OTTAWA—Call them wobbles, or missteps, mistakes, or worse.

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef was forced last week to apologize for slagging opposition MPs as lazy after she tossed aside their electoral reform report.

As she stood Monday, Conservative MPs heckled they smelled “toast,” a taunt that her career was on the line.

Monsef appeared unconcerned. She had trailed into the Commons, late, sat down and asked aloud, “Where’s Jim?”

That’s her seatmate, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr. He capped last week’s approval of two new pipelines by suggesting defence and police forces would deal with protesters. Carr, an otherwise strong performer on government bench to date, was absent for Monday’s question period.

So was the prime minister.

Justin Trudeau was elsewhere in downtown Ottawa at a coding workshop for high school students to launch computer science education week. Ottawa locations are often photo op venues for the prime minister. But Trudeau was nowhere to be seen Friday when his government hastily reversed a decision on the location of a new Ottawa hospital. It left egg on the face of another star Liberal cabinet minister, Catherine McKenna, whose campaign rhetoric had backed the wrong locale and forced a lengthy, pointless re-examination.

The government also reversed another decision, and launched another lengthy re-examination. It is restarting a fighter jet procurement competition and will consider Lockheed Martin’s pricey, as-yet-not-operational F35 after all, contrary to a campaign promise.

Meanwhile it will buy 18 of the F35’s competitors. No matter that two top cabinet ministers, Harjit Sajjan and Judy Foote, are the face of the file. The government still struggles to bring clarity around what the true needs of the Air Force are.

These days, it seems, everyone — including Trudeau — has stumbled.

Trudeau’s official statement to mourn the death of Cuba’s “longest-serving,” “larger than life” unelected communist president Fidel Castro was a wrong-footed reaction he quickly tried to right by acknowledging the very next day Castro — his father’s friend — was a dictator.

It’s worth noting Trudeau’s senior advisers Gerry Butts and Katie Telford were not travelling with him when he issued the statement. It’s also worth noting the Castro clarification didn’t stop the prime minister from being booed during a video appearance at the CFL’s Grey Cup game.

And no amount of heckling has moved Trudeau, or his House leader Bardish Chagger, off the government’s defence of his and his ministers’ attendance at so-called “cash-for-access” fundraisers.

The Globe and Mail has reported Trudeau was directly lobbied at one such party — based on admissions by his host, a wealthy Vancouver businessman, who acknowledged he called on Trudeau to allow Chinese investment in seniors care, relax immigration restrictions on financiers and ease investment by foreign real-estate developers.

Whether they are miscues or gaffes, the past few weeks have seen the shine wear off the Liberal government, more than 13 months into its first mandate.

On Monday, the opposition fired a broad salvo at the government in the form of an ethical complaint about the prime minister to two separate officers of Parliament.

Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose wrote to complain about the private fundraisers to conflict-of-interest and ethics commissioner Mary Dawson and to lobbying commissioner Karen Shepherd.

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“It is wrong, it is unethical and it is actually illegal,” Ambrose said in question period. “When will the prime minister come to his senses and end this cash-for-access fundraising?”

It’s one thing for the opposition to rally and criticize the government in unison. It’s another for the government to sustain daily blows. But that’s what it appears determined to do.

On Monday, government sources and Liberal MPs who spoke to the Star argued the blows are just glancing. They said ministers like Monsef and Carr are rookies facing more criticism for small mistakes than is warranted.

Several suggested the government’s missteps are amplified by “sharpened” media focus now that the Liberals have passed their first anniversary in power. They countered the government is doing “all the big things right” — like the economic files, the words of one. More than one insisted none of what the opposition, the press gallery or partisans might see as big mistakes are anything more than a distraction outside the bubble of Ottawa — which may indeed be true.

No one uttered the phrase “sunny ways.”

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