As national polls suggest the Liberal Party is headed for defeat in the next election, some disaffected Liberal MPs are expected to take the mic today at their national caucus meeting to urge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to call it quits.
After nine years in government, Trudeau’s popularity has plummeted. The CBC Poll Tracker shows the Conservatives have a 19-point lead over the governing Liberals, a margin that suggests dozens of Liberal MPs could be out of a job after the next vote.
The prospect of an electoral implosion has led some Liberal MPs to organize an effort to oust Trudeau as party leader.
CBC News has reported that more than 20 Liberal MPs met in secret and signed a document committing themselves to trying to force Trudeau out of the party leadership.
Three MPs have come forward publicly to say they have signed the letter: Newfoundland’s Ken McDonald, Prince Edward Island’s Sean Casey and New Brunswick’s Wayne Long.
All three of those MPs are longstanding critics of Trudeau. The names of other MPs who have signed the letter may also be made known today.
No one seems to know what could come out of this potentially fractious caucus meeting, or whether a letter bearing the names of disgruntled MPs will prompt Trudeau to change his mind.
Trudeau could decide to press on as leader even if he’s dealing with significant discontent in his caucus. He has said repeatedly that he will lead the party into the next election.
McDonald, Casey and Long have all said that while they want Trudeau to go, they’re yet not willing to leave the party and sit as Independents.
The move to oust Trudeau could lead to a seismic development in federal politics — or simply fizzle out like past efforts to challenge the prime minister.
It’s not just the polls that signal trouble on the horizon for the Liberals. Liberal MPs are also anxious about Trudeau and his team losing two byelections in historically rock-solid Liberal ridings in Toronto and Montreal.
The Liberal candidate in another recent Winnipeg-area byelection posted one of the worst results for a governing party in Canadian history.
The party’s national campaign director quit in early September. The party took weeks to announce a replacement.
Four more of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers have announced, or are expected to announce soon, that they will not run again in the next election, sources have told CBC News.
That news came after MP Pablo Rodriguez left caucus to sit as an Independent while running to lead the Quebec Liberal Party.
Still, Trudeau has support from his cabinet.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller has called the efforts to oust Trudeau “garbage” and said it would be better for the team to pull together to take on their main opponent: Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller says any time spent focusing on some Liberal MPs’ efforts to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘is a minute that’s not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country.’ Miller says Trudeau has the support of the ‘vast majority of caucus’ and the entirety of cabinet.
“Any minute spent on this garbage is a minute that’s not spent on Pierre Poilievre and what he wants to do to this country, and I think that is very dangerous,” Miller told reporters ahead of a cabinet meeting Tuesday.
“I’m a member of his cabinet and obviously we support him,” said Housing Minister Sean Fraser.
Echoing Miller, Fraser said it’s Poilievre who’s the real problem.
“We are up against somebody who is campaigning on promises to deny access to free birth control for women, who won’t even get a security clearance to look into allegations about his own caucus members being engaged in foreign interference,” he said, citing Poilievre’s controversial decision to forgo getting the necessary credentials to review top-secret documents.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson predicted this latest attempt to take Trudeau down will fail.
“At the end of the day, we will have a robust debate, we will come out with, in my view, support for the prime minister and move forward with the election,” he said.