The Current - Trudeau’s ‘revolting caucus’ and Poilievre’s security clearance

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Justin Trudeau could face calls to resign from his own “revolting caucus” Wednesday, while Pierre Poilievre is under increased scrutiny for refusing to get security clearance. Guest host Peter Armstrong unpacks the politics with the CBC’s Catherine Cullen, the Globe and Mail's Stephanie Levitz and the National Post’s Christopher Nardi.

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. Two million Canadians are lined up at food banks. There are 1,400 homeless encampments in Ontario today. And what is the Prime Minister doing? Working to save his political skin from his revolting caucus. This can't go on.

Will he call a carbon tax election now? That was Conservative leader Pierre Palliev taking aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during question period yesterday. Now, that reference to his revolting caucus is not just a clever turn of phrase. There is, of course, a bit of a simmering revolt going on within the Liberal ranks. Trudeau is expected to face a heated caucus meeting tomorrow, where some MPs do reportedly plan to call for his resignation. The Liberals, meanwhile, continue to go after Polyev over the issue of security clearance and foreign interference. And these calls for change, they're not just coming from Ottawa. We're still waiting

on the results from the provincial election in British Columbia. And Susan Holt's Liberals won a majority government in New Brunswick last night, toppling the Conservative government in that province. Our National Affairs panel thankfully is here to unpack it all for us. Catherine Cullen is the host of the House on CBC Radio. Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter for the Globe and Mail's Ottawa Bureau. And Christopher Nardi is a parliamentary reporter for the National Post. Good morning to you all.

Good morning. Good morning. Catherine Cullen, if I can start with you. Can you just sort of lay the land for us here? What are we expecting to hear from the Liberal caucus meeting tomorrow, specifically about the Prime Minister's leadership? Yeah, I mean, Peter, this is so dramatic. There has been so much suspense around this. We know that there are a group of MPs somewhere in the neighborhood of about 30, according to the sources

that we've spoken to, who are, we believe, preparing to take to the microphone in this closed-door caucus meeting and challenge the prime minister's leadership um there there's been so much sort of cloak and dagger around all of this uh difficult to get a sense of exactly what is going to happen there's a possibility that they present him with some sort of um letter beforehand but we expect the rubber to really hit the road in this caucus meeting my colleague david cochran reporting that in fact they may whoever it is who decides to step up to the microphone, may ask for a secret ballot on his leadership. That's one of the things that this group of MPs planning this so-called revolt is looking at. And I think that would be a really dramatic next step because I've spoken to several MPs who haven't signed this letter or

pledge, whatever you want to call it, who say they would actually vote for the prime minister to go if there was a secret agreement. That's me previously reporting this. So could be a pretty dramatic moment happening behind closed doors tomorrow. Indeed. Stephanie Levitz, there's a political headline that I love that called this a quote, slow, super polite revolt. Given what you're hearing on the ground, what Catherine was just saying about the actual possibility that there may be some kind of a vote here, how serious is this? So the fact that they have, this group of dissidents seems to have landed on a path forward, that's the part that makes it serious. Because as soon as this story broke, whenever it

was, you know, about a week ago, the question was, okay, you're going to call for the prime minister to resign, but with what authority, with what power, and with what mechanism, and then what would come next? They don't have an ultimatum that they're saying, right? They're not saying, you better resign or else we will quit and sit in his independence, vote against the liberals. If they've landed on, we would like this to happen, then they have a clear ask. Because if the prime minister just simply refuses to step down, which he could, now there's the next thing that could happen. And this maybe keeps this going forward a little longer than just an angry caucus meeting. And Chris, I was around for the Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien revolt, and that was very clear,

had very clear parameters, and mostly had a very clear replacement for the existing prime minister. Is it clear who these people would want if, in fact, Trudeau agreed to leave somehow? Well, Peter, just asking the question is basically answering it in this particular case, right? We've heard about a number of potential contenders, but unlike the Paul Martin era, where Paul Martin had obviously done a lot of moving behind the scenes to take over local writing associations, to win over MPs and caucus, and basically make sure that if Jean Chrétien left, he was the natural next step. Unlike that back then, this has not happened. We've had people who've expressed interest,

but then quickly backtracked or specified that, oh, but for now, Justin Trudeau is the leader and that job is not vacant. And I think that's part of the challenge that these frustrated MPs are facing is that there's no really natural course of action. You ask the prime minister to step down, he steps down, you've got a void, in fact, with a party structure that's not ready or equipped for a leadership race. You don't have clear runners. No one seems to be organized. Sure, leadership contenders might be making calls, but a leadership race is a lot more than just making a few calls and having a few people ready to write an op-ed for you when you're ready to go. So, that's part of the struggle is that even though it still remains Justin Trudeau's party in that no one is clearly contesting his leadership, they're just frustrated and they're finding an outlet to express that and this caucus is basically that outlet. But they, I think, are very open to the idea that Justin Trudeau shows up on Wednesday with this large plan or at least a form of a plan to get them out of the polling doldrums that they've been in for the last year. And then maybe it quells everything significantly. That is also

a possibility. Less likely, but a possibility. Right. Fair enough. Stephanie, the timing of this has confused me in that there's no obvious trigger. We're not sort of facing an imminent sort of turnaround to an election. What should we make of why this is happening now? Part of it is they're running out of runway, the liberals. If they are going to change leader at the top, you know, I think most folks would prefer something that doesn't resemble a six-week leadership campaign with some time on the ground, some time to build the party, some time to lay out a vision. And the clock's running down on the next, you know, scheduled election, right? We're exactly a year out, actually, from

the next scheduled election. But I think the other thing that's happening is that the House right now is paralyzed. It hasn't been able to move forward on very much because there is a procedural dispute going on over the production of documents related to a funding scandal. And, you know, there's that great expression, idle hands are the devil's workshop. And I think in this case, it's true. I think that there's, you know, a larger group of MPs now who are watching sort of cabinet, still do cabinet things behind the scenes, but they don't have really anything to latch on to. They're thinking about their political futures. They just spent, you know, time in their writings and are hearing,

we don't like your guy. He's got to go. Hey, I'd vote for you, but I don't like your guy. And people start to talk and they start to look at this. And then I think there's also, you know, the knock on Kamala Harris effect, watching what happened in the US when they switched leaders at the top. It certainly revitalized the fortunes. The situations are not identical. You cannot draw a clear parallel between Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau. But people see that change does work. We're in a change moment in the Canadian political narrative. And I know we'll talk about that a little later, but people are still looking for change even from within. It's interesting though, like we have these calls for new vision, calls for some kind

of new strategy. We don't have that, but at least there has been some pushback. You know, Prime Trudeau went on the offense last week. He took shots at Pierre Polyev at the Foreign Interference Inquiry. Let's just take a quick listen to some of that. The leader of the official opposition, who is certainly trying very hard to become prime minister, is choosing to play partisan games with foreign interference and accusations on foreign interference, but not taking it the least bit serious as regards to his own responsibilities as party leader. So Chris, he's talking there about Pierre Poliev and his security clearance as a federal party leader. Can you just, like for people who haven't been following this,

it can be a little confusing. Just walk us through the crux of the issue there. The crux of the issue is that in Canada, there's obviously intelligence and to access intelligence, you have to have the right security clearance, which is considerate of a very, very deep background check at the highest level if you're looking for the highest levels of clearance. And as Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau kind of automatically has access to everything the government produces. It's de facto. But opposition leaders would have to go through a top-secret clearance process, which is a very thorough background check. And NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet have all committed to or obtained that clearance and then were able to access intelligence that was deemed relevant to their job as party leaders. So it would be relevant to threats against or within their caucuses.

Pierre Poiliev, the conservative leader, has refused to do so. He's argued that it would gag him because there are obviously laws that prevent you from spreading top secret information to people who don't have clearance. And so he keeps arguing that I don't want to receive this information because then I can never speak about it and I can never do anything about it. And that is a growing tension between the two with, as you just heard, Justin Trudeau lobbing a bomb at him basically saying, there are threats in your caucus. I know about them. You don't know about them because you're not acting future prime ministerial and obtaining the necessary clearance to receive it. And that is kind of an ongoing clash, but also, as you can imagine, Peter, a little bit of a smoke bomb from the prime minister who was

facing all sorts of, you know, negative headlines, the revolt in the caucus, the growing tensions with India. And so, you know, he dropped that in there knowing full well that all the headlines from his testimony at the foreign interference inquiry would be about that and try to put Pierre Poilievre on the defensive basically it's like yeah this is the sound of a channel trying to be changed Catherine you know Chris calls it the the lobbing of a bomb Trudeau admitted afterwards that he did get a bit partisan he said in that testimony what do you think of the language he used there yeah you know I was on an airplane watching this on the Wi-Fi, and I'm sure that my seatmate was pretty alarmed because I know I had a visceral reaction, specifically when the Prime Minister accused Pierre Polyev of making a

decision that lacks in common sense, and of course common sense being a key phrase that Pierre Polyev uses all the time. There's no question it was deeply partisan. There's no question the prime minister knew exactly what he was doing. I think that particular phrase is probably not one he came up with on the spot. I did think it was remarkable. You know, the liberals spent a lot of time saying that a public inquiry was not the right way to deal with foreign interference. And even though now they speak very positively of this inquiry, the truth is they were sort of dragged into this kicking and screaming, right? So not something they wanted to do.

But then in that moment, the prime minister found a way to try to take this thing that was sort of a liability for them and try to turn it into a political advantage. And we know that this was to some extent calculated because his chief of staff was at the inquiry a few days previous, also talking about this issue of party leaders needing to have this security clearance. Again, it was partisan. I think it was also, frankly, effective because there are, you know, we've heard from people who are not partisans around this, people like the former heads of CSIS, Ward Elcock and Dick Fadden, saying that fundamentally they're quite critical of Mr. Polyev's decision,

although also critical of the prime minister's decision to be so partisan about this. Stephanie, I was going to ask you if Polyev's refusal to get clearance makes sense. Can I tweak that slightly to say, does it still make sense? Because I think it might have previously. I wonder if it if it's beginning to get stretched. It's beginning to get stretched in the argument he can't sort of justify, excuse me, why he doesn't want to know beyond being gagged. Is he not concerned about foreign interference in his party? Does he think he doesn't have a problem? Is he not worried about the nomination race? allegation about Pierre Polyev. There's an inference that it's not just that he's not being prime ministerial. It's that the inference is that he's covering something up. He's colluding with a foreign government. He himself is caught up in all of this because of the leadership race

that he won. All of these things cast some doubt on Mr. Polyev and his caucus, not just his prime ministerial aspirations. Conversely, I mean, this question that Mr. Polyev would be gagged and not be able to speak about it. True. Okay. But to say that he couldn't act on it, that's a bit different. I mean, there's all sorts of ways you can act on things quietly. Could he stand up, you know, in the House of Commons and point a finger to another MP and say, Jacques Hughes and throw them out the door? No. I mean, he could and probably avoid prosecution. But politically, he can't. But I think it's also important to note, and Chris made reference to this right off the top there, about how the prime minister de facto has access to all of this information,

which also means the prime minister could, should he wish, tell Mr. Polyev what he knows. And if it was that egregious, if it was such a threat to national security, if it was so bad, the prime minister could go ahead and say something to Mr. Polyev. There's all sorts of reasons he wouldn't, he can't, he might choose not to, but he does have the power to. And this leaves them both playing partisan politics with national security, and that's unfortunate for Canadians. 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 three 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. I want to switch gears a little bit here and bring sort of the provincial landscape and overlay that on top of what we're seeing out of Ottawa. These fascinating provincial elections in BC. We're still waiting for results. I know Catherine Cullen was there recently, so we'll get to that in a second. But I want to start with the New Brunswick election,

where we had this, you know, Kayla Hounsell, our great reporter out of the region, had a Peace on World report this morning, touching on how Susan Holt, the Liberal leader, had to really work hard to distance herself from the federal Liberals in order to win. Chris, what do you think that dynamic in the provincial election in New Brunswick tells us? Well, I think that liberals here in Ottawa are absolutely licking their lips at the Holt victory in the hopes that the name recognition broadcasts to Ottawa directly, even though Ms. Holt made those efforts to separate herself from Trudeau. I can guarantee you Trudeau is going to be trying to stick to that party and that brand very closely. That being said, I think you really touched on a point there is that, you know, the Trudeau brand

is not what led Ms. Holt to win. This was a ground game. This was frustration against, you know, the incumbent Mr. Higgs. There was a lot at play here, but it was not the implication of Mr. Trudeau or his government, I believe, that turned that tide. And the liberals would be very, the federal liberals, sorry, it would be very risky for them to think that that could mean that their tides are currently turning in Atlantic Canada, broadly speaking, when ultimately we also know that the revolt in caucus is being partly led by Atlantic Canada MPs who are just really, really mad, who go to doors and just get shellacked about the leadership of their party. So, you know, the liberals, the federal liberals will be very happy to see the liberal brand winning somewhere, but I really don't think that they should think, wow,

okay, we're saved. Atlantic Canada or, you know, New Brunswick, we're good. Don't think that they should think, wow, okay, we're saved. Atlantic Canada or New Brunswick, we're good. Don't think that. It's not true. Catherine Cullen, you just got back from your, what, five days in BC covering the election there. We still don't have a winner. We're still waiting on these recounts. Why do you think in the end this was such a tight race? Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot, Peter. And I think one of the really interesting questions to me is to the extent to which such a close race speaks to a divided electorate or an undecided one. I think it's a hard thing to sort out. I mean, in British Columbia, like in so much of the world, there is a lot to be concerned about.

The housing crisis is so acute there. They've really led the country in an unfortunate way on that issue. Crime and the drug crisis, really visceral concerns.'ve really led the country in an unfortunate way on that issue. Crime and the drug crisis, really visceral concerns. You know, I lived in BC for a couple of months, like two decades ago, and coming back to Vancouver and seeing how particularly the toxic drug crisis itself is playing out in the streets is a really striking thing. The thing is, you know, if you take that sort of discontent with the incumbent or the state of things on one side, you also had an alternative take that sort of discontent with the incumbent or the state of things on one side, but you also had an alternative in BC that was unproven. And the BC Conservatives had some

candidates saying very troubling things. I mean, one of the things I'm going to retain from this election, the Surrey South candidate said hateful things on social media. Brent Chapman calling Palestinians inbred, walking, talking, breathing time bombs on social media. Again, this is years and years in the past. Suggesting the Quebec City mosque shooting, the Pulse nightclub shooting weren't real, didn't really happen. He won by almost 4,000 votes in Surrey South, nearly 20% ahead of his rival. So I think there's some real reflection to do there. But overall, I think because people you know, people might have not been happy with the state of things, but not so sure about the alternative. We've seen this really

close result. And I think it's people just not being really sure which path they're most comfortable with going forward. But there's also an argument to be made that people are just ultimately less indecisive and more divided about where we go. I'm going to steal that divided versus undecided line and use it everywhere and claim it as my own. Stephanie Levins, what do you make of that? Especially like there used to be that great rule of thumb that like as the provinces begin to all go liberal or all go conservatives, that tells us a lot about what might happen

in the next federal election in Ottawa. election in Ottawa, how accurately do you think we can overlay the provincial changes and mood with the appetite in Ottawa? Well, certainly out in British Columbia, I mean, although Pierre Polly of the federal conservative leader did not explicitly endorse the BC conservative leader, one could take a look at some of the issues that became the driving narrative in British Columbia that led to the formation of the BC conservative party at all, or the rebirth of it, I suppose, and realize that Mr. Polyev himself had been driving those issues, specifically in the lower mainland, specifically in places like Surrey, for the better part of, you know, two and a half years since he started his leadership bid. And with him driving that narrative there and people being exposed to sort of him raising the concerns in a much more national way, in a much more spectacular way, think about his videos, think about his hyperbole, some of the things that he was talking about were already in the minds of voters. And then you head to a B.C. election. He was effectively campaigning against David Eby well before there was a provincial conservative party to do that for him. So there I think you have an echo effect of Mr. Polyev changing the conversation.

If you flip and you go over to the other coast, there is what you're seeing is the appetite for change, as I mentioned before. We are in a change moment in politics. And in BC, I mean, Kath, that was a great line about divided versus undecided. And in New Brunswick, there was a decision. It was we want change. And that's what the thing I think we can all look forward to coming in the next federal election cycle. How high is the appetite for change? Indeed. And I mean, it's going to be a fascinating week. So I really appreciate all you guys making time to help us better understand it this morning. Thanks for this. Thank you. Thank you. Catherine Collin is the host of The House on CBC Radio.

Stephanie Levitz is a senior reporter for the Globe and Mail's Ottawa Bureau. And Christopher Nardi is a parliamentary reporter for The National Post. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.