Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week removed Liberal MP Wayne Long from two government committee positions as punishment for voting alongside Conservatives on small business tax reforms.

There’s been visceral outrage across the country – including in Long’s riding – among small business owners and professionals who see the Liberal “reform” as a job-killing tax grab.

Long, a New Brunswick MP, supported a Conservative move to extend the consultation period on the federal government’s proposed tax revisions.

In retribution, he’s been de facto stripped of whatever minimal powers he’d held.

While he hasn’t been booted out of the Liberal caucus, Long – who is not a cabinet minister nor a parliamentary secretary – now has no real government duties aside from being an advocate for his constituents.

The irony of course is that Long voted the way he did precisely because he was advocating for his constituents.

He was being a good MP. And he was punished for it.

But if anything, Trudeau should listen more closely to the likes of Long because his riding is a bellwether for broader grassroots opinion.

Looking at electoral results in his Saint John-Rothesay riding it is pretty clear the riding is a swing seat that generally follows the party that forms governments.

His residents are outraged over government plans to close what the Liberals characterize as “loopholes” for the rich, as are a growing number of Canadians across the country.

“I just can’t support a process that was only 75 days long that pitted people against each other. Doctors against nurses, put farmers on the defensive and made lawyers, small business and professionals feel vilified,” Long told the CBC.

“It’s not who we are as a party [or] what I believe in,” he said. “I need to follow my heart, and, in the end, I need to look in the mirror.”

The most troubling part of all this is how dumping Long from committee posts seems to violate a major campaign pledge Trudeau made to allow “free votes in the House of Commons standard practice.”

Long’s vote appears to conform to that pledge.

Trudeau, meanwhile, is increasingly having trouble reconciling his promises and his actions.

It doesn’t look like doing politics differently, that’s for sure.