The half-way mark of the Trudeau government this week is an excellent time to assess its performance and to look back as well as ahead to Liberal prospects for re-election in 2019. So far, many commentators remain unimpressed.

How to assess this government? For a start, we can look at promises made in the 2015 election campaign and resulting record of achievement. According to the non-partisan initiative called the TrudeauMetre – run by the group Polimeter – the Trudeau Liberals made a whopping 226 promises in the last campaign.

These analysts say the government has achieved 58 of these along with 73 in progress, for a total of 131. Of the 226, 59 promises have not yet been taken up and 36 have been outright broken, for a total of 95. Prominent among promises kept are various tax measures; prominent among those broken is of course the pledge to change Canada’s electoral system. So depending on your point of view, the glass is either half full or half empty on Liberal promises at the half-way point.

As interesting as this exercise may be, it is not adequate to the task at hand. Canadians will not be sitting with a scorecard based on 226 promises when they vote next time. They will be thinking about how the government is dealing with the big issues at hand. This may well include views about various promises fulfilled and broken – but it will include much more than that. Governments not only have to deal with their pledges but have to deal with new and emerging circumstances. And it’s the new challenges that are often so crucial.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper faced an unexpected financial crisis in 2008-2009 when in government. It is worth mentioning that Harper promised austerity in response to the crisis but ended up introducing a stimulus package. He broke a promise. But his government was seen to have handled this crisis extremely well and was rewarded with a majority government in 2011.

The Trudeau government has its own unexpected crisis and that is the shock of a Donald Trump-led U.S. administration and the resulting threat to trade relations. This file will loom large in how the Liberals are assessed in 2019. The issues besetting them now – the poor launch of both the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and the small business tax reforms – may not even figure in the next campaign.

Two factors will help the incumbents.

First, Canadians usually reward even a modestly competent government with a second term. The Chrétien-Martin Liberals won four election victories; the Harper Conservatives won three. So unless the Liberals are exceptionally inept, and there is no sign of that, history will work in their favour.

And second, a strong economy will help their prospects. Economic growth and job growth have impressive over the recent period, and barring a massive downturn, the incumbents are bound to benefit.

There is one more way that we might assess the Trudeau Liberals. When I was digging through the polling data from the 2015 election, one fact jumped out at me, and that was the huge desire for change. Depending on question wording, a frequent finding was that 60 to 70 per cent of Canadians wanted “change.” This is what Canadians voted for and so we can ask whether this government has delivered.

The answer has to be “yes.” The policy changes have been significant. The Liberal promise to run a deficit of $10 billion (now $17 billion in 2016-17) and spend it on infrastructure and other programs represents substantial change from the Harper Conservatives. Carbon pricing, legalizing marijuana, the child tax credit, and ending income splitting represent significant change. The first act of the new government was to bringing back the long-form census. There are many other examples. There can be no doubt that we have policy change.

But there is more. The entire demeanor, tone, presentation and language of this prime minister are different, representing a huge break from the past. Half the cabinet is female. The look and feel is vastly different. Words like gender and feminist would never be uttered in the previous government but today are commonplace. The change has been profound.

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By focusing on the topics and travails of the day, we sometimes miss the big picture.

Donna Dasko teaches in the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto and is former Senior Vice-President of the polling firm Environics Research Group.

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