As national polls suggest the Liberal Party is headed for defeat in the next election, some disaffected Liberal MPs are expected to take the mic today at their national caucus meeting to urge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to call it quits.
After nine years in government, Trudeau’s popularity has plummeted. The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a 19-point lead over the governing Liberals, a margin that suggests dozens of Liberal MPs could be out of a job after the next vote.
The prospect of an electoral implosion has led some Liberal MPs to organize an effort to oust Trudeau as party leader.
CBC News has reported that more than 20 Liberal MPs met in secret and signed a document committing themselves to trying to force Trudeau out of the party leadership.
Three MPs have come forward publicly to say they have signed the letter: Newfoundland’s Ken McDonald, Prince Edward Island’s Sean Casey and New Brunswick’s Wayne Long.
All three of those MPs are long-standing critics of Trudeau. The names of other MPs who signed the letter may also be made known today.
No one seems to know what could come out of this potentially fractious caucus meeting, or whether a letter bearing the names of disgruntled MPs will prompt Trudeau to change his mind.
Trudeau could decide to press on as leader even if he’s dealing with significant discontent in his caucus. He has said repeatedly that he will lead the party into the next election.
McDonald, Casey and Long have all said that while they want Trudeau to go, they’re not yet willing to leave the party and sit as Independents.
The move to oust Trudeau could lead to a seismic development in federal politics — or simply fizzle out like past efforts to challenge the prime minister.
It’s not just the polls that signal trouble on the horizon for the Liberals. Liberal MPs are also anxious about Trudeau and his team losing two byelections in historically rock-solid Liberal ridings in Toronto and Montreal.
The Liberal candidate in another recent Winnipeg-area byelection posted one of the worst results for a governing party in Canadian history.
Speaking briefly to reporters before the caucus meeting, Casey said he’d like to see a secret vote to decide Trudeau’s future: “I wish there was a mechanism for it, yes.”
McDonald told CBC’s Power & Politics Tuesday that he and other dissenters have discussed voting against the government if there’s another non-confidence vote, and they don’t see evidence that Trudeau and his team are taking their concerns seriously.
Asked by reporters Wednesday if he’s still considering such a move, McDonald said he was, “but, right now, it’s not something I would do.”
“I think the caucus is nervous because of the polling — it’s constantly going down and there’s a lot of people who want to run again,” McDonald said.
“The prime minister has to start listening to the people,” he said. “You have to try and get people back onside.”
Long told reporters he’s part of this movement to take on Trudeau because he thinks Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is a danger to country — and can also be beat by a different Liberal leader.
“The Liberal Party is an institution in this country, it’s bigger than one person, one leader and it’s incumbent on us as elected officials that we put our best foot forward,” he said.
Long, who isn’t running in the next election, said the party needs “a change in leadership,” but that “in the end caucus majority will rule” and he will respect whatever comes from the discussion.
Asked if he signed the document, Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi wouldn’t say, but added he’s encouraged it has prompted a discussion about Trudeau’s future: “This is the first time we’re talking about it openly and honestly.”
As to whether he supports Trudeau staying on, he said, “The key thing is we’re having this conversation. I support us having this conversation.”
Zuberi said he would be taking the mic to address Trudeau during the meeting.
“This will be a full conversation.”
On the other side, long-time Liberal MP Judy Sgro told reporters “there’s no one more committed to Canadians and representing the Liberals values than Justin Trudeau,” and said she will run again for the party at the next election.
Asked if she’d put Trudeau’s face on her election signs, Sgro laughed and said that was up to the campaign team.
Sgro, who was first elected in 1999 and served in the Liberal caucus during the fractious Jean Chrétien-Paul Martin years, said this effort to oust Trudeau is nothing new for the party.
“It’s not the first time,” she said, when asked if the infighting is a distraction.
Election readiness is something that’s making some MPs anxious.
The party’s national campaign director quit in early September. The party took weeks to announce a replacement.
Four more of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers have announced, or are expected to announce soon, that they will not run again in the next election, sources have told CBC News.
That news came after MP Pablo Rodriguez left caucus to sit as an Independent while transitioning away from federal politics to run for the Quebec Liberal Party leadership.
Still, Trudeau has support from his cabinet.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller has called the efforts to oust Trudeau “garbage” and said it would be better for the team to pull together to take on their main opponent: Poilievre.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller says any time spent focusing on some Liberal MPs’ efforts to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘is a minute that’s not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country.’ Miller says Trudeau has the support of the ‘vast majority of caucus’ and the entirety of cabinet.
“Any minute spent on this garbage is a minute that’s not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country, and I think that is very dangerous,” Miller told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting Tuesday.
“I’m a member of his cabinet and obviously we support him,” said Housing Minister Sean Fraser.
Echoing Miller, Fraser said it’s Poilievre who’s the real problem.
“We are up against somebody who is campaigning on promises to deny access to free birth control for women, who won’t even get a security clearance to look into allegations about his own caucus members being engaged in foreign interference,” he said, citing Poilievre’s controversial decision to forgo getting the necessary credentials to review top-secret documents.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson predicted this latest attempt to take Trudeau down will fail.
“At the end of the day, we will have a robust debate, we will come out with, in my view, support for the prime minister and move forward with the election,” he said.
