While the debate around the future of U.S. President Joe Biden remains a vigorous one, similar noises about the efficacy of Justin Trudeau leading the federal Liberals into the next election have quieted down.
This likely has less to do with people in the Liberal Party having changed their minds about Mr. Trudeau’s chances in the next national vote, and more to do with the realization there is almost nothing that can be done to force the man out of the job if he refuses to go.
And the Prime Minister has himself (and friends in high places) to thank for that.
At the same time Mr. Trudeau was assuming the helm of the Liberal Party in 2013, he was also taking control of the party apparatus, including the now-defunct national executive, which was replaced as the governing organization of the party by a national board. While this move might have looked to many like a change in name only, it was far from just that.
An acquaintance, who is a former senior member of the Liberal Party and who previously held senior positions in Liberal governments in the 1990s and 2000s, pointed out to me that many of the changes Mr. Trudeau and his advisers made to the party’s constitution have allowed him to be more than sanguine about a potential uprising undermining his leadership.
The makeup of the national board has changed, for instance. The new configuration effectively gives greater power and control to the Leader. Provincial wings no longer have the clout they once exerted. Again, the infrastructure has been usurped by Mr. Trudeau and the coterie of true power brokers around him.
When Mr. Trudeau assumed control of the Liberals, he was automatically the recipient of a change to the party constitution made years earlier by Paul Martin. That change was crucial: a leadership review could only be held after an election loss. Prior to the change, a review could be brought forward at any scheduled national convention.
Mr. Trudeau changed the nature of membership of the party, promoting non-paying “supporters” over card-carrying members. This was supposed to reflect the post-partisan times we live in, apparently. But again, a “supporter” does not have the same influence that the former, paid-in-full Liberal Party member once did. Instead, the Liberals became a cult of personality.
After doing this, Mr. Trudeau’s grip over the national Liberal Party office, board members and regional entities was complete – making any attempt to undermine his leadership all but impossible.
“There is no Liberal Party beyond the name and office – he has killed it,” my friend told me in an email. (I’ve agreed not to name him because of fears he has of potential reprisals for his comments.) “There are no soldiers to fight the next election war. His unchecked power over the party, power some of his predecessors would have liked to have had in full measure (think Trudeau père), has hollowed out the party.”
There is one other thing Mr. Trudeau made sure didn’t happen under his watch: He made certain he wasn’t held more accountable to his caucus than he needed to be. In other words, he wanted no part of the Reform Act, which allows MPs to review and remove their party leader.
The act was designed by Conservative MP Michael Chong and adopted by Parliament in 2015. Under the act, if 20 per cent of a caucus signs a petition calling for a leadership review, a vote is triggered. If a majority of the party’s MPs then vote against the leader, the leader is forced to step down. The Conservatives are the only party that adopted the act. They used it to oust Erin O’Toole as leader in 2022.
Of course, there wasn’t much outcry at the time over the changes Mr. Trudeau brought in to insulate himself from any potential rebellion. He brought the party back from oblivion and led it to three election wins in a row. When that’s happening, no one cares much about changes made to the party constitution years earlier, even if they could be used by the leader to help keep his job in the face of internal opposition.
There is a line – in some cases a fine one – between giving a political party so much power to dump a leader it becomes susceptible to abuse by mischief-makers with axes to grind, versus having some accountability built into a party’s policies that allows for a change in the leadership if it’s deemed necessary.
Sort of like the position the Liberals now find themselves in. However, there appears to be very little anyone can do about it now. Mr. Trudeau has taken care of that.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this column incorrectly said that Justin Trudeau’s team changed the leadership review provisions in the Liberal Party’s constitution. This version has been corrected.