Six weeks ago, in this space, I somewhat idly speculated that if there was a weak link in Cabinet as the government's response to the economic calamity brought about by the global pandemic, it was probably Bill Morneau disliked and distrusted by the business community, and completely unable to communicate the government's emergency measures and recovery plans.  A couple of weeks later, the revelation that Morneau had cut a $41,000 cheque to the WE organization for a donor trip that he neglected to disclose or seek ethics approval for made Morneau's continued presence in Cabinet untenable, and it became a waiting game to see how his exit would be orchestrated.  And on Monday night, Morneau announced his resignation amidst some back-patting and this trademarked pabulum non-answers, with the face-saving announcement that he planned to run for the role of secretary general for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with the full support of prime minister Justin Trudeau.

The week leading up to Morneau's departure was marked by a campaign of leaks organized by PMO with some responses by Morneau's office about tensions between him and Trudeau over policy differences, and Morneau playing the role of the more fiscally prudent of the pair being overridden by the desire to keep spending, and the shape of recovery.  It seems that the tensions were real, according to my sources, who noticed them pre-COVID, but became very apparent over the design of the emergency wage subsidy.  Those same sources also noticed that the Morneau had been effectively sidelined since he ballsed-up the rollout of the small business tax changes, and that the real decision-makers in the finance department became the bureaucracy and not the minister's office, unlike how things happened in other departments.  There was also the further indignity of being given an associate minister in the form of Mona Fortier, who was branded the Minister for Middle Classâ„¢ Prosperity®, presumably to try and better communicate the messages that Morneau was chronically incapable of doing himself.

We also can't forget that Morneau's staff was becoming a problem for this government.  They were implicated as being prime harassers of Jody Wilson-Raybould during the Double-Hyphen Affair, they allowed Morneau's strings to be pulled by SNC-Lavalin in drafting the deferred prosecution agreement legislation and inserting it into a budget implementation bill, it's pretty certain that they were the geniuses that tried to insert a clause in the emergency pandemic legislation that would give the government unconstitutional control over taxation without parliamentary approval for two years, and I'm fairly certain that it was those staffers and not those in PMO that leaked sensitive Statistics Canada jobs data in order to burnish their minister's image.  That Morneau was unable to reign them in was a problem that continued to fester.

The decision to use the OECD position as the face-saving gesture is a deeply curious one because there is virtually no chance that Morneau could actually get the job, making its credibility very suspect.  After all, Morneau has almost no international profile, and his resignation is under a cloud given the repeated ethics violations.  And then there are the geopolitics that come with these incredibly competitive positions international trade lawyer Mark Warner tweeted that he was at the OECD during the last time a Canadian served as secretary general, and it was only possible because the Europeans saw him as the American candidate something that is very unlikely to happen in the current context.

The choice of the OECD does, however, speak to an underlying pathology of this government, which has to do with a lot of the chatter that surrounds Trudeau and his inner circle that they are looking to transition to international positions post-Canadian politics, whether it's with the UN or other world bodies.  The problem is that Canadians rarely have a big enough profile to make it to the "big leagues" as a post-political career, making it a dubious strategy.  Of course, given this government's adherence to influencer culture, their big talk and progressive branding trying to project the image that they have the competence to play these global leadership roles, even if it feels an awful lot like trying to fake it until they make it.

So what's next for the government?  I am reliably informed that there will be no tears shed inside the caucus room for Morneau's departure, as he was unresponsive to his fellow Liberals and not liked by them which the small business tax changes amply demonstrated.  While the pundit class prematurely determined that Mark Carney would somehow be named the new finance minister, with a safe Liberal seat in Toronto Centre now vacated for him to parachute into, that fortunately is not what wound up happening (which is good, because Carney needs to stay the hell out of politics lest he damage the Bank of Canada).  As a bit of an aside, for the hours between Morneau's departure and Chrystia Freeland being named to the role, there was an Acting Minister under the succession plan in the Orders in Council, who is Fortier, effectively making her Canada's first female finance minister, though the real honour will go to Freeland.

With Freeland taking the role of finance minister, passing on her intergovernmental affairs responsibilities onto Dominic LeBlanc, we can be assured that there is someone in the job who is liked by the caucus and who has a reputation of listening to them and taking their concerns seriously, which is already a step up from Morneau.  Freeland is also a far better communicator than Morneau ever could be, which can only help the government going forward.  This leaves her to be the architect of the economic recovery, with the "rebuild better" mantra floating around, meaning more green economic measures, and potentially some more creativity in plugging holes in the social safety net now that the vulnerabilities have been exposed.  Morneau wasn't the right choice for the job, and we'll see if the optimism of making Freeland the new "minister of everything" is warranted, particularly if this is a test of her ability to succeed Trudeau as leader.

Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics