In Top Minister’s Resignation, Shades of an Earlier Political Crisis for Trudeau
On Monday morning, I was on my way out to hole up with other reporters to take an advance look at the government’s fall economic statement, mostly to see what it said about border security. Then Chrystia Freeland put out her resignation letter.
Ms. Freeland’s stinging rebuke of the government’s recent economic giveaways and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to oust her as finance minister created a political wildfire in Ottawa, which has placed Mr. Trudeau’s political future and Liberal Party control in jeopardy. [Read: Top Canada Minister Resigns, Threatening Trudeau’s Hold on Power] [Read: The Trump Factor Further Shakes Up Canada’s Politics] [Read: Trump Takes Credit for New Border Security Plan Outlined by Canada] [From Opinion: Worthwhile Canadian Resignation] In her overview of how Mr. Trudeau got here, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, our Canada bureau chief, writes that the prime minister’s political career “has taken him from glamorous liberal standard-bearer to the butt of jokes by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his acolytes.” [Read: From Liberal Icon to MAGA Joke: The Waning Fortunes of Justin Trudeau] This week’s turmoil — which ended in a cabinet shuffle and a vow by Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the New Democrats, to bring down the government in the new year — reminded me of two moments in Canadian political history. [Read: Key Ally Abandons Trudeau in Fresh Blow to His Government] [Read: Why Have So Many Canadians Turned on Justin Trudeau?] The first is from Mr. Trudeau’s political past. In 2019, he decided to demote another cabinet minister with whom he had a policy dispute, Jody Wilson-Raybould. Ms. Wilson-Raybould, who had been justice minister since Mr. Trudeau took office in 2015, was reassigned to the lesser post of veterans affairs. A month later, she abruptly resigned. She later said that Mr. Trudeau and his staff had pressured her to seek a “remediation agreement” with a fine, instead of a criminal conviction, in the bribery case involving SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering company now called AtkinsRéalis. Ms. Wilson-Raybould saw this as improper interference by politicians in the justice system, and refused. (The federal ethics commissioner subsequently agreed with her.) When Mr. Wilson-Raybould was demoted, Jane Philpott resigned as head of the Treasury Board in solidarity. The pair were later thrown out of the Liberal caucus. The episode marked the end of the wave of unusually high popularity Mr. Trudeau and the Liberals floated on when they first came to power. By April 2019, the party had fallen far behind the Conservatives in the polls. While Mr. Trudeau managed to keep the Liberals in power during an election that fall, he lost their majority of votes in the House of Commons, and the party was overtaken by the Conservatives in the popular vote. Once again Mr. Trudeau is well behind the Conservatives in public opinion — and apparently contemplating his future. Several backbench Liberal members of Parliament are calling on him to quit. Canadian news outlets have reported that some unnamed cabinet ministers have done the same, though not publicly. And an Ipsos poll released on Friday found that nearly three-quarters of respondents wanted Mr. Trudeau to step down.
The counterargument is that it’s now too late for Mr. Trudeau to leave. With the life span of the government increasingly uncertain, his departure could put the party in the disastrous position of running a campaign with an interim leader. And a leadership race would keep the media spotlight and scrutiny on the Liberals, rather than the Conservatives and their leader, Pierre Poilievre. The second parallel that comes to mind is the long shadow of another unpopular prime minister, Brian Mulroney of the Progressive Conservative Party. By the fall of 1992, his personal popularity in polls was just 12 percent. He left politics the next February. A few months later, in June 1993, Kim Campbell, a lawyer and academic, succeeded him to become Canada’s first female prime minister, after her selection as Progressive Conservative Party leader. But in the election that fall, Ms. Campbell proved to be a less than adept campaigner. At one point she told a reporter that campaigns were “not the time, I don’t think, to get involved in a debate on very, very serious issues.” She also couldn’t escape the lingering public resentment toward Mr. Mulroney or distance herself from the unpopular measures his government — which included Ms. Campbell — had brought in, particularly the goods and services tax. The result was the worst electoral defeat in Canadian history: The Progressive Conservatives got just two seats and lost official party status. Months later, Ms. Campbell was gone from politics. If Mr. Trudeau is replaced before the next election, his successor would most likely face the same long odds.
Trans Canada
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