The government is doing what it can to ride out the storm of yet another ethics investigation into the Trudeau family entanglements with WE, and no rational person expects Justin Trudeau to be even a bit chastened by the experience — he genuinely has no idea what the fuss is all about, and he has no inclination to step aside from his patrimony. Even if he did … the Liberals have nobody who could credibly step up:
Some, however, are wondering whether it’s time for the Liberals to start thinking about life after Justin Trudeau. It would be understandable if his leadership were in jeopardy. The ethics commissioner is commencing his office’s third official investigation into events that could have been avoided had the prime minister simply not done unnecessary things: vacationed on the Aga Khan’s island; inserted himself in the prosecutorial chain of command to “save” 9,000 jobs at SNC-Lavalin that were not in jeopardy; sole-sourced a giant jobs program to his buddies Craig and Marc. This theory holds that Chrystia Freeland is ready and willing and able to take over. And then everything would be, somehow, better.
There doesn’t seem to be much to hang it on. Exactly one MP, Toronto backbencher Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, appears willing to put his name to complaints about the Trudeau Gang’s latest easily-avoided snafu, and he’s not being impolite about it. Polling shows little sign that the scandal is leaving a mark on Liberal voting intentions: Canadians seem very grateful for the federal government’s terrible-to-middling performance during the pandemic. “Snap election, Trudeau super-majority” remains a competing Ottawa narrative.
But it’s an intriguing thought: The Justin Trudeau Liberals, without Justin Trudeau — intriguing because it’s basically a black hole. Way back in the Michael Ignatieff era there was this idea that the Liberals would assemble the best minds of various generations and turn themselves into a party that believed in things and behaved as such in government. There was to be a conference in Montreal, modelled on Lester Pearson’s 1960 think-fest in Kingston, Ont., which spawned various useful ideas including the Canada Pension Plan.
No one remembers much about the 2010 think-fest, which was, coincidentally enough, titled “Canada 150,” because all this “ideas” mumbo jumbo soon became a moot point. Justin finally agreed to run for leader, and he might as well have been unopposed, and it turned out he was really good at doing what Liberals have always believed in: winning.
Get rid of the Trudeau brand, warts and all, and what do you have? Freeland is an impressive person, though she’s also deputy prime minister and was presumably in the cabinet room as this WE disaster was conceived and implemented. You have a couple of very useful and competent veteran ministers in Carolyn Bennett and Marc Garneau. You have some greener ministers who might shine in a less top-down power structure. But mostly you have a flaky centre-left operation that doesn’t know how to do anything better than spend money and broadcast its own self-styled virtue.
Trudeau is damn good at that. Everything suggests he would walk away with an election held next week. Surely it’s unlikely he’s going anywhere he doesn’t want to.
