Has the prime minister built a sufficient legacy to justify resignation?
This is the real question to examine for those many Liberals who wish Justin Trudeau would have his own “walk in the snow” and resign like his father did 50 years on Feb. 28, 1984. Pierre Trudeau told a confidante the day of that fateful moment: “I don't have the energy anymore for the job."
His close staff also felt he was convinced he had done what he set out to do. The list was long: He had repatriated the constitution with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, beaten Quebec separatism, and established his peace mission on the hot button nuclear issue. He felt there was no new agenda to inspire him to stay on.
Justin is surely starting to think about his own legacy – has he done enough to change and modernize Canada in a progressive and inclusive way to say he had accomplished enough to step away? Unlike his father at age 65, there is no question that Justin should have lots of energy.
Leslie Church, a well-connected would-be Liberal candidate for St. Paul’s riding in Toronto, in a recent speech gave a very articulate resume of Trudeau’s accomplishments – including the child benefit that has lifted 300,000 children out of poverty, $10-a-day daycare and gender equity. She could have added his role in huge investments in Canada by international companies like Volkswagen and Stellantis for battery plants in St.Thomas and Windsor, Ontario, and a $20-billion investment in rental housing; taking the GST off rental housing construction, plus big housing accelerator grants in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and other Canadian cities. Not to mention most recently with dental care and promised pharmacare.
Yet despite these populist moves, the Trudeau Jr. brand has tanked among the electorate. A recent Abacus poll shows the Conservatives with 19-point lead, the largest the company has ever given the party. Only 14 per cent of respondents thought that the Liberals deserved to be re-elected. Worse, Justin, the sunny ways hero of 2015 now has favourability rating at minus 33, while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre scored a plus two. The government’s approval rating is a mere 24 per cent. As for Justin, 59 per cent of respondents disapproved of his job performance.
Can Justin make a comeback? It will be very hard for him to recapture his easy-going popularity now as an overexposed divorced dad who constantly gives us a correct lecturing about how Liberals are “continuing” (uttered ad infinitum when challenged) to invest in the middle class — whatever that is.
Then there is his love of being on camera, his preference for the symbolic photo op over the substantive deed, as one commentator noted. These tightly scripted predictable smug performances on camera are strangely unconvincing when you compare them to his genuine daily reports to Canadians outside his home during the pandemic. The hair remains good, but the rest needs a very challenging makeover.
Add to the serious problem with his personal appeal is the ArriveCan scandal, which is being compared justifiably to the sponsorship scandal that brought down the Martin government, and tone-deaf evidence of privilege in his Jamaica holiday and his prime ministerial career could appear to be heading to its close. But when? Does he wait to be defeated in 2025, or take his own walk in the snow?
Many believe him when he says repeatedly he is staying on, and relishes beating the smart communicator Poilievre whom he despises for his angry and divisive Trumpian ways. He was most convincing in a year-end radio interview with his old friend Terry DiMonte whom he asked, “Do you actually think I could walk away from this fight right now?” There seems no successor and little caucus unrest.
Some months ago in my blog I argued that politicians were human beings, too. While Trudeau remains plucky and confident and enjoys his travels as a senior member of the Group of 7, he is also endlessly attacked by the opposition and cannot do events in Canada without facing angry crowds.
It is tough to see the opposition endlessly accuse him alone of being responsible to just about everything that ails Canadians. Surely his poor personal popularity must grate on him. The long slide into a public that is simply tired of him and the Liberals. His accomplishments, however important and durable, seem to make no difference to public attitudes.
I leave you with the sad predictions of a very smart friend who is convinced he will be gone by June and of two commentators. The first, Michael Harris in the Tyee, simply says at the end of a long insightful article: “For Justin Trudeau, the options at the moment are the stuff of which political nightmares are made. He must either go, or go down with the ship.” The veteran Globe pundit, John Ivison, put it more bluntly in a recent podcast: “The electorate has made up its mind and there is nothing Trudeau can do to change them…they’re done. They want him gone. ”
Newmarket resident and renowned political commentator and author Patrick Gossage shares insights and opinions on current affairs and political issues in his regular The Insider column on NewmarketToday.
