LILLEY: Liberal MPs plotting against Trudeau seem like cowards

Plotting in secret against a weak leader isn't courageous

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Published Oct 19, 2024  •  3 minute read

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the federal inquiry into foreign interference in Ottawa on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

Marc Miller says the attempt to oust Justin Trudeau as Liberal Leader and Prime Minister is “the most passive-aggressive, weak type of display of questioning of leadership I’ve ever seen.”

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Miller is right to describe this attempted coup in disdainful terms, not because Trudeau shouldn’t step down, but because it’s so pathetic.

Miller – a longtime friend of Trudeau, one of the groomsmen in his wedding party and, of course, the current immigration minister – clearly has a different view of the PM than I do. But on the feeble attempt to remove the leader, we agree.

“They owe it to him to go up and tell it to his face,” Miller said in an interview with CBC Manitoba.

That the rebel group within caucus hasn’t gone public despite months of whispering and now more than a week of speculation about a letter demanding Trudeau resigns speaks volumes about these MPs. Of course, it speaks volumes in very hushed, quiet, fearful, secretive tones at a level barely perceptible to the human ear, but that’s the volume they are plotting at.

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Compare this to an earlier generation who plotted to overthrow their leader.

When a group of Liberal MPs loyal to Paul Martin sought to finally oust Jean Chretien, they did it by putting their names on paper and going in front of television cameras and radio microphones. In other words, they didn’t hide from what they wanted to accomplish, they spoke out loudly and clearly and eventually they were successful.

In the long term, that push hurt the Liberal Party. But at least those MPs had the courage of their convictions, which isn’t something you can say about the current rebel crop.

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Miller stated in his interview that these MPs owe their political careers and fortunes to Trudeau, insinuating that they are being ungrateful to the man who put them where they are now. That may have been the case in 2015, an election even the Liberals didn’t think they would win at the start of the campaign.

Trudeau’s campaigning and charisma convinced enough Canadians to vote for him and his party and he took the Liberals from third to first.

Fast forward nine years 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’s the stinking albatross hanging around their necks at this point.

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In the 2015 election, the Trudeau Liberals swept to power with 39.5% of the popular vote and 184 of 338 seats. In 2019, they were reduced to 33% of the vote and 157 seats while in 2021, they took 32% of the vote and 160 seats.

Under Justin Trudeau, the Liberals are now polling at roughly 23% of the popular vote. They don’t lead in a single region of the country. They are in third place behind the NDP in British Columbia, face a 22-point deficit to the Conservatives in Ontario and are 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 step down when he is this weak in the polls, it’s doubtful you ever will.

Consider that when Chretien faced his revolt, he was still leading in the polls and would have won a fourth majority if he had led his party into the next election.

It’s true that New Brunswick Liberal Wayne Long said in the summer that Trudeau should go, but Long isn’t 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 to step forward over the last week to declare openly that he thinks Trudeau should go.

If these rebel MPs want to be taken seriously, then they need to grow a spine and step forward. Otherwise, this is nothing but hot air.

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