It has been a tumultuous week in Canadian federal politics. The governing Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have seen their polling numbers plummet in the wake of buffeting headwinds such as the ongoing housing crisis, affordability issues, inflation, the hangover resentment from COVID lockdowns and just your normal ‘best before date’ realities that set in when a party has been in power for nearly a decade.
Governments, it is said, are not elected, they are fired.
The Democrats in our southern neighbour just got sent home, well a majority did anyway, handing the government reins to a returning populist reality star. While Mr. Trump likes to trumpet his “landslide” victory, the truth, like much of the words he utters, is somewhat less impressive. But the truly scary part of it all is that more people avoided the ballot box in this past US election than chose to exercise their democratic right to vote—not good news for any democracy.
The incoming president has made it clear he is no fan of our prime minister.
Should Kamala Harris have won the US presidency, Prime Minister Trudeau would have been arguably a better match than his main Canadian opponent Pierre Poilievre. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
The departure of popular Liberal cabinet stalwart John Fraser and a host of other ministers who have indicated they will not run again was challenging enough, but when his longtime ally Christina (Chrystia) Alexandra Freeland chose to not only exit cabinet, but to air significant policy differences on the way out in a scathing letter, well, we think the jig can be said to be well and truly up.
Mr. Trudeau has been the target of an avalanche of negative memes, sponsored positioning of negative columnist opinion pieces and more than a few “own goal” gaffes that opened him up to accusations of scandal—happily overblown by his political opponent and abetted by the natural order of media feeding frenzies.
Prime Minister Trudeau is currently “reflecting” on his path forward, but even the most ardent of Liberals are fervently praying that he, like his father before him, takes a long walk in the snow and comes back with the same conclusion.
If Prime Minister Trudeau is to have any hope of his legacy policies surviving the next political cycle—some of the truly good work he has done during his time in office, such as that in resetting the agenda for Indigenous communities and taking steps toward meaningful reconciliation, the nascent national pharmacare program, the national dental care program and affordable daycare—then he needs to step back. It won’t be an easy thing for him to do, Justin Trudeau is nothing if not a scrapper, but this is a mountain too high to scale in the time he has left before a confidence vote tosses him from the ring.
The current enmity directed at him by the Canadian public is quite obviously personal and much of it is a result of his rhetoric running slam into the realpolitik of running a nation like ours. To put it plainly, he has lost any veneer of authenticity, and that my friend, is nearly impossible to come back from. Sunny ways have succumbed to the gathering clouds.
For the good of his party, for the good of his family, for the good of all he stands for, and for the good of the country—Prime Minister Trudeau must resign.
