The only person more toxic to Liberals than Donald Trump right now appears to be Justin Trudeau.
Liberal MPs and leadership contenders are falling over themselves to outdo Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre in dumping on the prime minister and his past policies.
Former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland started the Liberal anti-Trudeau pile-on with her resignation letter accusing the prime minister of “costly political gimmicks” and suggesting he was more concerned with party fortunes than those of Canada.
Launching her campaign for leadership of the Liberal Party on Sunday, Freeland continued the attack saying it was the issue of fiscal responsibility that was the primary reason for her disagreement with the prime minister.
“As a party we need to recognize today that Canadians want us and need us to relentlessly focus on one thing — the economy,” said the minister, whose job for the last four years was to focus on one thing — the economy.
“Canadians want good jobs, homes they can afford and great care for their kids. They want a government that is as careful with Canada’s money as Canadians are with their own,” said the finance minister whose atmospheric spending has burdened the nation with a record deficit of $62 billion.
As for the carbon tax, Freeland, one of the most vocal supporters of the policy, is now in favour of ditching it because after 11 years as an MP she has just discovered that Liberals “need to get better at listening to Canadians.”
Ironically, Freeland even spoke of the need to focus on “bread and butter issues,” which are the things that under the Liberals some Canadians can’t afford.
Meanwhile, Karina Gould, Liberal House leader and a cabinet member for seven years, launched her campaign at the weekend with a video that opened with, “I understand these past few years haven’t just been hard, they have been exhausting.” At a news conference on Sunday, she even told reporters that “Canadians don’t trust the Liberal Party of Canada right now.”
In Edmonton on Thursday, George Chahal, Liberal MP for Calgary Skyview, was doing an amazing impression of being a vocal opponent of Trudeau’s legacy when he introduced for Liberal leader Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and Canada.
“We have a stagnant economy, our wages feel like they are frozen, but costs keep escalating,” said Chahal, apparently oblivious to the fact that the Liberals have been in charge for almost a decade.
“We face a fractured political divide that has pitted Canadian versus Canadian nowhere more than right here in Alberta.”
Trudeau’s legacy, then, according to Chahal, is a deeply divided country with an economy in the toilet.
Problems are so bad that no one wants to face them.
“These are challenging times. In times like this, most people run and hide. They turtle under that pressure and wait for someone else to solve the problems,” he said.
Carney, he added, was the only one running toward “the fire.”
Great, the house is on fire, the arsonist has run off and Canada’s only hope is a man who helped light the matches.
Of course, that’s not how Carney would see things. Asked about his relationship with Trudeau and the Liberals, Carney was at pains to put distance between them.
Carney, who was an informal adviser to Trudeau in 2020 and during the pandemic, who has been the head of the prime minister’s task force on economic growth since September, and who was tipped to become finance minister, characterized himself as being only an “occasional” adviser to the government.
Trudeau who?
Carney was also scathing of the Liberal government’s track record on the economy.
“I’m not the only liberal in Canada who believes that the prime minister and his team let their attention wander from the economy too often,” he said.
What was the state of Canada after almost a decade of Liberal rule?
“The system is not working as it should and it’s not working as it could. People are anxious. No wonder. Too many are falling behind. Too many young people can’t afford a home. Too many people can’t find a doctor,” he said.
“Our growth has been too slow. People’s wages are too low. Necessities like groceries and rent are too expensive for too many.
“The federal government spends too much. But it invests too little. Middle class taxes are too high.”
On the Trudeau government’s signature carbon tax policy, Carney said he would replace it with something “more effective.”
The Liberals are spending more time destroying the Trudeau record than they are attacking the Conservatives.
Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen appeared positively gleeful in a tweet because the absence of Trudeau and the carbon tax would blunt opposition attacks.
“In a matter of a week @PierrePoilievre has lost the two things his entire campaign hinged on for the last two years: Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax,” he wrote, indicating that neither of those two things were helpful to the party going forward.
Nine years of Liberal rule has left the governing party ashamed of their leader and embarrassed by their policies.
It’s not Poilievre who is saying that the Trudeau government has left a nation exhausted and anxious; that fiscal incompetence has left Canada poorer and in record debt; that Canadians can’t afford rent or food, it’s the Liberals themselves confessing their track record of disaster.
National Post