OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was all smiles as he walked into a Liberal caucus meeting Wednesday morning, where dissidents in his own ranks were prepared to challenge his leadership while his supporters harshly condemned the damaging show of disunity.
At the same time, a grassroots petition describing an “existential crisis” in the Liberal party was demanding an urgent secret ballot vote — both inside the caucus room and at the party’s national executive — on whether Trudeau really should stay on in the face of months of bad polls that place his party well behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives.
With Parliament Hill abuzz with speculation about Trudeau’s future, entrances to West Block were jammed with reporters and staffers keen to press MPs on what will happen inside the morning’s high stakes Liberal caucus meeting.
Francis Drouin, a Liberal MP from eastern Ontario, was among those to denounce the MPs involved in the push against Trudeau. As the Star has reported, more than 20 Liberal MPs have signed a letter calling on the prime minister to resign to make way for a new leader to better take on Poilievre and defend the legacy of the Liberal government’s nine years in power.
“At some point, to keep knifing like this? Like, put up or shut up,” Drouin said.
Judy Sgro said the dissenters have damaged the Liberal party and should have privately raised their concerns with the prime minister.
“When you look divided, you look weak,” she said. “It’s not necessary to do what is going on today.”
Sameer Zuberi pushed back against the “put up or shut up” sentiment, saying it’s the first time caucus is having this important conversation and he doesn’t expect today to be the end of it.
The petition describing a crisis in the party — titled Code Red Petition — was started by a group of mostly young Liberals, said Andrew Perez, a Liberal strategist and political consultant acting as a spokesperson for the petition organizers. The petition is accompanied by a memorandum that details how the modern Liberal party is struggling in many corners of the country, and names Poilievre as “our enemy” who has harnessed the power of the internet to win support and rake in more donations than the federal Liberals.
“We are hoping that this petition lights a fire for the party leadership,” said Perez, who added that “structural changes” are needed for the Liberals to improve fundraising and grassroots organizing.
While he declined to say how many people are behind the petition, he said it has been sent to “tens of thousands” of Liberals this week.
He also said the petition “is about much more than leadership,” arguing the party brass should be accountable given events of recent months — including two byelection losses in long-safe Liberal seats, the departure of campaign director Jeremy Broadhurst and a host of cabinet ministers, and the recent caucus dissent.
The document also criticizes the Trudeau government’s “policy problem,” decrying how gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is too low and demanding fresh ideas to focus on productivity and economic growth. It calls for the party to address “the leadership issue” through a secret ballot vote in caucus and at the party’s national executive, and that if Trudeau decides to resign he should announce his choice as quickly as possible.
Several MPs ignored questions about the petition’s call for a secret ballot vote on Wednesday, though some expressed support for the idea.
Sean Casey, an MP from Prince Edward Island who is among the three MPs who have publicly called for Trudeau to go, told reporters on his way into the caucus meeting that he wished there was a formal mechanism to hold such a vote.
Unlike the Conservatives, who ousted their former leader Erin O’Toole in a caucus vote, the Liberals decided not to adopt parliamentary rules that give their caucus that power.
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a Liberal from Toronto’s Beaches—East York, said he didn’t expect a secret ballot vote on Wednesday. But he said he would like to see some sort of future vote, possibly in Trudeau’s caucus, to provide “finality” to the question of the prime minister’s leadership.
“I think a secret ballot vote in caucus, you know, at some time in the foreseeable future, makes a certain amount of sense,” said Erskine-Smith, who has also voiced support for a partywide vote on the leader’s status.
Helena Jaczek, a former Ontario and federal cabinet minister dropped by Trudeau after she said she wasn’t running next election, told reporters ahead of the meeting, “I’m sure the prime minister will be taking it all in and listening intently, and no doubt he’ll want to take a few days to consider his options.”
Asked if she favours a secret ballot to test caucus confidence in the prime minister, she said, “I’m in favour of democracy at all times.”
On a day when Canada’s central bank cut the interest rate by half a percentage point, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland hung back and waited for cabinet colleague Lawrence MacAulay to chat with her and then walked briskly past cameras without commenting on either the rate cut or the caucus dissenters.
Down the hall, television cameras from all networks had set up outside the Commons chamber for live reporting on the critical caucus meeting.
Liberal MP Ruby Sahota predicted the dissent would be quelled because “a lot of the concerns you’ve been hearing are about a campaign chair and things like that. Those things are getting put in place, or have been put in place. And I think because of that, you’re going to see that some of those concerns are going to be addressed.”
Yukon MP Brendan Hanley, chair of prairies and northern caucus, told the Star that he expected a “very robust, very emotional conversation. And obviously there’s going to be lots of different points of view expressed. Whether it ends today’s up to the prime minister,” adding he hoped the meeting gives Trudeau a lot to “reflect on.”
But Hanley, who said he is running again, declined to state whether he personally had confidence in the prime minister.
Natural Resources Minister John Wilkinson said the caucus meeting is a chance to air all the complaints.
“Everybody is a member of Parliament are free to voice their opinions at the end of the day, though, we do expect that we are a team, and it’s important that we actually find pathways through which we can come to common agreement.”
