A little self-reflection never hurt anyone

A few quick public service announcements:

• Events: join our local holiday party on Tuesday December 16 at The Local and our NY Levee with MPP Mary-Margaret McMahon on Sunday January 11 at The Naval Club

• Canada Summer Jobs: if you’re an employer who can hire a young person this summer, the deadline to apply for a federal grant is December 11

• Local calendar: if you’ve got a good photo of Beaches-East York, email it to info@beynate.ca and we’ll do our best to include it (with attribution) in our 2026 calendar

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After 10 years of political life, it’s still possible to be surprised.

For example, I was surprised that our budget reaction video earned as much coverage as it did.

I just didn’t think the occasional (and measured!) disagreement from here in Beaches-East York was still national news. Although being quoted out of context by the Conservative leader at a strange press conference (not surprising) no doubt helped.

At that same presser, Poilievre imagined turmoil in the Liberal caucus, tried to pronounce my name correctly, and railed at the media (also not surprising). It was all deflection from his own leadership troubles, with no reflection on how he leads.

Of course, a little self-reflection never hurt anyone.

Our budget reaction video was yet another moment in my political life where I was deemed “not a team player” by some. It prompted pundit handwringing about keeping the disagreement in caucus. And it was selectively edited such that it became the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I even joined Power & Politics to respond to the silliness of the week.

At the same time, I received a lot of positive feedback from constituents, The Star’s Althia Raj argued that Poilievre could learn something in welcoming reasonable disagreement, and the Globe’s Robyn Urback made the case for more empowered MPs.

As I told Raj, not only did Prime Minister Carney welcome my specific budget response as constructive, but welcoming thoughtful disagreement more broadly is both good politics and policy.

Overwhelmingly, people locally want someone who’s going to stand up and speak their mind, show principles and a sense of honesty and integrity. And if you’re a strong leader who cares about ideas, you’ll only get better ideas and policies when you welcome that kind of challenge function.

And yes, some MPs and pundits will maintain a different view, still insisting that message discipline is everything and any disagreement should be behind closed doors.

Unsurprisingly, my view is different. As I’ve written before, so long as that disagreement is respectful, reasonable, and focused on ideas there is no reason to limit it to a private conversation with a minister or the confines of our caucus walls. As Liberal MPs, our responsibility is not only to raise issues forcefully in caucus, but to participate in and help shape a broader public debate.

Now, this may all seem like doubling down on a particular view of the role of an MP, what professor Alex Marland (in his recent book) describes as “a form of principled dissent that is increasingly rare in Canadian politics.”

But while I’m not going to change how I see the role of an MP, that doesn’t mean I always get every call right in that role. In reflecting on the last ten years, my least effective moments have been when I reacted with personal frustration and forgotten that central premise: that our disagreement should be focused on ideas.

Honesty and authenticity remain essential and we can’t shy away from sharing ideas simply because they might be taken out of context by bad faith political attacks. But we can avoid making it personal when our politics should be about ideas.