Trudeau Burns Down The Liberal Party Instead Of Resigning

On September 4th, Jagmeet Singh tore up the NDP’s “confidence and supply” agreement with the Liberals. This did not stop Poilievre from continuing to call him Sellout Singh – a nickname which Liberal Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan considers “absolutely offensive” and “racist”. Just another normal day in Canadian politics.

On September 15^th, a new Abacus poll was released which showed that national Liberal support has dropped to just 22%, and that the party could fall to fourth place in the House of Commons if an election were held.

On September 16^th, the Liberals lost their stronghold of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun on the Island of Montreal, getting narrowly beat out by the Bloc Québécois – a party that Anglos have been hopefully predicting will die for years, but which polling suggests would form the official opposition if an election were held today.

In other words, it hasn’t been a great few weeks for Trudeau. Facing such a precipitous decline in popularity, some prime ministers might resign. Others might stay on, acknowledge that Canadians are unhappy with the way things are being done, and shift policy accordingly.

Not our prime minister! Speaking to reporters, our fearless leader seemed to put the blame for his by-election loss on the Canadian public: “We need people to be more engaged. We need people to understand what’s at stake in this upcoming election.”

This quintessentially Justin Trudeau statement is reminiscent of an equally bizarre pamphlet distributed to citizens of East Germany after an uprising in 1953, telling them that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government, and could only win it back with redoubled efforts.

To explain his cratering support, Trudeau is pulling every card out of the deck other than the most obvious one: Canadians are suffering, and understandably blame it on the government that has held power for the last nine years.

And why shouldn’t they? Our quality of life is slipping. Average monthly rent nationwide has risen to $2,187. Unemployment has steadily ticked up to 6.6%, a trend which shows no sign of abating. One in five Canadians don’t have a family doctor. This is not normal.

The fraying of public services and the declining health of the labour market are largely the result of an out-of-control Liberal immigration policy which saw our population grow from 35.7 million in 2015 to 41.75 million in 2024. Roughly six million new people were added to the population with no commensurate plan to increase housing, jobs, and healthcare capacity.

Trudeau has never apologized for this catastrophic error. This stems from the same arrogance that prevents him from acknowledging his broken pledge to scrap the first-past-the-post system. The same arrogance which is leading him to bring down the Liberal ship rather than quit his post as captain.

In by-elections and opinion polls, Canadians are registering their discontent with an out-of-touch government. Contrary to Trudeau’s claim, voters do know “what’s at stake in this upcoming election”. They are choosing to risk the unknown rather than continue an untenable status quo.

Editor’s note: My Counter Current column is published once every two weeks in the Islands Marketplace paper on Salt Spring Island. This piece will appear in the September 20th, 2024 issue.