EDITORIAL: Some California wine with that lame duck?

Published Jan 07, 2025  •  2 minute read

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers remarks during a National Caucus holiday event in Ottawa, on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024.

Now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stepped down, we should examine how his successor will be chosen.

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The House of Commons was paralyzed for months due to the government’s refusal to produce vital documents; for weeks Trudeau pondered his future on the ski slopes; Parliament is now prorogued until March 24.

By that time, this country will have had no effective government for six months — all because the massive ego of one man failed to read the room.

It’s equally problematic that he’s plunged this country into a frenzied Liberal leadership race. From coast to coast, contenders will sign up hundreds of thousands of people for their cause. As it is now, they don’t have to be Canadian citizens and kids as young as 14 are eligible to vote on who will be the next prime minister. But only if they say they’re Liberals.

This is despite the warnings of two reports last year that flagged federal nomination and leadership races as “particularly vulnerable” to foreign interference and a “gateway” for foreign interference.

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In June, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) — a committee of MPs and senators from across the political spectrum — released a document detailing how foreign interference has infiltrated politics.

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“We came face to face with the troubling intelligence that nomination processes and leadership races are particularly vulnerable to foreign interference,” Liberal MP David McGuinty, now public safety minister, told a committee last year. Despite those concerns, the Liberals are about to plunge this country into a high-stakes, winner-take-all leadership contest.

Some prominent candidates are high-profile members of cabinet. So at a time when we should be focused on grave matters of national importance, such as the threatened tariffs from incoming President Donald Trump, the housing shortage and the high cost of living, most of the people who should be managing those issues will be running for another job.

Trudeau should have told the Liberal caucus to pick the new leader. He should have called an election. Instead, we’re stuck in a nightmare of a lame-duck prime minister leading us into a trade war with the U.S. The selfish Liberal Party is putting its political ambitions ahead of the economic future of this great country.

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