Justin Trudeau plummets in polls; some Liberals say he should resign

The most recent blow was a loss in a special election last month to the Conservatives in Toronto-St. Paul’s, a district that the Liberals had won (often easily) since 1993. It was as if the Democrats had lost a special election in Manhattan, or the Republicans had fallen in Colorado Springs.

Now Canadians are watching to see if Trudeau might be planning his own “walk in the snow,” a repeat of the solitary walk his father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, claimed to have taken in a snowstorm in Ottawa the day before he announced his resignation in 1984.

In a much lower-profile version of the Democratic push for President Biden to withdraw from the U.S. presidential race, several high-profile liberals, including his former environment minister Catherine McKenna and Christy Clark, a former Liberal premier of British Columbia, have called on him to step aside to give the party a better chance of holding on to power.

Trudeau, 52, has given no indication he plans to step down — and it’s unclear whether any of the alternatives would be more successful in turning the tide. By law, the next federal election must be held on Oct. 20, 2025.

“I want to make it clear that I hear people’s concerns and frustrations,” Trudeau said after the by-election. “These are not easy times, and it’s clear that I and my entire Liberal team have a lot of work to do to deliver tangible, real progress that Canadians across the country see and feel.”

Trudeau’s woes echo those of many incumbent leaders, who are grappling with high inflation and concerns about affordability, particularly in housing. Most Canadian housing markets are at or near their worst levels of affordability on record, the Royal Bank of Canada reported in December.

“The prime minister and his government have not been able to respond to those concerns,” said David Coletto, president of pollster Abacus Data. “As Canadians think about the state of the country, the state of the world, I think the conclusion is increasingly coming to a point where they just want change.”

Trudeau has won three federal elections. He’s been in power for nine years — and he’s racked up nine years of miscalculations and baggage: ethics scandals, photos of him as a younger man in blackface, controversies over foreign travel and vacations at home, struggles to balance Canada’s growing economy with climate action. It’s been more than a century since a Canadian prime minister won four elections in a row.

“A lot of people say St. Paul’s is a wake-up call, but that really shouldn’t be that surprising,” said Dan Arnold, Trudeau’s former head of research and advertising. “If it’s a wake-up call, it’s an 11 o’clock in the morning wake-up call, because there were a lot of warning signs beforehand.”

Analysts say it’s not just political missteps that have done the Liberals in, but the rise of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. The populist rebel has become the most formidable political opponent Trudeau has ever faced.

The 45-year-old has taken over the party engaging in grievance politics, protesting public health measures and standing up for the truck convoy that blocked the US-Canada border crossings in 2022 and paralyzed Ottawa for weeks.

“Canada is broken,” said Poilievre, an MP for two decades. He will fix it, he said, with a plan to “abolish the (carbon) tax, build housing, fix the budget, stop crime.”

He has focused his message on criticizing the government for high interest rates, persistent inflation and historically high housing prices and shortages, which have disillusioned many millennial voters — a key part of the coalition that brought Trudeau to power.

“He hasn’t offered a lot of compelling policy alternatives,” said Lisa Young, a political scientist at the University of Calgary. “But he’s seen as much more effective on the issue simply because he was the one who raised it before the Trudeau government started trying to respond.”

Under Poilievre, the Conservative Party has broken fundraising records — and worked to soften its image. An advertising campaign last year included a spot narrated by his wife, a Venezuelan immigrant, with video of the couple playing with their children.

Meanwhile, the liberals are slow to respond. They’ve tried to portray him as some kind of Donald Trump-lite – the former president is deeply unpopular here – but there’s little evidence that this has much effect.

“I think the Liberals missed their opportunity to define him as dangerous or outside the … boundaries of what is acceptable in Canadian politics,” Young told The Washington Post.

Trudeau has tried to reverse his decision slide. Last summer, he overhauled his cabinet in an effort to “re-energize” the government, bringing in a marketer to his team who, he said, focuses on “understanding Millennials and Gen Z.”

He repealed part of the carbon tax, one of his flagship policies, in what analysts called an effort to rally support in Atlantic Canada, angering not only his own environment minister but officials elsewhere who wanted exemptions of their own.

He spent weeks touring the country previewing a budget focused on “generational fairness”, breaking with the tradition of keeping budget details secret until the document is tabled in parliament.

“I think they’re at a stage where it doesn’t really matter what they do or what they say,” the pollster said. Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute. “I hate to use this expression, but it’s like they’ve ‘jumped the shark.’ No one’s listening.”

The problem, Coletto said, is that “if the prime minister is the one delivering the message, people won’t listen to it.”

In contrast to the Democrats’ pressure campaign on Biden, liberal lawmakers here have kept all the fear they feel about Trudeau secret. A member of his caucus has called for him to resign, but there hasn’t been a full-blown uprising yet.

That’s partly because there is no clear successor to rally behind, or compelling evidence that the people whose names have been mooted as possible replacements – Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland or Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, to name two – would turn the party’s tide.

“(The Liberals) are seen as, and I think rightly so, the party of Justin Trudeau,” Young said. “It’s really hard to imagine anyone else coming along and meaningfully redefining the party and the government in the time that they have until the next election.”

When Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party in 2013, the party was a remnant of the behemoth that had dominated Canadian politics to the point that it the country’s natural ruling party. It was banished to the political wilderness; books proclaimed its death.

The Liberals began the 2015 federal election trailing not only the governing Conservatives but also the New Democrats. Opponents bought ads dismissing Trudeau as “not ready yet.” But the youthful and charismatic leader defied expectations. The Liberals began the campaign with 36 of the 338 seats in parliament. They ended with 184.

“A lot of caucus members see themselves as elected because of Trudeau,” Young said, “and they may not see themselves as having much influence on this issue.”

Analysts and members of Trudeau’s inner circle say the amateur boxer is used to being underestimated, and that he performs well when he is on the ropes. The question is whether there is enough time to turn his fight’s fortunes around.

“The desire of voters for change in the current environment is not limited to Canada,” said Arnold, Chief Strategy Officer of the public opinion firm Pollara: “I feel like we’re in a post-COVID funk in the Western world, where people are just really frustrated with their quality of life…

“Voters are just looking for change and they don’t really care whether it’s left or right, or someone with 34 convictions.”