Expect an ‘ugly fight’ over Trudeau’s leadership at national Liberal caucus meeting, say Grit MPs
After nine years in power, and polling 20 points behind the Conservatives for more than a year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing a serious challenge to his leadership from within his own caucus, and MPs and political insiders are predicting a showdown between a “motivated group” of more than 20 MPs pushing for a new leader before the next election, versus the prime minister and his supporters.
“It’s going to be a fight, an ugly fight,” said one Liberal MP, who is a Trudeau supporter and did not want to be identified, in an interview with The Hill Times. “You are going to see some people who will do what they said they’re going to do which is to say that he [Trudeau] should go, and you’re going to see a bunch of people fight back and say, ‘Look, even if we agree with you about the boss going, your approach has made it impossible to support you, and it’s a shame that you decide to take everybody down along with you guys.’ ”
After the week-long Thanksgiving break, MPs are returning to Parliament on Monday, with all eyes on a high-stakes showdown between more than 20 MPs pushing for a leadership change and Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) along with his caucus supporters who are determined to settle the leadership question once and for all. Liberal sources told The Hill Times that the dissenting group of MPs has representation from “coast to coast to coast,” including women MPs, visible minority MPs, those seeking re-election, and those who are not. They added that the strategy for handling the upcoming Oct. 23 caucus meeting has not yet been finalized, and will likely continue to evolve until the last minute.
This past week saw a flurry of activity within the Liberal caucus, with MPs calling each other to gauge where they stood on the leadership issue. Reporters were also reaching out to MPs for their opinions on whether Trudeau should be replaced. There was a sense of suspicion among some MPs, with some describing calls from their colleagues as “spy calls” aimed at finding out who supported Trudeau, and who wanted him to step down.
One challenge Trudeau’s supporters faced was the uncertainty over the identity of a group of more than 20 MPs pushing for change, as their list was never made public. Even Liberal MPs who back the prime minister privately acknowledged that, based on conversations over the past few months, an estimated 60 per cent of the caucus is concerned that if the leader isn’t changed, the party will lose the next election. However, they were unsure how those MPs would act in Wednesday’s caucus meeting.
A Liberal source familiar with these private discussions claimed that while cabinet ministers are publicly backing Trudeau, they are not privately discouraging the 20-plus MPs who are calling for his resignation.
Some MPs told The Hill Times on Oct. 17 that they each received around 20 calls from reporters within 24 hours, all focused on the Liberal leadership. Media reports on Oct. 17 suggested that four cabinet ministers will not seek re-election, and that a cabinet shuffle is expected in a few weeks. Those ministers include Sports Minister Carla Qualtrough (Delta, B.C.); Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario Filomena Tassi (Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, Ont.); National Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau (Compton-Stanstead, Que.), and Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal (Saint Boniface-Saint Vital, Man.). Tassi, Vandal and Qualtrough later confirmed on social media or issued statements to confirm they won’t re-offer in the next election.
MPs interpreted this announcement as part of a PMO strategy to keep potential cabinet hopefuls engaged and on their side. This past week, some MPs requested that the national caucus chair Brenda Shanahan (Châteaguay-Lacolle, Que.) extend Wednesday’s caucus meeting beyond the usual two hours, given the importance of the leadership discussion. However, as of print press time on Oct. 18, the request had not been approved. Typically, when the House is in session, all parties hold their respective private national caucus meetings for two hours, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
In interviews with The Hill Times, some MPs and political operatives who want Trudeau to resign said that they plan to respectfully urge the prime minister to reconsider leading the party in the next election. They will point out that the party has begun losing byelections in traditionally safe Liberal ridings, has trailed the Conservatives by a 15-20 point margin for more than a year, and that even Liberal candidates are no longer using the prime minister’s name in their campaign materials in byelections.
“The central issue is his leadership,” a Liberal source told The Hill Times. “People [MPs] are still trying to find a way for him to get to that position rather than telling him to do it.”
MPs who support Trudeau argue that the dissenting group should not have taken their case to the media to push for his removal. Instead, they believe this conversation should have happened within caucus first.
“I’m a little upset and disappointed in the sense that this grouping of people, whoever they might be, could have brought it to the caucus in a very tangible way in hopes that we’d be able to resolve their concerns before they attempted this,” said Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Man.), parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, in an interview with The Hill Times. “So I don’t think they gave the caucus a fair shake, and, at the end of the day, there’s a lot of people who are disappointed in that, that are hoping for us to do well.”
However, members of the dissenting group say they have been making serious efforts to have this talk for months, but claim they have been effectively “blocked” by the caucus chair and the PMO at every turn. They highlight that, after the Toronto-St. Paul’s, Ont., byelection loss in June, nine MPs sent a written request to Shanahan for a discussion, but it was denied for “logistical” reasons.
In the last two caucus meetings, both the rural caucus chair and the Atlantic chair conveyed that their colleagues wanted to discuss Trudeau’s leadership. However, at every caucus meeting and during the summer retreat, the agenda was packed in such a way that this issue couldn’t be raised. These MPs argue that this is a serious conversation that cannot be resolved in just five to 10 minutes, or even within an hour. They believe the leadership should have granted the request from the nine MPs in June, and scheduled a special caucus meeting dedicated to this discussion
“Who are they kidding? The request was made [in June]. You think that request just disappeared and somebody withdrew the request,? They said, ‘no, we’re good. ‘That request was standing. It still stands. What’s the difference? It was made four months, five months ago,” said an MP who wanted Trudeau to step down.
“They [the PMO] should not assume that people aren’t going to resort to other ways to get their message out. This message was already attempted. They blocked that attempt, and they tried to manufacture compliance.”
This MP and others said that after their June request for an in-person caucus meeting was denied by the caucus chair, most MPs used their one-on-one conversations with Trudeau to urge him to change his senior staff and to shuffle his cabinet—among other suggestions—but no action has been taken.
Lamoureux and others who share this view argue that by starting this leadership conversation, their colleagues are aiding Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s (Carleton, Ont.) Tories. Lamoureux said that if Trudeau does not lead the party in the next election, he is unsure whether he himself would seek re-election.
The Hill Times reported on emails sent by Liberal MPs Chandra Arya (Nepean, Ont.) and Yasir Naqvi (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) to all caucus members saying that it would be a mistake to change the leader at this time, and any such discussion would only help the Conservatives.
For about two weeks, The Hill Times and other media outlets have been reporting on a group of more than 20 Liberal MPs pushing for a leadership change, primarily due to concerns that the party has been trailing the Conservatives by 15-20 points for over a year. According to a recent seat projection by Polling Canada, if an election were held today, the Conservatives would win 224 seats, the Bloc Québécois 43, the Liberals 39, the NDP 35, and the Greens two. These MPs and Liberal insiders insist they are raising these concerns in the party’s best interest, as they believe Canadians have tuned out the prime minister.
They emphasize that, like the majority of the caucus, they hold genuine respect for Trudeau, but fear that without a leadership change the Conservatives could win more than 200 seats. They also stress that these concerns reflect the views of their constituents who are worried that the progress made by the party on issues like pharmacare and other progressive policies will be undone if the Conservatives were to come to power.
On Oct. 16, four-term Liberal MP Sean Casey (Charlottetown, P.E.I.) publicly called for Trudeau’s resignation. Before that, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Que.) said that the party should hold a ‘robust caucus discussion’ on who should lead the party in the next election. In June, after the Liberals lost the Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection, Liberal MP Wayne Long (Saint John-Rothesay, N.B.) demanded Trudeau’s resignation in an email to his colleagues.
Prior to the start of the national Liberal caucus retreat, Liberal MP Alexandra Mendès (Brossard-Saint-Lambert, Que.) said that her constituents don’t want Trudeau to lead the party in the next election. Back in January, Liberal MP Ken McDonald (Avalon, N.L.) publicly called for Trudeau’s leadership review but, after pushback from the centre, recanted it. Both McDonald and Long are not reoffering in the next election.
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