They put on brave faces last Monday night about their parties’ showings. But not one, not two, but all three major federal leaders ought to go before we next elect a prime minister.
Justin Trudeau, Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh, for differing reasons, should walk or be pushed out of a job before they would again seek the big job. The election gave each leader a chance to ignite the country, and they couldn’t. In each case, any prospect of moving that needle by 2025 is either improbable or impeded.
Let’s start with Singh. In two elections his party has lost half its Commons seats in an era embracing progressive politics. He has kept his role mainly because Trudeau has needed him as a minority government prop, and we saw how disposable the Liberal Party thought he was. He is simply their leverage.
He appeared to campaign well this time, but it proved an illusion. The perception was that the NDP was draining support from the Liberals. In the end, the Liberals reversed any actual Orange Tide to prevent a renewed Jack Layton-style Orange Wave. There was barely an Orange Trickle.
His personal, principled stand on the right to wear religious symbols ensures his party will not break through in Quebec, where Bill 21 is popular and where a mere provocative question on it in the leaders’ debate reignited the moribund campaign of Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet.
Few have pushed the right buttons Singh has and not earned a big prize, which should tell us something about his true appeal. In three or four years he will be neither fresh nor fascinating to watch. It is not easy to see how the NDP can choose better, but choose better it must.
Erin O’Toole is the most difficult one to toss off the boat, mainly because he’s barely introduced himself as a first-year leader in a pandemic in which almost every Canadian was anesthetized by a federal cheque. He of all three can mount a credible, deserving argument for a reprieve. Trouble is, he’s not in charge of his destiny.
He gambled that Canadians were ready for a minor change, not a major one, but clearly didn’t prepare his party fully for his vision. He left the door open to the rise of the People’s Party without ever siphoning support from the Liberals.
What became obvious in recent weeks was that he was shape-shifting out of appeasement and not authenticity. His flip-flopping corroded his certainty. These are rookie campaign errors, but there is a serious-sized Conservative Party cohort that doesn’t buy into the notion that a centrist-positioned campaign can outmanoeuvre the champion Liberal chameleons at that game.
O’Toole got a shot at it because he was new; next time he would not be.
If he cannot claim a new following, he also lost his claim on the tough-right he used to secure the leadership in 2020 in favour of the soft-middle to secure the country in 2021. He may not wish to embrace those he left behind, but by isolating and ignoring them in recent months he cut loose just enough support to foretell loss after loss. It was a risky move that didn’t pay. The Conservatives have no imminent interest to address the grievances of the left-behinds – even the economic ones – but pressure on O’Toole will build to take a back-to-the-future approach on his leadership.
The harder-line party elements note that when Trudeau faltered early in this campaign, when it became clear this was winnable, O’Toole only briefly gained the front-running leverage. In the next election he is likely to face another Liberal prime minister than the one he just did.
But to get there O’Toole will now face an internal challenge, the resumption of the ceaseless Conservative civil war. Surviving it rarely strengthens a leader.
Indeed, leadership itself is hard to survive, which bring us to the most obvious of the necessary plank-walkers.
To retain his minority government, Trudeau spent hundreds of billions of dollars to float the electorate and depended on an untested opponent in O’Toole, a subdued one in Singh, a collapsed Green Party under Annamie Paul, a limited foe in Blanchet, and an ascendant nuisance for O’Toole in Maxime Bernier. Those cards will never be dealt again.
Trudeau was the aging champion entering the ring, playing rope-a-dope for five weeks, and earning a split decision to retain the belt. He didn’t really win as much as opponents really didn’t; in other words, of those who lost, he finished first.
But next time it will be a different arena.
The economy will be belching with higher interest rates, higher taxes and higher obligations. The pandemic will no longer offer a political dividend.
Odds are there are scandals to emerge within the blossoming of a trillion-dollar debt.
And he will be a tired, too-familiar face, not the reassuring one just re-elected.
As the architect, he will need to flee the building before it burns to the ground and leave someone else to firefight and clear the smoke. It ought to be clear to Liberals, once their delusions subside about their supposed win, Trudeau electability is being eclipsed by Trudeau unlikability. Once negatives start, people hardly ever fall back in love with leaders.
Might their situations improve in two, three, four years?
Not likely for Trudeau.
Not probably for Singh.
Not easily for O’Toole.
The Liberal and NDP leave-taking can be graceful – Trudeau will have been leader for a decade, Singh for two elections-plus – but the Conservatives’ one-and-done dethroning would be grisly. Three new faces will face the country. Our reputations for dull politics will be debunked again. •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
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