The message in Toronto-St. Paul’s loss is ‘clear and clear’, says minister
Members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet say they are standing next to him despite feeling dizzy by-election loss this week in what was once considered a reliable match Toronto seat for the Liberals.
“We received a loud and clear message from Toronto-St. Paul’s, which was considered a “safe driving” citation, Immigration Minister Marc Miller, who is also a close personal friend of Trudeau, said Wednesday.
“My advice as a close friend would not be given publicly, that’s for sure,” Miller said. “My advice as a minister and as a professional colleague is absolutely to stay. …I think he is best placed to beat Pierre Poilievre.
But Miller acknowledged that the party faces a “period of soul-searching.”
“It’s a loss, let’s not minimize the loss. I think many of us need to step back and shake our heads.
Conservative Don Stewart won Monday night’s byelection in Midtown riding by defeating longtime Liberal staffer Leslie Church and flipping the seat from blue to red for the first time since 1993.
“The Trudeau brand has become a liability to the party, which they didn’t really see coming,” said Lori Turnbull, director of the school of public administration at Dalhousie University.
Miller is one of several ministers who fanned out across the country Wednesday to make announcements, but faced a wave of questions about Trudeau’s political future.
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Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault said he still supports the prime minister and dismissed questions about dissent within the Liberal caucus.
“None of the MPs or ministers I spoke with told me they thought the prime minister should leave,” Guilbeault told reporters in Ottawa.
It’s a sentiment shared by Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya’ara Saks.
“(Trudeau) is still the most important leader in a generation to bring transformational change to this country,” said Saks, who represents the Toronto riding of York Centre.
“I don’t know of any other leader who is willing to accept being uncomfortable and make the changes and changes that need to be made. »
Saks, who has dual Canadian-Israeli citizenship, was also asked whether the Liberals had difficulty communicating with Jewish voters in Toronto-St. Paul, and whether they may have turned to Poilievre because of his outspoken support for Israel in the conflict with Hamas.
The riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s has the fifth highest percentage of Jewish voters in Canada.
While Saks said Canadians were “shocked by the level of anti-Semitism” and “the rise of hatred” in the country, she cautioned against making any “assumptions” about how a community votes.
“There is still a lot of listening to do. But to assume that the Jewish community is a monolith, I wouldn’t posit that for any community,” she said.
A day earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, whose riding neighbors Toronto-St. Paul’s, said she still had confidence in Trudeau.
“The Prime Minister is committed to leading us to the next election and he has our support,” Freeland said.
Trudeau has been behind Poilievre in national polls for more than a year. An Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News earlier this month suggests 68 percent of voters think he should resign.
However, Turnbull doubts he will resign as Liberal leader.
“It would be such a huge exercise for the party to say, ‘We want to go in a different direction,’” she said. “I don’t assume that’s the case.”
But neither option seems good at the moment, she added.
“Is there a scenario where they would follow it to the next election knowing that no seat is safe and the bottom could fall out? Or is there a conversation at this point where they say “we can try with someone else”.
— with files from the Canadian Press
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
