The Liberals Need a Kamala Kind of Renewal

There is an uncanny similarity between Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau that is worth noting. Biden stubbornly refused to step down, even though the polls made clear that if he stayed in the job, it was conceivable that Donald Trump could run the table — winning the House, the Senate and the White House.

It was not that Biden didn’t have a string of impressive accomplishments as president. He did, including big bipartisan wins on infrastructure, pulling NATO behind Ukraine, and a healthy economy on the rebound from COVID. It was just that Americans didn’t feel the results of those accomplishments in their lives.

Having lost his connection with the public, having failed at emotive politics, the president took to extolling his record. As the saying goes, in politics when you are explaining, you are usually losing.

Like Biden, Justin Trudeau has so far disregarded what appears to be the inevitable: if he remains at the helm, the Liberals could be headed for a debacle at the next election.

Instead, the PM talks about all the good things he has accomplished, and there have been many — attracting massive investment in Canada from major international companies, raising millions of kids out of poverty, introducing affordable daycare, the solid beginnings of a national dental plan and passionately supporting Ukraine in its battle against Putin’s invasion.

But as with Biden’s accomplishments, it’s just that Canadians don’t feel those successes in their own lives. In politics, you come in on the tide, but you also go out with it. The tide of public opinion appears to be going out on Justin Trudeau.

It was the same with Joe Biden. After pugnaciously declaring “I’m not going anywhere,” Biden ultimately saw the writing on the wall, declared he didn’t want to be a distraction in the battle to defeat Donald Trump in November and withdrew from the race.

Something remarkable ensued. In a little over two weeks, Biden’s vice-president, Kamala Harris, pulled off a reversal of fortune for her party. The Democrats made an astonishing comeback in the polls. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, attracted thousands of supporters at their campaign events, and the new ticket suddenly became a force in the battleground states where Trump had consistently led Biden. It is widely believed that those states will decide who wins the White House.

Could a change at the top of the Liberal government do in Canada what it has done in the United States? If Trudeau is sincere in his vow to lead the party into the next election, Canadians will never know.

But if, like Biden, Trudeau were to step down, it would lead to a whole new “political calculus” in Canada.

Why does the politically perceptive pollster Nik Nanos say that? Because Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives have based their entire quest for power on a relentless attack on one person, the prime minister.

If a new leader were to take over from Trudeau, particularly if he or she came from outside caucus, would Poilievre be back-footed the way Trump has been by Kamala Harris’s 11th-hour candidacy?

And who might that new leader be?

Trudeau’s summer horribilis

The question is all too relevant because, in what was supposed to be the beginning of better news for the beleaguered Trudeau government, the summer of 2024 has been a steady downward spiral.

Despite some success in rolling out its dental plan, and a slight drop in interest rates, the Trudeau government remains deeply unpopular. Food, housing and energy continue to cost too much to mitigate the anger across the land.

As they have for the last year, the Conservatives continue to lead the Liberals by double digits — a gap of between 15 and 17 points. If that lead were to hold into the next election, Poilievre would become prime minister at the head of a lopsided majority.

Recent polling from Nanos Research found that the Liberal party’s crisis of leadership is now epic. Sixty-three per cent of respondents were either negative or somewhat negative in their opinion of Justin Trudeau. Just nine per cent had a positive view of the prime minister.

So, short of resigning, which Trudeau has repeatedly said is not in the cards, what, if anything, can the PM do to right the ship? The biggest story of the summer doldrums, in Canadian public life, is the PM’s attempt to lure Mark Carney into federal politics.

At one level, that makes sense. Carney certainly has the credentials to be a potential political star in an otherwise bland Grit leadership landscape. Having served as governor of central banks in Canada and England, he knows how economies work. And he may well have ideas on how to get government spending under control. It has ballooned on Trudeau’s watch.

The Liberals are definitely in the market for a messiah. But is Mark Carney the man to save the party? The early polling suggests that, for now at least, the answer is no.

According to Nanos Research, 39 per cent of Canadians believe that if Carney were to come into the government as finance minister, it would have no impact on how people vote. That compares with 29 per cent who think that Liberal fortunes would improve at the next election with Carney in cabinet. Not exactly Carney-mania.

Given those numbers, why would Carney accept a subordinate role in a government led by Justin Trudeau? The PM has no coattails. In fact, being formally associated with Trudeau would almost certainly increase negative public impressions of Carney, as current Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has learned.

Freeland and Carney have virtually identical “favourable” ratings in the Nanos poll, both twice as popular as the PM. But Freeland’s “negative” rating is 31 per cent, compared with just 13 per cent for Carney. That’s what being Justin Trudeau’s deputy PM and finance minister has done to Freeland’s reputation.

The effect of Trudeau’s personal unpopularity, carefully stoked by Poilievre’s highly personal attacks on the PM, is that the leadership issue is now impacting the Liberal brand. That was evident in the shocking byelection loss in Toronto-St. Paul’s, the safest of Liberal ridings in “fortress” Toronto. Was Conservative Don Stewart’s upset victory an aberration or, as Nik Nanos wondered, “the canary in the coal mine”?

If the Liberals lose another stronghold in the Sept. 16 byelection in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, doubts about Trudeau’s leadership will only get worse.

Subsequent polling suggests that there is what Nanos calls a “sea change” taking place in federal politics. Voters want change and that is bad news for Team Trudeau.

In Vancouver, for example, Nanos found that the electoral map has gone from a sea of Liberal red, based on the results of the 2021 election, to a sea of Tory blue, based on seat projectors for the next election. It is the same story in Toronto and Ottawa, where formerly “safe” urban seats for the Liberals are under siege by the Conservatives — and in play.

The government’s dismal poll results and the PM’s plummeting popularity are beginning to have consequences. One cabinet minister, Seamus O’Regan, recently resigned his post and announced he won’t be running in the next election. A second Trudeau minister, Pablo Rodriguez, is expected to leave the government to run for the leadership of the Quebec Liberal Party.

Why does this matter? It is a tough slog to make it into cabinet, and it is a bad sign when the party’s most rewarded members begin to leave. In all, 17 Liberal incumbents have decided not to run in the next election, compared with just six Conservatives and five New Democrats.

There are also signs that the NDP might be closer to distancing itself from the Trudeau government. According to CTV News, the party has taken out its “largest pre-election ad buy since 2015.” A new 30-second ad showcases Jagmeet Singh setting up what the NDP calls the “change the rules tour.” The ad takes swipes at both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

The NDP has realized that a lot of Liberal seats are up for grabs, but to credibly contest them will mean that the party will have to step away from the confidence-and-supply agreement that has kept the minority Trudeau government afloat. You can’t both trash and support the party you want to supplant.

The Eldidi mess

As if the bad polls, exiting members and shaky alliances weren’t enough to cause the Liberals grief, along comes a major potential scandal.

In July, the RCMP arrested Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi and his 26-year-old son Mostafa Eldidi. The two were charged with being in the advanced stages of carrying out a murderous terrorist attack in Toronto inspired by the Islamic State group, or ISIS.

It is important to note that these men have not been tried. But where this becomes a problem for the federal government is how the elder Eldidi not only got into the country in the first place, but was granted citizenship.

That’s because both father and son were suspected terrorists before coming to this country. Global News has reported that the father immigrated to Canada after allegedly taking part in ISIS violence abroad that was videotaped. So how did such a person make it through immigration and security screening in Canada, and how was he granted citizenship?

That matter has now been taken up in an emergency meeting of the House of Commons public safety and national security committee. That could lead to public cross-examinations of Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

Miller seems to understand how ruinous this file could become for the Liberals, fuming publicly that he is disgusted by the Eldidi affair and is considering revoking his citizenship.

Justin Trudeau has chosen a more circumspect approach, saying only that his government takes this issue “very seriously” and that he won’t comment further until an internal investigation is completed. Fair enough from a legal point of view. But that is an answer unlikely to impress either the official Opposition or voters. And so the summer of the Liberal party’s discontent drags on.

The Liberals find themselves at a juncture requiring a political jolt of the sort delivered south of the border by the Democratic presidential candidacy of Harris. This much seems clear: making Mark Carney finance minister in a Trudeau government is not change; it is mere politics. To get their mojo back, the Liberals will need something closer to magic.

The magic of genuine renewal.