Desire for change is the most powerful force in politics. It also the most indiscriminate. It can cause the electorate to cast out an old regime today without regard for what may happen tomorrow.
It is the force that destroyed the Mulroney-era Progressive Conservatives in 1983, that made Jack Layton leader of the opposition for a few months before his death in 2011, that produced an NDP government in Alberta, of all places, in 2015, and that made a minor municipal politician, Doug Ford, premier of Ontario four years ago. South of border, the desire for change has been so strong, and so reckless, that it made the unscrupulous Donald Trump president in 2016, only to cast him aside in 2020, yet could well return him to power if he runs in 2024.
The desire for change is prowling the Canadian political scene this summer. It would be surprising if it weren’t. Justin Trudeau has been through three elections in seven years. By the time the next one rolls around (in 2025, unless the roof falls in before then), he will have been in office for 10 years. That’s a long stretch for a national government in this country in normal times, and these Trudeau times have been anything but normal.
His father may have had the FLQ crisis in 1970 and some heavy lifting with the Constitution a decade later. His son’s stress is non-stop these days. He’s had the COVID crisis for 2 ½ years (and counting); and, while pandemic-fueled inflation is taking its political toll at home, abroad he has to manage the tricky diplomacy dictated by the war in Ukraine, to try to plug the holes the war is exposing in his government’s defence policies, and to undo the inevitable result of decades of underfunding the military. Canada is not prepared for war. It’s one thing to assemble small contingents for limited duration assignments in regional conflicts; it’s another thing to play a useful role in a “real” war. Successive governments, Liberal and Conservative, bear responsibility for starving the military, but it falls to Trudeau’s to ensure that Canada is prepared to meet its military commitments to its allies. If Vladimir Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, calls to honour commitments may land sooner than later on a number of desks, Trudeau’s included.
Being prime minister is not the fun job it looked to be back in Justin’s “Sunny Ways” days of 2015. He’s been confronted by angry “freedom” demonstrators occupying the capital, been hung in effigy across the country by flag-defiling jerks who routinely abuse him in obscene language, and he is repeatedly savaged on social media for one bizarre conspiracy or another, including a secret plot to make himself the dictator of a totalitarian Canadian state, probably fascist but maybe communist (the plotline wanders a bit).
Parliament has become a poisonous place. Liberal arrogance and a fetish for secrecy contribute to the poison, but the bulk of it spills from the most vicious official opposition party anyone can recall. These Conservatives feel about Trudeau the way Trump fanatics feel about Joe Biden. They have no interest in making Parliament work; the less it accomplishes, the better for them. The worst offenders follow a moral GPS that tells them the direct route to the heart of Canadian voters is through a dark alley of suspicion, where allegations never have to be proved and where attacks on the character of the prime minister are the weapons of choice.
The public is not as blind or as easily manipulated as the Tory caucus and especially its star performer, Pierre Poilievre, evidently assume they are. The unruly Commons has tuned itself out from public attention. The media do not report details of Commons debates unless they involve hot-button items. Everyone, except the perpetrators, ignores the endlessly repetitive Conservative efforts to shame the prime minister.
On or off Parliament Hill, Trudeau is the lightning rod for public grievances. It can be argued that most people, if they were able to look beyond the pandemic’s temporary mandates and inflation hangover, would see that they have seldom had it so good. Yet it has been a long siege; Canadians are tired, and many are angry. If it were not for its three-year alliance with the NDP, the minority Liberals might well face defeat when Parliament returns in the fall. A recent Leger poll put Trudeau’s disapproval/approval rate at 55/39, and 44 per cent of respondents said Canada has become a worse place to live under Trudeau; only 17 per cent said it is a better place to live.
Although a desire for change is evident this summer, there is no way to predict how strong it may be in 2025. Counter-intuitively, the major polls suggest that an election today would mirror the outcome of the one in 2021 – a small Conservative edge in popular vote and another (the third) Liberal minority.
What would it take to turn what looks like a continuation of the status quo, a Liberal minority, into a change of government three summers hence? Let’s start by assuming Justin Trudeau does seek re-election and that on Sept. 10 Poilievre does win the Conservative leadership, on which he has virtual lock. Let’s factor in the disorganization of the leadership campaign (they can’t even agree whether to debate in August); the ugly backstabbing that led to the blackballing of Patrick Brown; the personal abuse, belittling of opponents and extreme polarization of the campaign being run by Poilievre, who would be the most right-wing federal leader in Canadian history. Let’s toss in a common conjecture that the CPC does not survive intact under new leadership.
The next election could be the exception that proves the rule – an election in which fear of the alternative outweighs the desire for change.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com