A painful retreat from obvious problems

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/08/2024 (449 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you were looking for a simple, concise, one-sentence statement that absolutely does not sum up the feelings of most Canadians, this might be it: “All of us have tremendous confidence in the prime minister.”

As recent — and even not so recent — polls have indicated in alignment with sentiments that would no doubt be expressed in pretty much any casual Canadian conversation these days, tremendous confidence, or trust, or affection, are not what most folks are inclined to express when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s name is mentioned.

An Abacus poll conducted earlier this year showed 59 per cent of Canadians have a negative opinion of the PM, compared to 33 per cent who view him positively. The currently governing Liberals trail the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, by 16 percentage points and has consistently been behind by a double-digit margin for most of the last year.

Every polling indication available suggests the Liberals are headed for a catastrophic defeat in next year’s federal election. The vast majority of everyday Canadians, it seems have had enough of Trudeau and his government.

And yet this week in Halifax, the aforementioned expression of “absolute confidence” was actually uttered out loud.

The statement came from Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland at the end of the Liberal cabinet’s three-day retreat in the Nova Scotia capital, when asked if the Liberals would be well advised to follow the lead of the U.S. Democratic Party. The Democrats’ chances of re-election this November were given a significant boost by the exit of relatively unpopular President Joe Biden from the race and the ascension of Vice-President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket.

No such leadership change is necessary here, Freeland insisted: “Absolutely not. All of us have tremendous confidence in the prime minister. We have confidence in him as the leader of our government, as the prime minister of Canada and we have confidence in him as our party leader — as the guy who will lead us into the next election.”

If that’s truly the consensus view of Liberal Party members, then perhaps Canada’s Maritime coast was the perfect locale for the cabinet retreat — because the policy discussions and pronouncements produced there were the thematic equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It’s not unexpected that Freeland et al would present a united front in the aftermath of the three-day gathering. It’s also highly likely that some very pointed conversations were had and serious questions were raised about Trudeau’s continuing leadership before Freeland emerged from the party’s figurative wheelhouse and declared no metaphorical icebergs were in view.

But the relatively modest announcements issued by the prime minister after his inner circle’s deep-thoughts discussions — including a curtailment of temporary foreign workers and tough tariffs imposed on Chinese EVs — seem hardly to be what’s needed to address the Liberals’ public-popularity woes.

The Liberal Party, as it currently stands, is a party in need of a massive regenerative reset. Some have suggested a wholesale cabinet shuffle and a major shakeup of Trudeau’s senior staff are the very least that needs to be done, but there was no indication from the PM this week that such a realignment is in the offing. And quite frankly, it’s entirely likely that even a major restructuring of the Trudeau-led Liberals would be enough to allow them to avert the crash that awaits them next fall.

The Halifax gathering, it seems, was destined to accomplish little. But remember: “retreat” is also what an embattled force might beat in a hasty fashion when all hope of victory seems lost.