Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Foreign Interference Commission in Ottawa, on Oct. 16.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
During his appearance at the foreign interference inquiry, we got a glimpse of Justin Trudeau’s strategy for winning the next federal election. The Liberal Prime Minister plans to turn the vote from a referendum on him into a referendum on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
It’s as good a plan as any. But no plan is likely to work.
At the inquiry, Mr. Trudeau accused Mr. Poilievre of refusing to learn about Conservative parliamentarians who might be working with, or influenced by, foreign powers. Mr. Poilievre declined to obtain the security clearance that would enable him to hear this information.
The Prime Minister called that refusal “bewildering.”
Mr. Poilievre says he does not want security clearance because then he could not criticize the government over any classified information he received. But that’s beside the point.
Mr. Trudeau wants to convince Canadians that Mr. Poilievre is not fit to lead. The security-clearance issue is just one example of many that we can expect him to use, as he seeks to reverse his sinking political fortunes.
“Embattled” does not begin to describe the Prime Minister’s situation. The Liberals are 20 percentage points behind the Conservatives in popularity. Word arrived Thursday that four ministers are not planning to run again. Mr. Trudeau faces a revolt from MPs who want him to resign.
Whether that rebellion succeeds or fails, it can only further damage the party’s fortunes. That some MPs are willing to take the risk speaks to how badly they want a new leader.
But at this moment, Mr. Trudeau seems determined to carry on. He must believe that, once voters are forced to choose between Mr. Poilievre and himself, more people will stay with him.
While Mr. Poilievre strongly appeals to Conservative partisans, many less committed voters find him strident and polarizing.
He reflects the public mood on several key issues, especially opposition to the carbon pricing. But elections often focus not on policy, but on whom voters trust as leader.
If Mr. Trudeau could change the ballot question from “Do you want four more years of Justin Trudeau?” to “Do you trust Pierre Poilievre to run the country?” the Liberal Leader might stand a chance on election day.
Mr. Trudeau only needs to woo about six or seven per cent of the electorate away from the Conservatives and over to the Liberals, putting the Grits near 30 per cent in support on election day and the Tories in the mid-thirties. That would be enough to produce a minority Parliament, at which point anything would become possible, including a real or de facto Liberal/NDP coalition.
All that said, Mr. Trudeau is facing the longest of shots.
People will not be casting their ballots on the issue of security clearances. What concerns them most is the impact of inflation on their standard of living, how much their mortgage payments have gone up because of higher interest rates, how impossible it has become for many people to buy a home or to afford rent, or even groceries. Rightly or wrongly, they blame the Liberals for the mess.
Even if some voters could be persuaded to shift their support away from the Conservatives on election day, it isn’t clear how much the Liberals would benefit. Recent polls have the Liberals and NDP close to each other in support. It is possible, though not yet probable, that the Liberals could end up behind the NDP after the next election, as they did after the election of 2011.
That may be one reason why some Liberal MPs are pushing for a new leader: to at least ensure the party’s status as official opposition.
Mr. Poilievre may not be all that popular, according to the polls, but those same polls say he is more popular than either Mr. Trudeau or NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. The majority of the electorate believes that it is time for a change.
So even if Mr. Trudeau does survive the caucus revolt, and even if he does lead his party into the next election, his effort to make the election into a referendum on Mr. Poilievre’s leadership is unlikely to succeed.
Voters would not only have to reject the Conservative Leader, they would have to plunk for Mr. Trudeau one more time. And there is no evidence to suggest they will.