Juno News - Will Justin Trudeau resign？

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 there are liberal mps that were just elected for the first time in 2019 or 2021 and they're kind

00:00:16.840 of in the position now of saying i haven't really had a chance to do anything but already i'm about

00:00:22.800 to be shown the door and this happened to a lot of conservative mps in 2011 when harper won his

00:00:28.000 majority they were elected in the greater toronto area and places such as aurora and oshawa well not

00:00:34.840 oshawa that's a conservative writing but aurora new market and markham and mississauga and you had

00:00:40.180 all of these one-term mps that they got in they served one term and then they were out the door

00:00:45.180 because harper couldn't hold on to his government when 2015 came around so that's where you have i

00:00:51.880 think this looking really bad for liberal members of parliament and will they decide once and for all

00:00:57.820 it's time to start calling for justin trudeau's political head on a political platter i don't

00:01:04.460 want anyone to get any ideas about you know me suggesting something you know untoward but that's

00:01:09.400 effectively the decision going on here so look we can go and talk about oh this poll went this way or

00:01:15.840 maybe this sign did this or this canvassing did this but there's a bigger picture here that we should

00:01:21.500 not lose sight of we'll be talking in a little bit with rahim muhammad in the national post who

00:01:26.580 has uh had some well he has interesting thoughts on pretty much everything but definitely some

00:01:30.940 interesting thoughts on this but i i want to welcome in to talk about the the the psychology

00:01:36.600 of justin trudeau on this almost uh it paul wells because journalist paul wells wrote a book that was

00:01:43.340 very fascinating and we actually share a publisher in ken white of sutherland house and he wrote about

00:01:48.760 this called justin trudeau on the ropes governing in troubled times and he joins me now paul it's

00:01:54.380 good to talk to you thanks for coming on today hi andrew how are you i'm i'm doing well i i'm you

00:02:00.120 i should just say to hit this you know right out of the gate you had done what i think a lot of people

00:02:04.500 did which is like you went to bed thinking the liberals had won and then you woke up in the morning

00:02:08.680 and had to write a mia culpa on this and i just get away from that by not making predictions because

00:02:14.180 then i i don't have to be wrong ever whereas you take the swing but before you saw the vote

00:02:20.020 yesterday what did you think was going to happen before you saw the numbers come in and kind of

00:02:23.940 concluded it was over so i happened to be in the writing i'm not in front of that often but i happened

00:02:29.400 to be there a couple weeks ago and i ran into a bunch of liberals who were really nervous uh and a

00:02:35.140 couple who reading between the line were not super interested in voting liberal they they thought it was

00:02:41.300 time to send uh justin trudeau a message and i was at a fancy ottawa garden party just before the

00:02:49.200 returns came in and i ran into a former senior public servant now retired who i believe has voted

00:02:56.620 liberal in most elections in their life and and they said i wish i lived in toronto st paul because i

00:03:04.600 would use my vote to send trudeau a message and uh so i knew they were heading for trouble but they

00:03:11.480 would have to have a lot of trouble before they lost and and so i was open to the very strong

00:03:17.820 possibility that uh it was going to be um tight but not lost for the liberals and that's that was

00:03:24.680 that was why i believe the early returns the way i do justin trudeau has in the past been incredibly

00:03:30.440 dismissive of anything that everyone else kind of uses to say that he's in trouble i mean pool numbers

00:03:36.120 are a great example of this and obviously you you should be aware of polls and and not give them too

00:03:40.840 too much stock but there was that line he gave to david cochran not that long ago about how canadians

00:03:45.960 aren't in a decision mode right now and that's why they're saying they'll vote for poly ev and then

00:03:50.200 yesterday in toronto st paul's they are in decision mode and he he's not really ever shown any overt

00:03:57.240 sense that he gets it and i i'm curious what your take on that is what would it take for him to

00:04:02.120 really realize hey i'm the problem so when um magazines started publishing photos of him in

00:04:09.960 blackface he's he this is now five years ago but he suddenly uh had to admit that in fact he had 0.51

00:04:15.720 worn blackface so that was a that was a mistake uh uh confronted with absolutely stark evidence um

00:04:22.840 uh you've been on the air i don't know if you saw he put he sent out a a communicate uh less than an

00:04:29.880 hour ago in which he says uh okay i get it this was bad this shows that we have work to do but it's

00:04:37.160 very much uh classic first draft trudeau it's it's like the statements he made after the snc lavaline

00:04:43.080 story broke he uh understands our concern and he promises to do better and i think uh a lot of people

00:04:51.480 including some liberals are saying no we don't need you to do better we need you to go and uh

00:04:58.440 i my hunch is that he's not rejecting that he's processing it and trying to figure out how much

00:05:06.280 maneuvering room he has from your knowledge i mean you they pick up your i don't know if they pick up

00:05:11.800 your calls still but i think historically you've had relatively good access to the liberals certainly

00:05:15.640 better than i have because i don't think they've ever thrown you out of an event but

00:05:19.000 the i'm curious insofar as you've learned from your contacts and sources in ottawa

00:05:25.080 does he did they have a plan for this did they have a plan for what does he do if don stewart wins

00:05:34.360 it's funny that was i was chatting with my wife who's a consultant and uh conservative and uh

00:05:40.600 very politically engaged as i left the house this morning and i said i wonder whether they had a

00:05:45.560 contingency plan you know it turns out so emmanuel macron the president of france had a very bad uh

00:05:51.560 election 10 days ago in european elections and he had been discussing the possibility of a of an

00:05:57.080 electoral route with his closest advisors for a week and they came out with an audacious plan to call

00:06:03.320 new legislative elections and like it's not at all clear that it will work but macron had a what if we

00:06:10.360 have a bad day plan uh i don't know whether the liberals did i have begun to put that question to

00:06:18.120 liberals um but if they did it would be out of character because they tend to uh hope for the

00:06:25.240 best and they corner very badly when when uh when things are now less than the best i mean i expect

00:06:33.400 what i expect is uh several days of confusion during which everything the prime minister says

00:06:39.880 can be uh treated as a curiosity rather than than as the final word because it's going to take them

00:06:46.200 days to figure out what what they think and what they want to tell us there's been from the liberal

00:06:52.760 party i mean really going back to 2015 i'd say a public caucus unity that you know the past two

00:06:59.000 conservative leaders would have killed to have in the sense that you don't see the knives out for

00:07:03.480 justin trudeau in the way that uh conservatives have historically for their leaders and i i'm

00:07:08.680 wondering if you think that will change now will will you start to get liberals that are are speaking

00:07:13.400 up a bit more publicly about their concerns or do you think that the same pattern we've seen for the last

00:07:20.040 nine years will will continue to hold there so now i i know someone who has an uh appointment with

00:07:26.280 christy clark today a pre-long-standing appointment with christy clark social thing uh who says the

00:07:32.760 day just got complicated because christy clark's phone is ringing off the hook uh i expect you can

00:07:37.320 multiply that by about seven because uh i expect anita nan's having a complicated day and sean fraser

00:07:43.800 and you know um i have no idea who's making those calls or what the content of those calls are but i

00:07:50.920 think that that's kind of happening um in a lot of corners one level of taboo has fallen i i there

00:07:57.880 hasn't even been much informal discussion about next time uh uh post trudeau leadership in the liberal

00:08:06.600 party and it hasn't been enforced by above it's been consensual liberals have not felt that it was proper

00:08:13.240 that uh uh a leader who gave them a decade in power or nearly um owes is owed some deference on these

00:08:21.800 questions um that's gone at least privately they are now talking um the next question is you know is

00:08:29.400 it going to is there going to be public uh statements um will any sitting member of caucus will any of the

00:08:36.840 the half dozen cabinet ministers who left on more or less peaceful terms people like navdi baines and

00:08:42.600 and uh mark carno and um will they start to say something and my hunch is they won't not immediately

00:08:49.640 but like this look new mps are are dragged up the house of commons by the their own leader and by the

00:08:56.920 the prime minister does justin trudeau really want to be the the prime minister who drags the new mp for

00:09:04.520 toronto st paul's up the center aisle of the house of commons like man you know yeah some decisions

00:09:10.760 to make pretty fast yeah i know i think you raise a valid point there and i'm also curious and again

00:09:16.600 i i never like the armchair psychoanalysis of politicians but with justin trudeau i do find

00:09:21.720 it fascinating because there's there's something that i've suspected and i'm curious if you agree or

00:09:25.880 not that he doesn't really care what party he leaves behind that he's okay if it sort of is a

00:09:32.200 sinking ship and he takes it down and i'm not convinced that he's as focused on legacy for the

00:09:37.640 party and i i wonder how if you take that to a context of the next election if that weighs in

00:09:43.880 because i do think the party would have a better time rebuilding they're certainly not going to win

00:09:47.960 the next election at this stage even if they have an interim leader but uh the reality is they would

00:09:54.600 probably set themselves up a little bit better to start having those succession discussions now instead

00:10:00.520 of you know the day after the 2025 election but but i'm curious if i'm projecting something on him that

00:10:05.880 you don't necessarily see i had a really chilling moment uh in conversation with um a member of

00:10:13.720 trudeau's caucus uh probably five or six months ago where i said i have always thought that trudeau

00:10:21.400 the day he leaves will be the day he stops caring about the future of the liberal party

00:10:25.480 and he just decides that he has to make a decision for himself and um this mp said do you think he

00:10:33.160 has ever cared about the liberal party it was shattered when he came along and he used it as uh

00:10:41.080 uh a vehicle um or a you know a kind of a hitching post for uh for a very personal movement

00:10:50.040 and that there was never a time when concerns about the future of the liberal party without trudeau

00:10:58.200 weighed much in his own career decision um it's one thing for me to say that but for me to hear that

00:11:05.560 from somebody who uh sits and hears from the prime minister every week and in in liberal caucus

00:11:11.720 meetings was a different was a different moment and um uh but i i do think that um his

00:11:26.120 the final calculation the decision to leave will be based on whether he's done

00:11:29.560 not on and and there won't be a lot of bandwidth for thinking about what's going to happen liberal

00:11:34.600 party next i thought my thesis was kind of snarky but it's not even as audacious as or as radical as

00:11:40.680 the one you got from a liberal member of parliament uh paul wells you can catch him on substack many

00:11:46.440 other places but i love his substack i'm a paid subscriber it's at paulwells.substack.com

00:11:51.400 thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north

00:11:56.040 andrew lawton show support the program at www.tnc.news

Juno News - June 29, 2024

Will Justin Trudeau resign？

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