Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to supporters during a Liberal Party fundraiser in Montreal, on July 3.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Still reeling from the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election disaster, Justin Trudeau was asked why he should not take this as his cue to step down. Voters had been unwilling to let any of his recent predecessors stay on past nine or 10 years. Why did he think he was any different?
In answer he referred, not to the by-election result, or his party’s low standing in the polls, or his own unpopularity, but rather to “a challenge faced by democracies all around the world right now.” He cited the elections in France and the United States. In “any democracy around the world,” he said, “we are seeing increasing challenges to people’s well-beings, greater anxieties, an erosion of democratic principles and rights.”
“This is a really important time,” he continued, “for governments to step up and deliver concretely for citizens, to restore and encourage faith in the institutions [of government].”
Did you catch that? He didn’t say it in so many words, but he sure implied it. The reason he should stay on as Prime Minister and Liberal Leader is to save Canadian democracy – to spare Canada from “the erosion of democratic principles and rights” under way elsewhere.
Perhaps you think I am exaggerating. But that was far from the only example. Asked a similar question in French (“Why stay on if your unpopularity is dragging the party down?”), he replied, “We understand that Canadians are going through difficult times and the rest of the world is going through a difficult time. If we look at the elections in the U.S. and in France, democracy across the world is under threat.”
Over and over the same theme was repeated: “difficult times … anxious times … in these times of uncertainty based on the instability we’re seeing across the world … we’re seeing a rise in the populist right across the democracies … we will present a positive vision to fight against this rise of populism of the right that we’re seeing across the world, including in the person of Pierre Poilievre.”
If he is unpopular, in other words, if his government is in trouble, it is not for anything he or it has done, but merely because of this time of generalized uncertainty and instability around the world. If his government is threatened, it is because democracy itself is threatened.
Ergo – the logic gets a little shaky here – the way to stand up for democracy is to re-elect the Liberals. And – shakier still – to keep him on as their leader.
There is, of course, an alternative theory. Far from a sign that democracy is under threat in Canada, the St. Paul’s by-election result could suggest that it is alive and well. If voters prefer the Conservatives to the Liberals, it may not in fact be a sign that they have given up on democracy. It may simply be that they prefer another party. His government may be under threat. Democracy is not – though democracy may be a threat to his government.
You can see what he is up to. Democracy is under threat elsewhere, notably in the United States. It is entirely legitimate for the Democratic Party to warn of the consequences for American democracy if Donald Trump is returned to the White House: The evidence is on the public record, in his own statements as well as those of his followers.
That does not necessarily make the case for Joe Biden continuing as the party’s candidate for president. He may be the best hope of defeating Mr. Trump, or he may not. It does suggest that the stakes are existential – not just for the Democratic Party or Mr. Biden, but for democratic government and the rule of law.
As such it is not just in the party’s interest but the country’s that it field the strongest possible candidate against Mr. Trump – or at least the strongest available. If that means someone other than Mr. Biden then the party must not hesitate to replace him.
That’s far from certain as yet. It would require, at a minimum, the acquiescence of Mr. Biden – for the alternatives, either forcible removal via the 25th Amendment, or an intra-party campaign of such scorched-earth intensity as to make his continued candidacy untenable, would devastate the party and its chances.
It would mean, further, trusting in the uncertain electoral appeal of his Vice-President, Kamala Harris – or, if she were passed over, enduring the firestorm that would erupt within certain sections of the party.
If it were Ms. Harris, it would require deciding whether she should campaign as his Vice-President, or as his replacement – meaning Mr. Biden’s resignation, before the end of his term, and all that that would entail. (Among other things, naming her replacement as vice-president, and shepherding the nomination through the Senate.)
If it were some other candidate, it would mean improvising some process for his or her selection, either at the convention or after. It would mean hoping, in the absence of any thorough vetting, that he or she was able to step into the role.
For all these reasons, there is room to doubt the wisdom of replacing Mr. Biden – though if he has irrevocably lost the confidence of the American people, the party may be left with little choice.
It is hard, however, to see how any of this applies to Mr. Trudeau’s situation. There is much to dislike about Mr. Poilievre, and much to disagree with in some of the positions he has taken. He is a bully, a propagandist and an unprincipled opportunist.
He is not, however, a threat to democracy. The most troubling entry in his résumé in this regard, his sponsorship, as a minister in the Stephen Harper government, of the Fair Elections Act, objectionable as it was, would be regarded as standard political fare in most other countries – and was largely withdrawn in the face of press and opposition criticism.
But there is no equivalent in Canada to Mr. Trump’s attempts, by a combination of force and fraud, to overturn the results of a democratic election, or his threats to use the Justice Department to “go after” his political opponents, or his privately and publicly expressed desires to see some of them executed, or his efforts to intimidate officials in his several criminal trials and otherwise undermine the rule of law.
And there is nothing in the positions advocated by either Mr. Poilievre or the Conservative Party, however harsh their rhetoric or childish their behaviour may sometimes be, to compare with the positions of Mr. Trump or the current incarnation of the Republican Party, whether on social issues or immigration or foreign and defence policy.
That may or may not be owing to any inherently greater moderation on the Conservatives’ part. But the institutional setting is very different in this country, and more important so is the political culture. We have not suffered the same series of traumas the United States has – 9/11, Iraq, the collapse of the housing market and the widespread bank failures – that have so discredited its institutions and leaders in many Americans’ eyes.
We worry about polarization here, but it is nothing like what has infected the United States. The politicization of nearly every public office – prosecutors, sheriffs, even judges elected on party political lines – has no equivalent here. Neither is party affiliation so much a part of Canadians’ identity – just two per cent of Canadians belong to a political party – as it is in the United States, where every voter must register as a Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
For that matter, the situation is nothing like so bleak “all around the world” as Mr. Trudeau’s sweeping statements suggest. Yes, the populist right has had some successes – in France, in Germany, in Italy. But elsewhere they have suffered setbacks.
The British have just sent the populist-addled, post-Brexit Conservative Party packing, in favour of the Labour Party under its impeccably moderate leader, Keir Starmer. Polish voters, likewise, dispatched the populist Law and Justice party earlier this year, returning the centrist Civic Platform to power under Donald Tusk.
So it is more than a stretch for the Prime Minister to pretend that his own troubles are part of some worldwide trend to instability, or to insinuate that democracy is on the ballot in the next election. And if it were? If the Conservatives, or Mr. Poilievre, represented the same threat to democracy as Mr. Trump’s Republicans, or the same far-right philosophy as France’s Rassemblement National?
Then that would make it all the more urgent that the Liberals consider the question of his leadership with the same unblinking rigour as the Democrats are now obliged to consider Mr. Biden’s. If the stakes were really that high, if the wolf were really at the door, then far from keeping Mr. Trudeau on, the Liberals would have to look hard at removing him.
But in fact the stakes are nothing like the same. As I wrote last fall, “Mr. Trudeau’s responsibility is to his party. Mr. Biden’s is to his country. … If Mr. Trudeau’s party loses the next election, it will mean a period in opposition. If Mr. Biden’s party loses, it could mean the end of American democracy.”
I still think the case has not been made that the Liberals would be better off fighting the next election under another leader, as I remain unconvinced the Democrats should dump Mr. Biden as their candidate for president. And it is even harder to remove a sitting prime minister against his will than a president.
But this kind of self-serving nonsense does a lot more to hurt Mr. Trudeau’s case for staying on than it does to advance it.