The Current - 2024 was a wild ride in Ottawa. What’s coming in 2025?

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government will likely face a non-confidence motion early in the new year, which could mean a federal election in the coming months. The Globe and Mail’s Stephanie Levitz and the Toronto Star’s Ryan Tumilty unpack an explosive year in Ottawa — and what lies ahead.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Today I'm calling on Justin Trudeau to resign. He has to go. If you hire clowns, you get a circus. But no one should be laughing. Like most families, sometimes we have fights around the holidays. But of course, like most families, we find our way through it.

It was a pretty wild ride leading up to the Christmas break, with the finance minister resigning on the eve of the fall economic statement, with a chorus of liberals calling for their leader to resign, with the NDP promising a non-confidence motion in the next sitting, and conservative supporters anxious to get their new leader on the campaign trail. Joining me now to talk about the year that was in federal politics and what lies ahead is our national affairs panel. Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter with the Globe and Mail's Parliamentary Bureau. And Ryan Tumulty is a political reporter with the Toronto Star.

Thank you both for being here on just about the first day of 2025. Stephanie, you know, 2015, Justin Trudeau was elected. I remember it well. I was in Montreal that night. It was sunny days, he said. He was even lauded as the sexiest world leader alive. And now, well, liberals could be staring down an historic defeat. How did we get here? Oh, how did we get here? I mean, you know, a long narrative, right? A long story about a government that should it remain in power until the fall of 2025, will have hit the 10-year mark. A liberal government beset by its own internal scandals, driven by the prime minister himself.

A liberal government that found itself, not because of its own doing, facing down some massive things in the world, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and thrown off its own agenda sometimes to do the things that it wanted to do by events beyond its control. And I guess finally, a Liberal government that lost control of the narrative. And the world, and especially Canadians, the issues that they were facing, the things that were concerning them, were no longer being dealt with, I think, in the minds of many Canadians appropriately by this current government. And that's where, you know, the sort of arc of Justin Trudeau begins its downward slope when they lost that plot. Ryan, what would you see as the key

turning points in that narrative? You know, I think for this government, especially, you know, this year, the loss of Toronto St. Paul's was cataclysmic. You know, we've seen Pierre Paglia polling much better than the Liberals for probably almost two years now. But up until that by-election, it still seemed like the Liberals could turn it around or that this popularity wouldn't actually translate into votes. There were a bunch of by-elections where Pierre Polyev's lead didn't really show up in the results. But in Toronto St. Paul's, all of a sudden they were losing very safe Liberal seats, and that has just continued. And I think, you know, that led to doubts about the prime minister continuing, those coming from within inside his own caucus. Those voices have only grown louder. And it has

been, you know, really impossible for them to turn it around. I think they are still hoping, certainly maybe not this week anymore, but up until last month, they were still hoping that an economic turnaround in Canada, inflation coming down, all of those good news economic indicators would improve their political fortunes. But you don't see that happening anymore. And then we had the bombshell. We're going to get to that in a second. But first, Stephanie, Pierre Poliev, as Ryan has described, has steadily gained support. He's got a pretty hefty lead over the Liberals. What do you think explains his rise and his early success, it appears? You can look at it two different ways, right? Is the rise of Pierre Polyev due to the fact that people are growing increasingly dissatisfied with Justin Trudeau,

and they are actively looking to park their support somewhere else. They want to vote Mr. Trudeau out of office. And of the leaders of the remaining federal parties, Mr. Polyev is sort of the natural heir to that voter switch, right? Because they are the largest party, because they dominate the airwaves the way they do, because they, you know, they out fundraise the every other party, infinitesimally, and therefore can get their message out to Canadians more and more. And that message is the other part, Mr. Polyev, in his, you know, two-ish leaders now, two-ish years as leader, has really the message discipline, he focuses on very specific core themes that hit at the heart of Canadians' everyday lives, right? He's talking, and that resonates with them. They're

looking for someone who is talking about the things that matter to them. And Mr. Polyev has managed to deliver those themes. You're talking about his message, and money, of course, drives political campaigns and how much they have to spend on the message. The pollster David Coletto compared the advertising budgets of the various parties and the conservatives, he says, have dramatically increased their investment close to 19 times what the liberals have. Let's listen to an example of those ads. Feels like home near the mountains where I grew up. I was adopted by school teachers who taught me that in Canada, if you worked at it, you could climb any mountain. People don't feel that way now.

In fact, feels like we're all a long way from home. Ryan, are ads like that landing for conservatives? I think you have to conclude that they are. You know, he has a 40, he's at 45 in most recent polls that I've seen. That is a 25 point lead. That is an unprecedented lead. That's the kind of numbers that very few politicians have seen. I think what's interesting about their ad campaign, though, is it portrays a different

version of Pierre Pev than the one we see in the House of Commons. You know, it portrays a more positive vision, a more, you know, broader vision for the country, less of an attack on Justin Trudeau. Of course, that's also always mixed in. But, you know, one of the challenges I think Pierre Palliev is going to have in this year, and it's a fairly easy challenge to have, or a good challenge to have, is defining himself. Everyone knows he's not Justin Trudeau. He's made that part clear. He wouldn't do what Justin Trudeau does. But what would he do? And I think that's where you're starting to see a message come out of those ads. Turning to the question at hand, of course, is Prime Minister Trudeau.

Will he resign pressure from his caucus to change the leadership? What are you hearing, both of you, about whether Justin Trudeau will step down? What are people saying? I mean, I guess it seems right now that it's not a question of if he will step down, it's a question and sort of allowing the parties more space to rebuild. I think there's a lot of ways you can game out these scenarios. But, you know, as a British friend of mine noted recently, we seem to be in Liz Truss and lettuce territory right now. And that's a reminder of, you know,

when the British prime minister was compared to which she lasts longer than a particular head of lettuce. Right. Ryan, do you think that a change in leader could influence the Liberal Party fortunes at this point? Yeah, I think you have to conclude it could. You can tell, certainly in the way the Conservatives talk about someone like Mark Carney, for example, that they're concerned about a change in leader. You know, I think for the Conservatives, concerned about a change in leader. You know, I think for the conservatives, they'd much rather run against a very, very unpopular prime minister than someone else, right? Someone else might be slightly more popular than Justin Trudeau. In fact, someone else probably has to be slightly more popular than Justin Trudeau because Justin Trudeau is incredibly unpopular.

So I think there's, you know, you can tell just by the way the conservatives attack Mark Carney and several of the other leadership potentials that they're worried about a change in leadership. But that said, a lot of the people who would come in as a change in leadership are very closely tied to Justin Trudeau. And I think it will be difficult for, you know, distance to emerge between, you know, someone in Justin Trudeau's cabinet and Justin Trudeau. Stephanie, can you help us with the timeline? It's quite complicated, actually. As you described, there are various ways that Trudeau could step down, but also the legislative calendar. In brief, you know, you've got the Conservatives promising to put forward a non-confidence motion on January

30th. Is that enough to trigger an election? It might be. It might be. You know, I think the first real pressure point, right, the House doesn't come back until January the 27th. The Conservatives are trying before that to get a motion of non-confidence passed through a committee. They say that could then be voted on in the House as early as January the 30th. That doesn't mean it will be voted on on January the 30th. There's sort of other points, but the reality is sort of this. The government heading into the spring by roughly middle of March has to seek approval for new spending measures. Those spending measures are always a confidence vote. So at minimum here, you know, it seems like this government will fall by spring if the New Democrats stick to their word, which is that they have said they will vote in favor of a non-confidence motion that they themselves introduce or perhaps comes another way. If they do that, then by middle of March, it doesn't seem like this government could get past that day. And Ryan, just on the NDP change of heart, it appears, if that sticks, Jagmeet Singh has said he would introduce a motion of non-confidence.

Should that be believed? And how much flexibility does he have in terms of timing? You know, I think at this point he doesn't have a lot of flexibility anymore. You know, he has been vague on this issue for so long. flexibility anymore. You know, he has been vague on this issue for so long, but he came out quite clearly and said, I will bring down this government regardless of who is liberal leader. So, you know, maybe he can wait until March. There's some questions about whether or not the Conservatives move with this committee vote would constitute a confidence vote. But I would say in general, the challenge for the Liberals is how long do you want to be seen as avoiding a confidence vote? How long do you want to be seen

as playing political games to avoid, you know, the will of Parliament? And so, you know, I think that starts to look real bad for the Liberals, the longer it goes on. And just briefly, I mean, the context of this is very important. We're going to see Donald Trump in president by the end of January. How much is that going to influence the conversation here in the year ahead, Stephanie? It has, I mean, absolutely, it will influence the conversation. And, you know, starting with if President Trump goes ahead and imposes the 25% tariffs on Canadian goods that he's been talking about, the implications of that for the Canadian economy are profound. And one of the ways it's going to shape the conversation to something Ryan alluded to earlier

was Mr. Polyev is going to need to start having more robust answers to some of the challenges that Mr. Trump throws up. People are going to be looking for that. The narrative that has worked for him so strongly and so well thus far kind of gets out of date, I think. If the Canadian economy is beset by 25% tariffs from the Americans, Mr. Polyev's focus on axing the carbon tax, while salient still for voters, is not the solution to Mr. Trump. And I think voters will be looking for him to present a more robust sort of suite of policy options responses, and he might have no choice but to deliver them. Ryan, very briefly, does chaos in Canada look bad

when you're from the US and looking across the border? I don't think it's necessarily about looking bad, but chaos in Canada means we can't properly respond to what is a real economic threat. You know, if Justin Trudeau is focused in on his own political fortunes, I don't know how he also focuses on NAFTA renegotiations, which seem to be headed our way. Indeed. Thank you very much. Very timely discussion, both of you. Thank you very much. Very timely discussion, both of you. Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter with the Global Mail's Parliamentary Bureau, and Ryan Tamalti is a political reporter with the Toronto Star. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.