Dance With The One Who Brought You
Come victory or defeat, Justin Trudeau is the Liberal Party’s last, best, and only option.
In a gut punch to millions, Kamala Harris was defeated in her bid to become the 47th President of the United States. For left-leaning Americans, her defeat provided a simultaneously sharp and blunt answer to many questions. Would the United States elect its first female President?Its first Asian-American President? could a candidate win with only 100 days to campaign? Was this the end of the era of Donald Trump? The answer to all of these questions was no. Another query that received an equally negative answer is the question that has been percolating north of the border through Canadian political circles ever more in past months: should Justin Trudeau resign?
At present, Trudeau’s defeat in the upcoming 45th Canadian federal election has begun to be treated as a near certainty by much of the Canadian political class and the wider world. Leaders ranging from the UK’s Keir Starmer, to India’s Narendra Modi have already begun making preparations to work with Trudeau’s likely successor, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. Current polling indicates the Tories are within grasp of not just a plurality of seats in Canada’s House of Commons, but a majority of them. The Tories have already achieved a historic win in a recent by-election (equivalent to an American special election), flipping a seat held by the Liberals for over 30 years. There has even been victory for politicians simply connected to the Conservatives. Earlier this month, the best friend and former college roommate of Canadian Conservative MP Jamil Jivani —a certain James David Vance— found electoral success south of the Canadian Border.
At a time in which incumbency seems to have become a millstone across the globe, Canada’s Liberals appear to be facing the same problem that confronted the UK’s Conservative’s earlier this year: how to turn an expected catastrophic electoral defeat into an accepted, but recoverable one? In the event of a Harris victory in the US, the solution would seem to have been written across every headline declaring her triumph. A poorly polling, center-left party could drop its unpopular leader and replace him with a new candidate, who, despite limited time to introduce her/himself to the electorate before an election, still managed to pull off a victory. Had Harris emerged from November 5th as the President Elect, Canadian news media would almost certainly have been drenched in op-eds urging the Liberals to do the same.
Trudeau has stated repeatedly that he has no intention to resign and fully plans to lead the Liberals into the next Canadian election, strongly resisting even the faintest rumors of his resignation. However, Joe Biden made very similar remarks prior to his own withdrawal from the presidential race. No man rules alone, and recent murmurs from within the Liberal party indicated that a movement to pressure Trudeau to step aside has been growing. The outcome of the US election was no doubt serving as a potential tipping point for many more party members on the fence.
However, those seeking to drop Trudeau already faced not just an uphill battle in finding a successor who could attempt to snatch a Liberal victory from the jaws of defeat. When Joe Biden withdrew from the Presidential race, there were rumbles about a brief chaotic free-for-all between various Democratic contenders, rumbles which were swiftly squashed by Biden’s endorsement of Harris alongside the announcement of his withdrawal. While Trudeau could strongly back a successor, the Liberal Party constitution requires a leadership race, a race in which most potential candidates are entirely unknown to Canadians.
For clarity’s sake, a key difference in the American and Canadian electoral systems should be noted. American Presidents hold office because they personally received sufficient electoral votes to assume the Presidency, while American Presidents tend to become the de-facto leader of their party, there is no official position of “Head of the Democratic/Republican Party” that the President is required to hold. A President could fully denounce their own political party and still retain the office of President for the remainder of their term. A Canadian Prime Minister, by contrast, enjoys their position due to receiving the support of a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, generally because they lead the largest party or have successfully formed a coalition.
As such, being the leader of one's political party becomes an unofficial-official requirement to becoming Prime Minister. When Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister in November 2015 it was because the Liberal Party had won a majority of seats in the House of Commons, therefore the leader of the Liberal Party —Justin Trudeau— became Prime Minister. If Trudeau loses or resigns from the leadership of the Liberal Party, the office of Prime Minister goes along with it, though he would likely remain in office until a new leader is elected (otherwise an interim Liberal Leader would need to be appointed to serve as Prime Minister during the leadership election). The race to determine the next leader of the Liberal Party, would determine the next Prime Minister, so long as the Liberals are able to maintain their delicate hold on Parliament during the interim period.
Unlike Kamala Harris, Justin Trudeau’s cabinet members have far less domestic recognition in Canada than Harris enjoyed in the US. Even before her selection as Joe Biden’s running mate, more than 41% of Americans could name then-Senator Harris in 2019. While the Vice Presidency is not typically the most headline-grabbing position in the executive branch, her position guaranteed her immense domestic name recognition and ensured her a spot as a frontrunner for a future Democratic nomination, even had she not assumed it near automatically following President Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.
In Canada however, there is no equivalent position to Vice President. While the office of Deputy Prime Minister exists, it is nowhere near as formalized as the Vice Presidency and was re-established by Trudeau in 2019 after a 13 year vacancy. It is currently occupied by Chrystia Freeland, a former journalist turned politician, who additionally serves as Trudeau’s minister of finance, a position once held by the three most recent Liberal Prime Ministers save for Trudeau himself. Freeland is regarded by many as the most likely successor to Trudeau and the second most influential member of the Liberal Party after the Prime Minister himself. In spite of this, only 39% of Canadians know who she is. Things are even worse for the other members of Trudeau’s cabinet, with none achieving above 20% national recognition and most being known by fewer than 5% of Canadians.
While it is possible for a lesser-known backbench parliamentarian or even someone outside of Parliament entirely to rise to the leadership, this is highly unlikely. If Trudeau were to resign, the subsequent race to decide the new Liberal leader would be the de facto race to decide the next Prime Minister. Canadian internal party elections however, are nowhere near as open as American primaries. While the exact process varies from party to party, typically only dues-paying members are permitted to vote. More than 30 million people voted to determine the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, roughly 10% of the national population. When Justin Trudeau assumed leadership of the Liberal Party in 2013, fewer than 105,000 votes were cast, even with Canada’s significantly smaller population, that is roughly 0.29% of the Canadian population. This makes new or wildcard candidates far less likely (though not impossible, Trudeau’s rival to the left, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is sometimes cited as an exception to this trend) in the Canadian system, while longtime party insiders and candidates who appear “safer” tend to be heavily favored. These factors combine to increase the odds significantly that any potential successor to Trudeau would have to come from his cabinet or the upper ranks of the Liberal Parliamentary caucus.
While the anonymity many of these candidates suffer from may be a boon for some, allowing them to attempt to form a new identity for themselves and for the party separate from Trudeau’s rule, history has shown Canadian voters punish leaders elected by such a small slice of the electorate. Unlike the United States, Canada has a long history of parties dropping unpopular chief executives in the run up to campaign season and appointing a successor to lead the charge into the next election.
Trudeau’s own father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau began the most recent variation of this trend. Facing deep unpopularity after over 15 years of cumulative rule, the elder Trudeau found his Liberal Party contending with their rivals, a strengthened Progressive-Conservative Party helmed by Brian Mulroney. Pierre would famously take a “walk in the snow” and —for entirely apolitical reasons according to his account— decided to resign in February 1984. He handed the reins of the premiership over to John Turner, the man he had hoped would be his successor and lead the Liberals to a resurgent hold on power nearly as long as their previous one. Instead, Turner would go on to hold the distinction of being Canada’s second shortest serving Prime Minister. Despite a brief resurgence for the Liberals in the polls, Turner would be thoroughly thumped by the Tories, ushering in 8 years of rule by Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney would follow in the footsteps of Pierre Trudeau, resigning himself shortly before the scheduled elections in 1993. The Progressive Conservative Party would replace him with Kim Campbell, Canada’s first, and to date, only female Prime Minister. Hoping to lead Canada for as long as her predecessor, she would go on to be Canada’s third shortest serving Prime Minister. After 132 days in office and one of the poorest run campaigns in Canada’s history, marred by ill-timed remarks and a particularly poorly edited campaign advertisement; the voters would hand Campbell not merely the worst defeat in Canadian history, but the single worst electoral defeat of a governing party in western democratic history. Her Progressive-Conservatives would lose all but two seats in parliament and send the entire conservative movement in Canada into disarray and realignment. The right would only return to power in 2006 following the newly formed Conservative Party’s victory over Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin; himself yet another short lived “successor Prime Minister.” In each of these cases, Canadian voters firmly rejected a recently installed leader, put in place, not by a large share of voters, but by an often nebulous and opaque party establishment.
All these factors combine to make the path forward for the Liberals quite clear. In sickness and in health, for as long as the current Canadian Parliament shall live, cleaving to Justin Trudeau is the best hope the Liberals have. While they face substantially long odds, any attempt to toss Trudeau out will only cast the party into ever more dire straits, at a time in which they risk falling to third place in the Parliament, an ignominy suffered by the Liberals only once before. Any potential successor will be faced with immediate comparisons to Kamala Harris and with less than 11 months until the next election, there simply will not be enough time to distance a potential Liberal leadership swap from the Democrats failed attempt. An election must be held by October 20th, 2025 and likely will occur sooner. Should the Liberals decide to swap out their leader, their rival parties in Parliament may well smell blood and trigger an election as quickly as possible to ensure any successor is unable to even attempt to form a new identity for the party. Further, the failure of Harris to win the White House may herald hope for Trudeau as the re-election of Donald Trump might be the lifeline the Prime Minister and the Liberals have been desperately grasping for.
The role of left-wing nationalism and anti-Americanism can rarely be overstated in Canadian politics. Justin Trudeau’s approval ratings soared to some of their highest heights in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and election. He was lauded as a counterweight to a populist, conservative America. Initial polling following Trump’s victory has indicated a slight but noticeable dent in Conservative gains and a minor bump in the Liberals’ numbers indicating that a change of circumstances, not a leader will aid them most at this perilous time. Trudeau, for his part, has proven to be a surprisingly savvy politician, shedding the initial criticisms of himself as a gimmick candidate riding on the coattails of his last name to bring the Liberals back to power following their worst ever electoral defeat and becoming one of Canada’s most important —though not necessarily popular— modern Prime Ministers in his own right. Regardless of one’s personal views of his policies, he has undeniably demonstrated clear skill in the political arena, managing to extend Liberal rule far longer than polling indicated and leading them to three electoral victories in less than a decade, despite consistently lowering popularity.
While the Liberals may have to endure the bitter taste of defeat, there is no one waiting in the wings of the Liberal Party capable of sweetening it any better than Trudeau. He has clearly and repeatedly vowed to lead the Liberals into the next election. If he stands by his word, and is willing to contest an election he is almost certain to lose, the Liberals have the best chance weathering the storm under his leadership. As Windsor Ontario’s own Shania Twain once sang, sometimes you need to Dance With The One Who Brought You (A song released in 1993, a month to the day after Kim Campbell began the dance that would end in the razing of her own party). The Liberals would do well to remember that.
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