At Issue - Can a cabinet shuffle save Trudeau's government?

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

At Issue this week: The Trudeau government scrambles to fill cabinet holes after the sudden departure of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. What is Trudeau's mindset as he contemplates his own 'walk in the snow?' Plus, how Canada's political chaos is helping Trump. Rosemary Barton hosts Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Althia Raj.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey there, I'm Rosemary Barton. This week on At Issue, the podcast edition for Thursday, December 19th. A sudden cabinet shuffle to respond to a political crisis

and deal with ministers leaving and others pulling double duty. I may or may not have a conversation if he asks me views on some colleagues. Sometimes he has, sometimes he hasn't. This week, we're asking what could a cabinet shuffle mean for the Liberals? Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne and Alkia Raj join me to talk about that. Plus, what is Trudeau thinking as he contemplates his own future? We've reported a couple of little bits of news that David McGinty is going to take over as public safety minister. Nate Erskine-Smith will take over as housing minister. But there are obviously other names and people at play here. And why do you think that they have to do this shuffle, Chantal? Other than, I guess, filling some of

those holes, what do you think this is about? Those holes are pretty big. When you think that there are three ministers who are kind of carrying on double or triple duty. So that shuffle is not a choice. It's an obligation. But when you do a shuffle to kind of give a party or a government momentum, you do not do it at midday on the 20th of December or Friday. You do it in the new year when people are paying attention again. So I am not seeing the shuffle, one, as an effort to send a signal other than there is still a government in place.

But two, I don't think it's the shuffle that the PMO and Justin Trudeau hoped for. No, definitely not. I think they have a shuffle that would send a big message earlier in the week, not just with Mark Carney, maybe with Christy Clark, the former BC Premier, who seems to want in on the Federal Liberal Party, maybe others. That's not happening tomorrow. So, Andrew, is it out of necessity? Is it to buy the Prime Minister some time to think about where things are going? And what is the risk, like any cabinet shuffle, that it will anger some people and disappoint them? Yeah, well, first of all, most cabinet shuffles are vastly overinflated and overstated in their

significance. If there's been a theme to this government, certainly to the Christopher Freeland exit, but also to some of the other top ministers now sitting on the sidelines. It's how little individual ministers really get to do very much versus the all-encompassing power of the PMO. That being said, I think the main thing here, as Chantal said, is there's holes to be filled. They're just for running the government purposes. I think a lot of it is also just to show that the prime minister is still in charge, to signal perhaps, maybe with not a full-throated lack of any ambiguity, but to signal that he may or may not be staying around. You've got to carry on business. I think his game is going to be larger than that, but this is certainly a piece of it is, if you don't have a cabinet shuffle and then people start to say, well, maybe the wheels have completely fallen off and he's, you know, exited for some foreign state or

something. Yeah. And Althea, how much more difficult do you think this shuffle is than previous ones, given the week that we've all seen? Well, Sean, that is right. This is not the cabinet shuffle that they envisaged a week ago. This is not at all the plan that they had. And that plan seems to have actually shifted throughout the week. So Chrystia Freeland's announcement, bombshell announcement, which was not expected at all, has really forced a reshuffling of the deck. This seems to be more of a caretaker cabinet. And frankly, I wonder if we're going to see another cabinet

because it still seems like some of the leadership contestants are going to be in this cabinet. So if then, and there is, one assumes, and it looks increasingly like the prime minister's resignation is not a matter of if, but when, and then how the whole thing plays out, we would see another cabinet shuffle because I can't see if you're a leadership candidate, why you would want to be in a Justin Trudeau cabinet or even in an interim leader cabinet. You obviously want to go around the country selling, well, not selling because they're liberals, but signing up registered liberals. There are some interesting moves. I think that they absolutely had to have a shuffle. You can have the finance minister also be the border minister. Like, that's just not feasible. People were already complaining that they were doing double duty. I mean, Anita Anand is at Transport and Treasury Board. These are both quite demanding portfolios. So

they had to make changes. People are very upset, though, by the changes. And I'm sure we'll get more into that. But that, it was always going to be a challenge. It's an even greater challenge than I think they expected. Talk to me about that, Chantal, why you think that that might be here, too. No, but think of it. If the prime minister, as many expect in Ottawa, says at some point between now and January 6th that he wants the party to replace him as liberal leader. It doesn't stop him from staying as prime minister. And by the way, we've not had in recent history an interim prime minister. They all stayed after they quit until the successor was appointed.

But at that point, anyone that sits in cabinet today and wants to run would probably have to withdraw from that portfolio. By my count, you go through the list of hopefuls, that's four senior ministers. I don't believe Justin Trudeau has been going around asking people, I'm about to shuffle the cabinet, Do you want to run for my succession? No. And that's Antio's point about how solid is that cabinet versus what happens if Justin Trudeau decides that he's moving on or how solid is it if he decides that he's staying?

And I don't think either question gets an answer tomorrow. Andrew? Just to pick up on something else, Leah kind of hinted at, which is that there may be further cabinet shuffles after this. And of course, if you're playing the game of trying to keep the caucus guessing,

then you never want this to be the final shuffle. You want them all still hoping that if they stick around, even if they only get to be a cabinet minister for six weeks or six months, for some of them, that'll be the best thing on their resume. I mean, yeah, go ahead, Althea. I think the challenge will be, if he continues to stay on, that more and more MPs will actually tell him, no, thank you.

I mean, what we've seen in the last week are people who thought that they were going to get into cabinet, assume that they were not going to get into cabinet and be very angry about it. We heard people who were actually fervent loyalists of the prime minister start to say publicly that he needed to go. We are hearing people say not just that we need a new leader, but he needs to resign immediately. There's a gamut of opinion, but it is getting harder and harder to find people who are not dissenters. And that was not the case two weeks ago. At issue tonight, Trudeau's future. Some MPs continue to call for the prime minister to step aside. We're heading for oblivion and we need to stand up as elected representatives, do the right thing.

Or just dodge the question entirely. There's a lot of discussions about what is going to transpire or not. I cannot provide you clarity and answers about people's futures. What does Justin Trudeau need to be thinking about after the shuffle? How should he be reflecting on his political future and his career? Chantal Hébert, Andrew Coyne, Althea Raj.

I want to take more time to talk about this because the shuffle, all of this is all part of what has to happen and what he's thinking about and who he's talking to and what the right decision is. Althea, tell me what you're hearing about where that discussion is. I don't think he's made up his mind, but you tell me what you think. I don't know. He hasn't told me if he has. No, but the people, you talk to a lot of people.

So he has been having one-on-one conversations with cabinet ministers where he has told them, well, some report a variety of different things. What is clear is that he is actually seriously considering resigning or saying so publicly in a way that he wasn't in, like, Rebellion 1.0 in October, that he feels that he has the fire to continue the fight, but isn't sure that he has the team around him to do it. And he's right. You know, we are not a presidential system. There is not an election for a prime minister. He has to lead the parade. And if there's nobody behind him, it's not much of a parade. The other thing is the caucus seems to be getting a little bit more emboldened. Like, Chrystia Freeland's resignation has lit a match underneath them. And I think it's possible that if he has no movement that they will try to force movement.

The challenge is that they're not aligned on what they want that change to look like at the moment. But it does really seem like he is coming to terms with the fact that the end might be near. I was at the Liberals' Christmas party on Tuesday, and the chatter was not whether he was going to resign. It was like, what's the mechanism when he does resign? Not if, but when. Can we shorten the leadership rate? Does it really need to be three, four months? Can it be shorter? Could caucus elect a leader? And if so, like, would the rules have to have a virtual convention to allow that to happen?

Like, it's almost like the party is making a decision and he hasn't publicly announced it yet. Yeah. I also have heard and we've reported that he has asked for sort of information around what it would look like if he stayed. So I also think, I totally agree, Althea, that he is perhaps for the first time seriously considering leaving. But I also think he's seriously trying to figure out how he could stay. And so I wonder what that means. Andrew wants in, and then I'll go to Chantal. Well, let's state, first of all, it's extremely hard to remove a sitting prime minister who doesn't want to go. It's only happened twice in our history.

Paul Martin controlled every aspect of the Liberal Party, root and branch, and it still took him three years to push Jean Chrétien out. So it's extremely difficult. Now, obviously, the situation is extremely dire for him, but let's consider the possibility that he is in the back of his mind or the front of his mind wants to stay. What would be the thing you would say to people is, Oh, you know, I'm really reflecting on my future. I'm really thinking about this.

I'll need a few weeks to think about it, but I'm still gonna, you know, I'm looking at this really hard. You wouldn't just say I'm staying, you'd play for time. And I think that's at least a plausible theory here is he's playing for time. He's trying to keep the ball in the air, trying to keep people guessing until, lo and behold, you wake up one morning, you realize, oh, it's too late now. We're going to have to go with him through the election. So the final point I'll just make is that's the consideration for him and for the liberals is they would the liberals. A lot of liberals would like to replace him as leader, but obviously they don't want to go into an election.

What is needed for the country, in my opinion, is an is an election, not just a change of leadership in the governing party. The uncertainty that's besetting the country right now really ought to be top of mind for people. Well, I do wonder, Chantal, whether the threat of Donald Trump is the thing that he could point to if he was looking for something. I don't know. It could work the opposite way, of course, as well. I tell Canadians what we need is stability after this week. It's going to be really hard to make that argument, especially given that he needs to survive in the House of Commons.

So what does he do? Suspend parliament forever until the G7 in June and think something is going to happen? If you look at the trend, I mean, I like Althea. He hasn't told me. But this is a prime minister who started off by losing voters. Then he lost the NDP. Then he lost control of the House of Commons. Then he lost control of caucus. Now he's losing control of cabinet. It's like you're watching someone, the water keeps going up,

and he's standing on this little island of sand. I'm hearing both things, that he's trying to find a way to stay, which, in part, I want to believe is comes from people who think the worst of Justin Trudeau, and maybe they're right. I'm hearing the opposite, that he wants to know how to go about a succession contest that doesn't spread over months. And by the way, the Liberals did move from Stéphane Zion to Michael Ignatieff within a matter of days and weeks. But on that basis, it would take most of the people who want to run for the leadership to think, let someone else take the hit in the next election, and then I'll run and to let one person stand. Yeah. And also I'm hearing from people who are concerned that if he stays, the people who want the job are going to make it really, really ugly to try and push him out, that the leadership race would be pretty awful for the party.

I don't know what you think about that notion, Althea. I think the leadership race is going to be divisive, but it would be divisive whether you have it now or you have it six months from now or a year from now. I think the Middle East question is going to be a very divisive question. I think just ideologically where the party goes is going to split people apart. I think what's really interesting is that this is not going to be a cabinet shuffle full of loyalists. I mean, you had a Reeve Varani there, the justice minister, who couldn't offer his wholehearted support for the prime minister. Nert Riskin-Smith, who's apparently going to housing, can't do that either. I mean, that means you're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel if you can't find people

who are willing to have your back. That says a lot. I do think that a bigger question is how much can you trust the NDP to keep their word? So they want, or Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the party, has said he wants the prime minister to resign. What I understand from his office is he means not just resign as liberal leader, but actually no longer be the prime minister. But Mr. Singh has called Wolf before, and he lent his support on confidence measures throughout the fall, despite saying he was not going to do so or suggesting he was not going to confidence measures throughout the fall, despite saying he was not going to do so or suggesting he was not going to do so after the end of the supply and confidence agreement. So there is a scenario where the prime minister could announce that he is

stepping aside, there is a liberal leadership race, he intends to stay to become the interim leader because he needs to provide stability because of Donald Trump and la-di-da, la-di-da. And then he runs in the next election because he is the interim leader and the leader of the Liberal Party and still the prime minister. So there's a lot, I think, of games being plotted out within caucus and within the leadership teams

to see what's more beneficial for us and what do we need to push for. But I think if he does not offer his resignation in the next weeks to come, it's going to get really, really, really ugly. Andrew? The thing that will really be the key is cabinet. I don't think the caucus is as much of a threat as people claim. We still only have 16 people who've gone on the record, 16 out of 153 have gone on the record saying you should step down, even at this late date. I think that, as I

say, cabinet will be key. The shred of hope that he's got in that is when you've got a number of different people with different agendas, leadership agendas, playing them off against each other, playing off people's different estimations of what the best timing for them is, may give them a chance to kind of wiggle through. But it's pretty slim. If significant numbers of cabinet turned against him, then I think that would be the end for him. About a minute to you, Chantal. A number of the silent cabinet ministers are assuming that the only issue is when he announces that he leaves. I don't know what they do beyond that. As for interim leadership, we've never had an interim PM. So prime ministers resign, but they stay until, which is a recipe for stability looking at the Trump inauguration. So that would be a totally stable and possible scenario.

I don't buy that the government would fall because the prime minister can parole basically until March 15th. Then he needs to get credits voted. And it's a confidence vote. So the liberals, I'm sure, can find a way to find a new leader between tomorrow and the end of February. But just so I'm clear, Chantal, your point is, is that he could stay on as prime minister while a leadership race happens, or he couldn't even do that, you don't think? No, no, of course he could stay on as prime minister while a leadership race happens, or he couldn't even do that, you don't think? No, no, of course he could stay on. We have never had a prime minister resign.

Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Lester B. Pearson. We have not had interim prime ministers. The prime minister stays on, ensures stability, as does Alice Gard, and a new leader is picked. And we've done these things over a matter of two months, not four, six or eight.

At issue, Donald Trump, the president-elect, has weighed in on the week in Canadian politics and keeps taunting Canada about becoming the 51st state. So here to break down how Trump is playing off our chaotic week, Chantal, Andrew and Althea. I mean, this is exactly sort of what we've been talking about all week. But I do hear, you know, just Canadians kind of like a little bit worried now about the way Trump is talking about a 51st state and the governor. And I don't I mean, I don't think he's serious, but I don't know how what to say to people who ask me what what the heck is going on.

How should we approach this? Andrew, do you want to weigh in there? I think it's important not to necessarily attribute method to his madness. This is a guy who nominated a series of the absolute worst possible picks for senior cabinet posts. This is a guy who never has a bad word to say about Vladimir Putin, who never trolls any of America's adversaries the way he does their allies. So to have led off, first of all, with a sort of sneak attack out of nowhere, 25% tariff, not based on anything, but just malevolence. I think it's entirely possible that that's all this is. It's just he doesn't like Justin Trudeau. He doesn't like he likes upsetting people. But the one possible scary scenario is he's trying to soften up American public opinion

to see Canada not as the friendly ally that's always there with them, but as some kind of force that needs to be dealt with and to And to get over this idea that people generally like Canada and like Canadians and make them seem some dark force that he's going to stand up to. Yeah, that could be quite dangerous, I think, Chantal, if you start to turn public opinion against Canada as Canada is trying to convince Americans that what he's threatening is bad for them. I think it takes a bit more than that to make Americans worry about Canada when they wake up in the morning, seriously. And that is not to say that we're not an interesting place, but it looks more like the bully in the schoolyard picking on the smallest kid.

And I suspect that Mr. Trump will soon have other things to worry about that are bigger than counting Justin Trudeau. But for sure, the message is that he's going to be happy if Justin Trudeau goes down this week, next week or whenever. Which is kind of an extraordinary thing to see from, you know, your closest ally. I know it's Donald Trump, but it's still an extraordinary thing to see your neighbor, you know, be gleeful of destroying the country and the stability and all the rest of it. I feel like I am dissociating two things. The 25% tariff threat is a real live threat that we need to respond to. Donald Trump saying that Canada should be the 51st state and tweeting or putting on truth social images of a big Canadian flag and him looking fondly at an AI image that's

not actually Canada. I don't think that's a bad thing. I mean, I remember a time when we thought like, oh, the US president doesn't think about Canada enough. This is not Donald Trump not thinking about Canada. I don't think that's a bad thing. I mean, I remember a time when we thought like, oh, the U.S. president doesn't think about Canada enough. This is not Donald Trump not thinking about Canada. He's thinking about Canada in pretty glowing terms. I love you so much. You should become the 51st state. I mean, maybe we should respond with humor. Yes, you were just after our maple syrup. You know, like, we don't need to respond to everything this man tweets. No, no. This idea that we're chickens in our

necks cut off and we have to, you know, like we need to focus on what's important and what's not important. And I understand Donald Trump sells, you know, clicks on news sites. And I'm sure people will tune in because it's Donald Trump being teased, but in the headlines here, but it's not that I don't see it at all as that big a deal. Like he's talking about it. Not a bad thing. Andrew. The only concern I have is what's the next shoe to drop after the 25 percent tariff? So supposedly it's about border measures.

So we're all turning ourselves inside out on the border measures. Is he actually going to withdraw the tariff at that point? Or does it just does he just come up with a new set of demands? So if if if what he's trying to establish is bullying around Canada is is modus is, you know, normal business, then this kind of language and this kind of rhetoric would be helpful in that regard. Okay, I gotta leave things there. As I said, a couple of you at least will be back tomorrow to talk about the cabinet shuffle. Otherwise, we'll try not to call you during the holiday period. Thank you all very much. That's that issue for this week. What do you think about Trump's trolling of Canada?

Is the government responding in the right way? Do you think the Prime Minister needs to move on? Send us an email at ask at cbc.ca. And remember, you can catch me on Rosemary Barton Live Sundays at 10am Eastern. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.