October 14, 2024 - 10:00am

A growing number of MPs in Justin Trudeau’s governing Liberal caucus are gathering forces in a prospective party revolt to oust the unpopular Prime Minister, according to Canadian media sources. A top-secret document urging the leader to step down has reportedly been circulating among Liberal lawmakers since the government’s shock by-election defeat in the former stronghold of Toronto—St Paul in the summer. This was followed by another bruising loss in Montreal last month, which only reinforced the rebels’ case for a leadership change.

While the Prime Minister’s office was able to pre-empt and put down the last round of open dissent immediately following these political setbacks, the document’s signatories — consisting of about 20 MPs — are keeping their names and the details of their message under the strictest cover of confidentiality. Supposedly, the plan was to keep silent “until [the plotters] had strength in numbers”, but a contentious meeting of the caucus last Wednesday and now these latest revelations have alerted the Prime Minister and his allies to the gravity of the discontent. Trade Minister Mary Ng, who learned about the intrigue while accompanying the Prime Minister back from a summit in Asia, reassured reporters that she believed her boss still had enough caucus support to carry on as leader, though Trudeau himself has so far remained silent.

The turmoil comes as the ruling party’s fortunes appear to be in free fall, with consistently poor polling data for well over a year giving the impression that it is headed toward a catastrophic wipeout at the next election. Abacus Data shows Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives on track to win 43% of the national vote share to the Liberals’ 22%. To put this into perspective, Trudeau won his first and only majority government back in 2015 with 39% of the vote.

What’s more, one electoral map model using this data illustrates the depth of the Liberals’ troubles: it shows the vote-rich Greater Toronto Area, where Canadian elections are essentially won or lost, submerged in a blue Tory wave — and the Liberal seat count reduced to one. If these projections hold, the Liberals will be on track for possibly their worst defeat in history. The belated replacement of veteran campaign chair Jeremy Broadhurst with another party stalwart Andrew Bevan will likely do little to reverse these trends. which have been years in the making.

Commentators have pointed to mounting ethics scandals, botched immigration and climate policy, dissatisfaction among the youth over housing and electoral reform, and a general cost-of-living crisis as reasons for the steep decline in the government’s chances for re-election.

And though the next election had been scheduled for late 2025 — which could theoretically give the Liberal minority another year’s worth of breathing room — the end of its governing agreement with the New Democrats, the Tories’ constant attempts at pushing confidence votes, and the increasingly costly demands of the one remaining opposition party with whom they could work out a deal (the separatist Bloc Québecois), make an early election far more likely. Should the current plot succeed, however, Trudeau could instead go at the hands of his own fearful and exhausted MPs. It would be a merciful end to a political career that has gone on for much too long.


Michael Cuenco is a writer on policy and politics. He is Associate Editor at American Affairs.
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