The Decibel - It was a rough year for Trudeau – what will 2024 bring?

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

2023 was a rocky year for Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government. The country was grappling with unaffordable housing and grocery prices, high interest rates, accusations of foreign interference. Trudeau and his government have been sliding in the polls, losing significant ground to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.Today, in our first episode of 2024, The Globe’s political columnist and writer-at-large John Ibbitson explains how the events of 2023 impacted Trudeau and his government, and Pierre Poilievre, and what might be in store for 2024.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Last year was a difficult one for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government. They faced a lot of issues. Let's recap. The cost of food has been a big focus recently in Parliament. Prices are high, and Canadians across the country are feeling it. There's a lot of pressure on the federal government to bring food prices down. Justice Paul Rouleau, the head of the Emergencies Act inquiry, he concluded that the federal government was justified in using the Emergencies Act. We've been hearing a lot about China's possible influence over Canadian elections. Former Governor General David Johnston

was appointed by the Prime Minister to look into this interference and decide if we need a public inquiry. Last month, he released a report that said, we don't. And now, Johnston is out. Canada has some of the highest levels of household debt in the world.

Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a carbon pricing exemption for some Canadians. Since 2015, the Liberal government has paid more than $116 million to the private company McKinsey. That's more than 30 times what the conservative government paid them over the previous 10 years. Things aren't going well right now between India and Canada. This all stems from an allegation Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made

in the House of Commons on Monday, that agents of the Indian state were behind the killing of a Sikh activist in B.C. this year. Today, in our first episode of 2024, I'm joined by The Globe's political columnist and writer-at-large, John Ibbotson. He'll explain how the issues of 2023 impacted Trudeau and his government, and what we can expect from the coming year. I'm Menaka Ramanwilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. John, Happy New Year. Thank you so much for being here.

Great to be here, and Happy New Year to you as well, Menaka. So, John, how would you characterize, I guess, the year of 2023 for Justin Trudeau and the liberal government? 2023 may, in retrospect, be seen as the beginning of the end. The year that Justin Trudeau's government went from being about as popular as the conservatives, neither one of them being all that popular, to becoming quite unpopular. A sizable gap in public opinion, in favorability, emerged in the summer and widened over the fall. And it's safe to assume that if an election were to be held now, at the beginning of 2024, the Pierre Polyev's conservatives would likely win a solid majority government. All right. So let's dissect this a little bit, John. Talking generally about kind of the dynamics

in the House of Commons in 2023, what did we see there? The House of Commons was tempestuous as always, but I don't think the dynamics was playing out there so much as it was playing in the street. People renewing their mortgages and discovering the huge increases in their monthly payments. In inflation, especially food inflation, which made everybody poor, everybody, a great many of us at least, took a real hit on our standard of living. It took place as well in news organizations like the Globe and Mail, stories about foreign interference in Canadian elections, and the inability or unwillingness of the Trudeau government to properly investigate those accusations.

They all combined, I think, to produce a sense that the government was now living beyond its best before date, and that voters were ready to see a change. All right. So let's go through all of these things in detail, because you listed kind of three big topics there, John. So affordability, foreign interference, and then this idea of the government getting stale, essentially. So let's talk about affordability. This has been something that we've discussed a lot over the past year in Canada, right? We've seen rents increase, housing is just increasingly unaffordable. Price of groceries is really high. But John, how much of this affordability crisis is really the responsibility of the Trudeau government?

It isn't really exclusively the Trudeau government's responsibility at all. Governments around the world spent lavishly during the COVID pandemic in order to sustain businesses and workers. That ended up goosing inflation. And central banks then combated inflation by raising interest rates. And it's those increased interest rates that people are encountering as they go to renew their mortgages. But the Trudeau government was running deficits even before COVID and seems to be not particularly enthusiastic about reducing deficits with great discipline now. So they bear, in my opinion, some share of the blame for their own

misfortune because they have been so loosey-goosey on finances, on fiscal policy. So you combine the increase in the cost of housing with the high interest rates that people are having to pay when they renew their mortgages. And you get that double crunch. And it produces something that I never thought I would ever see. And that is, first of all, a generation of Gen Zs and younger millennials who feel that they are never going to be able to own a house. They are never going to be able to make that down payment. And also a shift by those voters to the right. They are coming to conservative parties again in the United States, in Europe, and they're coming to the conservative party here in Canada. Millennials are blaming the liberals for the fact that they can't find a place to stay. And they are shifting to Pierre

Poglieb's conservatives as the party that they think will make it easier for them to eventually find a place to stay. Whether they're right or not, they're making that shift and Mr. Polyev is exploiting it for all it's worth. And we are going to definitely talk about that shift to the right amongst younger people a little bit later on. But just kind of continuing on with affordability for one more question here, John, I want to ask you about the carbon tax, which has been a big point of discussion in the fall because because this is, you know, the Trudeau government's big climate policy, and he recently tweaked it by giving an exemption to home heating oil, which mainly impacted Atlantic Canada, of course, that led to calls from parts of the rest of the country who also wanted a kind of

exemption from the carbon tax. No more exemptions, of course, have been given since. But John, what do you make of how the Trudeau government handled that and how it affected them? I think they handled it poorly because it seemed so nakedly political. The Atlantic Canadian MPs were warning that the imposition of the carbon tax on home heating oil in their region was causing huge increases in energy costs for their voters, and their voters were expressing their displeasure strongly. So Mr. Trudeau decided to lift the tax on home eating oil. There is more home eating oil used in that region than in other regions. So it looked as

though the Liberals were exempting a group from the carbon tax in order to placate their local MPs and to placate voters. It contributed, I think, even more to the notion that the government was tired, that it was becoming manipulative. And yes, voters all across the country who use hydro or natural gas said, well, I want an exemption for my energy costs as well. The carbon tax is starting to bite and people are starting to feel it. It is nonetheless, I think, a necessary measure to combat global warming. But people seem to forget very quickly all the forest fires we had last summer. And now they're being reminded of how the tax is imposing added costs on their heating.

And they don't like that at all. So the Trudeau government has been criticized then for the way it's been handling affordability issues. Is there anything the government has done to, I guess, counter that, John, to show that they are trying to help the situation here? Well, they have a housing policy in which they are encouraging municipalities to eliminate red tape and to accelerate the construction of housing. And there's more money for those municipalities that agree to do it. In the long run, it actually may work to increase the housing stock. But right now, the same interest rates that are hurting people when they go to apply for a mortgage are discouraging builders from building. So we have that double whammy. Things like this,

big systemic things, things that were years in the making, things that are intersectional in that they impact fiscal policy, monetary policy, housing policy, immigration policy. Stuff like that is very difficult to unravel and certainly very difficult to quickly correct. All right, let's move on to the second point that you mentioned off the top, John, which is foreign interference. So this is another issue that Trudeau has been criticized for this year. Can you remind us what's happened with foreign interference this year? Well, two big things. The one, accusations that appeared in the Globe and Mail and other media that the Chinese government had been interfering in the recent federal elections by encouraging or intimidating or funding people within the community to vote one way or another.

And that one way usually would be for the liberals and not for the conservatives, because the Chinese government appears to believe that its interest would be better served with the liberals in power. No one believes that they effectively undermined the election. No one believes that the election outcome is different from what it would have been. But it appears that they are present and that they are active. And the calls by the media and by opposition politicians for public inquiry were something that Mr. Trudeau finally agreed to after his special rapporteur resigned reluctantly. It's getting up and running now, but it's late. And it contributed to the notion that this government

was closed secretive didn't want to confront what was really going on compounded beyond that was um the accusation by mr trudeau himself that the indian government or agents of the indian government assassinated a sikh activist uh in british columbia accusations by the way that appeared to been borne out by the American government, which is saying, yes, it did happen, and they tried to do it in the United States as well. And the overall impression now appears to be that foreign actors are, you know, messing around in our political affairs, and our governments are unable to stop them. Yeah. So yeah, so these two different situations,

the one with China interfering in Canadian elections, the other of agents of India had killed a Sikh activist in Canada. How much is his handling of this? How much does this trickle down into the public perception of what the government is doing here? I don't know, to be honest,

because it's hard to measure. I would say it's not as important as the increase in grocery prices, the increase in rents, the increase in home heating, the increase in housing and in mortgages. It just doesn't help that on top of all of that, the government seems to have lost control of the foreign interference agenda. I don't think it's a valid question. It just doesn't help.

All right. And the last thing you mentioned off the top, John, was that the government is getting old. So what do you mean by that? Well, governments get old. If you go back to the 1980s, the Mulroney government lasted about 10 years. The Chrétien and Martin governments lasted about 10 years.

Stephen Harper government lasted about 10 years. This government is eight years and counting. The next election, if it takes place in the fall of 2025, they will be 10 years. Usually what happens is you implement your initial agenda, and then you have trouble finding a new agenda. The people who were advising you at the beginning have all left. They've gone off to their big consulting jobs or whatever it is they've gone off to. The people who are advising you now have less experience, perhaps, are more prone to making mistakes. You yourself as a political leader used to listen to people all the time, but you're now increasingly of the mind that you're the only one who actually

really knows what's going on. That is perhaps true of Justin Trudeau. It is certainly true of most of the politicians that I have observed over 30 years. We'll be right back. All right, John, so we talked a lot about the government's politics, Trudeau, in the first half. Let's turn to conservative leader Pierre Polyev, because it seems like 2023 was a really big year for him. So what happened to Polyev last year? Well, Justin Trudeau happened to Pierre Polyev, but in a good way for Pierre Polyev.

Sure, at this point last year, both liberals and the conservatives were in the low 30s in public support. Mr. Polyev was not popular. Neither was Mr. Trudeau, but neither one of them was winning any popularity contests. A year later, the conservatives are well ahead in the polls, and Mr. Polyev is considerably more popular than he was 12 months ago. Events, dear boy, events, as they say, happened. Inflation happened. Housing crisis happened. To Mr. Polyev's credit, though, he was pounding these issues

well before it was major front page news. You may remember, as far back as 2021, just inflation was Pierre Polyev's word for inflation. And he was finance critic then. He wasn't even leader of the party. So he was catching early on that economic insecurity caused by inflation was going to be a driving issue, and he's driven it. So he gets to take the credit for having driven it. But mostly, like all opposition politicians, you say that you're the government in waiting, but what you're really doing is waiting for the government to trip and fall. 2023 was the year that the Trudeau government tripped and fell. But credit Pierre Polyev with recognizing early on the economic insecurity that would be affecting people, especially younger people,

and pushing it home. So let's talk about younger people moving to support Pierre Polyev. Like, what is it about Polyev that is resonating with young people in particular right now? Well, what is it about conservative populist parties? Because it's not just happening here, it's happening in the United States and in Europe as well. Again, there seems to be an anger among young people that they don't have the economic security that their parents had. They don't believe that they're going to live as well as their parents lived. They blame established political parties for making their lives unpleasant and insecure. And so they are turning to populist conservative parties as a result. And Mr. Polyev is benefiting from that as well.

To stress, though, I am conflicted in my opinions about Mr. Polyev, and I think my column has reflected that conflict over the course of the year. He is certainly a populist conservative, but he's not a Donald Trump conservative. He's not one of the anti-immigrant, anti-democratic, essentially, illiberal populists that you're seeing in Europe. He is pro-immigration. He's pro-LGBTQ. He supports a woman's right to choose. In all of those areas, he is with the Canadian mainstream and with the other established political parties. His populism is purely economic. All right.

What about the NDP, John? They're still part of this supply and confidence agreement that gives support to the liberal government. So what was 2023 like for the NDP? When the liberals started to fall in the polls and the conservatives started to rise, the gap between the liberals and the NDP narrowed. And in the past,

NDP leaders have taken that as a sign that they should defeat the government and go to the polls because they could improve their standing. Indeed, Jack Layton, if you remember, catapulted his party into second place, into official opposition in the 2011 election. Jagmeet Singh must be looking at these poll numbers and going, could I do that too? It must be tempting for him. But he believes in this supply and confidence agreement because we are getting a national dental care program. We are getting a national pharma care program. These are very close to Mr. Singh's heart, and he is avoiding the political temptation in order to get the policy wins that he wants. I give him credit for that. So those are things that Singh wanted to get done before and they've made progress on the dental and the pharmacare plan. That's right. The pharmacare program is

probably delayed until spring. I'm guessing we'll see a rollout with the budget or something like that. But the dental care program is slowly rolling out and will be expanded to include new groups with each passing season, as it were. And these were the core elements of a supply and confidence agreement that Mr. Singh had with Mr. Trudeau. And he's getting them. So coming back to Trudeau, then, John, it sounds like, you know, if he's not as popular anymore, is there this chance that he could step down as leader of the liberals and let someone else take the party into the next election, whenever that might be? Well, if he's going to do it, he'd better do it soon. It should happen in the winter or early spring at the latest if the parties have time to hold

a leadership campaign, choose a new leader, and that new leader to have some time to govern before going to the polls if he or she chooses to do that. And I don't know if he's going to quit. There is an argument within liberal circles for him staying. Mr. Trudeau, even if he is defeated, will hold the core of the party in Quebec. He will hold the core of the party in downtown Toronto and downtown Vancouver. We don't know that a new leader could do that. And also a new leader could be tainted. If indeed that leader brings about a major defeat,

then that new leader will be under pressure to step down and will be back into all of those, well, what the Tories went to. You lose an election, you turf the leader, you go get another leader, you lose an election. So there is a good argument for Justin Trudeau to stay, even though it is quite possible at this point that the Liberals will be defeated in the next election. What has Trudeau said about this possibility of sticking around or leaving? Has he commented? Oh, yes. And he said there's absolutely no possibility that he's determined to go into the next election, that he can and will defeat the Conservatives, and that he has an agenda for governing. But you say that right up until the day before you quit.

So given that, are there discussions then about who could potentially replace Trudeau if he decided to step down? Sure. Well, Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England is always at the top of the list. He appears to want to run as leader. Well, he's denying it vociferously,

but then says things that make you think he's actually planning to run and he would be a formidable candidate. If you are worried about inflation and interest rates, well, a former governor of the bank might not be a bad person to have as leader. But he has very little political experience, and that's a big minus. Christy Freeland, the finance minister, could run. Francois Champagne, Anita Nann, Melanie Jolie,

these are all cabinet ministers who are talked about as possible candidates. We'll see. But before we see, Mr. Trudeau has to make up his mind that he in fact wants to leave. Are there concerns, I guess, John, that the Liberal Party in a way is kind of tethered to Trudeau though? Like the way you were saying,

Trudeau still has that kind of the base of support. Is there the, I guess, yeah, the concern that somebody else might not have that same thing? Absolutely. You have to go back to 2013 and remember where the Liberal Party was. They had placed third in the election. They were broke. And Justin Trudeau came along and rescued it.

He rebuilt the party. He rebuilt its finances. He rebuilt its fundraising. It's his finances. He rebuilt his fundraising. It's his party. There is no other wing, no other faction, no knives that are out for him. He can stay as long as he wants to stay. He will go when he wants to go. The question then is, when he goes,

yep, what's there? What's left? Did he leave or will he have left a established liberal party that is capable of governing, maybe not in this election, but in the election to come? Or has he left the party back where it was when he found it in 2013? So before I let you go, John, I don't know, what are you expecting or looking out for in 2024 here? Well, first and foremost, will Donald Trump become president? He is the de facto Republican nominee. There's a presidential election in November of this year. If he wins that election and the polls are not looking bad for him right now, then everything is in crisis, including Canada-U.S. relations, relations with Europe, relations with China. Canada will have no greater crisis in 2025 than dealing with Donald Trump if he's president, just as Canada had no greater crisis in 2017

than dealing with Donald Trump. Wow. John, thank you so much for being here today. Yeah, have a great year in spite of everything we just said. We'll try. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wells. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Cheung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.