Please Advise! After Trudeau, What’s Next?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Justin Trudeau is resigning as prime minister. Parliament has been prorogued until March 24 and the Liberals will now choose a new leader to take on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. What will the immediate future hold?

Signed,

Eight Ball

Dear EB,

It seems Jan. 6 is becoming quite a thing, isn’t it? As a political calendar date it’s getting up there with the Ides of March.

Now that Trudeau has announced his departure, all the political pieces have been tossed into the air.

The prime minister’s move was no surprise. Justin Trudeau was about as popular as squid ink ice cream.

The question now becomes whether those poll numbers are about Trudeau or the Liberal party. Can they find themselves a shiny new boss and get that new party smell? If Trudeau is the new Joe Biden, the Liberals are hoping his successor will do what Kamala Harris could not.

But the party knows they could do a lot worse than anointing the next Harris — they might end up with the next Kim Campbell. After then-prime minister Brian Mulroney stepped down, Campbell arrived in 1993 with plenty of fanfare and glowing coverage to boldly lead her party into an election. When it was over, her caucus could ride to Parliament on a Vespa.

The Liberals have not exactly been grooming successors. But there are names in play. Mark “Banksy” Carney, Chrystia “Stabby” Freeland, Dominic “Nickname TBA” LeBlanc and, if you believe Christy Clark, Christy Clark. Hopefully her federal Conservative party membership has lapsed, because that would be awkward. (Clark took out a membership to vote for Jean Charest in the last leadership race.) She can always say she was spying.

Cabinet ministers hoping to succeed Trudeau will now take a page from the Gospels as, like the Apostle Peter, they deny their leader. “I don't know him! Never met the man! Those photos were doctored!”

Former Bank of Canada governor Carney has not yet thrown his green visor into the ring, but that did not stop Pierre Poilievre from immediately attacking him as “Carbon Tax Carney” in a video released Monday.

That Poilievre video is almost awe-inspiring. In it, the Conservative leader reviles the current Cormac McCarthy hellscape where “everything's out of control” and the government “taxes your food, punishes your work, doubles your housing costs, puts crime and drugs in your community.”

Then comes a hyperbolic gush of utopian promises that would make Thomas More blush. It was like someone had given SpongeBob an emetic.

Conservatives, Poilievre promised, will “take back control of the border, take back control of immigration, take back control of spending deficits and inflation, fix the budget, take back control of our streets by locking up criminals, banning drugs, treating addiction and stopping gun smugglers, cap spending, axe taxes, reward work, build homes, uphold family, stop crimes, secure borders, rearm our forces, restore our freedom, put Canada first affordable food and homes on safe streets.”

What, no monorail? Dr. Steve would like to lose 30 pounds and play the violin. That must have been in there somewhere. Poilievre sounded like an insurance salesman on meth.

Poilievre finished with: “Canada first, Canada last, Canada always.” Canada last — that was probably the most believable thing in the video.

Will the Liberals find a saviour? One would like to believe Canadian voters will consider the alternative and choose accordingly.

But as we have just seen south of the border, when the electorate is in a mood, they won't care if the opposition's political platform stinks as though excreted from a possum's anal gland. They'll vote for it anyway.

The Liberal leadership might come with a free blindfold and a last cigarette.