Toronto St. Paul Shouldn't Decide Trudeau's Future

With Bonus Ontario Election Takes

Next Monday’s Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection will be incredibly consequential in the arc of this Parliament. If the Liberals lose, the calls for a Leadership contest will be swift and immediate, and if the Liberals win it this will be used as the reason to trust the current leadership that things can rebound. This is, as much as we can say with certainty about an event before it happens, a certainty. It also happens to be really stupid, in the same way that the #Discourse around a certain Maple Leaf is getting to be that way.

Because nature abhors a vacuum and sports media program directors hate one even more, Mitch Marner’s future as a Leaf has been in the spotlight recently. I don’t really care what you think of Marner, and I don’t really care to litigate the point, but one aspect of the #Discourse has annoyed me and it seems relevant here. Marner’s entering the final year of his current contract, and some in the media and the fanbase have said that depending on what he wants on the next contract would impact what they would do. Seems reasonable, no? Sure, in a vacuum, but the problem with Marner isn’t the contract, it’s that when the chips are down he folds like a cheap lawn chair. Whether he makes $11M, $9M, or $13M in 2027 doesn’t change the fundamental issue that his playoff performances have been dogshit.

If you think Marner is either just plainly not going to be the level of star you need, or is some form of damaged goods in Toronto, what that next contract comes in at is irrelevant. If you think he’s capable of being a true star, of elevating a level and becoming a true co-star to Auston Matthews, then you swallow the number and sign him, as Edmonton’s apparently about to do with Leon Draisaitl. But at the end of the day, either way the contract number shouldn’t change what you think about his future, because the difference of $2M on the cap hit matters much less than whether or not he can be good enough at the right time.

In the same way, there’s no reason to think that your opinion about Justin Trudeau should change based on St. Paul’s. If you think he should go, the case shouldn’t really hinge on Monday’s byelection - the disastrous polling that mostly refuses to get better should be the basis for it. If the Liberals win on Monday by 3%, say, that’s not really a meaningfully different result than losing by 2%, but one will be written up as a success and one a failure despite both resulting in swings that would, if replicated nationally, result in a Tory majority with over 200 seats.

I’m on record saying I think the Liberals are underdogs Monday, an assessment I’m only slightly walking back from because of the total kitchen sink being thrown at it. 17 Cabinet Ministers were in the riding this past weekend, apparently, while the Tories are perfectly content to let Trudeau win it. (The thing that is lingering in the air but isn’t being explicitly said is that the Tories want to run against Justin in 2025 and they think winning St. Paul’s makes it likelier the Liberals dump him. Political parties do not have the monopoly of wisdom - remember, Conservatives spent the first half of 2015 more scared of Tom Mulcair than Trudeau, and Liberal insiders once thought Michael Ignatieff was a good choice. That said, it’s worth saying explicitly what everyone seems to know privately and is being hinted at, amongst other places, on the CBC’s flagship political news show.) So who knows, maybe the Liberals hold it. Either way, the choice Liberals have to make is simple.

The bullish case for Trudeau is that he is (potentially uniquely?) strong in Quebec and weak in the rest of the country, but he has been strong in Ontario and can get that back. If you want to make a pro-Trudeau staying argument your best option is to argue it’s easier for Trudeau to build back Ontario strength than it is for [insert Anglo here] to win 32% of the vote in Quebec, and a change in leader could result in losing the Quebec beachhead and suffering huge losses in English Canada.

The problem is that the Quebec beachhead only gets you so far. Abacus has the LPC at 24% in the province, a level which is much easier for Anita Anand or Mark Carney or take your pick of others to replicate. The last Leger full sample Quebec poll had the Liberals at 26%, which doesn’t exactly make it clear whether dumping JT would be that big of a risk in Quebec. But the pro-stay the course argument is, at its core, that seats in Ontario are easier to get back with Trudeau than seats in Quebec are to hold with an Anglo leader.

Is that argument right? I’m undecided, and I can see the merits of a change and of staying the course. But what happens Monday won’t be particularly relevant, win or lose. The calculus that I’m going through, that I’ve been going through since the poll collapse of July 2023, is whether the risks of action outweigh the cost of inaction. The budget and the lack of bounce is relevant, even though the individual measures polled reasonably. The Quebec numbers matter, as does the fact that changing to some amorphous other always looks better than the incumbent in a time like this.

If the Liberals lose on Monday there’ll be knives out for the PM, and many of the people who will be working together to bring about a leadership challenge will then bitterly disagree who should replace him. Desperation makes for odd couples - Simon Crean tried to spill Julia Gillard down under in March 2013 despite hating Kevin Rudd, after all. There’s no saying what Liberal MPs, grandees, donors, and members will do if they lose. There’s also no guarantee they’d be right to do it.

But if the Liberals hold on, they throw everything at it and they win narrowly, that shouldn’t make those with doubts suddenly forget the polls. At the end of the day, if the last year has you doubting whether the PM is the right leader for the moment, then narrowly holding on shouldn’t really sway you. To extend the sporting metaphor, the goal for the Liberals isn’t to beat Arizona on a Tuesday in December, it’s to win the Cup. If Leafs management hadn’t had their heads up their asses for so long and hadn’t tolerated mediocrity after pathetic loss after pathetic loss, maybe Mitch Marner wouldn’t have them by the balls right now.

If you’re a Liberal who thinks Justin Trudeau’s the wrong leader, say so now. Waiting till Monday night hopefully makes it easier for you is cowardice, but it’s also fake. If you think Trudeau should go have the courage of your convictions and say it. If you think he should stay, then again, say it. Monday night is turning into a referendum on whether the Liberals should spend their summer melting down into a leadership crisis, and it’s stupid. I’m not saying the party doesn’t need a bloodletting, I’m just saying Abacus having you at 22% is a lot better of a reason to do it than waiting to see whether Jenni Byrne not sending volunteers decides our fate or not. 

Bonus: Early Ontario Election?

Doug Ford’s not planning on waiting till June 2026 to go to an election. Now, in theory, all early election talk can go out the window if the polls narrow, but Ford’s intending on going early. They just got a swing to them in Milton, the PCs have a huge cash advantage right now, an early call advantages the party with 70-some odd incumbents likely to recontest the election as opposed to Opposition parties in no condition to run proper selections everywhere, and the polls are good. There’s some debate in the reporting whether it’ll be October 2024 or June 2025 but there’s going to be an early election.

The Star has reported the rationale for going early as avoiding theoretical future cuts or whatever from Poilievre. If Poilievre wins in October 2025, and has any intention of doing any sort of fiscal austerity, the spring 2026 budget will be a bloodbath. If you’re Ford, you don’t want your writ to drop three weeks after the Feds are potentially talking job cuts and program closures. That said, the real reason to go is that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are at 24% in Ontario and he’s a reliable opponent. In the same way the Feds ran against Ford as much as they did Scheer in 2019, time for some karma.

June 2025 would only see 1 year cut off the mandate, but you’d give Bonnie Crombie and Marit Stiles another 6 months to get their shit in order and close the money gap. An October election this year would see Ford try and slip under the radar, in the hopes that further apathy and a media more focused on Trump-Biden lets him win again on shit turnout. I see the cases for both; if I were Ford I’d go in October, though I was Team June until very recently. (What you gain in your opposition being completely screwed outweighs any cost by going less than 3 years early, in my view.)

Ford’ll obviously win a third term, I’ll bitch and moan about the missed opportunity of picking Bonnie, and the 2025-6 Ontario Liberal Leadership race’ll be a doozy. And somehow the NDP will remain second in seats despite being a fucking disaster.