If Trudeau Steps Down, Then What?

Federal politics without Justin Trudeau? The chattering classes in Ottawa are hyperventilating over the prospect that one of Justin Trudeau’s closest ministers is gunning for his job. Could that job be up for grabs?

It all started with a piece in the Globe and Mail. Journalist and bestselling author Lawrence Martin published a story that said Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s public safety minister and the PM’s bestie, had an intriguing meeting with a former cabinet minister along with another supporter.

Over “whisky and cigars,” the former minister agreed to be part of a “ginger group” to lay the groundwork for the New Brunswick MP’s leadership campaign. According to Martin’s piece, the ex-minister got a commitment from LeBlanc that he would be willing to put in the hard work involved in running for the top job. In fact, Martin reported, LeBlanc seemed “eager” about the prospects of becoming the boss.

A caution: this is not an internecine and divisive battle within the party, not a Clark versus Mulroney, or Chrétien versus Turner, scenario. LeBlanc would only be interested in replacing his boyhood friend if a vacancy occurred at the top. In other words, if Justin Trudeau were to resign.

The PM has repeatedly said that he plans to lead the Liberals into the next election. Minister LeBlanc did not deny Martin’s story but said that he plans to run in the next election under Justin Trudeau’s banner.

Those are the boilerplate answers politicians always give on matters touching resignation or leadership aspirations. They have to.

The moment that Trudeau admits he is weighing whether or not to continue as leader, he becomes a lame-duck PM. And the moment LeBlanc agrees that he is organizing a leadership bid, creating a faction, he looks disloyal to the man who made him a minister. He also further destabilizes an already shaky party.

Summer of reckoning

With Trudeau having notched three electoral victories since 2015, nobody is going to push him out — at least not yet. After all, with a handsome face and a famous name, he took the Liberals from political oblivion to a majority government in 2015. But confronted with his own deepening unpopularity, will Trudeau himself step down?

That is what the summer of 2024 is all about — whether Trudeau will take a walk in the sand, as his father famously took one in the snow before resigning. Will Justin decide that for the good of the party, it’s time to make room for a new leader?

There is every reason for the PM to feel conflicted. Trudeau prides himself on his toughness. Remember how everyone thought that Sen. Patrick Brazeau would knock the stuffing out of him in their boxing match? It would be personally difficult for Trudeau to walk away from a fight with a man for whom he has so little respect, a man whose values mirror those of Stephen Harper.

Besides, power is as difficult to surrender as it is to achieve. Call it ego, optimism, intransigence or entitlement. Walking away is not as easy as it might seem. Just look at Joe Biden.

That said, there is relevant precedent to suggest that Trudeau might resign for the good of the party.

When his name was bruited abroad back in 2013 for the top job, he told me that he wasn’t ready to be leader. Several weeks later, when I interviewed him again, he explained why he had changed his mind. The party of his father needed him, and for the good of that party, ready or not, he had to answer the call.

After nine years in power, for the good of that same party, all signs point to the wisdom of a Trudeau resignation sometime this year. That way, the new PM would have a chance to showcase his abilities before heading into an election in 2025.

For months, the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre have enjoyed a double-digit lead over the Liberals. At one point, that lead ballooned to 20 points.

The Liberal house is on fire, and the task at hand is to save as much of the furniture as possible. Trudeau must decide if he is the one to do that at a time when he personally trails both Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in the polls.

Budget without bounce

Recently in this space, I referred to the government’s Hail Mary budget, a political document designed to revive the party’s electoral prospects.

A lot of the new spending was directed towards generation Xers and millennials, a voting bloc that has helped keep the Liberals in power. But that same group has grown disenchanted with the government. And according to polling, the government’s big spending did not give the party the political reboot it had hoped for.

Earlier, there were signs it likely wouldn’t play because, as the government released most of the budget in the weeks leading up to the official tabling in Parliament and pre-budget, the polling was bad.

According to Angus Reid, a majority of Canadians believed that Ottawa was spending too much, and that cuts were in order. A song straight from Pierre Poilievre’s political hymn book.

And, according to a recent post-budget Ipsos poll, just two in 10 respondents thought it was a good budget, while four in 10 gave it a double thumbs-down. Even worse, only 35 per cent of respondents approved of the government’s handling of the economy, against 65 per cent who disapproved.

The budget also failed politically at another level. In going after the richest Canadians by increasing the capital gains tax, the Liberals may have been hoping that the Conservatives would attack the tax. Poilievre shrewdly didn’t take the bait.

Why would he? He has made political hay by railing against a tax that affects 100 per cent of Canadians. Why would he come across as the defender of the corporate and financial elite over a tax that affects 0.1 per cent of the country?

The bottom line here? Justin Trudeau is not nearly as bad as his detractors claim, often in personal and reprehensible ways. But politics is not Sunday school. Perception, not reality, governs the game. Messaging and narratives, rather than the facts, ultimately carry the day.

Once the electorate sours on a leader, as the evidence shows it has on Trudeau, all faults are amplified and all accomplishments largely ignored. We have all but reached the anybody-but-Trudeau point in national politics, thanks to a relentless personal attack on the PM that goes well beyond policy differences and politics.

Which is why former NDP leader Tom Mulcair recently told CTV that he believes Trudeau will ultimately step down, rather than face a fourth federal election in which he and his party will be trounced if the current polling holds.

It is hard to argue with Mulcair’s logic. If by midsummer the Liberals still have two wheels in the ditch, Justin Trudeau would be wise to exit as gracefully as possible. Before he and his party get the bum’s rush at the polls.

The case for Carney

But in an important way, Trudeau’s exit would not end the problems of the Liberal party. Those problems would just enter a new and a very tricky phase. Who would replace him? And is there anyone who could actually win in an election that must be held by 2025?

There is no shortage of candidates within the Liberal cabinet: the charming and emotionally intelligent Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, the persuasive and personable Housing Minister Sean Fraser, the ubiquitous Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, and the intelligent and telegenic Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly.

There is something in the DNA of political parties that almost always looks inside caucus to fill the top job. At one level, that makes sense. They are the ones who have carried the water for the party, through good times and bad times. If a promotion to the highest post is in the cards, it should go to the people who have done the soldiering for the party — or so the argument goes.

But in the current circumstances, if the Liberals maintain their record of never choosing a leader who isn’t already holding elected office, they will make Pierre Poilievre’s job even easier than it is today.

There is a standard and effective line against a wobbly government when it selects a new leader from caucus. It is merely an exercise in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Every cabinet minister is tethered to the Trudeau record. All of them have been part of every decision the government has made, including massive deficit spending, and massive immigration. They have been part of every problem from housing shortages to high energy and food prices. Problems that the government has been unable to solve, except at some distant point in the future. In politics, the kitchen table issues are always in sharp focus, while the future is a blur on a distant horizon.

There is only one potential candidate to replace Trudeau who could inspire some Conservative bedwetting: Mark Carney.

For starters, he carries none of Trudeau’s baggage the way the Liberal front bench does. In fact, he has publicly disagreed with the PM on some of the key issues that plague the government.

On the carbon tax, for example, Trudeau has brushed off pressure to meet with the premiers. Carney said he would hold that meeting.

Although Carney had praise for the government’s investment in artificial intelligence, he also voiced public criticisms of the recent budget.

Speaking at Canada 2020, a progressive think tank, Carney said that the government did not put enough focus on economic growth. He also criticized “constant spending” and too many government subsidies.

Second, at a time when Canadians are telling pollsters that government is spending too much, that the debt and deficit matter, who better to deal with fiscal and monetary issues than the man who has been governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England?

Unlike the broad perception of Trudeau, Carney knows that budgets don’t balance themselves. Unlike the Crypto Kid, Pierre Poilievre, he knows that bitcoin is not a hedge against inflation.

In that same Toronto speech to Canada 2020, Carney pilloried Poilievre as a lifelong politician whose idea of the role of government is “grounded in a basic misunderstanding of what drives economies.”

Carney says that Canadians are living at a tipping point, with financial, health and geopolitical crises reshaping the global economy. The winners in the new economy, Carney says, will be leaders in zero emission, and artificial intelligence.

“This new era will demand fiscal discipline and a relentless focus on delivery, rather than reflexive spending that only treats the symptom but doesn’t cure the disease.”

No one knows if Justin Trudeau will resign. And if he does, no one knows who will replace him.

But should Trudeau leave, and should Mark Carney become Liberal leader and PM, an intriguing choice would be placed before the country.

Who would Canadians trust to see them through the economic whitewater that lies ahead?

The guy who specializes in slogans, T-shirts and tongue-lashings. Or someone who has guided the monetary policy of two countries, managed their currencies and controlled the money supply?

In the post-Trudeau era, whenever that comes, will it be glitz or gravitas?