By announcing his upcoming departure just before Donald Trump came to power, Justin Trudeau left Canada in a weak position.
Posted at 1:42 p.m.
The American president will negotiate in the face of a discredited prime minister – a lame duck whose resignation is scheduled for March 24.
It is true that the other options were not exciting.
Launch an election campaign now? On January 20, day 1 of the anticipated tariff war with Washington, the Prime Minister of Canada would have been reduced to a stewardship role, without moral authority, while waiting for the population to choose his successor.
Stay in power, against all odds? The result would have been roughly the same. The Liberal caucus allegedly humiliated Mr. Trudeau for three long weeks until the opposition ousted him in late January. The electoral campaign would have been launched just after the tariffs came into force.
Resign, ask the caucus to appoint a prime minister and at the same time organize a race to choose a new Liberal leader, who would lead the electoral campaign? This “interim” prime minister – who would probably have been Dominic LeBlanc – would not have had the experience of Mr. Trudeau to begin negotiations.
But if the other options were bad, it’s Mr. Trudeau’s fault. Everything would have been easier if he had started planning his departure last summer. The defeat in the partial in Toronto St. Paul’s, at the end of June, already showed the dead end towards which he was heading. The failure in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun in September confirmed this.
Even after spectacularly mishandling the demotion of his Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland in mid-December, he tried to stay in office. Further proof of the disconnection of the Prime Minister and his small entourage, prisoners of their bubble, incapable of listening and, despite all their hugs, clumsy at best in their personal relationships.
Until the very end, Mr. Trudeau held on. His caucus allowed him to do so. The calls for his departure came slowly, and rather politely at first. In October, the mutineers invited him to “think about his future”. We let him script his own exit.
But the last straw was the humiliation imposed on Chrystia Freeland. Mr. Trudeau announced to her that she would lose her title of Minister of Finance on Wednesday, December 18. And still, he asked him to table an economic update the previous Monday that violated his deficit target.
Mme Freeland resigned, which accelerated the ongoing revolt. In the cabinet reshuffle that followed on December 20, no newly promoted minister reiterated their confidence in Mr. Trudeau.
This was becoming inevitable. But Mr. Trudeau sought an improbable route through. He waited until Sunday evening, January 4, before announcing his departure to his family. He did it in spite of himself.
Prisoner of his own mythology, he repeated that he was a “ fighter “. He resigned with regret, because the “internal battles” forced him to do so. And not because he recognizes what the polls demonstrate with overwhelming consistency: he was preparing to direct his troops towards the slaughterhouse.
Even though he was emotional in announcing his resignation, Mr. Trudeau stuck to his message. He expressed no regret about the demotion imposed on Mr.me Freeland — he continues to claim to have offered her a prestigious position, that of directing relations with the United States, even though she was already chairing the committee on this subject and had not been invited to the dinner in Mar- a-Lago with Mr. Trump.
He trivialized a future pitfall in the race for his succession: ministers could participate. They will not have enough time to properly fulfill their ministerial functions. And the work of government risks being contaminated by this race. Will we defend the interests of the country or will we seek to please a small community of liberal sympathizers? Also, will foreign students and ordinary citizens have the right to vote, and therefore an indirect influence on these candidates? What latitude will the new leader have to establish his authority, make himself known and develop a distinct program for the campaign?
Here is a sample of the disorder left by this announced departure.
Added to this is the problem of proroguing parliament. Work will be suspended until March 24.
Conservatives are indignant at this denial of democracy. However, they have deliberately paralyzed parliament since the fall over a procedural issue surrounding the management of an energy transition fund.
Mr. Trudeau repeats the maneuver of Stephen Harper, who prorogued parliament in 2008 to prevent the opposition from overthrowing him. If it is a denial of democracy, it will be short-lived.
The government will prepare a budget, in principle, but everything indicates that it will not be adopted and that the electoral campaign will begin in April. Canadians won’t wait too long before voting.
