Signs of trouble for Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau

Very early Tuesday morning, about 4:40 a.m., the federal by-election in the riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s was called for Conservative candidate Don Stewart. While the margin of victory was small, about 1.5 per cent, the Conservative win, and consequent loss for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, was a gut punch for the incumbent government currently set to face voters in the next general election in October 2025.

The Liberals have held Toronto-St. Paul’s since 1993 with outgoing Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett having won the seat by around 24 points against her Conservative challenger in the previous general election in 2021. And though the loss is a surprise, the national landscape provided a hint with the Liberal’s main challenger Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives leading by about 20 points in the polls, a margin that has been holding steady for several months.

Still, before things started to go badly for Trudeau, he and his governments had since 2015 been safely on the winning side in what has been called for them “Fortress Toronto,” and this riding in particular. To put a fine point on it, if this seat is not safe for the Liberals, it’s hard to know which seats would be.

Having said that, there is always much chatter about how important byelections really are given that they don’t typically result in a change of government and provide a chance for the electorate to give the government of the day a bit of a kick in the pants without changing who is in charge.

Going into this byelection, according to research conducted by CBC News, voters did in fact site inflation, the lack of affordable housing, and the Israel-Hamas conflict as issues of contention, though many also said they were looking for change and were frankly tired of Trudeau. And there it is.

Toronto Star writer Susan Delacourt noted the frequency of comments by past Liberal voters at the door who said they could not vote for Liberal candidate Leslie Church “because they are keen to see Trudeau leave.”

A great deal of speculation over the past few months has had it that if the Liberals somehow lost this safest of downtown Toronto seats, Trudeau would have to consider stepping down in favour of a new leader who might at least have a chance of righting the ship. Now that this has happened, pressure will certainly build, though he has recently dismissed bad polls by claiming Canadians were not currently in a “decision mode.” Some might say the voters in Toronto-St. Paul’s disagree.

No politician signals departure before it is absolutely necessary for fear of undercutting their ability to get anything at all done, so Trudeau’s comments are likely meaningless. What has meaning is the kind of calculus one might undertake in these sorts of situations. Does it make sense for Trudeau to lead his party to the polls in the next general election and in doing so “take the fall” in what is likely to be a very bad loss for the Liberals. In doing so, the argument goes, he could shield a new leader from permanent damage, from the stench of loss. Or could a new leader make a difference, even if only to keep the Conservatives from forming a majority?

Yes, with the next election over a year away much could change. The United States could be in the middle of the next Trump presidency, which might scare Canadians away from voting for a Conservative government. Canadians might decide they are not after all absolutely beyond tired of looking at and listening to Trudeau, though ten years is a long time to lead a government and pretty much the outer edge of the best-by date. None of this, nor events we cannot contemplate, are going to change much.

I should note before someone else does that there are a couple of notable examples in Canada of leaders taking over long-tenured federal governments only to get crushed in an ensuing general election. True, but so what? Calculate your odds and roll the dice.

Whatever one thinks of Justin Trudeau, his time in the political spotlight appears to be coming to an end and I strongly suspect there are many Liberal candidates, both incumbents and challengers, who hope he takes the hint and rides off into the sunset giving someone else a chance to lead.