1 week Ago By [email protected] (Tonda MacCharles)
OTTAWA — The summer ride is over. So too is the Justin Trudeau listening tour. The prime minister spent much of two months meeting in small groups or individually with nervous Liberal MPs, many angry after the June loss of a supposedly safe Toronto seat to the Conservatives.
Trudeau also spent two months running, paddling, boxing and bounding from one summer festival to another, taking thousands of selfies with Canadians who appeared not to have read polls about how disliked he is. So what did the prime minister take away from it all? His practiced answers at a cabinet and again this week after his co-operation with the NDP fell apart show clearly he does not believe he is the problem. Rather, Trudeau believes he is the solution.
In public and in private, Trudeau has expressed his determination to stay at the helm of his party through to the next election. And he believes he now has most of his caucus behind him. The Star spoke to more than a dozen Liberals inside and outside the Prime Minister’s Office, cabinet and caucus, and agreed to requests they not be identified in order to gauge where they believe the prime minister’s head is at.
All said Trudeau plans to stay the course. Not all are thrilled with that. But most said Trudeau is newly energized for the fight ahead.
And the death of the NDP co-operation deal doesn’t bother the prime minister or many of those around him. If anything, after his summer listening tour, Trudeau is, surprisingly, “more emboldened,” said one Liberal. Another said, “I think there is a path to victory that he’s confident about.
Obviously it’s not what it was in 2015 by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s there, and I don’t think anyone doubts his capacity to win the last two weeks of the campaign.” Trudeau, several said, is deeply concerned about the rise of a right-wing populism that threatens Canadian social programs and cohesion. He sees Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as an agent of that.
Some said Trudeau believes he must stay on to counter Poilievre, even in the face of polls showing he is leading the Liberal party to likely disaster. “He’s not getting the message. He thinks he’s the only one who can fight for the progressive agenda in Canada against the big, evil Conservatives,” said one.
Some Liberals genuinely believe Trudeau the best leader the party’s got for that fight, and all they need to do in the months ahead is a better job of prosecuting the case against Poilievre. They and the prime minister are relying on a conviction that the more Canadians see of Poilievre, the more they will dislike him. Trudeau also thinks that most of the negative spin about his leadership comes from “groupthink” in the Ottawa press gallery.
That there is an unending stream of negative stories is certainly true, because there is a seemingly endless stream of polls documenting the mood of Canadians. So what has Trudeau’s own outreach taught him? The prime minister has often talked in the past about how he discounts the excesses of both his “haters” and admirers. Yet after a bruising early summer, where MPs spoke openly about their concerns to reporters (although only one, New Brunswick’s Wayne Long, agreed to be identified), Trudeau seems to have refuelled his tank on the encouragement he encountered in crowds.
From the Vancouver Pride parade to the St. John’s Regatta, Trudeau has told those around him that people were eager and happy to meet “the prime minister” not least because he brings “the celebrity factor.” The son of a former prime minister who grew up in the public spotlight, he creates a buzz most places he shows up.
Yet one Liberal cautioned it’s not an indication Canadians want him to stay. “He confuses the selfie with support and it’s not,” they said. “Some of it may be support, but the selfie is largely celebrity-driven and not politically driven.
” A clear sign that Trudeau’s public relations and security staff worried he would encounter protesters were Trudeau’s carefully sanitized public itineraries. Early in the summer, his office stopped issuing timely public notices of where the prime minister would be, sometimes concealing Trudeau’s whereabouts until after an event was over. And there was one telling, unscripted moment in Trudeau’s summer travels.
In Sault Ste-Marie, a steelworker declined to shake Trudeau’s hand, complained about taxes, the lack of a family doctor, the cost of dental care and about the “lazy neighbour” who doesn’t work but lives the same life he, the ordinary worker, does. Trudeau engaged the man and quickly tried to talk his way out of the awkward encounter, but the worker wanted no part of it and looked forward to Trudeau not being around “in another year.” It’s a strategy: talking your way through difficult meetings, and talking over your critics.
It’s one some say Trudeau has employed in caucus and in other tense meetings. Whether it’s the strategy the Liberal leader intends to employ at this week’s national caucus retreat in Nanaimo — the first face-to-face gathering of all Liberal MPs since the loss of Toronto-St. Paul’s — could determine whether his MPs think Trudeau has truly listened.
It may also determine what face they put on as they emerge before the cameras. One senior government official said the Nanaimo caucus meeting is important because people will compare notes, and express their views very directly to the prime minister, the PMO, and to each other. Yet that same Liberal — along with others — is convinced the vast majority of the caucus is united behind Trudeau leading them into the next campaign, and will be focused on how to win that election, not on leadership changes.
So will Trudeau offer a major course correction — say, on the Middle East, the economic direction of the country, or the carbon pricing regime that has caused him endless political headaches? Don’t expect that, said several. Trudeau plans to stay on the same track, even if the prospect of a federal election before October 2025 suddenly looms large. Certainly, Trudeau’s favourite catchphrase is, “We will continue to .
..” At the cabinet retreat, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne summed up the strategy: “Deliver, deliver, deliver.
” In an interview Friday, Champagne said, “We just need to double down and focus more on delivering and let others play their political game.” Canadians still feel “a lot of anxiety” as they look for economic relief with lower inflation and interest rates in sight, he said. “People have little appetite for the kind of spectacle you see in Ottawa, of gamesmanship and political play and, you know, House tactics and all that.
They say, ‘Listen, get on with it. You’ve been elected. Just do it.
’” Even Trudeau’s ardent supporters say the path forward is set. “The biggest course correction would be him — him leaving,” said one. And that is not something anyone is predicting, for now.
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