Should Justin Trudeau stay or should he go?
Kathleen Wynne has been there, done that — and didn’t go.
After a bitter byelection defeat for the federal Liberals in Toronto–St. Paul’s riding this week, Wynne has been asking herself the same question anew. As premier, she stayed to fight another campaign in 2018, paying a high price in the election defeat that followed.
So what would Wynne tell the prime minister if he called for advice about whether he should quit federal politics?
Good question. A better question for him, she argues, is why exactly he should stay.
The calculations aren’t as simple as they sound. All these years after her own ups and downs, Wynne says a bad byelection result, even in a traditionally Liberal riding, is not “a line in the sand.”
That’s because a byelection can mean everything and nothing — or something in between. Typically, they are protest votes — and rarely predictive of a general election outcome.
History also suggests that changing leaders is no panacea for unpopular premiers or prime ministers. After Wynne left, the Ontario Liberals under Steven Del Duca lost badly again to Doug Ford; after Brian Mulroney quit as PM in 1993, his successor Kim Campbell was wiped out; same with Pierre Trudeau’s successor, John Turner, in 1984.
Justin Trudeau insisted this week he’s sticking it out until the next election. But that doesn’t mean he can just keep saying — and doing — more of the same.
“I think what’s going to happen now is there’s going to be a lot of internal soul-searching,” Wynne told me. Over the next few weeks, MPs will be “trying to figure out now how to have the tough conversation with him,” because “he’s going to have to make a decision.”
Not necessarily an epiphany to go away, but a pathway to stay and fight another day.
“There is going to be such pressure on him now — not to leave so much as come up with a reason that he should stay.”
Wynne predicts Liberal MPs across the country will be going door to door this summer hearing their constituents say, “We love you, we hate your leader.”
That’s what happened to Wynne in her last years, and it’s the fate befalling Trudeau now.
“I lived through that and it’s tough.”
MPs have to decide whether they can stand it. And the PM must determine if he can withstand it.
But there are other calculations behind his personal unpopularity: Who comes next? In what context?
“I’m worried about who’s in the wings that’s ready to take this on,” Wynne muses. “Anybody who’s been in his cabinet is going to be seriously marked by what’s gone on.”
That weighed heavily on her own decision to stay on — wondering whether her successor would be handed a poisoned chalice. The calculation any incumbent must make is whether they are better placed to win — or worst placed to lose.
Back then, I thought if Wynne could reintroduce herself to voters and somehow rehabilitate her image, she had a better chance to eke out a narrow victory in 2018 than any of the other pretenders to the throne. But as readers know, I’m always wrong — and as it turned out, the downside risk of an unloved leader was a massive loss on voting day.
Similarly, Trudeau may be the best bet for a longshot Liberal minority victory in the federal election due in late 2025. But by virtue of the personal hostility he engenders — akin to Wynne — he could very well be the worst bet if things don’t go their way, leading to even bigger losses.
That’s the dilemma: Go for broke by staying put, or hedge your bets by bailing out.
Another complication weighing on the minds of Liberals as they contemplate a wide open leadership race: These are turbulent times in the Middle East and at home, with bitter divisions on both sides that could divide the party further if new members are motivated by a single issue — choosing someone to lead Canada into the future based on an intractable historical conflict in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon.
Party nominations and leadership races are messy affairs at the best of times. In the worst of times, they are prone to piling on by one large group or another.
“It’s going to bring out the factions, and I think that’s really dangerous — I don’t think it bodes well for choosing the right person to bring people together,” she says.
Wynne agonized over her own decision to stay on as premier in 2018, and is reliving some of that now — joking about how the talk of Trudeau’s future is triggering a form of political PTSD from her past.
“My heart has gone out to Justin all day — I’ve just been thinking about him, what a tough place he’s in.”
Been there, felt that.
