New Year, New Leaf For The Liberals?

In 2011, the late great Canadian writer Peter C. Newman published his book When The Gods Changed: The Death Of Liberal Canada. Newman argued that the sweeping electoral majority won by the Conservatives under Stephen Harper on May 2^nd, 2011 dealt a final death blow to the Liberal Party.

As we know, four years later in 2015, Justin Trudeau won a decisive majority. Dramatic political prophesies are risky, a fact which doesn’t stop commentators from pronouncing them. A prominent YouTuber incorrectly predicted that the U.S. election would usher in a bloody civil war, forgetting that today’s Americans will not allow any event – no matter the historic significance – to interrupt their primary pursuits of TikTok, football, and sports betting.

I will therefore confine myself to a lower stakes prediction. Once the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre bring their unbelievable twenty-point lead to fruition in a crushing election victory, the Liberal Party will not perish. But the inevitable post-mortem will likely result in a course correction. To right the sinking ship, some cargo will have to be thrown overboard.

The woke ideology will have to go. Following his first election, Trudeau was asked why he designed a half male, half female “gender balanced” cabinet, to which he gave his now infamous reply: “Because it’s 2015”. Fast forward to today, and public support for this type of rhetoric has cratered. Polls show that 78% of Canadians think political correctness has gone too far, and 77% disagree with the notion that diversity is an unalloyed strength.

Woke culture is in decline. Censorious language codes are losing ground, while edgy comedy is making a resurgence. Forced diversity in movies is becoming less common, and anti-woke politicians receive accolades. The Liberal Party would do well to decouple itself from this increasingly unpopular ideology.

The Liberals will also have to sever themselves from their unpopular mass immigration policy. The Trudeau government has been dragged by the sheer force of public opinion – polls show a statistical supermajority of Canadians supporting immigration restriction – towards enacting restrictions on the temporary resident streams and a 21% cut to permanent resident admissions.

These measures were significant enough to merit a denunciation by the Century Initiative, the lobby that wants to raise Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100: “Canada’s reputation as a stable, welcoming environment for business and talent is now at risk.” If these lunatics condemn a policy, that policy is probably bad for business interests and good for Canadians.

If the post-Trudeau Liberal Party wants to one day rise from the ashes, it will need to align itself with rising support for immigration restriction by committing to further cuts – after all, an annual inflow of 395,000 permanent residents is still mass immigration.

Repairing the damage wrought by Trudeau on his party will be a Herculean task. The best way to start would be to toss out the ideological baggage that has been rejected by a large majority of Canadians.

Editor’s note: My 500-word Counter Current column is published once every two weeks in the Islands Marketplace paper on Salt Spring Island. This piece appeared in the December 27th, 2024 issue.