Weekly Writ for July 3: Should Trudeau stay or should he go?
Liberal MPs are asking themselves that question as they mull their futures and their goals for the next campaign.
Welcome to the Weekly Writ, a round-up of the latest federal and provincial polls, election news and political history that lands in your inbox every Wednesday morning.
Justin Trudeau’s hold on the leadership of the Liberal Party, following the Conservative victory in the Toronto–St. Paul’s byelection, is shakier than it’s ever been.
The prime minister has not given any indication that he is thinking of throwing in the towel, though his response to a question from the CBC’s Heather Hiscox about his future was tepid at best.
So far, the only calls for his resignation and/or demands for change that might carry some weight have come from a former cabinet minister (Catherine McKenna) and a few backbencher MPs who have stirred up some trouble in the past and aren’t running again (Wayne Long and Ken McDonald). But there have also been mounting calls for an emergency caucus meeting and far more open expressions of discontent from Liberals than we’ve ever seen before since Trudeau became leader in 2013.
Whether or not these tensions reach a point of no return for Trudeau remains to be seen — it’s only been little more than a week since the byelection. Either things will continue to snowball or they will dissipate over the summer.
Nevertheless, the question of whether Trudeau should stay or go seems to revolve around three different goals the party might have for the next federal campaign.
The first, and perhaps the longest-shot of them all, is for the Liberals to win re-election. It’s true that there is a fair amount of time between now and the next election. But it would be wrong to think of the next election as being 15 months away without considering the 104 months or so that came before it.
It is not easy to win four consecutive elections in even the best of circumstances. John A. Macdonald did it in 1891 (and promptly died) and Wilfrid Laurier did it in 1908, but no prime minister has pulled off a four-peat since.
These aren’t the best of circumstances for the Trudeau Liberals. They trail the Conservatives by a wide margin in the polls, the number of Canadians who would even consider voting for the Liberals is the lowest its been since before the 2015 election and the prime minister’s approval and favourability ratings have been on a long and steady decline. Turning things around in 15 months is always possible, but doing it after nearly a decade in office is very difficult. It’s like turning a big ship — and the longer a government has been in office, the bigger the ship is.
If the goal is for the Liberals to win the next election, then a change of leadership appears to give the party the best (and perhaps only) chance of success. The replacement of Dalton McGuinty with Kathleen Wynne gave the unpopular Ontario Liberals a new lease on life, at least for one more term in office. The Liberals are in need of a similar kind of renewal, because the wear-and-tear of Trudeau’s time in office has become too great to reasonably believe the party can win again (barring a miracle, which is never a good Plan B).
Could he, instead, save the furniture? Recognizing that there is a cyclical aspect to voters’ desire for change and the depth of his own unpopularity, a more achievable goal for the Liberals might be for Trudeau to perform well enough in the next campaign to elect a large opposition caucus that maintains a presence in most parts of the country. The next leader of the party would then have something to work with.
Trudeau’s skills as a campaigner might argue in favour of his staying in order to achieve this goal. Over a six-week campaign, Trudeau might succeed in putting enough doubt in voters’ minds to blunt the Conservative lead. Perhaps the Liberals could emerge with a 100-seat caucus, much like Stephen Harper managed in 2015, or even keep the Conservatives to a minority. The Liberals still have some residual support in Quebec — where Trudeau is probably better-placed than most other potential leadership contenders to hold seats — and in enough parts of the country that a good campaign from the prime minister could stave off disaster.
But Toronto–St. Paul’s demonstrated that a disaster is possible under Trudeau’s leadership. His slumping personal numbers could continue to drag the party down with him. His campaigning skills might be of little use if voters have stopped listening to him. And his continued presence increases the odds that the next campaign will be a referendum on Trudeau, a referendum the Liberals are unlikely to win. Saving the furniture is no guarantee with a different leader — they could very well do worse. But things could also get much worse with Trudeau staying in place.
That brings us to the final goal. If defeat is inevitable, then Trudeau should stay on to take the hit. A cathartic election in which voters take their frustrations out on Trudeau could let his successor start fresh. No sense in wasting a new leader on a doomed cause. Give Trudeau a chance to do his best and, if it doesn’t work out, start over.
There’s a logic to that. If the odds of re-election are low to begin with, stick with the known quantity that is Trudeau instead of the unknown that would be his (unidentified) replacement.
But it does mean playing the odds. If it is a 50-50 proposition that his replacement would perform better, it might arguably be a 50-50 proposition that Trudeau would improve on his current standing in the polls in the next campaign.
We have very little real evidence that tells us much about how a replacement would perform. Leadership polling at this stage is largely based on name recognition and is of little value. But one would have to take a very generous view of the numbers we do have concerning Trudeau to conclude that his chances of doing better in the next campaign are about even with his chances of doing worse.
If the next campaign goes badly for the Liberals, they could very well end up in third place — either behind the NDP in vote share or behind the Bloc Québécois in the House. Handing off a party in such a shape to a successor would do that person no favours. Having Trudeau take the hit only makes sense if the Liberals aren’t irreparably damaged from the blow.
Liberal MPs eying their future would likely be more sympathetic to one of the first two goals — winning again or minimizing their losses. It’s not unreasonable for them to conclude that taking a leap into the unknown gives them better odds than sticking with what hasn’t been working.
Programming Note: I will be away for the next two weeks taking a much-needed break. The Weekly Writ will be on hiatus during that time and will return on July 24th. Podcast episodes will still be published while I am away and I hope to have an analysis piece up for you next Wednesday. Thank you for your understanding!
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on two provincial leadership contests that are underway or about to get started.
Polls conducted just before the byelection gave the Conservatives a big lead, plus we have new numbers out of Ontario and an update on premiers’ approval ratings.
Some ground made up by the Liberals in Atlantic Canada, but it would still be a crushing Poilievre majority if the election were held today.
Riding profile for Fredericton North, where vote-splitting could decide the outcome — and not just for this riding.
Allan Blakeney’s rise to the Saskatchewan NDP leadership in the #EveryElectionProject.
A milestone for Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet.
IN THE NEWS
Manitoba PCs, Québec Solidaire kick-off leadership races
The Manitoba PCs, defeated in last fall’s provincial election, have officially started the race to replace former leader and premier Heather Stefanson. Her replacement will be named on April 26, 2025, but contestants are already able to submit their paperwork to run for the job. They have until October 15 to make their candidacies official and until the end of February 2025 to sign new members up.
It makes for a long leadership race, and presumably potential candidates will spend the summer gauging their viability. There isn’t much of a rush to get in early with so much runway ahead of them.
With the party smarting after its recent loss in the Tuxedo byelection and trailing Wab Kinew’s NDP in the polls by a significant margin, being leader of the Manitoba PCs might not be an enviable job at the moment. But despite the party’s defeat last year, it still has a sizable caucus of 21 MLAs — the largest opposition in the province since Gary Doer’s first term in office from 1999 to 2003.
On the other end of the ideological spectrum, Québec Solidaire has also set down its rules for the choice of its female co-spokesperson. The role was vacated by Émilise Lessard-Therrien earlier this year only a few months after she defeated MNA Ruba Ghazal by three votes in the November contest.
The race will begin on August 16 and candidates will have until October 15 to throw their names into the ring. Voting will be held at an online convention with the results being announced on November 16.
At the moment, only Ghazal has expressed her intention to run.
THIS WEEK’S POLLS
Pre-byelection, Conservatives led by 14-19 points
Four polls published over the last week, all entirely or nearly-entirely conducted prior to the Toronto–St. Paul’s byelection, put the Conservatives’ national lead at between 14 and 19 points.
The surveys come from Spark Insights, Abacus Data, Léger and Nanos Research, the last being the weekly update to the four-week rolling poll.
Across the board, the Conservatives registered either 41% or 42%, what appears to be the consensus view of Conservative support that we’ve now seen over multiple polls. As has also become somewhat common, there is less agreement on where the Liberals stand. Both Abacus and Spark put the Liberals at 23%, while both Léger and Nanos have them at 27%. The NDP stands at 17% in three of these four polls, with their 19% score in Abacus being the lone dissenter.
The results in Ontario and British Columbia are consistent, putting the Conservatives about 15 to 22 points ahead of the Liberals in Ontario and 17 to 26 points ahead of the NDP in British Columbia (not as wide a variation as it looks, considering the smaller samples in B.C.). The picture in Quebec isn’t as clear. But if we look at the range of results for the three main parties (Bloc 28%-36%, Liberals 26%-29%, Conservatives 23%-25%) the general contours of the situation are pretty clear: Bloc in first, Liberals in second, Conservatives third, but all three parties bunched up together.
Interesting, these polls do point to a small rebound for the Liberals in Atlantic Canada. The Liberals’ best results in the Sparks, Abacus and Léger polls are all in this region, with a low of 30% in the Sparks poll to a high of 40% in Léger.
If you squint, there might be reasons for the Liberals to take hope from these numbers. The Atlantic Canada results are one reason, the uptick in the Léger poll (from 23% in May) is another, and Trudeau’s positive ratings stabilizing at 26% in the Abacus poll (up from 23% to 25% for the first half of the year) is a third. But you really have to squint — and ignore a lot of much worse data, as well as the potential impact of the last week of news on the Liberals’ support.
POLLING NEWS BRIEFS
The quarterly premiers approval ratings numbers were published by the Angus Reid Institute, showing that Wab Kinew’s honeymoon keeps getting better. The Manitoba premier now leads the country with a 66% approval rating, up three points from the last quarter. He’s followed by Newfoundland and Labrador’s Andrew Furey, up eight points to 55% (despite some recent horrid byelection results). New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs and Ontario’s Doug Ford bring up the rear with 31% apiece. Scott Moe (49%) and David Eby (43%) are both in a decent position as they head toward a fall election, but are trending down.
In Ontario, voters aren’t terribly keen on an early election call but it isn’t clear how much of a risk this would pose to Ford’s PCs. Abacus Data puts the PCs ahead with 41% to the Liberals’ 25% and the NDP’s 22%, while Liaison Strategies has a similar spread of 39% PC, 28% Liberal and 21% NDP. Abacus found that only 15% of Ontarians would be “unhappy” or “very angry” if Ford calls an early election, but that increases to 44% when put in the context of how much an election (early or otherwise) costs. Liaison found the PCs’ 11-point lead cut down to five points if a call is made early. It suggests there might be an opportunity for the opposition parties to whittle down the PCs’ support if they successfully frame an early call in a negative light, but also that even if they do the PCs would still be the favourites to win again.
IF THE ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY
A lot of seat swaps in the projection at the regional level produce only a few net changes nationally. The better poll numbers for the Liberals in Atlantic Canada win them a few extra seats compared to last week, as does the jumbled three-way contest in Quebec. But the Conservatives jump even further ahead in Ontario, mitigating some of those Liberals pick-ups east of the Ottawa River. The NDP and Bloc each lose a couple seats.
Despite the duo of polls out of Ontario, the projection there remains unchanged — Doug Ford’s PCs would win a big majority if an election were held today. The projections were also unchanged in other provinces.
The seat estimates are derived from a swing model that is based on trends in recent polls as well as minor tweaks and adjustments. Rather than the product of a purely statistical model, these estimates are my best guess of what an election held today would produce. Changes are compared to last week. Parties are ordered according to their finish in the previous election (with some exceptions for minor parties)
RIDING OF THE WEEK
Fredericton North (New Brunswick)
The next election in New Brunswick could come down to a handful of seats, just as in 2018 when only one seat separated the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives. Such a result could give the Green Party a lot of influence after the election.
But the decisions of their voters could also play a crucial role in the election itself — especially in a riding like Fredericton North.
The PCs’ Jill Green won this seat on the north shore of the Saint John River with 41.1% of the vote in 2020. The Liberals’ incumbent, Stephen Horsman, dropped to third place with just 18.7% as the Greens’ Luke Randall finished second with 31.4%.
The People’s Alliance captured 7.5% of the vote in Fredericton North, while NDP leader Mackenzie Thomason managed just 1.3%.
This seat has been a swing riding in recent years. It was safe PC territory until the Liberals swept Fredericton (and the rest of the province) in 1987. But then this part of the city kept swinging back and forth. It went with the Confederations of Regions in 1991, back to the Liberals in 1995, over to the PCs in 1999, back to the Liberals in 2003 and 2006, then back to the PCs in 2010, over to the Liberals in 2014 and 2018 before winding up back with the PCs in 2020.
Considering that historical tendency, it seems more likely than not that Fredericton North will swing again in October.
But how?
Vote-splitting could play an enormous role in this riding. Over the last two campaigns, the PCs and People’s Alliance have combined for about 50% of the vote in Fredericton North, while the Liberals, Greens and New Democrats have also combined for 50% of the vote. Whichever party can minimize their losses to fellow-travellers has the best shot of winning.
In 2014, the Liberals won with 34% as the PCs fell just shy with 32%. The People’s Alliance’s 4% might have cost the PCs a win here, but the 20% for the NDP and 10% for the Greens also put the Liberals at risk of losing in a squeaker.
In 2018, the Liberals again narrowly won with 32%, with the PCs taking just 28%. The 21% for the People’s Alliance played a big role, while the Liberals could have used the 17% that went to the Greens in order to pad their win.
In 2020, the PCs got most of the People’s Alliance vote and the Liberals and Greens split much of the rest.
What will happen this time?
If the polls that indicate a jump in Liberal support in southern New Brunswick are accurate, then the Liberals could put Fredericton North in play. That is especially the case since Luke Randall, who finished second as a Green candidate in 2020, will be carrying the Liberal banner in 2024.
If he can retain much of his Green support from last time and add the existing Liberal base in the riding, he has a good shot at defeating Jill Green, who is running again. Anthea Plummer of the Greens will endeavour to block Randall from sapping her party’s support, while the People’s Alliance has a candidate in Glen Davis, who could put a ceiling on the PCs’ vote share.
Fredericton North will certainly be a riding to watch on election night. The splits here could decide who forms government.
(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject
Blakeney defeats Romanow
July 4, 1970
This was originally published on July 5, 2023.
Tommy Douglas is widely remembered as the father of Canada’s universal health care system after first introducing it in Saskatchewan. But it was actually his successor, Woodrow Lloyd, who turned the proposal into law, navigating it through the legislature and facing down the province’s striking doctors.
Lloyd got little thanks for his efforts. When he took his CCF government to the polls in 1964 (the Saskatchewan CCF had not yet followed the national party in adopting the New Democratic moniker), Lloyd went down to defeat against Ross Thatcher’s Liberals. Lloyd just wasn’t the firebrand and charismatic Prairie populist that Douglas was, and he followed up his defeat in 1964 with another in 1967.
Patience with Lloyd within the Saskatchewan NDP (as it was now finally known) had run out in 1970. In the federal convention the year before, Lloyd had voted in favour of a motion put forward by the Waffle that reflected the group’s socialist, radical views, greatly influenced by the anti-Vietnam War politics of American youth.
The motion didn’t pass, but the Waffle was starting to have a big influence within the national party — and the Saskatchewan wing, too. Members of the ‘Old Left’ and more pragmatic centrist wings of the party were not happy, and after a contentious caucus meeting in March 1970 Lloyd offered his resignation.
That put Allan Blakeney in an odd position.
Blakeney had long been a loyal supporter of Lloyd and had been deeply involved in the Medicare file as minister of health. Minutes were not kept, but Blakeney does not appear to have spoken out in defense of Lloyd at the caucus meeting, and the distaste he felt at how Lloyd was forced to resign led him to hesitate to run to replace his old colleague.
But Blakeney had always had his eye on the leadership and he was the first to announce. He had the experience to be leader. Though just 44, he had been a Regina MLA since 1960 and had been named to cabinet by Douglas before he had left provincial politics to take over the federal NDP.
After about a month, another candidate stepped forward: Roy Romanow. Just 30 (though he told the newspapers he was a few years older), Romanow had been first elected in Saskatoon in the 1967 election and was seen as a bright rising star within the Saskatchewan NDP. But he was also seen as representing the centre or centre-right of the party.
“[Romanow’s] campaign was modelled on the new era of television politics in the United States,” writes Dennis Gruending in his biography of Allan Blakeney, Promises to Keep. “He was photogenic, and had an easy way with people. There was a glitz and excitement to his campaign that Blakeney couldn’t match.”
With neither Blakeney nor Romanow being a spokesperson for the left, it was inevitable that other candidates from that side of the party would emerge. There was Don Mitchell, even younger than Romanow, who stepped forward as the unofficial candidate of the Waffle group, pitching public ownership of Saskatchewan’s farmland with a so-called “Land Bank”. There was also George Taylor, a venerable standard-bearer of the Old Left and the Regina Manifesto and a veteran of the international brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Taylor was there to avenge Lloyd’s defenestration.
While Blakeney put the emphasis on experience and Romanow on style, Mitchell focused on policy in the series of town hall debates that took place during the campaign. He might have pulled Blakeney and Romanow further to the left than they would have liked — the two eventually said his Land Bank idea wasn’t so bad after all — but the contest was always going to be between Blakeney and Romanow, between the establishment of the party and a new modern direction.
Some 1,600 people gathered at the Regina Armouries for the vote. The Waffle vs. Establishment battles continued in the contest for party president, and the win by the Establishment boded well for Blakeney. It was a shock, then, when Romanow narrowly emerged as the front runner on the first ballot with 35.3% of delegates’ votes to 33.6% for Blakeney. Mitchell took 22% and Taylor dropped off after taking 9.2% of the vote.
On the second round, Taylor’s votes split nearly evenly between the three other candidates, though Mitchell garnered more than either Blakeney or Romanow. The gap was closed between the leading candidates, and Mitchell dropped off after the second ballot.
Romanow had spoken out against the Waffle and Blakeney was also seen as opposed to the movement, so Mitchell decided to abstain on the final ballot. Taylor, though, tried to gather the old guard of the left behind Blakeney. While a big chunk of Mitchell’s supporters indeed abstained, Blakeney got more than three votes for every vote gained by Romanow on the final ballot, and emerged with a narrow win: 53.8% to 46.2%.
With a little guidance from Douglas, who suggested that his turn would come later (and it would), Romanow urged the convention to make the decision unanimous. Allan Blakeney would be the next leader of the Saskatchewan NDP — and return the party to power in 1971.
MILESTONE WATCH
Blanchet passes Bouchard
On July 11, Yves-François Blanchet will surpass Lucien Bouchard, the founder of the Bloc Québécois, as the party’s second-longest serving leader.
Though Bouchard will be bumped down to third on the all-time list, he’s still the most consequential leader of the party. In addition to founding it, he led the Bloc to official opposition status in the 1993 federal election. None of his successors ever managed that feat — though there is an outside chance Blanchet could match this achievement if things continue to go badly for the Liberals.
It’s a notable milestone considering that Blanchet took over the party in early 2019 when it seemed moribund, reeling as it was from the tumultuous leadership of Martine Ouellet. At the time, he seemed like merely the latest person to be shuffled into the Bloc leadership, the only decent candidate interested in a thankless job. More than five years later, Gilles Duceppe is the sole name ahead of him on the list.
It’ll take a long time, however, for Blanchet to get to the top. Duceppe led the Bloc for a grand total of nearly 15 years between 1997 and 2011 (and then, briefly, in 2015). Blanchet needs another decade in the role to beat Duceppe.
That’s it for the Weekly Writ this week. The next episode of The Writ Podcast will be dropping on Friday. As always, the episode will land in your inbox but you can also find it on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting apps. And don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, where I post videos, livestreams and interviews from the podcast!