Front Burner - Will the Liberals dump Trudeau?

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

It’s no secret the Liberal Party is Canada is unpopular. Poll after poll shows the Liberals between 15 to 20 points behind the Conservatives, led by a surging Pierre Poilievre.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t faring any better, hitting record low approval ratings after nearly ten years in power. Is it time to replace him? And if so, who can take over the sinking ship?David Herle, a partner at Rubicon Strategy and chief campaign strategist for the Liberals under Paul Martin, joins us to answer those questions and gives us his thoughts on the politicians whose names are floating around to take over the party.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.Help us make Front Burner even better by filling out this listener survey: https://forms.gle/JpaGc3RyiaYKqMmw6

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic, and I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals in learning options that work with your ambitious lifestyle. Adapt, evolve, and excel. Go to humber.ca slash cpl to get started. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. So right now we're doing an audience survey and we would love to

get your feedback. What do you like? What do you not like about the show? The kinds of stories that you want more of or less of. You can fill out the survey via the link in our show notes. It'll be up until June 13th. We'd love it if you could take part. All right, here's the episode. It's a little ironic that red is the color of the Liberal Party of Canada, because for quite a while now, that is where the party's polling numbers have been stuck,

deep, deep in the red. Different polls have the Liberals between 15 and 20 points behind the Conservatives. If these polls are right, that could translate into a slashing of their MPs by well over half and put them something like 140 seats behind the Tories. After nearly a decade as prime minister, the personal polling for leader Justin Trudeau has also continued to slide over the last year. Angus Reid has him at a record low approval rating of 28%, down from 40 almost a year ago. It goes without saying that this is absolutely not where the Liberals want to be with an election

potentially coming in the fall of next year or even sooner. Trudeau has said repeatedly that he is planning to lead his party to the next election. But what if he didn't? What if he stepped down? Who could replace him? Could they fare better?

David Hurley is a partner at Rubicon Strategies and Politics. He was chief campaign strategist for the Liberals under Paul Martin, and he is the host of the Hurley Burley and Curse of Politics podcast. David, hi, it is so great to have you on FrontBurner, finally. It's great to be on FrontBurner, finally. It's great to be on FrontBurner, finally.

So to start, I am wondering if you could take me through what the liberals are thinking and weighing right now about whether it makes sense for Trudeau to lead them into another election. If you could try to take me inside their heads or some of their heads. Right. Well, I guess that's an important point because not everybody would see these things the same way. And I think the first point is that liberals are doing less thinking and reflecting and more speculating because I know that this is not intuitive to listeners, but this decision is entirely the prime ministers. It is the case for almost all prime ministers that they're left to make this decision by themselves. But the kind of pressure that is required to actually remove a prime minister or a leader is really quite extraordinary and not something that we are seeing or going to see. are sitting around thinking is what is Mr. Trudeau going to do and what is the right thing for him to do? And I think up until maybe six months ago or so, there was a strong body of opinion that Mr.

Trudeau was, despite his growing unpopularity, probably still the best person to lead the party into an election from an electoral standpoint, that he could win more seats than anybody else could win. He's a very strong campaigner, charismatic, articulate guy out on the campaign trail. People have voted for him before. He's got a following in Quebec. All those arguments are good arguments. But I think that his standing with the public has gotten to the point, fairly or unfairly, that that's no longer the case.

And I think that most liberals now think that, and certainly I think, to be clear, that the balance of risk lies with him staying, that we don't know how a new leader will do. And it's possible that it won't go well, but it's almost certain that this will not go well. I take your point that it's his decision to make, but, you know, is, is there a sense that there could be like a very strong pressure campaign internally? Are there kind of internal mechanisms that could be pulled to try and move him and in a certain direction? I don't think so.

And I think for the following reasons, one of which is that all of these members of caucus, virtually all of them, had their political career start on 2015. They don't know a leader other than Justin Trudeau. They've only been elected under Justin Trudeau. And there's a residual loyalty there that is augmented by the fact that liberals generally remain grateful to Mr. Trudeau for salvaging the party from the dustbin of history prior to the 2015 election. He was a deus ex machina in the machine that resurrected a party that many of us had thought was likely not to seriously contest another election. The liberals last time round in Ontario, they only won 11 seats out of the more than 100. Can they do better than that? Can they do much better than that? Can they do like they've done in Atlantic Canada, where they pulled a huge percentage of the vote? You know, as soon as the votes began coming in from Newfoundland, it was clear that a sweep was underway from coast to coast to coast, as we said at the beginning.

So there's a lot of gratitude, and appropriately so for Mr. Trudeau in that circumstance. So I don't think that the caucus will lead that kind of revolt. And in terms of the party outside of the caucus, frankly, there were a number of constitutional reforms when Mr. Trudeau first took office, which effectively gutted the Liberal Party as an independent institution with power centers that could be a threat to the leader, that doesn't exist anymore. So there's really no avenue. I hear you saying that you think that the balance has shifted in the direction of him being a liability. But one thing you hear from people, and my colleague Erin Wary, for example, is someone who said this to me many times, is that Trudeau actually does perform very well when the odds are against him. When I interviewed him back in the fall, when I asked him this question about how low his approval rating was, he immediately responded by emphasizing how he's like fallen behind in the polls before

and bounced back to win elections. And so, you know, what reasons might we have to think that he could pull off a miracle comeback this time? Or do you think that's really out of the question? I think it's almost certainly out of the question. We're in meteor hits the earth territory in terms of a change. Let's remove any personal considerations about him or his government whatsoever. If you could pick your favorite prime minister and surround them with the best cabinet you can imagine and the most astute political observers, after 10 years in

office in what is an economic crisis situation for many Canadians, that government would be almost certain to lose. And governments have not gone past 10 years in Canada since Wilfrid Laurier. And I believe that was a different time. Not sure they had TikTok. And he is facing, leaving aside the issues that surround him personally, enormous odds in terms of getting reelected. And he's not in the strongest position to do that because he has become a very, he used to be a polarizing figure and now he's not polarizing. Now he's just unpopular. And the government is unpopular largely and seem to be focusing on the wrong things. I don't really see a way back, to be honest. One of the common metaphors for this when he's facing tough odds is the boxing match.

In fact, Paul Wells has written a whole book about this theme. When he was fighting Mr. Brazzo, most casual observers looked at it and said, well, here's a big, strong guy who's street tough in Mr. Brazzo. He is a tough guy. His life has been physical. I think he's been in more fights. Well, in a month that Trudeau has in a life. And here's this little guy who's grown up in privilege. Obviously, that tough guy is going to beat the snot out of him. And there you have it. The fight called for Justin Trudeau knew that he was a trained boxer and Brazzo wasn't. Trudeau knew that he was in impeccable physical condition and Brazzo was an overweight smoker. I don't see similar weaknesses

or vulnerabilities in his opponents that he can exploit. I don't see similar weaknesses or vulnerabilities in his opponents that he can exploit. You don't think that there are weaknesses he can exploit with Polyev? I think Polyev has weaknesses, but I don't think people are inclined to look at them seriously as long as they are so demanding of change. I think it is possible that if the liberals had a different leader, they could get people to take a second look at Mr. Paulihan. I want to get to that in just one moment because it's the real fun part. But, you know, you are a very plugged in guy. And have you gotten any indication that the prime minister is thinking about stepping down at all, maybe in quiet moments?

No, I'm not that plugged in and nobody is that plugged in. It's possible he's having those conversations with Katie Telford, but not with anybody else in his office. Really, it's a very lonely decision because you can't talk about it really with many people. But nobody in politics who tells you that they have an indication from him, he's telling you the truth. Happy holidays. I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic, and I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.ca slash cpl to get started. their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together.

To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. What do you think is motivating him to remain leader? Like just, you know, to keep walking down this path when it really does look like you have an enormous target on your back and that it's not going to end well. Being prime minister of Canada is evidently the best job in Canada. And the evidence that I will cite for that is that nobody has ever voluntarily quit it. Nobody in the history of Canada ever woke up on a Tuesday, unthreatened in any way, and said, I don't want to be the prime minister anymore. People leave this job in one of two circumstances. Either they are defeated in an election,

or they have resigned the job because they concluded that they faced inevitable and imminent defeat. When people do step down, they don't tend to step down until quite late, quite close to the election date, because it isn't until then that they conclude that their defeat is inevitable. There's always events that can happen. There's always something that could occur. And it is also the nature of government to dramatically underestimate your opponents. Almost everybody who's ever been the prime minister lost to somebody they didn't really

believe they could lose to. Great. I was just looking this up yesterday. I thought it was pretty interesting to see this. That Pierre Trudeau announced his retirement at the end of February in 1984. The next election was in September, so six months later. Brian Mulroney said he would resign on also the end of February in 1993, and that election was in October, so eight months later. I mean, both of these men had very, very low approval ratings at the time as well. So, you know, six, eight months, it's a bit different than what we're looking at right now, if the election was in the fall of 2025. Yeah, I don't, I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's other examples. I mean,

Dalton McGinty stepped down a year and a half with a lot of, stepped down with an election not imminent. And that gave Kathleen Wynne a year and a half to govern and look different and establish a difference. And she was able to win election after that. But you're right. If you're only given four or six months, it's impossible to put a different imprint on things or to make people think real change has occurred.

And that's the danger. I mean, I think it is quite likely that Mr. Trudeau will step down and not run again, but I think it's unlikely that he would do that this summer. It'll be a historical. You know, I want to ask you about Kathleen Wynne because you, uh, were her campaign manager, right? Um, so of course, after Dalton McGinty, she won that majority in 2014, But four years later, the party lost most of its seats and she resigned.

It was a real walloping. And you're looking at a historic loss for the Liberals. I am resigning as the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. Kathleen Wynne really had no choice. This is the worst result for the Liberals since 1951 when they took seven seats.

And I'm wondering, before that second election, were you having any conversations about whether it made sense for her to stay on as leader? Yes, absolutely. She was curious about that. She was interested in what was in the party's best interest. She and I were having conversations, but again, those were not conversations that were going much beyond, say, her chief of staff and campaign manager and a few other people. But, you know, I think you're driving at an important point, which is the jig doesn't go on forever, right? So you can change your leader and extend the mandate sometimes.

Kathleen Wynne, Paul Martin, you can extend the mandate a little bit beyond what it might have gone under the original leader. But it's not like you're going to get another 10 years. Like there's just a rule of change and fatigue with the governing party. So, you know, I think liberals need to be thinking about that too, which is that if they change leaders now, the best case scenario is probably one more term. Let's talk about who might be able to pull that off, right? And who the options are. Starting with the name that I'm hearing the most that is outside the party, Mark Carney,

who is the former governor of the Bank of Canada in the Bank of England. Last November, you told the Globe and Mail that you hadn't ruled out a run for the liberal leadership. Is that still the case? Well, there is. It's easy not to rule out something that doesn't exist. So it's we're but you know, and I'll be. And why would he be an attractive choice, but also one with a lot of question marks? He's an attractive figure in a number of respects. I mean, to people who think like liberals, to have somebody that is a liberal and has liberal values, but really, really understands the economy and believes in the market economy. That's sort of the golden mix for liberals. And he fits right in there. And at a time of genuine economic problems, everything from affordability to the level of productivity in our economy, people are looking for more of an economic focus from

the government. And he would certainly bring both that focus and that expertise. That's why people are excited about him. What are some of the problems with him? He's never been involved in politics before. Nobody knows how good he'll be at that. Can he give speeches that rouse people and move people and motivate people and persuade people? Is he a good campaigner?

We don't know any of those things about Mr. Carney. And there's also an aversion in political parties to making somebody the leader the minute they join your party. And Bob Ray found that out, who might well have won the leadership of the Liberal Party in 2006, had he run for parliament in 2006, but didn't, and then sought the leadership. And so Mr. Carney's coyness about his prospects, as opposed to just jumping in and joining the team, is I think rubbing some people the wrong way. You know, I wonder, too, do you think like the ghosts of Michael Ignatieff are kind of haunting some people in the party? So, of course, like Michael Ignatieff, an intellectual and Harvard professor, he was also coy about his political ambitions, but then won the leadership. On a very difficult night, trailing badly in his own riding, and the party getting, well, they're at 33 seats right now,

a historic low for the Liberal Party of Canada. And the last time we looked at the share of the vote, it was under 20%. There was a lot of criticism of his inability to kind of connect with voters, right, of being stiff or lecturing. And so does Carney risk, or do people feel that Carney risks being like an Ignatia 2.0? I really think those comparisons are extraordinarily superficial and irrelevant. I mean, Mr. Ignatieff had literally lived out of the country his entire adult life. He didn't know anything about Canada. That's not true of Mr. Carney. Mr. Carney's been deeply involved in Canadian public life for all but the term that he spent as Bank of England governor. Secondly, Mr. Carney's expertise is in relevant things. Mr. Ignatieff was a philosopher. Mr. Carney is an expert in the economy.

This kind of matters. And the third thing is Mr. Ignatieff was a patrician, aristocratic bearing that didn't suit well with people. Michael Ignatia, man of the people. The Harvard professor with the street smarts to get the job done. Both parsimonious and perfunctory. Meritus without being unctuous. Ignatia.

Anybody that's met Carney knows he's a guy from the Northwest Territories. Cheers for the Edmonton Oilers. He's not reading War and Peace at night like Ignatiev. He's cheering for the Edmonton Oilers. He's not reading War and Peace at night like Ignatieff. He's cheering for the Edmonton Oilers. And he's a charming, funny guy. So, no, he is not Ignatieff part two. He may not be the answer, but he's definitely not Ignatieff.

Okay, I have not yet seen him be funny, but I'm not saying he's not. I just haven't yet. It's generally not advised when you're the governor of the bank. Let's talk about the options inside the party. Krista Freeland is the deputy prime minister. Of course, she has held the biggest cabinet files. What might prevent her from being the obvious choice here? Well, in many respects, she is. Let's start with the fact that the Liberal Party, which prides itself as the feminist party in Canada, has never had a female leader of the party. And now you have one that seems like she ought to be a frontrunner.

She's eminently qualified. She had an astonishingly successful career before entering politics. She's been the most important person other than the prime minister in this government. She is really quite attractive to people that are currently still very excited about the liberal government. If you're really still supportive of this government, you would like Chrystia Freeland to replace Mr. Trudeau if he were to step down. If you're the kind of person that's drifted away from the government since 2015 and is now voting somewhere else, she's too close to Mr. Trudeau for you. And the second thing is, I think while there's no question about her competence and intellectual

acumen, she's prone to say things like the Disney streaming example. Oh God, the Disney blessing. Canadian families are looking really closely at all of their expenses. I personally, as a mother and wife, look carefully at my credit card bill once a month. And last Sunday, I said to the kids, you're older now, you don't want to watch Disney anymore. Let's cut that Disney plus subscription. So we cut it. It's only $13.99 a month that we're saving, but every little bit helps. And I think every- If you're good at politics, that statement passes a flashing red line in your brain before it comes out of your mouth. And that didn't happen. So I think that

those are the two challenges that she's going to face. Two other names. We're talking about women here. Melanie Jolie, the foreign affairs minister, former defense minister, Anita Anand. She's currently president of the Treasury Board. Do either of these names make sense? I think they're both on most people's list of people they'd like to see run, Anita and Ann, very strong administrative reputation inside the government. Melanie Jolie brings something to the table that we haven't talked about yet, and that is Quebec. The Liberal Party does not form majority governments without substantial support from the province of Quebec. We simply don't get enough votes in English Canada

to ever form a majority if we're not doing very well in Quebec. Point number two is we don't do very well in Quebec unless we run a francophone Quebecer, not an anglophone Quebecer, not a francophone from outside of Quebec, but a francophone Quebecer. That's the difference between 40-some seats and 20-some seats. And so she's the only leading candidate that really brings that to the table. And she is very well known and very popular in Quebec, much stronger image in Quebec than she has outside of Quebec. And her real challenge will be to, I think, A, demonstrate gravitas to people and to demonstrate

that she can sell as well in Toronto as she does in Montreal. Let me throw some other names at you. as she does in Montreal. Let me throw some other names at you. Minister of Public Safety, Dominic Leblanc. Minister of Innovation, Francois-Philippe Champagne. Minister of Housing, Sean Fraser, who's a young guy, but has certainly made an impression lately.

What do you think of these guys? Very talented. Very talented mix of people. I mean, the government is so lucky that Dominic LeBlanc was part of it. Um, he settles down every file they put him on. Uh, and he has tremendous political instincts and tremendous political judgment. He also is going to be very closely identified with the prime minister, a lifelong friend. Yeah.

Um, so it's going to be hard for him to really distance himself. And Mr. LeBlanc has spent his life seemingly content to be behind the scenes of the person that's actually out front. Does he have a vision of the country, and can he mobilize and motivate people around that vision of the country? That's a Dominic LeBlanc we haven't seen. Sean Fraser, I think, is a very complete package in terms of politics, probably a little fresh and young to be considered this time. But I don't rule him out because I think he's got great skills. And Champagne?

Champagne's obviously one of the highest profile people in the government. But there's no evidence that I've seen in polling anywhere that he's generating any interest among the general public, despite having lots of money to spend and despite being at the forefront of big decisions, battery plants and car manufacturing plants and NAFTA, all sorts of things. Some people the public finds interesting and some people the public does not find interesting. And I think Mr. Champagne falls into the category of somebody who's an outstanding minister, makes the government stronger by being part of it, but is not likely to be an interesting prospect as leader. I imagine that this is, well, obviously, this decision, like, couldn't be taken in isolation

because whoever might hypothetically take over the Liberal Party would be going up against Polyev, right? Who is, I think it is very fair and objective to say, a formidable opponent. He is aggressive. He has certainly been having success at getting his own messaging out there. And what would a candidate need to have or need to possess to take that on? And do you see anybody in that list that we just went through who might have those qualities? Well, I mean, you know, Mr. Paulieff's favorable qualities are in stark display right now because he's standing next to one of the least popular people in Canada, in Justin Trudeau. When that's no longer the case, some of those things may look a little different. And so I think a lot of things change if there's a leadership change for the Liberal Party. I think you can make arguments for all

of those people that they would be able to exploit various aspects of, I certainly think that Carney knows way more about the economy than Mr. Polyev does and could potentially expose how simplistic Mr. Polyev's economic solutions are. I think that Ms. Jolie presents real challenges and maybe so does Ms. Freeland, real challenges for Polyev's aggressive combative style and how that may look up against them. Up against them, may be perceived differently. And, you know, there are lots of things that

the Liberals could have been talking about to Canadians about Mr. Pauliev all along. He has a record. He's been in government. He's taken positions throughout the course of his life, a record. He's been in government. He's taken positions throughout the course of his life, many of which he doesn't want to profile now because he's running for prime minister. But nonetheless, liberals could make him answer for those things. But that would require really driving those messages home. And that requires advertising dollars these days. And that requires a leader that people are prepared to consider themselves. People have settled on Mr. Polyev now because they've made a judgment about Mr. Trudeau. And that's his greatest strength. All right. David Hurley,

this was great and interesting and also a lot of fun. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you. It was fun. Thanks for having me. All right, that's allbc.ca slash podcasts.