It was a political call to arms that no Liberal MP appears to have taken up.
In an email to his colleagues last week, New Brunswick MP Wayne Long gave voice to feelings Grit MPs were confidentially sharing, in chat groups and with reporters, that the prime minister should step down. He expected further calls for Justin Trudeau’s resignation would follow. But so far … crickets.
“I won’t lie, it’s a bit of a lonely feeling. But … I feel that it needed to be said.”
In a long conversation with the Star, Long said he has no regrets about speaking up, or for possibly being judged a “bad guy,” or shunned for his comments. But he also expressed surprise no other Liberal MP had piped up.
“I’m just kind of puzzled — like, I just don’t understand the silence,” he said over the phone. “It has been quieter than I thought it would be.”
He expected to spur “a more robust, open conversation, but clearly, that’s not what’s occurred to date.”
In a five-line email to his parliamentary colleagues Friday, Long said the byelection results in Toronto—St. Paul’s, where the Liberals lost a seat they had held since 1993, led him to conclude the party needed new leadership and a new direction.
“I think the way to reconnect with Canadians is a new leader, a new fresh face,” he told the Star.
It wasn’t just the byelection loss that prompted Long’s reflection. It was also the prime minister’s response in June to a 20-point lead in public support for the Conservatives, when Trudeau suggested voters aren’t in a “decision mode” yet, and that Liberals just need to “work harder connecting with Canadians,” he said.
“With respect, I beg to differ,” said Long. “We’ve been 15 to 20 points down in the polls for a better part of a year now … Seventy per cent (of those surveyed) are saying that we don’t deserve to be re-elected and … 84 per cent are saying that they want change. I mean, let’s listen to what Canadians are telling us! I don’t want to see, you know, a Kathleen Wynne example happen to us nationally.”
(In Ontario’s 2018 election, Wynne led the governing Liberals to a third-place finish, losing official party status in the process.)
The problem, for Long, is the prime minister. Whatever good work and popular policies the Liberals have adopted — from dental care to the billions invested in housing — he said the message is just “getting lost because people can’t get past the, “‘Yeah, but your leader …’
“There’s just a tuning out, and I want to see us win. I want to see us be competitive.”
He feels that can’t happen with Trudeau at the helm, but it might happen with a new leader — and that someone needed to sound the alarm. “The alarm bells have been ringing for a year and a half, as far as I’m concerned.”
Long doesn’t have a preferred leadership candidate — he lists Housing Minister Sean Fraser, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney as possibilities — and he’s open to the idea that an outsider could come in and swing the contest. “I don’t know. That’s what the process is about.”
Like many in the Liberal caucus, he’d like to see his party realign closer to the political centre. Long’s Saint John—Rothesay’s riding is a blue Liberal/red Tory kind of seat that often flips between Liberals and Conservatives. He feels Canadians have seen the pendulum swing too far to the left and now too far to the right, and that there is a thirst and an opportunity for centrist policies. “I’m convinced that there’s a lot of people that are parking their vote for Pierre Poilievre … because they just won’t vote for Justin Trudeau another time,” he said.
“I hear it every day.”
A backbencher for nine years, Long is no stranger to speaking his mind. He once called for an inquiry into the SNC-Lavalin affair, amid allegations Trudeau had inappropriately pressured his then-attorney general to offer the Quebec engineering firm a deferred prosecution agreement. But one gets the sense that this time he’s particularly concerned about being seen as knifing his party’s leader.
“I like the prime minister,” he offered, unprompted. “I think the prime minister has done a good job, you know, since 2015, by and large. I mean, every government has some, you know, peaks and valleys.” Long speaks highly of Trudeau’s progressive policies, and commends his leadership during COVID.
“I just think that a lot of our good work … a lot of it gets lost and is getting lost and people just can’t see through the unfortunate dislike of the prime minister.”
And while some in caucus think Trudeau’s leadership and the Liberals’ fortunes can be salvaged through some big bold moves, Long wonders what those could be. “We had a cabinet shuffle, like, last August. Maybe I missed something but … I didn’t see anything change.” Same thing with the spring budget, he said.
“There’s a time when you need to read the room.”
Maybe his Liberal colleagues aren’t talking in that room. But on their doorsteps, Canadians certainly are.
Long says the prime minister is ignoring that message at his — and his party’s — peril.
“You’re gonna hear what you want hear if you block out what you don’t want to hear.”
