The end is near for Justin Trudeau.
Late Friday October 11, 2024, reports began to surface of a campaign by a number of Liberal Members of Parliament (MPs) to force leader Justin Trudeau to step down as party leader and make way for a leadership convention.
Worried Liberals have become increasingly anxious about the party’s plummeting support and have been meeting to discuss their future since the party lost previously ‘safe seats’ in byelections in the Toronto-St. Paul riding in June and Montreal’s LaSalle-Émard-Verdun riding in September.
Disgruntled caucus members are now being approached to sign what amounts to a pledge to stand together to force Trudeau’s resignation.
The next key date in this struggle will be at the Wednesday, October 23rd Liberal caucus meeting, when some members have indicated they will make their case for his resignation directly to Trudeau. Their concerns may be magnified by the recent news that four more Liberal cabinet ministers have said they will not run for re-election. According to Radio Canada, 24 elected members of the Liberal caucus now don’t plan run next time.
It appears that Liberal MPs are finally catching up with Canadian voters who have long been discontented with Trudeau’s leadership. Liberal support has been falling precipitously since mid-2023. Current polls show the Conservatives well ahead, with 338 Canada giving them 99% odds of winning a majority in the next federal election.
Once members of a leader’s caucus begin to push for a change, it is only a matter of time until they succeed. Their campaign fuels media coverage which in turn further weakens the leader. This then increases the number of caucus members willing to join the revolt. A downward spiral ensues.
It is now indeed only a matter of time before the Prime Minister resigns as leader of the Liberal Party. However, the Liberals have at most one year remaining before the next federal election, as it must be held on October 20, 2025, at the latest. This leaves the party barely enough time to hold a leadership convention if the new leader is to have any meaningful opportunity to get his or her feet wet before the writ is dropped.
And they may well have much less than a year before facing the voters. They are a minority government which has held power for this long due to a formal support agreement with the New Democratic Party. Jasmeet Singh has now ended that agreement, and the NDP will no longer automatically vote with the government.
Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party are now actively pushing non-confidence votes in the House of Commons. They have failed in their first two tries. They may yet succeed as the Bloc Quebecois is also pledging to vote against the government unless they agree to implement two Bloc policies that the Liberals have said they will not support.
A non-confidence vote could bring down the minority Liberal government at any time.
Approximately a year ago, I predicted that the federal Liberals would dispose of Justin Trudeau prior to the next federal election, and I further predicted that the new leader would be Mark Carney. I may still be proven right.
Buckle up your seat belts. We could be in for a bumpy ride!
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (October 16, 2024): 422.12ppm
One year ago (October 17, 2023): 419.66ppm
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