The Justin Trudeau loyalists are digging in. There’s a “considerable cadre who want him to move on,” long-time Liberal MP John McKay told me. “But he’s stared them down before and he’s staring them down now.”
Some of the voices of dissent are not getting through to Mr. Trudeau, Senator Percy Downe, one of the first to call for his ouster, said in an e-mail. They’re being blocked, he said, by his chief of staff, the all-powerful Katie Telford.
Slowing the efforts of the leadership-change advocates is the crisis with India, which has dominated the news cycle. Then came Wednesday’s much-anticipated appearance of Mr. Trudeau before the public inquiry into foreign interference.
The American election, with its serious consequences for Canada, is less than three weeks away. Liberals say Mr. Trudeau wants to await that result before making any big decisions regarding his future. If Donald Trump wins, he’ll be more inclined to fight to stay on, hoping he’ll be seen, given his experience with the demagogue, as best equipped to counter his threats.
“He can claim to have weathered the Trump storm before and that might help him,” David MacNaughton, who served as Mr. Trudeau’s Washington ambassador, said in an interview. “But not enough to turn the tables.”
Not enough indeed. While foreign crises might bolster Mr. Trudeau’s support in caucus, they are unlikely to affect his woefully low standing with the general public. More probable is that they will only delay the inevitable: his departure.
India crossed a red line. Canada had to respond decisively
Making it more difficult for him to quit, said Mr. McKay, is his animosity toward Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, who he regards as a parochial guttersnipe who has little interest in, and no experience with, foreign affairs.
It’s no time for neophytes. Rarely if ever has Canada been confronted by so many hostile major powers. The change since the year 2000 has been dramatic. At that time, China, Russia and India were co-operative in varying degrees with Canada. They are now our adversaries. There was no fighting in Ukraine, and conflicts in the Middle East had subsided. Wars are now raging in both regions. The U.S. was a more open market then. It is considerably less so now.
Markets for trade-reliant Canada have shrunk. With the turn of events regarding India, Ottawa’s Indo-Pacific strategy is imperilled. With China, political conflicts have created roadblocks. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is vowing to renegotiate free trade with Canada and Mexico – which he previously said was “so wonderful” – and threatening to impose a 10-per-cent tariff on all imports.
While Mr. Trudeau gets some plaudits for his handling of Mr. Trump in his first White House term, there’s the disadvantage of a sour personal relationship. Mr. Trump feuded with him. He’s called him – just an average putdown by Trumpian standards – “a far-left lunatic.”
Though untested with foreign leaders, Mr. Poilievre would start with a clean card with Mr. Trump and, being Conservative, would have a closer affiliation to a Republican president.
An Environics Institute poll this month put Mr. Trump’s support level in Canada at 21 per cent, less than half of what it is in the U.S., a disparity that tells us something about the two countries.
While Canadians are so much more supportive of the Democrats, Kamala Harris, as Mr. MacNaughton noted, is protectionist herself. She voted against the renewed United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. “Trump’s transactional, she’s ideological,” he said.
In the U.S., the post-election challenges will be tough. On India, Mr. Trudeau scored well with his caucus with the forceful way he handled the RCMP’s allegations. The Prime Minister had alienated the government of Narendra Modi with his political courting of Sikh-Canadian activists who favour the creation of Khalistan, a separate state. Over lunch last year, India’s High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma made the disapproval clear to me, though in mild terms. Just a few months later, Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed in Surrey, B.C. Mr. Verma was one of the six Indian diplomats expelled this week as a result of the RCMP’s probe into that killing and other crimes.
On China, Mr. Trudeau was only just getting beyond the bitter controversy over the incarceration of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, and the Chinese detention of the two Michaels, when he was hit with charges of turning a blind eye to China meddling in our politics. While predictably denying interference, two Chinese embassy officials told me in a recent interview that it’s possible rogue actors had been involved in such activities.
Overall, Mr. Trudeau’s foreign-policy record, which has seen Canada lose influence in world capitals, is hardly something for the Liberals to crow about. Nor is it something that should prevent them from pressing him to pass the torch.