Justin – Has He Built A Sufficient Legacy To Justify Resignation?

Justin is surely starting to think about his own legacy – has he done enough to change and modernize Canada in a progressive and inclusive way to say he had accomplished enough to step away? Unlike his feather at age 65 there is no question that Justin should have lots of energy. Leslie Church, a well-connected would-be Liberal candidate for St. Paul’s riding in Toronto, in a recent speech gave a very articulate resume of Trudeau’s accomplishments – including the child benefit which has lifted 300,000 children out of poverty, $10 a day daycare and gender equity. She could have added his role in huge investments in Canada by international companies like Volkswagen and Stellantis for battery plants in St.Thomas and Windsor, Ontario, and a $20-billion investment in rental housing; taking the GST off rental housing construction plus big housing accelerator grants in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and other Canadian cities. Not to mention most recently with dental care and promised pharmacare.

Yet despite these populist moves, the Trudeau Jr brand has tanked among the electorate. A recent Abacus poll shows the Conservatives with 19-point lead, the largest the company has ever given the party. Only 14 percent of respondents thought that the Liberals deserved to be re-elected. Worse, Justin Trudeau, the sunny ways hero of 2015 now has favorability rating at minus 33, while Poilievre scored a plus two. The government’s approval rating is a mere 24 percent. As for Trudeau, 59 per cent of respondents disapproved of his job performance.

Can Justin make a comeback? It will be very hard for him to recapture his easy-going popularity now as an overexposed divorced dad who constantly gives us a correct lecturing about how Liberals are “continuing” (uttered ad infinitum when challenged) to invest in the middle class - whatever that is. Then there is his love of being on camera, his preference for the symbolic photo op over the substantive deed as one commentator noted. These tightly scripted predictable smug performances on camera are strangely unconvincing when you compare them to his genuine daily reports to Canadians outside his home during the pandemic. The hair remains good, but the rest needs a very challenging makeover. 

Add to the serious problem with his personal appeal the Arrivecan App scandal which is being compared justifiably to the sponsorship scandal which brought down the Martin government, and tone-deaf evidence of privilege in his Jamaica holiday and his Prime Ministerial career could appear to be heading to its close. But when? Does he wait to be defeated in 2015, or take his own walk in the snow?   

Many believe him when he says repeatedly he is staying on, and relishes beating the smart communicator Poliviere whom he despises for his angry and divisive Trumpian ways. He was most convincing in a year-end radio interview with his old friend Terry DiMonte who he asked, “do you actually think I could walk away from this fight right now?” There seems no successor and little caucus unrest. 

Some months ago in my blog I argued that politicians were human beings too. While Trudeau remains plucky and confident and enjoys his travels as a senior member of the Group of 7, he is also endlessly attacked by the opposition and cannot do events in Canada without facing angry crowds. It is tough to see the opposition endlessly accuse him alone of being responsible to just about everything that ails Canadians. Surely his poor personal popularity must grate on him. The long slide into a public that is simply tired of him and the Liberals. His accomplishments, however important and durable seem to make no difference to public attitudes. 



I leave you with the sad predictions of a very smart friend who is convinced he will be gone by June and of two commentators. The first - Michael Harris in the Tyee simply says at the end of a long insightful article:  “For Justin Trudeau, the options at the moment are the stuff of which political nightmares are made. He must either go, or go down with the ship.” The veteran Globe pundit John Ivison put it more bluntly in a recent podcast: “The electorate has made up its mind and there is nothing Trudeau can do to change them…they’re done. They want him gone. ”