Trudeau will resign as prime minister and leader of the Liberal party. With the Governor General suspending Parliament until March 24, the resignation has launched a Liberal leadership race.
While the Liberal party is selecting its new leader, Pierre Poilievre is maintaining his lead. On Jan. 19, 338Canada projected the Conservative party would win an overwhelming majority. If correct, the Liberals would lose five to one.
Carney and MacKinnon
Regardless of which leadership candidate replaces Trudeau, the Liberal party will remain unchanged. Consider Mark Carney, a candidate for replacing Trudeau, and Steven MacKinnon, Canada’s former minister of labour and current minister of employment, workforce development and labour.
During the global financial crisis in 2008, Carney was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada. Five years later, he became the first non-Briton to head the Bank of England since the United Kingdom’s central bank was established in 1694. Running a country like a business is morally bankrupt. So why would running it like a bank be any better?
In October of last year Canada’s labour tribunal said MacKinnon effectively directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to end the strikes and lockouts at Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. Two months later, MacKinnon responded to the Canada Post strike by sending the labour dispute between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to the CIRB.
MacKinnon was promoted during the cabinet shuffle last month.
A party that has platformed a former central banker for prime minister and promoted a strike-breaker will never prevent Poilievre’s Conservative party from forming a majority government.
Options and threats
Alternative parties such as the Green Party, cannot compete with the Liberals, the Conservatives or the NDP, who possess the political infrastructure necessary to run candidates in ridings across Canada.
Under Poilievre’s leadership, the Conservatives have become a single issue party with their slogan, “Axe the tax,” as if repealing the carbon tax will somehow solve all of Canada’s political problems.
Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president on Jan. 20. The CBC reported that Trump “has been reviewing three options: a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods, a 10 per cent tariff on goods from all countries or an escalating tariff that starts low and rises over time…”
“A 25 per cent tariff would be particularly devastating to Canada,” the CBC report continued. “Experts have said just a 10 per cent levy would shave billions of dollars off the GDP and potentially plunge the country into a painful recession requiring government stimulus to prop up the economy.”
Poilievre has promised to fight Trump’s economic policies, tariffs ‘with fire.’ “The Conservative leader said his long-stated plan to eliminate the consumer carbon price, as well as cuts to income tax and taxes on foreign investments, will end the flow of investment and industry from Canada to the U.S.”
Cut taxes. That’s our prospective prime minister’s plan. Fifty years of tax cuts for the rich have failed to trickle down.
Julian Limberg, lecturer in public policy at King’s College London, said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch that the economic rationale for keeping low taxes for the rich is unconvincing.
“In fact, if we look back into history, the period with the highest taxes on the rich — the postwar period — was also a period with high economic growth and low unemployment.”
Right party, wrong leader
Trudeau has led his party for too long. Jagmeet Singh has led the NDP astray. Despite the “supply-and-confidence” agreement between the Liberals and the NDP, which ended in September 2024, the latter is more likely to win the next election. The Liberals’ leadership race sidelined their party while the NDP’s shifting stances have kept their party unsteady, yet viable.
The NDP could build its voter base by supporting workers and students. But to do that, they’d need to replace Jagmeet Singh with a new leader. Singh has shifted his stances, and his party’s, too many times for voters to trust them.
In 2017, according to the CBC, there were more than 124,000 members eligible to vote for the next leader of the New Democrats. Statistics Canada reports that over two million students were attending post-secondary institutions between 2022 and 2023.
If half of those students joined the NDP and elected a new leader, then students could leverage Trudeau’s resignation in their favour. If the NDP fails to select a principled leader who will unapologetically advocate for students and workers, Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative party will be elected.
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