Liberal Party MPs give Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a standing ovation as he rises to speak during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ont., on Oct. 23.Blair Gable/Reuters
It’s very Ottawa to prebook an attempted political knifing for a Wednesday morning, but also to keep enough of the messiness under wraps so that if the agitators blinked, you could go back to being one big happy family, with bolted-on grins, in the afternoon.
The last week has been filled with reports about a growing swell of frustration among Liberal MPs over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership, given the party’s abysmal standing in the polls and in the minds of Canadians. This discontent took the form of a letter – which no one seemed to have seen with their own eyes, let alone signed with their own hand – urging him to step down.
In the leaks, this week’s caucus meeting – the all-hands gathering each party holds for its MPs weekly – was proffered as the moment for this letter to be presented to Mr. Trudeau and for a broader airing of grievances behind closed doors. (Again, this being Ottawa, you had to sign up in advance for microphone time to vent.)
So at least 40 journalists packed into the cordoned-off slice of hallway just outside the caucus room, where MPs heading into the meeting would be forced to walk by. Some, such as Anthony Housefather and Dominic LeBlanc, dealt with this awkward geography by slinking past without acknowledging the questions shouted at the sides of their skulls.
Others offered a few words in clipped tones and walked on. Still others stopped for full back-and-forth exchanges in which they still managed to say absolutely nothing.
If you’d started a drinking game in which you took a gulp every time an MP or cabinet minister talked about the imminent bloodletting using the words “robust,” “frank” or “productive,” you would have needed your stomach pumped after three people passed by the microphones.
At one point, Mr. Trudeau glided down the stairs from his office in light-blue shirtsleeves and a let’s-do-this grin, but he darted around the corner into the caucus room without stopping to chat.
When someone shouted a question at Marie-Claude Bibeau about how the Prime Minister could possibly get past this crisis, the Minister of National Revenue stopped walking and turned back with a befuddled smile.
Campbell Clark: Liberals limp out of confrontation without closure
“I mean, you are amplifying something that is very not to what I think you wish it would be,” she said. The extra words in that sentence were her grasping for exactly the right way to tell everyone to calm down, but somehow, it made the sentiment more perfect.
Once the Liberals had assembled, and the heavy wood doors clunked shut, Mr. Trudeau became Schrödinger’s Prime Minister – at once both dead and alive, in a political sense – until the doors opened and the Liberal caucus was extruded into the hallway of waiting reporters again.
The first to emerge when the meeting finally ended – an hour past its usual time – was Nate Erskine-Smith, who has a long history as a cheerfully rebellious MP, but who has publicly remained supportive of Mr. Trudeau.
Mr. Erskine-Smith stopped at the first knot of reporters closest to the caucus room doors and answered a couple of questions. He physically startled when he turned his head and realized that all of the other journalists in the hallway had silently glided over and clustered around him, like a pack of seagulls regarding a single French fry on the beach.
When he recovered, he said he didn’t think Mr. Trudeau was out of time to turn things around, and that he wasn’t going to air anything from the meeting because it was supposed to be a safe space to vent.
“And then it’s up to the Prime Minister to reflect on everything he’s heard and to come back to caucus not only with a plan, but also to express to caucus how have my colleagues been listened to,” Mr. Erskine-Smith said.
Sameer Zuberi echoed many of the others in answering obvious questions about a caucus in open revolt by underlining that where they all sure agree is what a nasty scourge the Conservative Leader is.
“We are united to defeat Pierre Poilievre and ensure that he does not have a single day in government,” Mr. Zuberi said.
He had spoken up at the meeting to report back on what he was hearing from constituents, and he said, “I believe I was heard and I think the rest is to be determined.”
This, too, was a recurring theme of what everyone said on their way out: Many frustrations and concerns were aired in that caucus room, and that was all to the good. But no one seemed to know what was going to happen next, which meant that Wednesday ended not far from where it started.
A short time after the meeting ended, Mr. Trudeau and his caucus took their seats together on the government benches in the House of Commons for Question Period.
When the Prime Minister rose to deliver his first response to Mr. Poilievre, the Liberals gave him a loud standing ovation, obviously meant to demonstrate their unity and support after the day’s drama.
Such trained-seal applause are common in certain symbolic moments in the House, but what you don’t see often is what happened next.
The entire Conservative bench rose to their feet, too, roaring and clapping, with Mr. Poilievre leading the mocking effort. He bowed across the aisle toward Mr. Trudeau, offering a sarcastic salute to the Prime Minister whose own party seemed to be flirting with starting the job Mr. Poilievre so badly wants to finish: taking Justin Trudeau down.