Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived for the Liberal caucus meeting smiling, and left the meeting smiling too. He told reporters the Liberal Party is “strong and united.”

Speaking after the caucus gathering, Minister of Tourism Soraya Martinez Ferrada—like most of her colleagues—turned the focus on the Conservatives.

“The Liberal Party and the Liberal caucus has always been a place where people can express their feelings, have the conversations, and sometimes tough conversations. But one thing that we are united on—everybody—is beating Poilievre.”

Leaving the meeting, Government House Leader Karina Gould declined to discuss caucus conversations, but said it “was a robust conversation.”

Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Marc Miller, a personal friend of Trudeau, has been one of the prime minister’s most outspoken supporters. Despite previously describing the efforts to oust Trudeau as “garbage,” he was singing a different tune after caucus, saying he was “extremely proud” of his colleagues.

“I know it sounds a little off brand … but I’m extremely proud of them airing things out in private and having a frank conversation that was really truthful,” he told reporters. 

“I think we still have some stuff to sort out, but I think it was a great conversation. People were honest, and weren’t doing it as a whisper campaign, so I’m actually quite confident.”

Newfoundland and Labrador MP Ken McDonald has publicly said he signed a document that was circulating in the weeks before the Oct. 23 meeting aimed at getting Trudeau to resign.

New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, who is not running in the next election, has also said he signed the document.

Liberal MP Brenda Shannahan is the party’s national caucus chair for the 153 Liberal MPs. She previously shut down a late June request for a national caucus meeting following the party’s surprising by-election loss in Toronto, citing “logistical” reasons.  

Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry François-Philippe Champagne said Liberal MPs had “a great discussion.”

“When you have a caucus, you need to hear all voices. But what really matters at the end is that we come out of that caucus meeting united, resolved in delivering for Canadians, and resolved in winning the next election.”

Champagne later compared the caucus to a family.

“You need to listen to each other, you need to make sure you welcome the views of people, but at the end, it’s like a dinner table. At the end of the dinner, we all need to come out and [have a] relentless focus on serving Canadians and winning the next election.” 

Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith declined to share any details, but described the meeting as a “healthy” conversation.

“I think that’s the worst part about some of these things, where people leak from caucus. It’s unhelpful; it means that people aren’t willing to share.”

He said MPs must “stop the palace intrigue” and instead “focus on what’s most important”: work in Parliament, and standing up against the Poilievre Conservatives.

Erskine-Smith, one of the more outspoken backbench Liberal MPs, said his message to colleagues was twofold.

“The prime minister has to listen to the frustrations—and in some cases really valid frustrations—of caucus colleagues, and incorporate that into changes moving forward, whether those are big changes, or small changes, or both,” he said.

“And the second thing is my colleagues need to turn the knives outwards and not inwards, and we need to focus on the most important thing, which is getting things done here in Parliament and taking the fight to Pierre Poilievre cause he’s a disaster for this country.” 

After news broke of a pledge to push Trudeau out, Liberal MP Chandra Arya sent a caucus-wide email saying removing Trudeau would be a strategic error.

Treasury Board President Anita Anand said the meeting was a forum for people to express their views.

“We are going to emerge united because we have work to do for the Canadian people,” she said before the meeting. “We are a party of big ideas and a party that accepts different points of view, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen told reporters before the caucus meeting that MPs “need to get behind our leader, and fight for the values that we believe in and fight for Canadians.”

After the evening cabinet meeting on Oct. 22, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson predicted a “robust debate” would follow, but that the efforts to oust Trudeau would ultimately fail. Before the Oct. 23 caucus gathering, he said he expects the “vast majority of caucus strongly supports the prime minister’s leadership, but we’ve got to have a conversation. We need to hear what people have to say.”

Liberal MPs Ken Hardie, right, and John McKay arrive for the caucus meeting. McKay previously told The Hill Times that, had the Liberals adopted a Reform Act measure granting caucus the power to vote on their leader, “it would have given everybody at least a format for the issue that seems to be at hand.”

Before the caucus meeting, Minister of Northern Affairs Dan Vandal said he supports the prime minister “100 per cent,” and he thinks most of the caucus does as well. 

“We need to put this away, because the more time we spend talking about ourselves, the less time we spend talking about Canadians and about Pierre Poilievre.”

—The Hill Times photographs by Andrew Meade

The Hill Times

 

See all stories BY SAMANTHA WRIGHT ALLEN