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Secretly plotting against a weak leader is not courage
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Posted: Oct 19, 2024 • Last updated: 13 minutes ago • 3 min read
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the federal inquiry into foreign interference in Ottawa, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. Photo credit: Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press
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Marc Miller said the attempt to oust Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister was “a questioning of the most passive-aggressive and weak type of leadership I have ever seen.”
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Miller is right to describe this coup attempt in pejorative terms. Not because Trudeau shouldn’t step down, but because it’s so pathetic.
Miller, Trudeau’s longtime friend, one of the groomsmen in his wedding party and the current Immigration Minister, clearly has a different view of the prime minister than I do. But we agree about the feeble attempt to remove the leader.
“They have an obligation to go to him and tell him to his face,” Miller told CBC Manitoba.
The fact that the rebel group within the caucus has not been made public despite months of whispers, and that there has now been more than a week of speculation about a letter calling for Trudeau’s resignation, says a lot about these MPs. Of course, it speaks volumes in a very quiet, quiet, fearful, secretive tone that is almost imperceptible to the human ear, but that is the volume they are planning for.
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Miller said in the interview that these MPs owe their political careers and fortunes to Trudeau, implying they are being ungrateful to the man who put them in their current positions. The 2015 election may have been like that. When the election started, not even the Liberals thought they would win.
Trudeau’s campaign and charisma persuaded enough Canadians to vote for him and his party, and he lifted the Liberals from third to first.
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Nine years have passed and things have changed dramatically. Trudeau’s Sunny Ways have given way to Dark Days, and the voting public has clearly soured on him.
If Trudeau was the reason the Liberals won in 2015, he is a stinking albatross around their necks at this point.
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In the 2015 election, Trudeau’s Liberal Party came to power with 39.5% of the popular vote and 184 of 338 seats. In 2019, it was reduced to 33% of the vote and 157 seats, but in 2021 it won 32% of the vote and 160 seats.
Under Justin Trudeau, the Liberals currently enjoy about 23% of the popular vote. They do not lead a single region of the country. They are in third place behind the NDP in British Columbia, 22 points behind the Conservatives in Ontario and tied with the Conservatives in Quebec, well behind the poll-leading Bloc Quebecois.
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If you can’t publicly call for your leader to resign when he’s this weak in the polls, I doubt you can.
When Chrétien faced the revolt, he was still leading in the opinion polls and would have won a fourth majority if he had led his party in the next election.
It’s true that New Brunswick Liberal Wayne Long said in the summer that Trudeau should go, but Long is not running again. Alexandra Mendes said in September that her constituents want Trudeau to go, but she wants him to stay.
PEI Liberal Sean Casey was the only one brave enough last week to publicly declare that Trudeau should step down.
If these rebel lawmakers want to be taken seriously, they need to grow some spine and move forward. Otherwise it’s just hot air.
billey@postmedia.com
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