Enough of the parlour games, enough trying to figure out how the Liberals can win back voter support.
It’s over for the Liberals, their time is up, and Justin Trudeau needs to call an election, take his shellacking and let his party begin rebuilding without him.
We don’t need Trudeau to resign – though there was briefly a rumour that he would resign on Friday afternoon – we need an election to clear the political air and elect a government with a mandate to deal with the incoming Trump administration.
Despite Trudeau’s delusional idea that he is Canada’s saviour, he will not be leading that new government and neither will anyone associated with his party.
Replacing Trudeau as Liberal leader won’t help the current governing party in the next election and, in fact, it might make things worse.
The Angus Reid Institute asked Canadian voters whether the Liberals changing leaders would make them more or less likely to cast a ballot for the party and the results … they weren’t good for the Liberals.
This comes days after the Institute released a poll showing the Liberals holding just 16% support among decided and leaning voters behind the NDP at 21% and the Conservatives at 45%.
For this latest poll, ARI asked not just decided and leaning voters but also those who are undecided and those who don’t normally vote. The results found in the poll would still result in a massive majority for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives and a pummeling defeat for the Liberals.
Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister and deputy PM, fared the best among the hypothetical leaders, and she would only take Liberal support up to 21%. In that scenario, the Conservatives would capture 36% of the vote, the Liberals 21%, the NDP 14%, the Bloc Quebecois at 7%, and 21% of voters remained undecided.
Considering that most undecided voters don’t actually cast a ballot, the Conservatives would likely pull in more than 40% of the ballots cast and form a super majority.
Melanie Joly, Trudeau’s foreign minister, would pull in 16% of the vote, according to the poll, and Mark Carney 14%. The poll found the Conservatives would hit majority territory in every scenario.
We really do need a prime minister now, specifically one with some level of authority from voters. Despite Trudeau occupying the prime minister’s office, the truth is, this country has been leaderless for the past several weeks.
Since Freeland resigned from cabinet, Trudeau has essentially ghosted the country. He’s done an Irish exit from public but has refused to give up his office or power.
“We just had an excellent cabinet meeting,” Trudeau said on Dec. 20, his last public statement and the only time he’s spoken to reporters in the last several weeks.
He went on to say the meeting that day was focused almost exclusively on the Canada-U.S. relationship. He then went away for the Christmas break, hid out in British Columbia while taking in some skiing and came back for another meeting on the Canada-U.S. relationship on Friday.
What is he doing? What is he thinking? Does he have the support of his own party, never mind the House of Commons?
These are all valid questions but not questions Trudeau will take from reporters. He cancelled all of his year-end interviews before going into hiding.
We need an election now.
We need a government that can go to Washington with a mandate from the people, not a government that Trump knows is weak and vulnerable.
As Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pointed out in an interview with Jordan Peterson seen by tens of millions, we can’t and shouldn’t have to wait for the Liberals to choose a new leader before having an election.
“The Canadian people are not obliged, 41 million people are not obliged, to wait around while this party sorts out its shit,” Poilievre said.
Exactly!
And now we know that changing the leadership of the Liberal Party won’t change much of anything, so let’s get to the polls now.