Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes a keynote address at the 2023 Liberal National Convention in Ottawa on May 4.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to a crowd of Liberal faithful to lead the party into a fourth election as he attacked Pierre Poilievre over his “brokenist” Conservative politics.
Mr. Trudeau kicked off the Liberal national convention in Ottawa on Thursday evening. The party is charting a path to the next federal campaign, which he said is still “a couple of years” away.
“When the election comes, when Canadians need to make a consequential choice in this consequential moment, it will be the honour of my life to lead us through it,” the Prime Minister told his party’s most diehard supporters to cheers and a standing ovation.
Ahead of his speech, the party played a recap of his tenure, from his 2013 leadership election to an appearance on Canada’s Drag Race and his pushback against former U.S. president Donald Trump.
The upbeat video and the Prime Minister’s repeated insistence that the Liberals present a positive message didn’t stop him from attacking Mr. Poilievre, who he said believes investing in Canada is “a waste of money, or that our policies are too woke.”
“Hey, Pierre Poilievre, it’s time for you to wake up,” Mr. Trudeau said, pointing at the camera, and prompting raucous cheers from the crowd.
“We want to build things up, while Pierre Poilievre and his brokenist Conservative Party want to tear things down.”
By staying at the helm, Mr. Trudeau is attempting to do what no Prime Minister has done since Sir Wilfrid Laurier more than a century ago: win four consecutive mandates. Even without that historic challenge, Liberals face an uphill battle, say political watchers who cite the foreign-interference scandal as a key reason why his government is struggling.
The controversy centres on what the government knew about Beijing’s interference attempts in the 2019 and 2021 elections, what it did to stop them, and how it is managing the backlash now. While it has dominated Parliament Hill in recent weeks, it got only a passing mention from Mr. Trudeau. Instead, he told the Liberals in attendance that he wanted to talk about the “positive future” his government is building.
That vision, he said, includes a price on carbon, fighting climate change, boosting immigration and creating an electric vehicle supply chain. On building affordable housing and improving the country’s health care systems, Mr. Trudeau said his government still needs to do more and be “clear-eyed” about the challenges confronting Canadians.
”Pierre Poilievre’s populism, his slogans and buzzwords, are not serious solutions to the serious challenges we’re facing,” he said.
Nanos Research polling shows that the party has been consistently trailing the Official Opposition Conservatives since February.
The minority government has not enjoyed any boost from significant political events such as the visit of President Joe Biden and the release of the 2023 budget, said pollster Nik Nanos. The question is whether the Liberals can use their convention to change the trendline.
Nanos polling over the course of April shows the Liberals at 30 per cent compared with Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives at 35 per cent. The NDP are at 20 per cent and the Bloc Québécois are at six per cent. The four-week poll is based on 1,159 respondents and has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
On top of that, Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Trudeau are statistically tied on the question of preferred prime minister, at 28 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively. Mr. Nanos said the incumbent usually has a baked-in five-point advantage because Canadians already see them in the job.
Against that context and already in a third mandate, Mr. Nanos said that Mr. Trudeau winning a fourth consecutive election would be “exceptional.”
“It’s quite difficult,” he said. “If Shakespeare was writing this play, he’d say the son is trying to outdo his father as the most successful Liberal leader in the modern era.”
The questions around the government’s response to foreign interference is setting the agenda, to the government’s detriment, said Lori Turnbull, director of the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University.
“I would say that this is the most critical and uncertain time for the Liberal government since it was elected,” she said. “Unforced errors have made this one of the worst times for the government since 2015, and perhaps the very worst because the government is almost eight years old and on its third mandate, and so voter fatigue is palpable.”
She said it’s difficult for the government to get out from under the foreign-interference controversies because while there is “no proven wrongdoing on the part of the government” it is difficult to prove the absence of it.
The challenge is made worse because the people that Mr. Trudeau has entrusted to provide oversight and advice are also connected to him or the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
Prof. Turnbull said the Prime Minister needs to use the convention to energize Liberals and persuade them that he is the only one who can beat Pierre Poilievre.
“Ultimately, he needs to shift momentum so that the party feels that a win is possible,” she said. “The party needs a shot in the arm.”
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
