OTTAWA—Former B.C. Liberal premier Christy Clark says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has got to step down.
In an interview with the Star, Clark said the message for Liberals after Monday’s Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection defeat is “unequivocal,” that Trudeau “doesn’t have the pull with voters that he once had, but more importantly, he isn’t even able to motivate some of the people in the country who are most likely to vote for his party. That’s a tough message for any leader.”
Clark said she is not organizing a potential run for the job, saying it isn’t open. But she acknowledged that people are encouraging her to run if Trudeau does leave. She has not ruled that out, but said “I don’t have any of those plans ready to go.”
Clark said she has no insight into whether Trudeau is truly reflecting on his political future, and she hasn’t spoken to him personally since 2017 when she left office.
“What I do know is he’s a fighter. I do know he’s extremely competitive. And I do know that he has never lost an election or anything in his entire life. So, you know, I presume if he’s thinking about it at all, it’s a very difficult decision for him to make.”
But she said the results of Monday’s vote should not be ignored by him or the party.
The midtown Toronto riding, held by the Liberal party for the past 30 years is “bedrock for Liberal voters,” said Clark. “It’s the centre of the universe. And if people in that riding aren’t prepared to come out in the byelection and vote for him, I think it says a lot about the weakness the party is experiencing across the country.”
Before and after Monday’s vote, senior Liberal and Conservative campaign organizers who spoke to the Star agreed on the factors at play in the campaign: everything from fatigue with Trudeau or skepticism about his rival, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, high housing costs, the high cost of living, concerns about a rise in antisemitism, and about how the government responded to conflict in the Middle East. Each of the main parties miscalculated how those issues would play out in the result beforehand, however. The Liberals counted on a narrow win, and Conservatives expected a narrow loss.
In the end, in a vote where turnout was relatively good, the Conservative candidate won a stunning upset, with Don Stewart gaining 42.1 per cent of the vote (well up from the party’s showing of 25 per cent in the previous general election) and Liberal Leslie Church winning 40.5 per cent (down from the party’s 2021 showing of 49 per cent). The NDP was well behind at under 11 per cent, and the Greens at under three per cent.
Clark said while there may have been myriad issues at play in the byelection, “it’s impossible to separate issues from leadership.”
“In my experience, if people don’t feel like the country is going in the right direction — and clearly Canada isn’t going in the right direction right now — they will blame the leader and they should. Because the leader sets the agenda. The leader is the one that gives direction to his or her cabinet. The leader is the one who sets the economic priorities or fails to do so.
“Yeah, you can find exceptions to this rule, but it is almost always, all of it, is on the leader’s shoulders,” she said.
Clark, a senior adviser at the law firm Bennett Jones, served as B.C. Liberal premier from 2011 to 2017, and has been a critic of Trudeau’s in recent years.
Still, hers is the view of someone who once identified strongly with the federal Liberal party.
“I want the Liberal party that I used to vote for to come back,” she said.
Clark worked for the party in the 1990s, was national youth campaign director for Jean Chrétien’s 1993 campaign, later worked for senior cabinet minister Doug Young, and returned to B.C. in 1996, where she was elected and sat first in opposition under B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Campbell. She served in his government as deputy premier. Clark left politics in 2005, but returned to replace Campbell in 2011, and won a come-from-behind victory in the 2013 provincial election. Under her, the party narrowly won the 2017 election, with one seat shy of a majority, but did not hold onto power after the NDP and Greens struck a deal to govern.
She said the federal Liberals and Conservatives have long had many points of disagreement, but in her view they used to agree on the need for economic growth, job creation and “responsible economic management.” It’s not a question that the party has moved too far to the left, she said, but it has lost its focus.
“I don’t think you can really characterize the world in terms of left and right anymore. I just don’t … really accept that paradigm. To me, governments can enable or they can impair economic growth. And that’s not really a left-right issue.”
Clark blasted Trudeau for failing on three main points: on stimulating economic growth; on failing to meet international commitments on defence and managing the Canada-U.S. relationship (“Canada has really lost its lustre when it comes to meeting our international commitments and being respected internationally”); and on national unity, where she blamed Trudeau for fighting with premiers “all the time,” “setting regions against each other” and showing “favouritism.”
“People out in this part of the country really feel forgotten. And there is a sense that the prime minister is playing some regions of the country off the other for his own political gain. And I don’t think anybody in the country benefits from that … It can never work for Canada. And over time, I think we all know, that’s a path that can lead to a pretty dangerous place for our country.”
Senior Liberals say there is a robust reflection going on inside the party organization and the Prime Minister’s Office, and many discussions are taking place with caucus members, cabinet ministers who campaigned on the ground and senior officials. While they have not ruled out convening an early caucus meeting to discuss the way forward, no in-person meetings are scheduled at the moment.
The prime minister has not taken reporters’ questions in the three days since the byelection loss, although he has delivered brief prepared remarks this week in which he indicated he “heard” voters and his main focus remains on the interests of Canadians.
