LaSalle/Elmwood Byelections: Liberals' Pathetic Exit

Resign, For The Sake Of The Party

I’d say I’m disappointed, but disappointment would imply a certain amount of expectation on my part.

Tonight has been exactly as terrible for the Liberals as I’ve been saying it will be for weeks now, what has been clear as a certain loss revealed as one. It’s a loss that should end Justin Trudeau’s leadership, one that has to if this party cares about anything or anybody but the selfish interests of its current leaders. If you’d like to yell at me for thinking the NDP would win over the Bloc, feel free, but let’s be clear - the only thing I felt safe in was that the Liberals were fucked, and they lost. (Also, if I had had the intel that the Bloc won advance polls when I tweeted my guess on Sunday I would have predicted them. I got those texts on Monday. Oh well.)

Elmwood is a rebuke against Jagmeet Singh, but it’s been clear the NDP won’t let themselves be judged by petty things like “math” or “results” since they decided to keep Jagmeet after the 2019 and 2021 elections, so let’s not pretend they’ll suddenly care now. They have made the decision to keep their unserious poison as leader. They will win 15 seats at the next election. That’s their cross to bear. 

Them winning a safe seat by single digits doesn’t change this fact. It’s a pathetic result that dumb people will spin as a win. It’s 17.5% swing since the 2021 election, which is a disaster for the NDP. If you’re a NDP candidate in any right-trending seat - Skeena, Kootenay, Windsor, even London or Timmins - you should be shitting yourself. I will say I’m glad this byelection gave us all a Rorschach test of who understands math. It’s truly a gift from God. 

But tonight is about Justin Trudeau. Tonight is about the failure of Justin Trudeau. It’s about the fact that Justin Trudeau will not be our Prime Minister in 14 months, and so our options as Liberals is to let the sinking ship that is his leadership take us all down, or try and save as many seats as possible with a new leader. Pretending we are not headed for wipeout isn’t acceptable. It wasn’t acceptable after St. Paul’s, and yet we did. And now we’re here, having lost another safe seat we didn’t need to.

I don’t like to invoke morality in my politics but it is clear to me that there is a moral imperative to replace Justin Trudeau. The cost of allowing Pierre Poilievre an easy victory, a landslide, without even attempting to run a candidate who could stop him from breaking 200 seats, is too high. Justin Trudeau cannot even keep safe Liberal seats in Montreal or Toronto safe anymore. His time is up.

It is fine and dandy for people to talk about all the ways Pierre Poilievre is unfit for the job but it’s also very clear the Canadian people do not give a shit. They are so done with Justin Trudeau that an unserious moron who can only Verb The Noun is 20 points ahead. Every time someone criticizes Poilievre for being unserious and dangerous, I have the same reaction - “it’s really fucking pathetic we’re losing to him, then.” It’s unacceptable that we are.

The dirty secret that everyone is willing to say privately is that nobody thinks Trudeau should keep his job. They’ve known since St. Paul’s that his staying was unacceptable. They’ve been perfectly willing to say so to anybody that would listen, including what feels like an endless stream of Althia Raj stories. But they refused to say so in public so now we’re here, with another seat lost, and 3 months wasted for the new leader to come in and right the ship.

The other dirty secret is that the Conservatives absolutely want to run against Trudeau. Conservative central HQ tried to limit Don Stewart in St. Paul’s because they thought him winning would force the Liberals to replace Trudeau. They want to run against Justin, or against Chrystia Freeland. The thought of having to devise a new strategy for Anita Anand doesn’t exactly fill them with dread, but it does fill them with a higher level of concern than the prospect of Trudeau does.

The reason I’m angry is that it doesn’t feel like the Liberal Party cares about its survival. In a moment of anger recently, I asked a buddy why it feels like I’m working harder to save the Liberal Party than the actual fucking Liberal Party is. His answer was simple, but devastating. “Because you are.” Whether that’s actually true or not is unprovable and entirely besides the point, because it is absolutely the case that the party has wasted three months to achieve no outcome.

There are many good people inside the Liberal Party who do care about outcomes and are trying to save this party from the landslide that is facing it. They’re just not in charge. What we need is courage from Members and Ministers, and a pressure campaign from voters and party members. We must not allow the Liberals to resile from this loss like they did St. Paul’s. Justin Trudeau’s continued leadership is a threat to all of the things that we are claiming Poilievre will get rid of.

If you genuinely believe that Pharmacare, Dental Care, Child Care, and a whole host of other initiatives will go if Pierre Poilievre wins you cannot support Justin Trudeau staying in office. You cannot. LaSalle has proven once again that he is toxic. We can have the fight about whether or not that toxicity is warranted or not another day, but there is no virtue in yelling at the voters that they’re wrong if you want to win.

Justin Trudeau must resign. His continued leadership of the Liberal Party is an in-kind contribution to Poilievre’s victory and the dismantling of his legacy. If he has any bone in his body that actually cares about this country more than his own vanity, he won’t be long in this job.