Policy Announcements and Preparing for New US President: A Look at the Liberal Cabinet Retreat

Facing political headwinds, the Liberal cabinet has wrapped up its annual summer retreat in Halifax before the full party caucus meets and stares down another key byelection next month.
That election is a source of great interest for the governing Liberals, but so is finding a way to gain back popular support at home. The cabinet retreat came two months after the Liberals’ surprise by-election loss to the Conservatives in the riding of Toronto–St. Paul’s, which had been held by the party since 1993.
Following the Liberal defeat in Toronto–St. Paul’s byelection and bad poll numbers, amid calls by some current and former MPs to step down, Trudeau said he’ll be staying on and he will have to present to his MPs a vision for the next 14 months before the federal election.
A divided opposition with the NDP and the Bloc Québécois having a good showing could be what saves the Liberal seat. In any case, the results will be a weathervane for the Montreal area, which like Toronto has been dominated by Liberals. A byelection will also take place in Winnipeg on the same day to replace the NDP’s Daniel Blaikie, but Liberals there are unlikely to be a major factor.
Sept. 16 is also the day the House of Commons will resume sitting after the summer break. Government House Leader Karina Gould, coming back from a seven-month maternity leave, did not have details to share about her party’s legislative agenda for the fall parliamentary session.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the cabinet retreat on Aug. 27, Gould said she would listen to her colleagues and craft an agenda that “reflects the needs and hopes of Canadians.”
With unemployment trending upward and Canada’s labour market improving, the federal government will be refusing TFW applications in cities with unemployment rates over 6 percent, capping the number of foreign workers as part of the total workforce that can be hired through the program’s low-wage stream, and reducing the maximum duration of employment for temporary workers in the low-wage stream from two years to one.
Ahead of the retreat, Ottawa also announced it had added 56 new properties to the public lands bank of locations suitable for long-term leases, allowing developers to build more housing. These include former Canada Post sites, military bases, and federal office buildings.