Front Burner - Can Trudeau survive Freeland’s resignation?

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Chrystia Freeland's bombshell resignation as finance minister has thrown Justin Trudeau's fragile government into chaos. The decisions that led to this are raising questions about the Prime Minister's judgment, loyalties, leadership and ability to stay in power.Paul Wells and Stephen Maher are our guests. Paul has a substack under his own name and has written about Canadian politics for decades. Stephen is a longtime federal politics reporter and author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Let's put it this way. Firing a Minister of Finance who has served you extremely well is not what I would call a trustworthy move.

Should you resign? Yes. Hi, everybody. Jamie here. So back during the first Trump presidency, Chrystia Freeland faced a trial by fire. She'd been selected by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to lead Canada through some tough economic negotiations with Donald Trump, who'd just come into office hot,

ready to blow up NAFTA. This had the potential to cause Canadians real economic pain. She got the deal done, And after 14 months of bargaining, the first thing Freeland did was lie down on the floor of the prime minister's office, thrilled, but also exhausted. Well, today I am going to bet that it is more likely that Justin Trudeau is lying on that office floor. Christopher Freeland's bombshell resignation has thrown his fragile government into chaos again, but arguably even worse than before, raising questions about Trudeau's judgment,

loyalties, leadership, and how much longer he can stay in power. Paul Wells is here. He's got a substack under his own name and he's written about Canadian politics for decades, and so is Stephen Marr, also a longtime federal politics reporter and author of The Prince, The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. Stephen, Paul, thank you both so much for making the time today.

It's nice to be here with you. Thanks for the invite. Awesome. It's always great to have you, especially on today. So a note before we get rolling, that we are all talking at 4 p.m. Eastern time on Monday. I just want to timestamp this conversation because things have been moving really fast all day. And I wonder if we could start by digging into this resignation letter in detail. But quickly, once you finished reading it this morning, what is the very first thing

that went through your head? Just a couple of words, if you could. Stephen, maybe you could go first. Well, I thought, holy smokes, good for her. This ought to be the end of the Justin Trudeau era. That was what I thought. It took me about two minutes to come to that conclusion. Okay.

And Paul, how about you? It's a very British resignation letter. British? There's a strong Canadian taboo, even in departing, for cabinet ministers to criticize their party leader. It's very rarely done. In Britain, people continue the argument in print in their resignation letter. And Christopher Freeland, who worked in London for many years for the Financial Times, clearly has read some of those letters and knows how they sound. And so she wrote one of her own.

That's a very interesting takeaway. Okay, so let us get into that letter that she wrote. So she explains that the PM told her on Friday that she would no longer be finance minister, and he offered her another cabinet position, which we now know is apparently a U.S. relations role, staying on as deputy PM but not having a portfolio, which I think is an important detail. She says a minister needs the confidence of the PM, and clearly she doesn't have it. And so the only viable path for her was to resign. And now I just want to read you both some of what I think is the heart of this letter. For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada. Our country today faces a grave challenge.

The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25% tariffs. We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today so that we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment. She also wrote, I quote, of the moment. She also wrote, I quote, I know Canadians would recognize and respect such an approach. They know when we are working for them and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves. All right, Paul, parse that for me. What did you hear in that? She's saying that the prime minister of Canada is not serious about governing the country and not keenly aware of obvious things. She's essentially asserting that he hasn't noticed that Donald Trump has

been reelected and that he plans a tariff campaign against his northern neighbors. I don't know how you could assert that that's different from saying that the prime minister of Canada is incompetent to continue as prime minister of Canada. So yeah, it's a hell of a letter. Yeah. Stephen, if I could pull some of those details out. When she says costly political gimmicks, what is she talking about? And when she says that they're at odds on the best path forward, what are these two visions that she might be talking about? Well, the PMO has apparently been insisting that she proceed with what economists think is an ill-conceived Christmas tax holiday. And she's saying that she doesn't want to do that. Something that strikes me as very important about all this is the timeline so she

had apparently agreed against her better judgment to proceed with this gimmicky tax holiday uh but he would have been aware that that she was only doing so reluctantly and then on the friday before the day that she is supposed to do it, he says, well, and after you finish that on Tuesday, you're not going to have that job anymore. I'm going to give that job to someone else. We presume that that was to be Mark Carney. So he put her in a position where there was a little downside to her saying, I don't think I'm going to do that. It's an extraordinary sort of failure of personnel management. And it takes us back to 2019 when he stood in Vancouver and told reporters that the fact that Jody Wilson-Raybould remained

in his cabinet was evidence that she still had confidence in him. In our system of government, of course, her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself. It was, again, an example of him seeming to take for granted the support of people who were ready to withdraw that support. Do you think that he was shocked by her letter today? I mean, this is somebody who has stood in tandem with the prime minister for the better part of a decade. And really, her timing was, I don't know if you would agree, but felt like maximum impact to me too, hey? maximum impact to me too, hey?

Like, this letter was released right before she was supposed to deliver the fall economic update. It really threw the entire government into chaos, right, Stephen? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it produced a farce. It's quite an extraordinary thing. And I want to say, actually,

it seems to contradict Paul Well's first rule of Canadian politics. Is it that, like, the most boring thing will always happen? Was that one of the rules? For any given set of circumstances, Canadian politics will tend towards the least exciting outcome. Right. Any given set of circumstances is carrying a lot of weight today.

Do you think that, just even a quick question for you, do you think that it really caught Trudeau and the PMO's office off guard? Well, it had to have. I mean, they,

they've been through an awful lot together. So you have to think that if he wasn't listening to her, if he did not see that this was a possible outcome of him telling her that he was firing her, essentially, after all she's done for him and his government over a decade, you know, that's on him. When I was researching my book on him, a former cabinet

minister talked to me at length about the extraordinary confidence of Justin Trudeau, said it's like a superpower. If we all were as confident as Justin Trudeau, imagine what we could accomplish. He appears to have been a little too confident in this case. So, Paul, Stephen mentioned that the job of finance minister was presumably supposed to go to Mark Carney. So this was the former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor that Trudeau has been trying to reel in for a while now. Some in the liberal camp think he's got like the economic chops and could help save them from some safeties. But he's not the finance minister as of 4 p.m. On Monday, Dominic LeBlanc is longtime Trudeau friend and currently public safety minister. I, Dominic LeBlanc, do solemnly and sincerely promise and swear that I will be truly and faithfully and to the best of my skill and knowledge,

execute the powers and trusts reposed in me as Minister of Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs. What on earth happened there? It would be helpful if Mark Carney would use his words and explain to the Canadian people what happened. I personally plan to count it heavily against my sense of Mark Carney if he chickens out of that obligation. I can only guess. Here's my guess. He would have noticed that this prime minister has burned two loyal finance ministers, and that there's no point in being the third loyal finance minister.

In the order of precedence, according to sort of constitutional convention, the finance, the minister to replace the finance minister was the industry minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, who's an ambitious guy. And he immediately said he didn't want to touch the job. It's almost like the only guy they could get is Dominic LeBlanc, who's known Justin Trudeau since almost literally the day Justin Trudeau was born. Nobody who thinks about this job as a job rather than a vocation is interested in being the finance minister of a G7 country under this prime minister. Right. On Friday, when he told Freeland that her time as finance minister was up, When he told Freeland that her time as finance minister was up, do you think that he hadn't had Carney then? I know this could be sort of an unfair question, but I guess I'm just trying to figure out what this was all for.

I think they thought that Carney could count on Chrystia Freeland to do the most helpful thing for them for as long as they kept asking, because she always has. Right. When Jane Philpott resigned from cabinet over the SNC-Lavalin affair in 2019, Chrystia Freeland, every minister in cabinet had a decision to make, and they all, except for Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was directly implicated, decided to stay. The prime minister absolutely has my confidence. I have found him to be absolutely supportive. He is a feminist as a prime minister and he's a feminist as a boss. Again and again, in every controversy that's come up since then, blackface, the We Charity, and assorted lesser controversies, at some point, Krista Freeland says, you know, into a bank of cameras, that she still has confidence in the prime minister.

The prime minister has my full support. I know he has the full support of cabinet. And I know he has the full support of the vast, vast majority of liberal MPs. She's like the kid that the rich kid always knows he can count on to lend him her car if he needs to go out on a spree on a Friday night. Right. And then suddenly she drives him out to the edge of town in a blizzard and dumps him there. I bet they were surprised.

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Nearly two months ago, Trudeau had to stare down this insurrection in his own party. Worth noting maybe that Freeland came out then. The prime minister has my full support as leader of our government, as leader of our party. The prime minister has been very clear that he intends to lead us into the next election.

And he has my full support in doing that. But today, what did her resignation and rebuke set in motion here? Stephen? Well, I think it sets in motion the end of the second Trudeau government. It's hard to imagine him managing to muddle through the, it hasn't happened, but there are rumors that five or six other cabinet ministers are threatening to leave. Sean Fraser did announce that he was leaving the day before. And after Freeland made her announcement, he made a point of saying what close friends they are. I consider her a friend, and that friendship will continue long after my time in politics.

A number of MPs have called on Trudeau to resign. I don't see how this helps the Prime Minister and I don't see a way out and how this helps us talk about Canadians while we're continuing to talk about what's happening right now. So he needs to go. Sorry, I'd like to hear you say. I think he needs to go. Yeah. Do you think the Prime Minister should resign? Yes. We're not united. There's still a number of our members who feel we need a change in leadership. I'm one of those. And so has his helpmate in the House of Commons, Jagmeet Singh. They're fighting themselves instead of fighting for Canadians.

And for that reason today, I'm calling on Justin Trudeau to resign. He has to go. So a lot of people have been telling Justin Trudeau that he's had a decade and had some good innings but it's time for him to to move on for a long time and he hasn't been listening to them i can't believe that he will not listen now i have to think that as a rational actor uh that the people close to him people who presumably care about him as a person and not just as a politician, will be saying, you're only going to hurt yourself more if you keep fighting. We know you're a fighter, buddy, but you've lost this one. this one. Paul, what do you think? Do you want to chime in here? Do you think this is very likely the end of the road? Or do you think he could conceivably muddle through here? So I have learned to draw a distinction between what I think any reasonable person would do and what I have learned

through observation that Justin Trudeau does. Any reasonable person would understand that not only has his government collapsed, but that he does not have the legitimacy to continue as prime minister for serious tasks that engage the prosperity of the country, facing up to Donald Trump to the extent that anybody can. Surely any reasonable person would figure that out. What I've learned that what Justin Trudeau will do is that he will muddle through until the house rises for the holiday on Wednesday. Then he'll go into a kind of hiding for a while.

And then he'll try to come out at some point on the other side of the Christmas break and try to pretend that nothing happened. Look, there'll come a day when that's over and when he leaves politics or is ejected from it. But I no longer expect him to sort of autonomously smell the coffee. I expect him to try and farce this out indefinitely. Stephen, when we're talking about possible scenarios here and how this could play out,

obviously Paul just laid out the muddle through the holidays and pretend everything's cool on the other side of it scenario. I suppose one is he just resigns tonight or tomorrow. Like are there other ones? Yeah, I'm not sure whether he should resign or should announce his resignation. He could call an election. And what a disaster that would be, because a lot of, I suspect that

a lot of people who are now nominated as candidates for the Liberal Party of Canada would decline to run under him at this time. I'm told that he will not base a confidence vote before the break. I know that Liberals are hoping he'll announce that there will be a leadership race and prorogue. That looks like a very difficult path as well. It really is difficult to see what the responsible thing for him to do would be at this point. But I think it's to call a leadership race, to prorogue, and to plan an election early in the new year with someone else leading the Liberal Party of Canada. Just coming back to Freeland for a moment, we've talked about what likely motivated her to write that letter. But

is it also possible that what she was doing this morning was taking a run at his job? She says she's going to stay on and run in the next election, and she's going to stay on as an MP. I was struck by the stated intention to continue as a candidate and an MP after the next election. She would probably win her seat. There are no guarantees. That suggests that she wants to be in the thick of Canadian politics the next time the Liberal Party needs a leader. And I have kind of thought she might be done with politics. But I don't think that this resignation and the tone of that letter, I don't think anything she's done over the last couple of weeks is a purely tactical play.

I don't think she's only thinking of her interests. I think she's trying to respond to what should be unacceptable circumstances and an unacceptable predicament. And kind of as a second tier priority, she's also trying to keep her options open for her political future. I don't think she quit because she thought it'd be clever. I think she quit because even she has finally had enough of this guy. She quit because even she has finally had enough of this guy. I'll put this to both of you. Final thoughts for today, which feels like really an extraordinary day in Canadian politics.

Stephen, I'll start with you. Well, it was a gap of about six months between it being completed and it being published. And when I started to do publicity for it, I found myself saying, well, I see things as a little worse. I see his record a little worse now than I saw when I finished writing the book. worse. I see his record a little worse now than I saw when I finished writing the book. And I saw it when I finished writing the book worse than I saw it when I started writing the book a year earlier. And I see it a lot worse now. The prime minister, I wrote in September that he was risking the verdict of history by overstaying his welcome. risking the verdict of history by overstaying his welcome.

And he seems to have done that. And I find it sort of sad for him and the people around him and the people in his party, in his caucus, that things have come to this. But it seems to be his doing. Paul? I think just about everybody in Canadian public life loves the country and hopes to help to make it better. And I may upset some listeners by including Justin Trudeau in their number. I think that he's trying his best to be the best prime minister he can be.

But he is years past having to notice that his judgment is often terrible, that he's better at chasing talent away than an attracting talent. Uh, and that he has asked far too many favors of the people around him. What he's essentially doing now, every day that he stays in politics is asking for more favors from the people around him, including the people around him. What he's essentially doing now, every day that he stays in politics, is asking for more favors from the people around him, including the people of Canada. And the most long-suffering person in his cabinet was Christa Freeland. And she finally tapped out. Again, the reasonable person would draw conclusions from that, but Justin Trudeau was the prime minister. Okay. I want to thank you both very much for this.

Thank you. It was a pleasure. All right. So before we go today, just a few updates. Liberal MPs did have their emergency caucus meeting Monday night. Chrystia Freeland was there. The Prime Minister was also there. I very much wish that I was there. It's hard to get a sense right now of what exactly transpired, but my colleague Rosie Barton did say that Trudeau is planning to take some holiday time to consider his position. We also did find out more about the fall economic statement,

which eventually did get tabled on Monday. It did blow past the government's self-imposed deficit cap by more than $20 billion. It's a more than $60 billion deficit. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow.