In Canadian politics, 16 per cent is an ugly number with a lethal history.
The governing Progressive Conservatives won only 16.04 per cent of the national vote in 1993.
After ruling with a hefty majority since 1988, they were left with only two seats in Parliament.
The PCs didn’t go formally extinct for a decade but the night of Oct. 25, 1993, was their death sentence.
Today the Trudeau Liberals have 16 per cent support, according to a new Angus Reid poll.
Some projections suggest this would win them six seats.
Maybe they’d pick up a few more, maybe less — or, quite possibly, none at all.
I wrote back in September that the Liberals might be completely shut out of Parliament. That seems even more likely today. Support has fallen six points since Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland dramatically quit.
Diehard Liberals snort at the very thought. Extinction comes hard when you’ve had seats in the House of Commons for 157 years.
They hope getting rid of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the solution. When even the Atlantic Liberal caucus comes out against him, you know that all hope for Trudeau’s leadership is dead.
Those MPs got a carbon tax break on home heating oil for their region just by meeting the PM and twisting his arm. In so doing, they shattered support for the entire carbon tax regime.
Atlantic Liberal MPs are the ultimate insiders and beneficiaries. Now they want him out.
All this would be serious enough in normal times. Today, Canada faces the existential threat of Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs. They could come as early as Jan. 20, inauguration day.
And Justin Trudeau goes skiing in B.C.
He took some time to do a New Year’s comedy gig with This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Yet he doesn’t answer a single question from journalists or sit still for a traditional year-end interview.
The PM does put out a brief video, reminding us that 2025 is an election year, and how he must protect policies like dental care and pharmacare from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
There’s not a word about the U.S. situation or the challenge faced by Liberal ministers now trying to deal with it.
The Americans suspect with some reason that Canada does not have a functioning government.
The president-elect calls Trudeau the governor of an American state. Fox News gleefully amplifies talk of annexation.
But there’s no joking about tariffs that could shrink our GDP by several percentage points and throw the country into a profound recession.
And Justin Trudeau skis.
One can’t help recalling his father, Pierre, who stood firm, shaking his fist, when Quebec separatists threw rocks at him.
Whatever his policy offences in the West, and they were many, the first Trudeau was fierce in defence of Canadian dignity and sovereignty.
Pierre Trudeau dealt with five U.S. presidents — Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
Nixon disliked Trudeau intensely. Dealings with Reagan were often testy. The PM probably got along best with Ford and Carter, who has just passed away at 100.
But no president took Pierre Trudeau lightly. The new president thinks Justin Trudeau is a running joke. That is no recipe for winning diplomacy.
If Trudeau does quit, Liberal prospects still look bleak.
Mark Carney, former Bank of Canada governor, outlines some of his hopes in a Globe and Mail opinion piece that reads like a campaign introduction.
He says we should not be “subservient” to the U.S. We should play as a team. We should bring the Stanley Cup back to Canada.
Carney comes across as exactly what he is — an elite finance figure desperately trying to loosen his tie.
At the heart of the Liberal malaise is a profound intellectual bankruptcy. Their policies are old, tired, overbearing and often ineffectual.
They have nothing new for the swiftly altering post-progressive world. They’re done, and only Justin Trudeau doesn’t seem to know it.
Happy New Year, though.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
X: @DonBraid