EDITORIAL: Cabinet shuffle won’t save Trudeau Liberals

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Seldom has the phrase “shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic” applied better to Canadian politics than to the news Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to shuffle his cabinet on Friday.

Not when the captain is AWOL, his crew look like deer caught in the headlights every time they’re asked whether he should resign and the passengers — meaning Canadians — are witnessing behaviour from Trudeau that is “delusional”, as outgoing Liberal MP Wayne Long put it this week.

Trudeau’s last major shuffle was in July 2023.

At that time he said he was a proud and excited “to introduce the team that’s going to roll up its sleeves to keep working, delivering concrete results for Canadians, creating good jobs, helping with the cost of living, to keep leading on reconciliation (and) on climate action with a positive and ambitious vision for the country.”

That was when the Liberals were 10 points behind Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives in the polls. Today they’re 20 points behind.

Meanwhile, Trudeau’s deputy PM and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, resigned on Monday saying Trudeau is more interested in “costly political gimmicks” to attract voters than address the serious threat by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian exports to the U.S.

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Before Freeland’s resignation, so many cabinet ministers had announced that they’re not running again to spend more time with family, or jumped ship because they can see the writing on the wall when it comes to the next election, or resigned in scandal (see Randy Boissonnault), that Trudeau’s cabinet today little resembles the one he was proud to introduce in July 2023.

The reality is that cabinet shuffles are a much bigger deal in what we’ll call “official Ottawa” compared to what’s going on in the lives of working people, trying to feed their families and pay the rent in the middle of an affordability crisis and runaway housing costs.

More than a year of polling has shown that most Canadians have stopped listening to Trudeau, let alone his appointed cabinet underlings who keep telling us — insert laughter here — that they support the prime minister and expect him to lead them into the next election, in order to retain their current jobs.