"Milk turns sour" for every Canadian government after a decade, analyst says

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00:00With the battles having grown too big to fight, Justin Trudeau has brandished the white flag.

00:06Last night over dinner, I told my kids about the decision that I'm sharing with you today.

00:14I intend to resign as party leader, as prime minister,

00:19after the party selects its next leader through a robust, nationwide, competitive process.

00:28In-house tensions reached their peak three weeks ago,

00:31when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau's most loyal cabinet member, handed in her resignation.

00:38The now outgoing Canadian Prime Minister says he's asked the party's president to begin the voting process,

00:44as the Liberal Party will seek to restructure ahead of the general election to come before the end of October.

00:51I'm excited to see the process unfold in the months ahead.

00:57We were elected for the third time in 2021 to strengthen the economy post-pandemic

01:04and advance Canada's interests in a complicated world.

01:08And that is exactly the job that I and we will continue to do for Canadians.

01:16Trudeau's popularity among voters has waned post-pandemic,

01:20with Canadians unsatisfied with his measures to battle the cost-of-living crisis.

01:26Voted in as the country's second-youngest prime minister in 2015,

01:30Trudeau was at first celebrated for bringing liberal values back to Canada following a decade of conservative rule.

01:37But now, some studies have found that the Liberal Party is at its lowest rate of support in the country's modern history.

01:44While leaderless liberals focus on saving their jobs...

01:47While the leader of the opposition is twice as popular as Trudeau in the polls.

01:51An out-of-control housing emergency...

01:53Parliament will be suspended until the 24th of March.

01:57Justin Trudeau then announcing he is to resign.

02:00The Liberal Party in Canada is in search of a new leader,

02:03who of course will then become Canada's prime minister.

02:06Let's bring in for more analysis and more context,

02:09and perhaps a look into what the future might hold,

02:12Shachi Curl, president of the Angus Reid Institute in Vancouver.

02:16Shachi, thanks for being with us here on France 24.

02:18We appreciate your presence.

02:20Shachi, Justin Trudeau was elected with a great deal of enthusiasm,

02:26and obviously was very popular at the start.

02:28Is it just inevitable that a popular leader will eventually see it all turns to vinegar,

02:33or did he do something in particular along the way to make this happen?

02:36Give us a sense of that.

02:38Well, one cannot reflect...

02:40Thank you for having me, Bonsoir.

02:42One cannot reflect on his resignation today

02:49without thinking about those heady days.

02:51He referred to them himself as sunny ways,

02:54a time when the Liberals were riding very high in the polls,

02:58won a landslide in 2015,

03:00and his own personal approval numbers were in the high 60% levels,

03:06not just for one or two quarters, but for an extended period of time.

03:11And you're absolutely right.

03:14In Canada, over the last 50 years or so,

03:17a government lasts about a decade,

03:20maybe eight years, maybe nine years,

03:22maybe a little longer, maybe a little shorter.

03:24But at some point, the milk turns sour.

03:28At some point, the best before consumption date passes.

03:33And in Mr. Trudeau's case, but also in the Liberal government's case,

03:37this is less about something in particular that he had done

03:43in terms of a very unpopular policy,

03:46and more about, number one, longevity and the fatigue factor,

03:51but two, also what I would call the wicked problems

03:54that have plagued governments across Western liberal democracies.

03:59Regardless of stripe, we saw a conservative government in the UK

04:03tossed out after a long period of time

04:06because people were feeling stressed around cost of living.

04:09We've seen the same problems in France.

04:11We saw the same problem in the United States just last November.

04:14And we are poised to see a change in government in Canada,

04:18in part because people do not feel like they have economic financial security,

04:22that they cannot get ahead financially.

04:25Was perhaps the re-election of Donald Trump

04:27the final straw for Justin Trudeau?

04:29Trump today saying that Canada should merge with the United States.

04:32That's one of Trump's possible solutions.

04:35Yeah, he's been saying that a lot.

04:37I can tell you that even conservative-leaning Canadians

04:41don't put much interest in joining the United States.

04:44And if Canadians were voting in a presidential election in the United States,

04:49they would overwhelmingly vote against Donald Trump,

04:52even conservatives north of the border.

04:55So Donald Trump's presence and re-election had an impact,

05:00but in an indirect manner.

05:02Trump has threatened 25% tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States,

05:09and to really expose and explain what a significant problem this would be for Canada.

05:16Canada and the United States have very close and meshed intertwined economies.

05:22This would be a 25% blanket tariff on Canadian exports.

05:27Disastrous for the Canadian economy.

05:30In theory, Canadians put more faith in the opposition leader's ability to handle Trump,

05:37but he is untested. He's never been prime minister.

05:40And I think that just has to do in general with support for the opposition leader.

05:45But what ultimately was the straw that broke the camel's back

05:50was the fact that Justin Trudeau, in a political attempt to gain some favour with Canadians,

05:58proposed a sales tax holiday.

06:01We had it for two weeks.

06:03Exempted federal sales tax on a number of items.

06:06And additionally wanted to send out sales tax rebate checks to millions of households.

06:12This prompted the former finance minister to say, look, this is not responsible.

06:19It's a political gimmick.

06:20It will cost government coffers too much money at a time when our,

06:25the Canadian economic situation is already fairly precarious if those tariffs come in.

06:32So I would say it's more indirect in terms of the Trump factor than direct.

06:39But it was very much about the tariffs that caused the finance minister to say,

06:44look, I'm done. I quit.

06:46Which ultimately really put the nail in the coffin for Justin Trudeau,

06:52who had been on a long slide downwards in terms of vote intention.

06:56But I can tell you that in the days following the finance minister's resignation,

07:01we saw the Liberal Party's vote intent fortunes drop, as was mentioned in the report just prior.

07:09It was our data that showed the party at 16 percent in terms of vote intention.

07:14This is the natural governing party, which they call it in Canada.

07:18The Liberals have been, and this would have been one of the worst outcomes for the party.

07:23And it also reflected one of the worst outcomes personally for the Liberal leader.

07:28Shachi, can I take you back in time a little bit to reflect about the name Trudeau?

07:32Because, of course, Justin Trudeau isn't the first of his family to be prime minister of Canada.

07:37When he was born, his father, his dad, Pierre, was the prime minister.

07:41I'm wondering how, and this is obviously a compare and contrast question, isn't it?

07:45How does he compare to his father? Both, of course, long serving prime ministers.

07:49How will he rank? One or two? I don't know. Give us your sense of that.

07:54You know, I think in general, and you can correct me if I'm wrong,

07:59but I find that politicians tend to do better in retrospective than they do in real time.

08:05So we've seen it time and time again.

08:08Even Winston Churchill lost an election in the postwar years.

08:12People were tired of him. And look at how much he is lionized today.

08:16Look at Richard Nixon, grudgingly respected or genuinely respected,

08:20although he, too, was drummed from office.

08:23So I think it's going to take a little bit of time to really understand Justin Trudeau's legacy.

08:29But he was a left of center, progressive beacon of light for, again, not just Canada,

08:35but much of the Western liberal world at a time when many European democracies

08:42and the United States were tilting to the right.

08:46I feel like now we're in a situation where electorates around the world don't really care

08:51who is right or who is left. They're just in a mood for change.

08:55And I think that is very much reflected in the data that we're seeing right now.

08:59One thing I want to point out about the opposition leader, Pierre Poliev,

09:03is that while his party is leading all opposition leaders and opposition parties by double digits,

09:12including the governing liberals, what's important to note is that he personally is not particularly popular.

09:19His unfavorable numbers are actually higher than his favorable numbers.

09:24So when we talk about a move towards the Conservatives,

09:28it's less about people sort of swooning for a popular leader and more about a desire for change.

09:35And so we've got a change now with the prime minister's pledge to leave and to elect

09:41and for the liberals to elect a new leader. And in some ways, I don't want to go too far in saying this,

09:47but in some ways it levels the playing field, but only a bit.

09:52Charity Cole of the Angus Reid Institute, president of that body, joining us live from Vancouver.

09:57Thank you very much, indeed, for that analysis, giving us a far broader context

10:01to the announcements of Justin Trudeau's resignation as leader of the liberals,

10:06therefore as prime minister of Canada. And it's all changed at the top there.

10:10Thanks again to Charity Cole of the Angus Reid Institute. Thank you indeed.

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