Juno News - What happens now for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals？

00:00:00.000 All right. Well, joining us now on The Faulkner Show is Hamish Marshall, a partner at One

00:00:08.360 Persuasion, a pollster and former political strategist. So, Hamish, take us through what

00:00:14.340 is going to happen now. We know that Parliament is going to be prorogued. What happens from today

00:00:20.460 until perhaps until the federal election, which is slated for October?

00:00:24.720 Well, it's an exciting time. Thanks for having me, Harrison. You know, the Parliament's frozen now.

00:00:31.080 Actually, it's more than frozen. Everything that Parliament is working on is being thrown in the

00:00:34.840 waste paper basket. Bills that were halfway through being examined, committee reports,

00:00:39.960 any of those things that are happening, all thrown in the waste paper basket. And there'll be a big

00:00:44.480 reset button that will get, things will get restarted on the 24th of March with some form of a thrown

00:00:49.900 speech. The big question right now, the most important person in Canada right now is a group

00:00:55.100 of people, is the federal liberal board who are going to lay out the rules and that most importantly,

00:01:00.380 the timelines for this leadership election to replace Trudeau as liberal leader and frankly,

00:01:05.080 as prime minister. Whether or not that process will be done by the 24th of March is anybody's guess.

00:01:12.240 That would be pretty short for federal leadership. I spent the morning reading the liberal constitution,

00:01:17.700 obviously one of my favorite things to do. And there aren't a lot of timelines set in there

00:01:23.720 beyond, you know, 27 days. If someone has to be registered as a member, or not a member, as an official

00:01:29.340 liberal, basically 41 days before. So there's more than enough time for that. In theory, they could

00:01:34.480 have it wrapped up by the 24th of March, but that would be logistically pretty tight.

00:01:40.100 Okay, so let's say it goes through and they find an interim leader in the, they find a leader out of

00:01:47.760 this liberal, liberal race here before March 24th or after March 24th. Who is it? Who is it looking

00:01:55.180 like it's going to be? Well, I gotta tell you, it's the sort of the people that the media focus on

00:02:01.500 are almost certainly wrong. Remember, the liberal leadership is based on when they created this

00:02:07.320 concept back in 2013, or whenever it was something like that called registered liberals. And in order

00:02:13.360 to vote in a liberal leadership, all you have to do is have your name added to a list, and then

00:02:18.140 register to vote in the leadership itself. That means that anybody can be signed up. It's not like

00:02:24.480 a federal conservative membership where you have to buy a $15 membership, and you have to be able to

00:02:29.400 prove that was your own money you spent. There's no money changing hands, which means that the people

00:02:33.540 who are going to be the winners in this are the people who can sign up the most number of people,

00:02:39.320 many of whom probably won't even know that they've been signed up. And it will happen all mass. And it's

00:02:45.860 about who has the best organizers to do that. And that doesn't necessarily mean who is going to be the

00:02:51.040 most famous minister on TV, or Mark Carney. And you know, what does Mark Carney have been out of the

00:02:56.320 country for a long time? Does he have the connections of organizers to make it happen? We'll see.

00:03:01.120 And just as a political strategist, what would you what would you say to Mark Carney, who may be

00:03:07.980 seriously contemplating entering federal politics with this chance to become the liberal leader,

00:03:13.120 and for a short period of time, the prime minister, if he does win, it seems to me that anyone who does

00:03:19.120 take this position is almost certainly going to be, you know, throwing out their chances of ever

00:03:24.460 actually becoming prime minister, winning a mandate for themselves.

00:03:27.200 Mark Carney I think there's two things to that. In order to be put your name on a ballot to lead a

00:03:32.700 federal party, you got to have a fair bit of ego with you. Anybody who's running in their heart of

00:03:37.900 hearts is going to believe whether you and I believe it or not, it's another story, they're going to

00:03:41.180 believe that they have the opportunity to turn this around, maybe win, maybe knock the Tories down to

00:03:46.400 a minority, who knows, but they're going to believe that they have the ability to change the channel

00:03:51.820 and deliver. That's number one. Number two, you get to be prime minister, a former prime minister

00:03:57.200 forever. I mean, Kim Campbell was prime minister for 15 minutes, and she still gets trotted out on

00:04:02.800 important panels and gets fancy jobs and gets invited to things as a former prime minister.

00:04:07.380 So that's a prize worth having for a certain sort of person anyway. And so even if the idea of just

00:04:13.180 being prime minister for, for, you know, an afternoon or whatever it's going to work out to be,

00:04:17.680 you still get to be on the list. You still get to be the, you know, the prime minister of Canada

00:04:23.680 on every list. Your Wikipedia article will say that for the next thousand years. That matters to

00:04:29.560 some folks. And better to be Kim Campbell than some, some, some cabin minister who didn't run in 1.00

00:04:35.520 that, in that leadership, who none of us remember today. Right. So let's say that the next prime

00:04:41.420 minister, the 24th, isn't Pierre Polyev, maybe the 25th prime minister certainly looks like it will be.

00:04:49.500 If an election were held today, how big, how big will Pierre Polyev's mandate be?

00:04:54.580 Well, I think we could, we, you know, right now it'll be somewhere in probably the range of

00:05:00.280 215 to 230 seats, which would make it the largest in Canadian history by a, by a significant margin.

00:05:09.040 You know, we'll see how leadership goes. There is a certain group of people who are going to be

00:05:12.740 attracted back, but to liberals of leadership, whether they'll stick with it after the leadership

00:05:16.520 is another story. But I fully expect liberal party polling to drift up in the next couple of months,

00:05:23.240 probably not by 10 points, but maybe by two or three or four. I think we could see them go from

00:05:28.400 consistently somewhere around 20, 21% to back up in the 25% range. I think that's realistic as they go 0.72

00:05:35.520 through this leadership process, especially if, I mean, this leadership process is going to dominate

00:05:39.960 all the media for the next few months. Canadians are going to be inundated because we're choosing

00:05:44.760 a prime minister. Big question again is whether or not that process will be done before parliament

00:05:49.780 comes back and whether the NDP decide to force an election before that process is over.

00:05:54.960 I can't imagine there are many Trudeau loyalists left in the liberal caucus or in the PMO,

00:06:00.860 but I'm sure some of them think to themselves that the only person who is capable of leading

00:06:07.380 the liberal party right now and succeeding at a federal level is Justin Trudeau when all the others

00:06:12.820 are just, you know, weak copy attempts at Justin Trudeau. Is there anything to that,

00:06:20.100 to the idea that Justin Trudeau is still the best person to lead the liberal party in the election?

00:06:25.120 I mean, he certainly thinks so. I mean, even his remarks today, he didn't say,

00:06:30.680 I can't win an election against Pierre. His message very much was, I can't fight Polia if I'm 1.00

00:06:37.560 fighting for my survival internally. I can't fight two battles at once. Not, I can't go and fight and

00:06:42.480 win that one. So I'm convinced that him and many of those few loyalists left probably do believe that.

00:06:48.700 Look, you know, anybody who's underestimated Justin Trudeau over the years has ended up on the

00:06:54.320 wrong side of things. He's a forwardable fighter. But at this point, his personal numbers were so

00:07:00.540 bad, so awful, that I think that he, that almost anybody will have slightly better numbers than him,

00:07:09.740 unless, of course, they managed to choose somebody who's even worse.

00:07:13.240 So prime ministers have come back from defeat. His father did that. Is there any chance that Pierre,

00:07:19.160 that Justin Trudeau might come back? May time be a benefit to Justin Trudeau? May it do him well?

00:07:26.500 Do you think that there's a possibility of Trudeau ever making a comeback?

00:07:30.740 Well, I think the scenario that his father went through around this time in 1980 is actually

00:07:35.460 kind of a bit of an example. I mean, Trudeau Sr. had announced his resignation after the 1979

00:07:42.380 election. The liberals realized they could bring down Joe Clark government in late 1979 and basically

00:07:48.380 brought Trudeau back. He sort of unresigned as leader. He was still a leader and the election

00:07:52.360 was called and away they went and he was able to win a majority. I think, frankly, there is a chance

00:07:58.460 that if the election is, if the leadership, liberal leadership election is not complete by the 24th of

00:08:03.080 March and the NDP, I mean, Jagmeet Singh has said, you know, we don't care who the liberals lead,

00:08:07.600 their time is up. If the NDP decide to bring them down on a vote at some point in late March,

00:08:15.120 we could be in an election where Trudeau is still the liberal leader.

00:08:19.320 So his comeback, his last campaign could be as soon as in about three months.

00:08:25.220 Wow. So is that a possibility? Because everybody is under the assumption now that as we laid out at

00:08:31.060 the beginning of the show, the prorogation period will cover the liberal leadership race and

00:08:37.320 as soon as they select a new leader, Trudeau will be gone, exit stage left, and then parliament

00:08:42.240 will come back. And do you anticipate that an election will be called right away?

00:08:49.040 I look, the conservatives are very, very clear. The bloc's clear. The NDP claims to be clear,

00:08:54.260 but we'll see how believable that actually is. But, you know, if the parliament comes back on the 24th,

00:09:00.640 even if there's a new prime minister, parliament comes back on the 24th, there is a throne speech,

00:09:08.400 they have to vote supply. There's going to be matters of confidence voted before the 31st of

00:09:15.440 March. If that happens, we're looking at an election May 5th, May 12th, maybe May 19th,

00:09:22.600 but I think May 5th or May 12th are the most likely dates. And away we go. So, you know, I think that's

00:09:29.040 the most likely scenario, but that's only if the liberals can get their act together and get a

00:09:32.640 leadership, a national leadership to choose a prime minister done in a period of time that they've

00:09:38.660 never been able to do it at. So let's just look ahead then to the federal election, whether it's

00:09:44.120 in October, whether it's earlier, perhaps May. What do you think are the issues that are going to

00:09:48.700 dominate the election? Are they the same issues that are dominating the voters today? Cost of living,

00:09:55.720 immigration, housing? Are those the issues that are going to come to the front?

00:09:59.880 Absolutely. Nothing fundamental is going to change in the next three months to how Canadians feel

00:10:04.380 about the world. This is an unusual election. Obviously, there's been a lot of focus on Trudeau

00:10:08.380 himself, and a lot of he's become a lightning rod for all the discontent. But much of the discontent

00:10:13.160 with the government is being driven by very, very real things. It's not something someone said or did.

00:10:18.200 It's, I can't, my groceries cost too much. I can't afford to ever stop renting in the city I want to

00:10:23.780 live in. You know, immigration is wildly out of control, and not just out of control deliberately, 1.00

00:10:30.180 they've also lost control of the system. Crime, we're seeing crime become a problem. Crime is on

00:10:36.000 the rise everywhere. People feel safe in our big cities, and even in a lot of smaller places than

00:10:40.280 they used to be. Those things are all driving dissatisfaction with the government. It's not the

00:10:44.580 usual, well, I'm sick and tired, it's time for a change. That's part of it. But it's being very driven

00:10:48.600 by very, very real grievances. I want to ask you, you know, to perhaps answer this question,

00:10:54.660 which is going to be a difficult one, but I want to know if there are any standout achievements

00:10:59.860 from Justin Trudeau's nine years as prime minister that you think the liberals and Trudeau will look

00:11:06.040 back on and say, okay, that's at least one big or two things that we can be proud of that we were

00:11:12.820 able to accomplish. You know, I think the most important word you just said there was accomplish.

00:11:17.160 This is a government that actually hasn't accomplished a great deal. They've put out a lot

00:11:21.320 of amazing news releases and lots of exciting announcements. But I've always said, if only,

00:11:26.460 and Trudeau saw this as an exception to this, if only the media covered what the liberals actually

00:11:30.540 did as opposed to what they said they were going to do, it would be a very, very, very different

00:11:33.840 story. A lot of their own big accomplishments are much smaller and less ambitious than the news

00:11:40.200 releases suggested. You know, I don't think they actually accomplished an awful lot, apart from

00:11:44.780 really driving up the cost of everything, making crime prevalent in the country and creating a real

00:11:51.200 instability in our investment climate, which is ultimately will take us decades to fix.

00:11:57.880 We know that any government that comes into the role will have a very difficult time, but I have

00:12:03.900 to imagine that Polyev is looking at a significant challenge here, as it looks increasingly likely that

00:12:09.880 he will become prime minister. What do you think that first year is going to look like for a Pierre

00:12:14.380 Polyev majority government? Do you anticipate there being lots of roadblocks and lots of issues that are

00:12:21.060 going to be in their way?

00:12:23.260 Look, it's going to be, there's a lot of politics and a lot of elections and voting to happen before

00:12:27.840 we get there. But, you know, you know, Mr. Polyev's got a very ambitious agenda,

00:12:32.500 and that will run into lots of institutional roadblocks in Ottawa. But, you know, I've known

00:12:40.740 Mr. Polyev for 25 years, and I don't know anybody as focused and determined. And I have no doubt that

00:12:48.560 if anybody can overcome those institutional roadblocks, it's him. But we, he's got an election

00:12:54.140 to win first, and that's going to be his absolute focus until election day.

00:12:58.660 Before I let you go, I have to see if I can get a name from you, perhaps a guess as to who might

00:13:05.700 lead the party in the, in this shortened period. Is it going to be LeBlanc, Carney, Champagne? Who do

00:13:12.860 you think it's going to be?

00:13:15.740 So my prediction, and I'll slightly weasel out of it, is that whoever Navdi Baines endorses, the former

00:13:21.960 cabinet minister who's got the ability to sign up huge numbers of people, whoever he endorses is going

00:13:26.480 to be the water. That's an interesting take, actually. That's, one we'll have to see what

00:13:31.800 happens. We'll be paying attention then to who Navdi Baines, of all people, chooses to endorse,

00:13:36.920 because you've heard it here first from Hamish that Navdi Baines could be, in fact, the kingmaker

00:13:42.700 in this instance. Mr. Marshall, thank you once again for joining us and giving us some insight into what

00:13:48.580 exactly is going to happen in this country over the next several months. It'll be very interesting.

00:13:52.960 Thank you. Pleasure as always.

00:13:56.480 Thank you.

Juno News - January 07, 2025

What happens now for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals？

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