ANALYSIS: The Liberal revolt concerns Trudeau, communications and the carbon tax
Hopes for an uneasy Liberal caucus were first raised in late summer 2022 in the New Brunswick resort town of St. Andrew’s.
The Liberals had gathered in August for the first in-person retreat after the pandemic to deal with a series of polls that found them just a few points behind the leaderless Conservatives.
In September of the same year, the Conservatives will find their leader, Pierre Poilievre. Now, two years later, the anxiety of 2022 has turned into the panic of 2024 with multiple polls showing Liberals 20 points behind and facing absolute rout if elections took place this fall.
Many Liberal MPs who once thought they could survive on their own popularity are now facing the reality that they will lose their jobs because of the unpopularity of the same leader who helped them win back their party in 2015.
During the 2022 caucus, Liberal MPs were told there was a plan to turn things around. They were told the same thing when they met last month in Nanaimo, British Columbia, for this year’s summer caucus retreat. Indeed, applause could be heard during the closed-door meeting in the conference center room in downtown Nanaimo as Trudeau’s director of strategic communications, Max Valiquette, presented his marketing plan for the months to come.
Today, many of these MPs complain that nothing was done after the St. Andrews meetings. And nothing has been done since Nanaimo.
The plaintiffs say there have been no promised communications campaigns, no changes in policies and no changes in how the prime minister and his top aides interact with the caucus.
Conservative activist Cole Hogan, director of gt&co, tracks the amount of money each party spends on Facebook advertising, figures that Facebook itself discloses for all political parties. For the week ending October 5, conservatives spent $114,569 on Facebook ads compared to $3,086 for the Liberals and $1,240 for the NDP.
Hogan has documented this kind of lopsided ad spending week after week since that Nanaimo meeting and leading up to this one. This data reinforces the opinion of liberals who complain that nothing has been done.
And while Liberal MPs were promised some sort of marketing campaign to increase their fortunes, Conservatives produced slick television commercials that aired on traditional television networks. The liberal response? Trudeau did it a podcast with one of his own backbenchers and made an appearance on an American late-night television show.
The contrast makes some Trudeau MPs shake their heads.
At least one of the common complaints of many MPs who spoke to Global News this weekend was resolved Sunday when the party finally named a national campaign manager, a position that had been vacant for more than a month following the resignation of Jeremy Broadhurst.
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The new campaign manager is Andrew Bevan, who will hand over his position as chief of staff to Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister.
Bevan is a “veteran” Liberal, a soft-spoken, lively Brit with a smile and laugh, who has worked in and around the federal and Ontario Liberal parties for ages.
“Good at reading people, wise at understanding how to help them trust him. And he’s a very nice guy,” Robin Sears, the former principal secretary to NDP leader Ed Broadbent, wrote on Bevan’s LinkedIn page in support of Bevan joining Freeland’s office.
“Andrew Bevan knows how to win,” David Herle posted on his social accounts. Herle ran several political and federal campaigns for the Liberals.
That said, Bevan also found himself serving as head of staff for some famous Liberal lost causes. He ran Stéphane Dion’s office when he tried – and failed – to sell his green shift to Canadians in the 2008 election. He was Kathleen Wynne’s top advisor at Queen’s Park when Liberal rule in Ontario collapsed in 2018. He now faces the steepest hill he has ever had to climb: getting a long-toothed Trudeau government re-elected in 2018. 2025.
He won’t be surprised that many of the incumbent Liberals he’ll try to help re-elect think the job would be easier with a new leader.
Those who want a change in leadership tend to be “blue” liberals, those who might have supported Paul Martin or John Manley in past leadership races. Some believe that someone like François-Philippe Champagne, who represents Jean Chrétien’s former riding of Shawinigan and is Trudeau’s minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, would immediately improve the Liberals’ fortunes if he was chief.
It’s not just leaders who need to change, some of the plaintiffs say, it’s also time to abandon some policies they hold dear, including the carbon tax.
“It’s over when Poilievre wins anyway,” one MP said.
Indeed, several progressive politicians across the country have already decided that it is impossible to campaign and win on a federal carbon price.
NDP Premiers Wab Kinew in Manitoba and David Eby in British Columbia have called on the federal government to abolish the carbon tax.
Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck is campaigning in her province’s current provincial election against a carbon tax. And federal NDP Jagmeet Singh is also hesitant on the principle of carbon pricing.
In New Brunswick, Liberal Leader Susan Holt also asked Ottawa to cancel any increase in the carbon tax.
Today, some members of Trudeau’s caucus – largely MPs from English-speaking Canada – think it’s time to do what the Polièvre Conservatives are constantly calling for: “remove the tax.”
Global News spoke with numerous members of the Liberal caucus this weekend. Those who had something substantive to say about a growing caucus revolt – whether for or against – preferred not to be cited by name.
Indeed, one of the MPs seeking a change of direction said that part of the problem is that there is almost no one looking to revolt and saying so when the television cameras are on. on him.
According to this MP, someone should either hold a press conference or organize a sustained “mic grab” campaign at the next Liberal caucus meeting which, given the upcoming “break week”, will not will probably not take place before October 23.
It is not clear how widespread the caucus leadership revolt is.
The Toronto Star first reported Friday that a move was underway to get the rebels to commit in writing to seeking a new leader. Other news outlets, including Global News, have confirmed the existence of such a document.
But how many signed? There could be 20 or 30. However, there are more than 150 Liberal MPs. Those seeking a change in leadership say it would take at least 50 people demanding change to force action.
News of this “revolt” was made public on Friday, as Trudeau and his closest aides were in the middle of a 13-hour flight from Laos to a refueling stop in Honolulu aboard an unconnected RCAF plane. Internet.
Commerce Minister Mary Ng, who was traveling with Trudeau, told reporters during the refueling stop that she had not been aware of the revolt until turning on her phone as the plane landed in Hawaii. (Indeed, all the journalists on the plane learned it the same way.)
And yet, back in Ottawa, Trudeau loyalists had already begun the hunt for the rebels.
Global News has learned that while Trudeau was in the air, PMO aides were already calling Liberal MPs to try to track down those they suspected of having signed the document demanding change. These PMO aides would almost certainly have started with members of the Atlantic caucus.
Last Wednesday, while Trudeau was out of the country, Atlantic caucus chair Kody Blois of Nova Scotia surprised the weekly national caucus meeting by declaring that Atlantic MPs were coming all the way. just to come out of a “difficult but frank discussion on the future of the Atlantic”. gone,” and then simply walked out of the closed-door national caucus meeting.
“It was absolutely incredible,” said a non-Atlantic Canadian MP.
MPs who spoke to Global News said Trudeau is now on the verge of losing the support of the Ontario and Quebec caucuses.
As MPs from these two provinces knock on doors seeking support, they say they are receiving positive reviews of the work the government (led by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP) is doing on pharmacare. national health care and national dental care, but any support the Liberals might get on these policies evaporates when it comes to the leader.
“He’s not just unpopular,” said one liberal.
“He is greatly hated.”
David Akin is the chief political correspondent for Global News.
