LILLEY: Canadians ready to move on as Trudeau clings to power

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Justin Trudeau will head to British Columbia for a ski vacation after spending Christmas in Ottawa. He shouldn’t expect a warm welcome in BC. In fact, as the latest Leger Poll shows, there aren’t many places that Trudeau would get a warm welcome because, to put it bluntly, Canadians are done with him.

You’ve seen the numbers, 72% are dissatisfied with his government, 69% of Canadians think Trudeau should resign, only 11% think he would make the best Prime Minister behind 13% picking Jagmeet Singh and 31% choosing Pierre Poilievre. In party voting intentions, the Liberals are at 20% nationally just ahead of the NDP at 19% and 23 points behind the Conservatives at 43%.

Trudeau’s Liberals are now in third place in Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia and if Leger didn’t measure Manitoba and Saskatchewan as one group you could likely add Saskatchewan to that group as well. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives meanwhile are at 50% popular support or higher in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and above 40% support in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada.

Poilievre’s Conservatives have a commanding lead in every demographic group looking at gender, age, or location — urban, suburban and rural. Any Liberal strategist or campaign worker looking at these numbers knows they spell disaster now or whenever the election campaign comes.

And yet, Trudeau hangs on seemingly convinced that he can survive this, that he is the best shot the Liberals have for the coming election.

Why wouldn’t he think that given how many times Canadians have forgiven him?

Trudeau has been forgiven for interfering in criminal prosecutions to help a Quebec company, for dismissing women who disagree with him, for groping a woman, for wearing blackface, for weaponizing vaccinations after promising not to, for dividing Canadians while preaching unity.

If you are a trust fund baby who has never had to play by the same rules as anyone else, who has survived the scandals that Trudeau has — and there are many more than what I’ve listed — then why wouldn’t you think you could survive the internal party struggle that is going on now.

So what if he lost a cabinet minister who issued a scathing public letter denouncing his feckless policies as she quit. As Trudeau showed, there were enough greasy pole climbers in his caucus willing to look past his flaws to take up new titles and positions.

One of them, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP for Toronto’s Beaches East-York riding, went from being an outspoken critic of Trudeau to a minister, to a secret critic of Trudeau with a whip lash inducing speed.

If he loses a minister, he’ll find another.

He’s probably also thinking that despite Jagmeet Singh’s rhetoric that the NDP leader will fall in line and back the Liberals with the right bribe when the time comes. If not, there is plenty of chatter that the Liberals will simply prorogue Parliament to avoid any confidence votes that may come in February or May.

Sure, Trudeau denounced prorogation in the past, when he was an opposition MP, but he’s used it effectively in the past including to shut down committee hearings into the WE Charity scandal in 2020 and he will use it again to save his political life.

That’s what the entire focus of this government is about right now, protecting the King, or the would be King that is Justin Trudeau.

Canadians are ready to move on from the Trudeau government, the country desperately needs new leadership at a time of crisis, but Trudeau and those enabling him, are doing everything they can to cling to power.

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