Liberal Party candidate Leslie Church, third from left, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speak to supporters at a campaign volunteer event in Toronto, on May 30.Arlyn McAdorey/The Canadian Press
The shocking result in the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election leaves the Liberals with only one question: should they lose the next election with Justin Trudeau as leader, or should they lose it led by someone else?
After an excruciatingly slow vote count over Monday night and into Tuesday morning, Conservative candidate Don Stewart snatched from the Liberals what used to be one of their safest seats, a riding in the heart of the Grit bastion of downtown Toronto, a riding that had withstood the tsunami of 2011, when veteran Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett held on even as the Liberals nationally suffered the worst result in the history of the party, being reduced to third place in the House of Commons.
To lose St. Paul’s means the Liberals are at risk of an even worse fate in the next election. The message is stark: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau simply must stand down and let someone else lead the party, which now confronts electoral oblivion.
Except....
A new poll this week from the Angus Reid Institute asked respondents whether they would be more or less inclined to vote for a number of potential replacements for Mr. Trudeau, including Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly. In a head-to-head comparison, respondents on balance said every candidate mentioned would make them even less likely to support the Liberals.
(The online survey of more than 3,000 adults was conducted in mid-June, with a comparative margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.)
There is no comfort for the Grits anywhere. They are deeply unpopular from sea to sea to sea, including in the urban cores that were once their final refuge. Taxes are too high, growth too low, interest rates too steep, mortgages and rent too burdensome.
It doesn’t matter who leads them. The Canadian electorate wants them gone.
The Liberals clearly knew they were in trouble in a riding they had held for more than 30 years, a riding they simply could not afford to lose. So they pulled out all the stops. Mr. Trudeau and much of his cabinet and caucus campaigned in Toronto-St. Paul’s during the by-election campaign. There were plenty of your-government-working-for you announcements.
The Tories claimed that the Liberal government’s decision last week to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization was an attempt to placate the relatively large Jewish vote in the riding. The Tories may have been right.
And the Grits employed rhetorical overkill equal to anything Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has employed. Ms. Freeland on Monday warned voters in St. Paul’s that the Conservative alternative to her party “is really cold and cruel and small. The alternative is cuts and austerity, not believing in ourselves as a country, not believing in our community and in our neighbours.”
Ms. Freeland’s riding of University-Rosedale is right next door to Toronto-St Paul’s. If St. Paul’s is lost, then her riding is at risk. Downtown Montreal and Vancouver are at risk. Nothing is safe, anywhere.
But those who might replace Mr. Trudeau in hopes of preventing such a tidal wave must convince Liberal supporters that they could achieve a better result. Not a victory, mind you, just not a shellacking. It’s a tall order.
The Tories also fought hard to win the by-election. Mr. Poilievre was door-knocking in the riding even before the writ had been issued. He knew what a victory here would mean. He must be elated to have pulled this off.
By-election votes are often protest votes. In the general election, whenever it comes, Toronto-St. Paul’s may well revert back to the Liberals. The real fights, the fights that will decide the election, will be in dozens of seats in suburban Toronto and in the surrounding 905, named after the region’s area code. That fight will be mirrored in Greater Vancouver and in other urban cores.
But this result suggests the Tories are well placed to win those fights. Toronto-St. Paul’s has sent a stern message. The Liberal Party is at risk of being obliterated in the next election. And it doesn’t matter who leads them.
John Ibbitson