbon pricing file has been one own-goal after another by this government because they refuse to actually challenge what the Conservatives are putting forward as a narrative particularly because they have figured out that by posing bogus questions that McKenna won't even attempt to answer, they make her look like she's incompetent. Instead of pointing out that the question is bogus, McKenna falls back to another platitude or the "where's your plan?" retort.  It makes her looks evasive, which just gives her opponents more ammunition. And this problem is endemic with this government.

Witness with the private corporation tax changes last summer because Bill Morneau stuck to the pabulum talking points and didn't actually come out to call out the egregious lies that the Conservatives (and in particular Pierre Poilievre) were spinning about them, he allowed the Conservatives to set the narrative and make Morneau look like he didn't know what he was doing.  Morneau may have been averse to the kinds of partisan communications that may have been expected of him, but that doesn't mean that he couldn't have done his part to put some more facts on the table but he didn't, and it made his ongoing consultations and tweaks to those changes look like a climbdown in the end.  (Poilievre, meanwhile, continues to spin the egregious lies about the supposed 73 percent tax hike on small businesses, and he still isn't being called out on it, particularly as he has claimed victory in supposedly stopping the government.)

There have been other examples of where this government's inability to communicate made small problems worse.  Look at the India trip, where Trudeau and company stuck to a very tight script that allowed the Conservatives to spin a massive conspiracy theory about the appearance of Jaspal Atwal at the event, the communications by the National Security Advisor, and the supposed fallout of the trip were allowed to go unchallenged.  When the Conservatives tried to spin that the tariffs on Canadian pulses were a direct result of this trip, nobody in the government called that out as a lie (the tariffs are a result of low prices resulting from a global supply glut and electioneering by the Modi government to try and win the rural vote amidst a suicide crisis among Indian farmers).

Trudeau's inability to have a clear answer on the "grope" allegations that were dug up a few weeks ago was yet another own-goal for this government's feminist agenda, especially as people kept making specious comparisons to the ouster of former MPs Massimo Pacetti and Scott Andrews.  More to the point, Trudeau's in ability to have a clear response allowed the weaponization of the #MeToo movement to carry on.

It seems absurd to me that this government appears to be unable to cope with the Conservatives' own communications strategy, which is one part bald-faced lies, and one part narrative-setting that consists entirely of using "Justin Trudeau" and "failed" in every single one of their tweets and press releases.  Instead of pushing back, calling out the lies, and actually communicating policy ideas, we just get more of the same pabulum talking points that they're helping the Middle Class and Those Looking to Join Itâ„¢.  That's it.  And along the way, because they can't push back, they can't effectively communicate policy ideas in a way that isn't drowning in the mush of those same bland talking points, they're ceding the ground to their opponents.

I'm not sure what it will take for the Liberals to wake up to the fact that these problems are of their own making.  They can't keep relying on the media to correct the record or call out Scheer's lies, because even when they do run fact-check pieces, days have gone by and narratives are set in people's minds.  The Liberals need to take ownership of how they're communicating, and to stop with this infantilizing pabulum.  But this constant habit of scoring goals on their own net and playing right into the opposition's hands because they can't actually articulate things is going to be a very big problem the closer we get to an election, when those narratives will have cemented themselves in people's minds.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics