Do the Liberals still have time on their side? The signs say the opposite is happening

Exactly a year ago in P.E.I. following the Liberals' federal cabinet retreat, I wrote that ministers believed they could counter growing support for Conservatives with the passage of time.

Today, a year later, they still believe that, despite multiple indicators in the interim that the opposite is happening.

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The lead that started to mount a year ago has grown and cemented. The Tories – then a handful of percentage points ahead of the Liberals – are now anywhere from 15 to 20 points ahead in the polls and have been since February. Those same polls, perhaps even more significantly, show Canadians are not thrilled with the direction the country is taking. And before you come at me and say polls are just polls, they became reality at the end of June when the Liberals suffered a shocking loss in the Toronto-St. Paul's byelection, a riding the party had held for 30 years and one even the Michael Ignatieff-led version of the party retained in 2011.

It's against that backdrop ministers gathered this week for a retreat in Halifax, their first collective public appearance since that byelection loss. Liberals acknowledged the loss was significant when it happened and promised to inform their response by listening to Canadians this summer. It appears Canadians told them to keep on keeping on.

There is no escaping that messaging, personally delivered by the prime minister to kick the retreat off and repeated often by others: Canadians want us to keep delivering for them.

Minister after minister lined up at the microphone to say just that, and publicly pronounce their support for the prime minister. Even on the policy front – new rules for temporary foreign workers (hinted at since March), tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (following U.S. and EU moves to do the same) and a working group to look at inter-provincial trade barriers and productivity – it did not exactly send the message that the loss was internalized and big change is on the way.

Part of what is informing the approach is the sense among people at the very top that the economic picture at the individual level is improving thanks to interest and inflation rates on the decline. At the outset of the retreat, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon called it improving "economic optimism."

The bet? That as the economic well-being of Canadians improves they will see the light: the government has helped make their lives better, and is putting more on the table to make your life even better, and Pierre Poilievre will take that stuff away and goodness knows what else. Plus, Liberals will argue they're positive and he's negative.

To be clear, that IS the hypothesis on the table, and my observation is half of the ministers around the table believe it, while the other half are resigned to say they believe it, which of course isn't the same thing. "What are we supposed to do?" one of them kidded to me on the sidelines of the retreat. A few of them conveyed the recent positive vibes in the Democratic Party south of the border has helped push some ministers into believing, at the very least, voters will buy the message.

To be fair the hypothesis contains some truths: inflation rates are now back to a normal range (if grapes start costing less than $15 a bunch I too may feel optimistic about the future) and interest rates are starting to slowly come down (Canada is the first G7 country to see that happen). And while we do know what Poilievre wouldn't do (keep the carbon tax), details are scarce about what else he would roll back. Plus, his message is as far from sunny ways as you can get. All of that is true.

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But the idea that lower interest rates and prices abating at a level 20 per cent higher than they were three years ago will all of a sudden prompt Canadians to take a second, wide-eyed look at the Liberals – well, that isn't a strategy – it's a hope. It hinges on many what-ifs, and doesn't take into account that some people are just tired of the prime minister, in the same way I remember being on the campaign trail in 2015 and people were tired of then-prime minister Stephen Harper. It happens.

People pass the Bank of Canada in Ottawa, July 24, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

It's also a conscious decision not to do something else. There are a few options, ranging from pretty obvious to very obvious.

They could of course switch out their leader – "absolutely not," according to current Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who until a few weeks ago was maybe being replaced by former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.

If that's not going to happen – and not a single minister or staffer I spoke to thinks it will – the advice they're hearing from people at the retreat is to put a handful of big, bold and new things on the agenda that represent drastic change, and put the Tories in a spot where they have to articulate a position instead of just oppose. In essence, tell people why you want to stick around. Give them a reason.

Both ideas seem to have been rejected, the latter for fear of offending various special interest groups and a hesitation to believe wholesale change is actually necessary. In their place, the prime minister insists he will remain, and there's a new working group to solve a problem that existed before the Liberals came to government and was never fixed over the last nine years.

Another. Working. Group.

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There's more. Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told CTV News at the retreat his government plans to fight for Canadians and deliver, deliver, deliver. "Hope is contagious," Champagne said.

What does that mean? I have asked that question probably close to a hundred times and I don't have an answer. Maybe people aren't paying attention yet though, maybe grapes will cost $8 a bunch, maybe Poilievre will really screw up. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

The Liberals think they've got time on their side for all that to happen. Maybe they're right. What if they're not?