Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rises to speak during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 18.Blair Gable/Reuters
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs’s approval ratings are the lowest of any premier in Confederation, according to the Angus Reid Institute. When he launched his re-election campaign Thursday, Mr. Higgs needed to pick on someone even more unpopular.
Luckily for him, there’s Justin Trudeau.
Every politician in Canada is running against Mr. Trudeau, except Liberals, who are running away from him.
The speech Mr. Higgs gave in Fredericton to launch his campaign came with one central warning about provincial Liberal Leader Susan Holt: that she would do to New Brunswick what Mr. Trudeau has done to Canada.
On the same day, Quebec Premier François Legault was demanding that the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa change its mind and vote to defeat Mr. Trudeau’s government in the House of Commons this week.
That wasn’t so much a push to bring down Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals as it was Mr. Legault’s attempt to lay the blame for the Prime Minister’s continued tenure at the feet of the Premier’s more popular rival, Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.
Mr. Legault complained that Mr. Plamondon could order the PQ’s sister party, the Bloc, to vote down Mr. Trudeau for failing to give Quebec additional powers over immigration.
Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet seemed sanguine, however. He feels he can use the weakness of Mr. Trudeau’s government to extract a policy concession – a multibillion-dollar increase in Old Age Security for those aged 65 to 74 – that he can use to bolster his own support. And defeat Mr. Trudeau later.
Everybody wants a piece of Mr. Trudeau now. Not in a good way.
The PM is a such a useful foil that Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s strategists have mused about calling a snap election in early 2025 so as not to let anti-Liberal sentiment go to waste.
And as Mr. Blanchet’s gambit makes clear, those who want to negotiate with Mr. Trudeau’s government feel they have the upper hand.
That’s true for parties in Parliament but might also be true for others: provincial governments, business lobbies, pressure groups and so on. They might feel the PM needs them more than vice versa, or that there’s little reason to make a deal with a government that might not last long. Mr. Trudeau’s government is weak.
It’s all happening in a way that is cruel punishment for a politician who once walked on a wave of popularity. Now he’s used as a prop by unpopular politicians while others calculate how much they can extract.
Outside his caucus, many Liberals try to hold Mr. Trudeau at a distance.
Laura Palestini, the Liberal candidate in last week’s by-election in Lasalle-Émard-Verdun, had tried to tell voters the campaign was about her, not Mr. Trudeau, but she lost the race in the Liberal bastion anyway.
For those who want to leave, such as Mr. Trudeau’s now-former Quebec lieutenant, Pablo Rodriguez, the trick seems to be getting away fast.
Mr. Rodriguez resigned as Mr. Trudeau’s transport minister on Thursday to run for the leadership of the Quebec Liberal Party. But even before he officially quit, his opponents were attacking him for being a player in Mr. Trudeau’s team.
Mr. Rodriguez chose to sit as an independent MP until the leadership race officially starts in January, although he said he isn’t denying his part in Mr. Trudeau’s government.
But he spent some time dancing around reporters’ questions about whether he would vote to support Mr. Trudeau’s government, saying people don’t want an election now – but not taking up the invitation to express wholehearted confidence in it.
Certainly, it’s a trickier step from Ottawa to the provincial capital than it is in other provinces. Still, Mr. Rodriguez was one of Mr. Trudeau’s senior ministers on Wednesday. On Thursday, he had to make tracks.
All that’s a bad sign for the re-election hopes of federal Liberal MPs, of course. But it’s also turning into a dangerous dynamic for the government Mr. Trudeau leads. So many players and every level now see their interests in preying on his unpopularity.
There aren’t many defenders left, and there’s a long lineup of folks looking to take a shot.
Editor’s note: (Sept. 24, 2024): This article has been updated to correct the name of Liberal candidate Laura Palestini.