Liberals face storm clouds as cabinet meets in Halifax

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kicks off a three-day cabinet retreat in Halifax on Sunday. The themes will be fairness and Canada-U.S. relations, but the feelings are all about déjà vu.

A year ago in Charlottetown, the cabinet hoped its annual post-summer retreat and the massive cabinet shuffle that preceded it would give new life to the Liberal government.

Spoiler alert: It did not.

Trudeau and his team are so far behind the Conservatives in the polls that if they were on a running track they’d have been lapped by now. And with the next election at most a year away, the runway to recover is growing shorter by the day.

Interest rates have started to come down. Inflation is back in a normal range. Wage growth has been strong.

But housing costs and availability remain extremely challenging, food prices are still high and the Liberals have been unable to counter messaging from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre that life has become more expensive and unsafe under Trudeau’s watch.

In June, the Liberals lost a long-held Toronto seat to the Conservatives, further eroding what was left of the fragile confidence the party had that they could stage a miraculous comeback with Trudeau still at the helm.

The cabinet met briefly online over the summer to sign off on some appointments, but the working dinner that kicks off the retreat Sunday will mark the first in-person meeting since that byelection.

Marci Surkes, the chief strategy officer at the Compass Rose government relations firm and a former senior Liberal staffer, said most cabinet retreats are 90 per cent focused on the business of government and 10 per cent on politics and caucus management. This time, she said, there may be more focus on the latter, especially in the more