This time last year, the new U.S. President Donald Trump forced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to press the reset button on his government.

Isn’t it time for the Trudeau government to give itself another shakeup? How about a new Speech from the Throne?

Maybe it isn’t all that surprising that Liberals are taking their sweet time getting around to their second act. In the more than two years since they were sworn into office, we’ve learned that it takes them quite a while to get things done: appointments, consultations, passing legislation and so on. That’s not a matter of opinion — it’s backed up by data.

Last month, for instance, the Trudeau government set a record for vacant appointments: 594 jobs either unfilled or occupied by someone still in the post after the expiry date.

Meanwhile, an analysis by Global News highlighted the snail’s pace of legislation under Trudeau — roughly half the output of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s last government over the same period of time (34 to 61.) Last fall was particularly unproductive, with fewer bills introduced than under any government going back to 2001, Global recently reported.

Trudeau, in his recent cross-country travels, said people should be looking at the quality of his government’s legislative record, not just quantity — the real-world impact of legislation passed by Parliament. “If people actually compared the impact of what we’ve done with what the previous government actually got done, people are really feeling the difference,” Trudeau said Tuesday in an interview with CBC Radio in Halifax.

“We’ve done really, really big things and we’ve done them in ways that respect Parliament [and with] a more independent Senate … Yes, perhaps [this may] pose certain challenges in terms of the pace of things through the House [of Commons] but the size of the things we’ve done have made a deep and lasting impact in the opportunities that Canadians and their families have.”

Maybe. This current session of Parliament is a long one — 775 days from the first Throne Speech to today — but it’s not unusually long. Again, some numbers: Harper’s first parliamentary session after winning his majority in 2011 lasted 834 days. The longest session of Parliament I could find in this or the past century belonged to Trudeau’s father. After he won the 1980 election, Trudeau Sr. kept Parliament in session for a whopping 1,325 days, waiting until 1983 to present a new Throne Speech.

Beyond numbers or new U.S. presidents, there is one very good reason to have a new Throne Speech now: the last one is starting to look seriously out of date. Beyond numbers or new U.S. presidents, there is one very good reason to have a new Throne Speech now: the last one is starting to look seriously out of date.

Presumably, this Trudeau government isn’t aspiring to that record. As those who remember that era will recall, a lot of the political action in those years was extra-parliamentary — federal-provincial constitutional conferences leading up to the 1982 patriation of the Constitution. That kind of thing isn’t on the current Trudeau government’s agenda.

But beyond numbers or new U.S. presidents, there is one very good reason to have a new Throne Speech now: the last one is starting to look seriously out of date. Those promises that once looked sunny-ways shiny and new in 2015 have either been fulfilled — or displaced.

In the “done” list, we can check off the Throne Speech’s promises on the child tax benefit, enhancements to the Canada Pension Plan and a new health accord with the provinces. (That last promise didn’t exactly land as one accord, as it turned out, but the government did manage to make individual deals with all the provinces and territories; Manitoba, the final holdout, signed on at the end of last summer.)

Most of the other 2015 Throne Speech promises now look dated too, either because they’ve been abandoned (electoral reform) or because delivering them turned out be a source of ongoing negative news and headaches (the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women).

And of course, Trump’s presidency has since made parts of the 2015 speech look like they were written by someone wearing rose-coloured glasses. Consider these phrases, for instance:

“The Government will strengthen its relationship with allies, especially with our closest friend and partner, the United States … And to expand economic opportunities for all Canadians, the Government will negotiate beneficial trade agreements, and pursue other opportunities with emerging markets.”

Ah, memories.

No government wants to look old. But this government has a particular aversion to looking tired and aged, what with all its talk of generational change and connecting to young people and new Canadians.

The next Speech from the Throne will be read by a new face — Governor-General Julie Payette. If the government holds out until later this year, the speech may even be read in a new place — the Government Conference Centre that’s due to become the Senate’s temporary home sometime this year. Certainly those optics would help the two-year-old Trudeau government show that it’s still interested in looking new.

But a government starting to get a reputation for glacial progress might not want to wait until then. It’s time for a second act — and a new Throne Speech.

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