It took an avalanche of caucus discontent to get the Prime Minister’s attention
Posted January 10, 2025
Trudeau and the Liberals were painfully aware of the deteriorating support for him and the party. The January 5th report from poll aggregator 338 had the Conservatives leading the Liberals by 25%.
That would translate into the Liberals dropping from 170 seats in parliament in the 2021 election to 35 seats in 2025. The Bloc Quebecois is forecast to get 45 seats, which would make them the official opposition.
Such is Canadians’ disaffection for Trudeau that Liberal support is likely to show improvement even before voters know who the new leader is. The party’s process will have to conclude by early March. The winner can expect to lose a confidence vote shortly after parliament resumes on March 24th, triggering an election.
The interval will see the beginning of the Trump presidency. He is threatening heavy tariffs against Canada, and teases the idea of Canada becoming a 51st state. He does not like or respect Trudeau, who has regrettably chosen to remain as Prime Minister until a successor has been chosen.
Nothing Trudeau says during the interval will be viewed as Canada’s future position. Trudeau should not respond to Trump’s trolling. Comparisons to melting slowballs are not the way to respond to a bully.
Now that Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc has taken himself out of the leadership contest he should be the one to speak for the government on dealings with Trump.
We should thank Chrystia Freeland for giving the caucus courage to express their feelings, triggering Trudeau’s decision.
She, along with other ill-treated former minsters Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, and David Lametti, were gracious in their responses. So was Green Party leader Elizabeth May.
The other opposition leaders were more interested in tying Trudeau’s prospective successors to the many poor decisions made during his tenure.
A new Liberal leader such as Freeland or former Bank of Canada (and England) Governor Mark Carney will certainly improve the party’s outcome but not enough to prevent a Conservative majority. They will still be hampered by Trudeau’s track record.
In principal, a carbon tax can be a useful tool in slowing climate change. But the Liberals presented a false description of what it was going to cost.
Worse, they belatedly removed it on home heating oil, which is widely used in the Atlantic provinces, but not on natural gas for heating, common in the prairies. The distinction was based solely on the number of Liberal members in Atlantic Canada being much larger than the number in the prairies.
They made a mess of Canada’s historically successful immigration policy, amplifying the housing crisis and adding to border problems with the United States.
The huge Conservative lead in the polls is not attributable to Poilievre’s charisma. In an Angus Reid poll, 55% of Canadians held an unfavorable view of Poilievre, compared with 34% who viewed him favorably. That is still much better than Trudeau. But if the opinions are mostly about style rather than substance, his rating may be worse than the next Liberal leader.
Poilievre’s proven skill is identifying and highlighting the many flaws in the Liberal program. It is not yet evident whether he has the right skills at governing or the gravitas to deal with complex issues.
When the election is called he will need a pleasant demeanour in presenting ideas and a solid platform explaining the direction the party will take the country.
That platform has been under construction for some time and will be refined when the new Liberal leader is known. Conservative insiders predict that it will include references to the housing crisis, climate change, and the Bank of Canada.
When the election is called, the campaign period must be a minimum of 36 days and a maximum of 50 days. The party will want the new leader to choose the maximum, since they will need as much time as possible to introduce the new leader to Canadians and to distance them from Trudeau, who will still lead the government, subject to the Caretaker Convention.
The vote will happen in mid-May. The new government will be installed more than four months after Trudeau’s announcement. The deterioration of support for the Liberals has grown steadily since the summer of 2023. A wiser and more mature leader would have served his party and the country better by making his decision three months ago.
As it is, Canada will have a four-month period without an active government.
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