Trudeau looking lonely on left

OTTAWA— J ustin Trudeau may eventually move up to a front-line political role but until then history is unlikely to record more than a trace of the first legislative initiative he moved forward Wednesday.

His wordy proposal to have a parliamentary committee study the introduction of a "national voluntary service policy for young people" is essentially an invitation to MPs to explore expanding the Katimavik program introduced in the days of his father.

As the NDP's Nathan Cullen noted on Wednesday, given the chance, as Trudeau had, to bring in a full-fledge private member's bill instead of just a motion, many rookie MPs would have come up with something slightly more ambitious for the first legislative act of their parliamentary career.

Despite its timid scope, the motion did serve one purpose and it was to formally align Trudeau with the activist wing of the Liberal caucus. Over the one-hour debate on the motion, that message was driven home further by the presence within camera range of Trudeau of Toronto MP Gerard Kennedy.

They both belong to a section of the caucus that has pretty much been reduced to marginal gestures since the de facto selection of Michael Ignatieff as leader, and the subsequent decision to support the Conservative budget.

Trudeau was not reappointed to the Liberal shadow cabinet and Kennedy, who served as industry critic under Stéphane Dion, was demoted to a second-tier role as infrastructure, communities and cities critic.

As key participants in Dion's leadership victory, neither probably expected anything more. Moreover, Kennedy did not help himself by coming out in support of Bob Rae literally hours before the latter pulled out of the race to pave the way for the Ignatieff's year-end coronation last fall.

But Kennedy and Trudeau also happen to represent two of only a handful of ridings that the Liberals actually won at the expense of other parties in last fall's election.

They campaigned on a brand of liberal activism that resonates in many core urban ridings. On that score, Trudeau's Montreal riding of Papineau and Kennedy's Parkdale-High Park are very similar in their makeup.

How Ignatieff will play in such ridings in the next election remains to be seen, given that he seems determined to move the party to the right.

Since he has become leader, he has talked a good game about building bridges to a host of natural conservative constituencies but said very little about maintaining those that link the Liberal party to more progressive ones.

On the day when Trudeau was making his modest first entry on the left-hand side of the legislative ledger, his leader was taking pot shots at National Geographic magazine for a graphic depiction of the environmental impact of the Alberta oil sands, and making a pitch to rural Canada.

There is no doubt the Liberals should try to reintroduce themselves to voters in regions like Western and rural Canada, where they no longer have much presence, but the real question is: on what basis?

Ignatieff talks about the need to make up for years of Liberal neglect, but it is really his party's stance on some of the very issues that have distinguished the Liberals from Conservatives over the past decade – like Iraq, climate change and same-sex marriage – that have kept away many of the voters he is so determined to court.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.