Prime Minister Trudeau is still ignoring the message
Posted September 20, 2024
The byelection results on September 16th were another wake-up call for the Liberals.
A change of direction is urgently needed. According to a TD bank report on the Justin Trudeau era: “Canadian’s standard of living, as measured by real GDP per person, was lower in 2023 than in 2014.”
There have been intimations for months that Mark Carney would be recruited as a new Minister of Finance. He would bring much needed credibility to the cabinet but would first need to be elected to a seat in Parliament.
Back in the day a compliant MP in a safe seat would be asked to make that possible. Thus Elmer MacKay stepped aside so that Brian Mulroney became the MP for Central Nova in 1983.
There being no safe seats for the Liberals Prime Minister Trudeau has found a less cumbersome way to smuggle Mark Carney into the heart of government, appointing him as chair of a “Leader’s Task Force on Economic Growth.”
Carney will not be taking direction from Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne. In effect his recommendations will direct them.
Nor will Carney accept direction from the Prime Minister’s Office, the gang that has served the country so poorly. He may provide sound economic ideas that could form the core of the party’s platform in the 2025 election.
The Liberals have been more interested in redistributing wealth than increasing it. Carney’s economic recommendations will be well to the right of what the Liberals have been doing for the last nine years. An implementation of new thinking would have to begin with the budget speech next spring, so there would be no time for them to take effect.
It will be hard to both defend the past and promote those contrary ideas for the future. Based on the non-fulfillment of so many prior commitments, voters will have plenty of reason to doubt whatever the Liberals promise.
They are in urgent need of revival. As of September 15th, poll aggregator 338Canada has them trailing the Conservatives by 19%. That would reduce them to 68 seats from 160 in the last general election, with the Conservatives taking 219, up from 119.
The recent byelections were consistent with what pollsters have been reporting. In LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, the Bloc Quebecois eked out a victory in a seat the Liberals had won by 20% of the votes in 2021. The NDP were a close third.
It is telling that the Liberal candidate had urged voters to make it about her, not Trudeau. What kind of hubris does it take to ignore that?
In the Winnipeg seat of Elmwood-Transcona the NDP retained its seat, albeit with a margin reduced to 4% from 21% in 2021. The Liberal vote collapsed to 5% of the votes.
This leaves NDP leader Jagmeet Singh with lots to worry about. He has torn up the supply-and-confidence agreement that kept the Liberals in power for three years.
His members almost never win with more than half of the votes. For his party to do well he needs support for the Liberals and Conservatives to be evenly divided. Better still if the Greens take a share. Thus in 2021 Lisa Marie Barron won Nanaimo Ladysmith with 29% of the vote.
The prospects of a Conservative landslide will be bad for the NDP. 338Canada shows them losing 11 of their 25 seats. On the other hand, the Bloc Quebecois are happy with the current disposition and are unlikely to add the votes needed for a non-confidence vote to succeed.
In advance of the byelections Trudeau said that he would stay no matter what the outcome. Of course, Joe Biden swore that he was not retiring from the race, until he did.
Trudeau might take that walk in the snow that his father did in February1984. It would leave little time for the campaign to choose a successor.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre would be happiest if Trudeau stays on, just as Donald Trump was happy to compete with Biden.
The cabinet ministers mooted as candidates own some of the messes in the management of population and finances. Some might have better prospects than Trudeau, simply by being a new face. But it would not be enough to prevent a Conservative majority.
Carney might also be a contender, not owning the baggage of the last nine years. He might take some votes from both the NDP and a few Conservatives. His green credentials might help with traditional Green Party voters.
It still would not be enough. The Liberals have made such a mess that it will be impossible to defend no matter who is the leader.
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