Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leaves a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 23.Patrick Doyle/Reuters
This week in Ottawa, Justin Trudeau faced off against a small herd of rebellious Liberals who, as it turned out, all showed up for the staring contest with a raging case of pink eye.
Basically, two dozen of his MPs whispered, “Please go away,” and the Prime Minister said, “No,” and smiled his Cheshire Cat smile, and then everyone went back to what they were doing before.
The most docile and mincing coup attempt in the history of the world began a couple of weeks ago, with leaks about a letter signed by an unclear number of MPs, asking Mr. Trudeau to resign as Liberal Leader because of how the public had soured on him and on his government. This letter was to be presented at Wednesday’s caucus meeting, along with a broader venting of worries and frustrations.
The best detail by far to emerge from this drama was the fact that at the meeting, British Columbia MP Patrick Weiler read the breakup letter aloud, and the Prime Minister was told that 24 MPs had signed it, but they would not be revealing who they were.
This is objectively hilarious. Try to imagine Mr. Trudeau’s facial expression when confronted by this level of bravado. Even better: Picture the faces of the two dozen anonymous rebels sweating through their shoes in the midst of their caucus colleagues. We can only hope they were wearing Groucho Marx disguises.
Just before the meeting started, Mr. Trudeau had bounded down the stairs from his office and past the herd of reporters to slip into the caucus room. He did not have the stench of death around him; he didn’t even look like he was having an especially bad day at work. Now we know why: He was about to be mauled by a basket of kittens.
Not that the unnamed signatories are alone in their grievances or in noticing some larger impending political carnage. Another B.C. MP, Ken Hardie, reported that some 50 people spoke at the caucus meeting, though it’s unclear how many were critical of the Prime Minister rather than supportive.
It’s not surprising that the calls are starting to come from inside the House – even if some of the voices on the line are whimpering to disguise their identity. The Liberals are now mired behind the Tories by fat polling margins, they have lost two supposedly safe by-elections and every press conference seems to feature at least one question about why people hate them so much.
It’s not a new or transient phenomenon. In the spring of 2023, the Conservatives had pulled ahead by a few points, says Philippe J. Fournier, editor-in-chief of the polling site 338Canada, but given that the Tories had won the popular vote by one point in the last two federal elections, that was status quo.
“It really was June, July and August ‘23 that the wheels fell off,” he says. “Like something that I had never seen before.”
By late summer, the Conservatives had opened up a double-digit lead; by Christmas, it was 15 points; and by the spring of 2024, it had reached the 20-point chasm where it’s been hovering since, Mr. Fournier says.
There’s a page on Canada 338 that shows seat projections based on current polling. Little squares represent every MP in the House of Commons, with bright red denoting current seats the Liberals are expected to retain and black Xs indicating held seats they’re on track to lose.
Every region of the country that has been a Liberal bastion is a forest of angry black Xs. The entire province of B.C. could send a single Liberal back to Ottawa in the next election, according to 338Canada’s projections, and fortress Ontario would be carved down from 77 current Liberal MPs to 15, and another seven seats are toss-ups.
Nearly two-thirds of the 153-member caucus could expect to lose their jobs, based on those seat counts.
“Right now, if I look at the data, the best-case scenario for the Liberals would be an honourable defeat, pretty much like Stephen Harper,” Mr. Fournier says of the 2015 election, when the Conservatives were shaved down to 99 seats and 32 per cent of the popular vote.
There are many other plausible outcomes on the books that would be a whole lot uglier.
But the same dire circumstances that explain why some MPs have started to agitate for big change at the top – even if their courage isn’t rising as fast as their panic – also makes the whole exercise seem a tad pointless.
Surely, if you could ask the Liberal agitators how many polling points they figure it would be worth to have a fresh face leading their bedraggled nine-year-old government, none of them would pin that bounce at 20 percentage points. Maybe they figure it’s worth 10 or 20 seats, even in a country profoundly fatigued with their party, and in the most hopeful compartment of their heart, they may believe one of those seats would be their own.
The Liberals have been living inside a very deep and dark political hole for a long time, and that sucking sound at their feet does not suggest the sun is getting any closer. Having one less guy in the pit with them isn’t going to change that, but it must be hard to stand still and do nothing while you wait for the earth to cave in around your ears.
